“There,” he told the commander, gesturing toward the area where the blue smoke snaked toward the high ceiling. “Do you see it?”
The alien stared intently at the air before them. Unlike the other two soldiers, however, his gaze was fixed in one spot, and as far as Nuri could tell, he was in the right vicinity.
Does he really see her? Nuri wondered.
For a moment, he forgot all about searching for Colt’s hidden symbols in the mausoleum. He was more intrigued by the idea that this hostile, heathen alien could pick up on signs which only one of God’s Called soldiers should see. The very notion went against everything the Duri had taught him since he’d been brought to the distant mountaintop. The Duri insisted that only God’s chosen ones could see His presence, and that included the ethereal vessels—like Colt—He used to facilitate the trials.
He can’t, Nuri reasoned. It would undermine all Duri teachings and, therefore, the trials themselves would be a farce, which cannot possibly be true.
The alien commander breathed heavily and made a noise Nuri didn’t recognize. “Is it blue?” he asked.
Nuri’s heart leapt into his throat. He took a few steps forward without realizing his legs were moving at all. “You can see it.” He meant for it to sound like a question, but his voice came out flat.
“It’s just smoke.”
“It’s not just smoke,” Nuri protested. His legs shook. He could feel the toxins from the atmosphere seeping back into his lungs, burning his esophagus on the way down. “It’s her.”
The commander eyed him carefully for a moment, then looked back at Colt’s remnants at the far end of the mausoleum. “That’s not the Corpse Queen,” he said. “It’s something else.”
“It’s her,” Nuri said weakly. He felt like sitting down. Or falling over.
But everything I’ve seen in the trials is real, he reasoned, which means the Duri faith is real. How could we see Colt otherwise?
The alien commander walked to the far end of the mausoleum and traced the blue smoke with his fingers.
He sees it.
The soldiers who’d accompanied Nuri into the building stared at their leader with heads tilted inquisitively. Evidently, they thought that he was crazy, or perhaps just putting them on. They made no attempts to spot the anomaly for themselves, even with the aid of their suits’ sensors.
They only trust their eyes, Colt said. They don’t understand there are senses that can detect realities beyond their own.
Nuri crossed the room to the alien commander on unsteady legs, trying his best to recall his meditation techniques as he fought back the toxins worming into his blood.
This isn’t real, he thought. This can’t be real.
The reason you are here is to see if you can distinguish illusion from reality. Can you be sure of anything during the trials, then? Can you be sure of anything back in your flawed reality? How will you know where God is present and where it is the Evil One in disguise?
“What is it?” the alien asked again uncertainly.
“I told you. It’s her. Colt.”
The commander stepped back and watched the blue smoke swirl through the stuffy air, then turned to his soldiers. “Bring the offering.”
They hesitated, glancing at each other to see if either of them were willing to voice a protest, then quickly exited the mausoleum and shouted to the other soldiers.
“You’re sure that this is the place?” the commander asked.
“See for yourself,” Nuri replied curtly.
You don’t have much time, his Duri Master cautioned. Kill these heathens and find your way off this wretched planet! You have God’s work to do, and it begins with cleansing these creatures of their iniquities.
Nuri scanned the room for exits or any other symbols Colt had left behind for him, feeling a little more clear-headed each moment as he got his breathing under control and the toxins began to slowly suction out from his bloodstream. Before he could focus enough to detect additional clues, however, the alien commander gripped his shoulder and exclaimed in his native tongue.
“Something’s happening.”
Nuri turned back to the electric blue air. He was right. The smoke wasn’t swirling with the aimless nonchalance he’d previously observed. It began to rapidly spurt out from nothing into a shape that solidified as the smoke increased.
“She’s here,” Nuri whispered, his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He felt an other-worldly presence manifesting around them. The sensation was as exhilarating as it was alarming.
It’s not you, he said to Colt.
A shudder rocked his body as he watched the figure take form.
“Hurry!” the commander yelled in the direction of his soldiers. “She’s already here!”
A moment later, a half-dozen aliens burst into the mausoleum carrying a purple-haired primate that struggled against their hold.
“Lay it in front of her!” the commander demanded.
The soldiers stopped running and stared at him, obviously confused. “Where?” one of them asked.
“What are you talking about? Right there!” he pointed toward the woman-figure’s face. She’d nearly assumed full physical form.
Still clueless, the aliens advanced toward the general area where the commander had pointed and dropped the struggling primate to the floor.
The glowing, blue smoke that was now a woman looked down at the beast and hissed.
“The book!” the commander shouted.
Another soldier busted through the doorway with a large, weathered text clasped against his chest and handed it over as reverently as he could manage at the end of a sprint.
The smoke-woman had at last become a full being, with glowing, pupil-less eyes, rotted hair, and a loose robe to cover her flaking, gray skin.
“Iesu halla gokan,” the commander read from the text while the soldiers glanced back and forth between him and the seemingly empty air. “Ack alahoo depon.”
The Corpse Queen scowled at the alien, curling back her pale, blue lips to expose a worm-like tongue and cracked, yellow incisors.
