by Will Wight
Though it was harder now, cycling still didn't take much of his attention. It was a difficult task, but not a complicated one. His mind was free to ponder the mystery of the hideous sacred beasts with twisted auras.
As the day crept on, with dogs snapping and growling every few minutes, a new concern revealed itself: thirst. By late afternoon, he and Yerin had finished the last of the pathetic handful of water remaining in his bottle, and he had become painfully thirsty.
It was there that he missed his home so much that it hurt. He hadn't slept a full night since leaving Sacred Valley, he was only feet away from monsters held back by nothing more than a flimsy, invisible barrier, his entire body was cramped by a night crammed between rocks and roots, and the stress was wearing on his mind. Back home, no matter how badly the other members of his clan thought of him, at least he had all the water he could drink. And tea at every major meal. He could taste the flowery scent of his mother's tea, could even hear the whistle of the kettle...
His eyes snapped open at the same time as Yerin's, and this time the revolting appearance of the dogs didn't catch his attention. He craned his neck to the left, ignoring the dark shapes slithering through the bushes, until he saw it. A bright green shadow appeared under the afternoon sunlight, waving the claws of a centipede in the air and undulating like a snake.
The Remnants had found them.
Yerin braced herself on the trunk as she wobbled to her feet.
“It's nothing to worry about,” Lindon said, trying to reassure them both. “The circle is intended to protect us from Remnants, so it should work even better against them than against the dogs.”
Yerin limbered up her right shoulder, wincing as though it pained her. “Yep. They're not so strong as the dogs.” She drew her pale white blade, and this time Lindon noticed the icy, razor-edged aura that clustered around the weapon so dense that he could barely see the sword itself. “But they're smarter.”
He understood in an instant why she was concerned. The dogs hadn't left them alone because they couldn't break the circle, but because they didn't know how. These were the Remnants of a couple of Lowgolds—they would be stronger and smarter than any spirits Lindon had seen in Sacred Valley.
The circle might stop them for a while, but after enough time, the Remnants would toss some dirt over it. Lindon pushed himself, slipping off the parasite ring and gripping his halfsilver dagger instead. He'd withdrawn the weapon hours before, comforting himself with the thought that he could protect himself if the dogs managed to break through.
He looked past Yerin, deeper into the scene, trying to catch a glimpse of the vital aura around the Remnants. But he was sidetracked, staring at Yerin's waist. Or, more accurately, at her belt.
He'd known it was some sort of construct Forged from red madra, and had wondered if she wore it as some kind of fashion on the outside. Maybe sacred artists in the rest of the world distinguished themselves with clothes made of Forged madra, instead of the badges.
But looking at it now...it was a dense rope of congealed red power, identical to the aura dripping from the dog's mouth but a thousand times more potent. He could practically taste the blood coming off of it, and it made him want to vomit. Visions of slaughter, of an army's worth of corpses, filled his vision.
How could she wear that? It was like having a river of blood wrapped around yourself.
Lindon retched, as suddenly as though someone had punched him in the gut, but nothing came up. He was glad for that, not only because he didn't have the water to spare, but because the sudden impact of the motion knocked him out of his Copper vision.
Yerin watched him from beneath her straight black hair, eyes understanding. “Knew we'd come to this bridge eventually, but let's cross it later. Agree?”
Lindon refocused and steadied his knife and his breathing both. “No, that's not necessary. It's none of my concern, and I apologize if I've given offense.”
She watched him for a second longer, then hefted her white sword and turned back to the advancing Remnants. “We'll talk,” she said.
Then the acidic green Remnants were there, pulling themselves along on their centipede legs. The rotten dogs turned their tails to Lindon and hissed, lowering themselves as though preparing to leap and attack.
In response, the two Remnants made the motion of snapping their jaws open and shut, but there was no sound. They might as well have been the shadows of serpents biting at nothing. Afterwards, they did make a cry: the same whistling teakettle noise that had pursued Yerin and Lindon since their camp.
Lindon's spirits rose. This was something he hadn't considered; for some reason, he'd assumed the Remnants and the dogs would work together to breach the circle and devour the humans.
Only then did he realize how ridiculous that would be. One pack of predators didn't share prey with another. They would fight each other first, and in the chaos the humans might escape.
Some of the rotten beasts haunting the distant forest let out a chorus of growls. Another pair of corrupted dogs padded out of the underbrush, then another.
His optimism vanished, and Yerin's grip tightened on her sword. If the beasts joined together, it wouldn't be a fight with the Remnants so much as a brief extermination.
Turning from Yerin, he focused on aura again. “Allow me to break the circle,” he said. “When I do, you can keep them off us, and I'll get to the cloud.”
Her back was pressed against his, and he felt her nod. The area in front of him was clear, and he kept one eye on the impending battle between Remnants and rotten dogs. As he did, he slid closer to the script.
There was no reason they couldn't leap over the circle, leaving it intact—it wouldn't stop them. But it would affect any madra from Yerin used while it was active. If she tried to use a Striker technique from within the script, its power would be weakened. Maybe to the point of complete uselessness. And if she drew power into herself as an Enforcer, that power would be dispersed as she stepped over the circle.
In all, it was better to disperse the script before it became a trap for them. But he still felt like he was cutting a hole in his own boat as he slid even closer.
When the vital aura around the rotten beasts flared up like dark fire suddenly fed dry timber, he grew sick. Their auras swelled, growing twice as dense and two or three times as large. Somehow, they were growing more powerful.
Then he realized that every aura had inflated in the same way.
The world was awash in a chaos of color beneath his Copper vision, as the veins of yellow in the earth and the flows of green in the grass flared brighter...and then bent, like tree branches pressed down by a strong wind. The vital aura drained off in a phantom river, pouring away from its source, streaming deeper into the forest.