Nuri’s body was frozen in place. He wasn’t sure whether to engage the hateful apparition whose very breath was sin and abomination, free the innocent primate who’d been brought as a blood sacrifice to the witch, or use the distraction to attempt an escape so he could find his way off the planet.
“Iesu domi muham, Iesu domi iham. Bukara,” the commander continued unabated, even when the Corpse Queen moved toward him with a dragging limp and Kileran flies circling her rancid breath.
“Sir?” one of the alien soldiers whispered.
“Do you see her?” Nuri asked.
Again, the soldiers glanced back and forth, perplexed.
At least only one among them is privy to other realities.
Nuri nodded. “Then you should all leave now. Your commander can handle the rest. You won’t be any good to him if you can’t see your enemy.”
The alien stopped reading abruptly and snapped his head toward Nuri. “She’s not our enemy,” he growled, venom dripping from his voice.
“She’s a courtesan of the Evil One,” Nuri argued. “She’s enemy to all living things. Her presence here is an affront to God and all creation. We have to destroy her now before she becomes too powerful to contain.”
The witch turned her soulless eyes to Nuri and growled a deep, phlegm-thick challenge.
“Then you can be her sacrifice,” the commander told him. He resumed reading defiantly. “Iesu domi Tscharia, kinoman lisan.”
Heathen! his Duri Master shouted. Kill them both now!
Waves of heat rolled off the Corpse Queen, driving Nuri back toward the entrance. They didn’t seem to have any effect on the alien commander.
I don’t have my weapons, Nuri protested, edging sideways. He wasn’t about to give up on finding a portal back to the ancient temple, even if it meant suffering the witch’s presence even longer. It may not have been Colt’s signs that had led him to the C
orpse Queen’s chamber, but he wasn’t ready to dismiss the notion entirely considering he’d been too distracted to seek out alternative exits.
“Ipatsu meno kolahando, kokkola opearandi hermanisk,” the commander finished, dropping the text carelessly to the floor the moment that the last word left his lips—or whatever his species used for verbalization. For all Nuri knew, the sounds could have been manufactured completely by telekinesis. He’d seen such adaptations in other heathen species during his missions throughout the galaxy as a Called soldier while cleansing heretics of their sins and delivering them to God.
“My queen,” the commander declared, falling prostrate before her.
“I am Death,” the Corpse Queen hissed. “I will cover your universe in darkness.”
Pride dwells in the tongue of the dead man, Nuri thought, remembering the seemingly nonsensical passage from his Duri teachings. But he couldn’t stop the life from draining out of him when the wretched creature turned her glowing eyes to him again and roared with such terrible strength that he shrank back furtively. He could feel her thick saliva burn holes in his suit.
“You,” the witch growled. “You stink of the Omega worshippers. I feel their poison in you.”
“Poison?” he gasped. “It’s your presence that poisons me.”
“I’ve brought you back from the land of the dead to help my people,” the commander persisted, ignoring the exchange between Nuri and the Corpse Queen entirely. “You’re the only one who can save us from destruction.”
The witch, likewise, ignored the alien, crossing the mausoleum to Nuri and sending rivulets of cracks like infected veins through the ground as she approached. “You wish to be Hidria,” she said mockingly. “Hidria are not what you think they are.”
Nuri attempted to backpedal but found that his limbs were paralyzed by malfunctions in his suit. The creature’s poison was causing widespread system failures. “Hidria are servants of God. They protect all realities from your dark reign.”
“It is not my reign, Omega fool.”
“No, it is the Clown King’s. You are nothing more than his consort. A harlot corpse. An abomination.”
The Corpse Queen laughed, shaking the walls of the building so violently that even the alien commander fell to one knee and shielded his head in case the roof collapsed.
“Do you believe that God exists?” she asked.
Nuri gaped at her incredulously, forgetting her terrible power for a moment at the shock of having his faith questioned so openly without any prefatory argument. “I don’t just believe,” he said. “I know.”
“Then that is your ultimate flaw,” the Corpse Queen responded. “Your faith cannot be tested because faith requires an unknown. You know that God exists, therefore you don’t have faith in Him.”
Nuri scoffed, but the notion rattled him.
Could she be telling the truth? he wondered. Is it even possible for me to be Hidria, then?
Of course, his Duri Master argued. The Hidria know that God exists more than any other living creatures because they know Him. If you become Hidria, it is impossible for you not to know that God exists.
Nuri frowned, barely noticing the witch as she limped closer to him. Then it’s also impossible to say that Hidria have faith or are faithful. Is it possible for them to serve an ideal when it is no longer an ideal but a fact?
“Please,” the commander begged, crawling across the floor to her feet, yet not daring to stand in her presence without permission. “My people will die if you don’t help us. You must! We brought you back to life solely to vanquish our foes. Please! Save our people.”
The Corpse Queen stopped limping abruptly and scowled at the alien. “You raise a corpse queen and appeal to her to spare the living?” She laughed and theatrically changed direction to limp back to the commander. “What do you think a corpse queen is, fool? Did it ever occur to you that I need more souls from your dead to grow in power?”
Slowly, the alien pushed his way backward, erasing her progress with each shuffle of his hands and feet. But there was a wall not far behind him. It wouldn’t be long before a confrontation was necessary one way or the other.
He’s done this to himself, Nuri thought, once again using the opportunity to scan the mausoleum in case he’d missed an obvious exit or Colt’s sigil while he’d been distracted by the Corpse Queen. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to leave the mausoleum through the doorway they’d entered so long as the soldiers lingered and the Corpse Queen’s attention was angled in that general direction. Even if he managed to evade the soldiers, he wouldn’t get far. As it was said, the dead traveled fast.
They both deserve to die.
The witch’s head snapped back to him as soon as the thought echoed in his consciousness. “Are you one to pass judgment on who lives or dies?” she mocked. “How can you kill a Corpse Queen? I own death. I am death.”
Rising, Nuri shook his head slowly. “I am Death,” he said resolutely. “Hidria are Life and Death, and I am Hidria.”
“You have to save my people!” the commander shouted. “Forget him! I’m the one who brought you here!”
“No, you’re not!” the witch roared, forcing the alien to cower against the wall. “He brought me here, whether he knows it or not.”
The alien turned to Nuri. “You?”
“She’s lying,” he said. “I know nothing about her.”
“I do not lie.”
“You are a queen of lies,” Nuri retorted. “Death is the greatest lie, so a corpse queen is the greatest liar of all.”
The witch snarled, then turned back to the commander. “I cannot save your people. Your planet is doomed no matter what you do. Not because of me but because of the maniac plans of his god.” She stabbed a crooked, rotting finger in Nuri’s direction, then curled her upper lip over her teeth again and brushed at the air in front of her face. “The stench of that foul creature is all over him. He’s drenched in it. It’s offensive.”
“I’ll kill him for you,” the commander pleaded. “He can be your sacrifice. The sacrifice that you deserve.”
The witch made a crude honking sound and spat black acid at the floor. “I deserve more than one of Omega’s disciples. You insult me with the offer.”
The alien stood and held out his hands imploringly. “I meant no offense, my queen.”
“Stop groveling!” she shouted. “Offer yourself as a sacrifice. Then I’ll know you truly value the fate of your people and not just yourself.”
He fell quiet, considering. The Corpse Queen turned back to Nuri.
“You,” she said. “You should offer yourself as a sacrifice for his people. Isn’t that what your Savior God Omega would do?”
“They are not my people,” Nuri responded.
“If the Duri truly lived the lifestyle they preach, they would be offering themselves as sacrifices for all people, regardless of their constitution, rather than eradicating anyone and everyone who challenges their beliefs. They are like children who cannot bear the thought that there are people in the galaxy who are better off than they are, and their jealousy drives them to kill indiscriminately.” She waited a moment to see if Nuri would argue the point, then laughed when she realized he was speechless. “You must agree, then. In your head if not your heart. But the heart cannot be trusted with matters of faith and common sense. You shouldn’t worry, though. The Duri do a great service to the Evil One by merely existing. Every day, they drive more souls into the corpse fields of Tscharia. They do his work more readily than even his self-proclaimed disciples.”
She’s lying! his Duri Master’s voice shouted in his head. She’s trying to trick you! She wants you to forsake your holy calling!
Silence hung heavily in the air. Nuri stared into the ground while the witch watched him. The alien commander held his breath with poorly suppressed despair.
“Please,” the commander eventually muttered again. “You have to save my people. I’ll do anything.”
“Will you let
me crucify you upside down and keep you alive for one-hundred years that way while your people prosper?”
Again, the commander fell silent, glancing at the other soldiers in the mausoleum who could only hear the words spoken by their leader and Nuri. Even with a helmet to hide his expressions, Nuri sensed the guilt radiating from him. He was likely wondering if the soldiers could hear the witch’s words or if their ocular perception of the apparition was the only sense affected.
“You are a weak, pathetic thing,” the witch continued disgustedly. “What do you expect I can do for you? Why did you come here? I cannot raise armies of the undead in this reality. I do not have ships or weapons to offer you. If you wish to use the soul-summoning magic of the Evil One, then seek his Watchmen and find his unholy relics. You’re more offensive than the Omega fool. At least he understands his doubts and deficiencies. At least he is willing to die for the will of God, even if he does not understand what that entails.”
“Death is a lie,” Nuri said defiantly before the alien commander could protest.
The witch moved back toward him. Her limp had diminished somewhat since she’d appeared, and that troubled Nuri. It made him wonder if she was gaining more and more strength the longer she was outside the realm of the dead. “Death is not a lie. It is a lack of comprehension for your finite minds.”
As she moved, her shape began to lose constitution. Her rotting skin pulled off her body and swirled into tendrils of smoke that reached out to Nuri like tentacles. They beckoned him toward her, and the sensation was unsettling.
“You are on a quest to know the nature of God, or so you claim,” the Corpse Queen continued. Her voice had changed as well, Nuri noticed. He couldn’t even be sure that she was the Corpse Queen anymore. “But a human being cannot know the Divine Infinite. A human being cannot understand His nature because your minds aren’t built for it. You can only comprehend things in terms of a beginning and end point. An Alpha and Omega, but never one and the same even when you picture them as a circular line encompassing everything.”
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 15