The flow looked like a rainbow river, and it left the world feeling dry and empty in its wake.
Every monster bolted. The Remnants left first, burbling and whistling as they followed the flow of the vital aura. The rotten dogs had an instant of confusion, in which they turned from their trapped prey to the rushing light, visibly torn. Finally, one of them gave a guttural bark, and all of them tore off. Even the dogs farther away from the warding circle followed, quickly overtaking the Remnants.
In the background, amidst the trees and undergrowth, the bigger rotten beasts left. They ran from the warded tree like they were fleeing a burning building, and in three breaths Lindon and Yerin were alone.
Lindon watched the physical world again, trading glances with Yerin. “You don't happen to know what that was, do you?” Lindon asked hesitantly.
“You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?” She stood with her white sword held forgotten in one hand, staring into the distance.
Now that the danger was over, Lindon's whole body went slack, and he leaned against the tree, panting. “Were they scared away? Is there something worse coming?”
Yerin gave him a look of surprise. “What? No, it's plain to see what happened to the beasts. They follow
vital aura, so they followed it away. Stone simple. But I'm coming up empty on what makes aura do that. Like it gathered together and then rushed off in a blink. Look; I don't know that I've ever seen vital aura so thin on the ground.”
Lindon looked and found that she was right, though that came as no surprise. The world in his Copper vision was dim, as though the scene had been painted in washed-out colors. “How is that possible?” As he'd been taught, vital aura was like the madra of the natural world. It took on different aspects as it moved through the heavens and the earth, though it was all connected. Even when you harvested aura and cycled it into your madra, that was like taking a cup of water from the ocean. Sooner or later, it would return to the source.
Lindon had never seen the ocean, but he'd read stories. This struck him as though the tide had left completely, leaving the shore bare and dry.
Yerin sheathed her sword and walked casually across his warding circle, not bothering to push the day's worth of dirt away from her tattered outer robe. “Scripts can gather up a bunch of vital aura, not considering aspects. Or push it away, sometimes. But if a script is doing this...I'd contend it's ten miles across, engraved in bedrock, and powered by ten thousand Remnants.”
Lindon didn't question it further. Whatever the event had been, it had saved them from having to fight their way out of an army of monsters. He seized his pack and hurried over to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. There hadn't been time for him to recover much madra, and he wasn't confident of his ability to fly it for any length of time or at any great speed.
“How has your spirit recovered?” Lindon asked, hoping she'd be able to feed power to the cloud.
She hopped up and straddled the front of the cloud as though mounting a horse. “I'm not bursting at the seams, but I'm well enough to ride this pony.” She patted the cloud behind her. “Come on up.”
Lindon knelt first, running his hand along the side of the cloud. As he'd expected, the cloud was slightly smaller than it had been the previous day, its sides wispier. One day of missed maintenance wouldn't affect its performance much, but one weed wouldn't overrun a garden either. It was better to take care of the problem while it was small than let it grow larger.
He let his pure madra flow into the construct, feeling it seized by the script at the cloud's center. Madra pulled from his weaker core, and there was a slight delay as the construct processed the pure madra and used it to nourish its Forged cloud madra.
Like a plant growing a thousand times faster, the cloud grew thicker and perhaps half an inch larger. He even thought it may have bobbed higher, though that could have been his imagination.
The effort drained that core dry, as it had been mostly exhausted already, but he switched to the other and climbed up behind Yerin.
“You're a fussy one,” she noted.
“I've always found that a little work up front makes things easier later on,” he said, climbing onto the cloud and securing his pack between them.
He hadn't quite finished when she kicked the cloud up to speed, sending him lurching back and grabbing onto her shoulders for support.
“I think you may have seen hard work sometime in the past,” Yerin called back, “but you never came close enough to shake its hand.”
She blasted through the forest, faster than they had usually gone on their way down from Mount Samara, black-leaved tree branches whipping by Lindon's ear. He leaned down behind Yerin so her Iron body could protect him, though her small back offered little shelter.
Only once he'd adapted to the speed did he recognize their direction. “Apologies, but...are we chasing the monsters?”
Branches whipped her as they passed by, but she ignored him as though they were nothing more than a gentle breeze. “Aura's heading this way for a reason. May as well find out where that is.”
“We know one thing about where it's headed: there's an army of monsters there. That we know.”
He felt her laugh. “Where did we leave the guy who spilled blood to leave the only home he'd ever known? You're weak, but I didn't suppose you were a coward.”
That prickled his pride, and he straightened. A foolish move, as he immediately took a branch to the face.
Spitting out leaves that tasted of copper and rotten vegetables, he responded. “I'm not saying I won't go, I'm saying I'd like to be somewhat cautious.”
“Oh, I'll be cautious.” She steered the cloud to leap over a bush, rolling down a small hill as he clung to her arms for support. “Somewhat.”
Chapter 4
Iteration 217: Harrow
In the first strike, she exterminated humanity.
Suriel’s weapon activated as she whipped it down. It expanded in a microsecond, expanding from a meter-long bar of blue steel into a skeleton of blue metal containing a web of light. It looked like a bare tree, each of its branches arcing with power.
While it was sealed, Suriel called her weapon a sword. Now that it was released, the weapon regained its identity as Suriel’s Razor.
It had been handed down to her from her predecessor, along with the identity of Suriel, the Sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. More than a tool for destruction, the Razor was meant as an instrument of healing. An infinitely complex, incalculably powerful scalpel.
Her mind ran along its familiar pathways even as she struck. First, she isolated the bloodline she intended to target. That feature was intended to remove pests in a home or a strain of virus in a body, but she could just as easily expand her focus.
To mankind. They were corrupted now, fused to and altered by the same chaos that destroyed their world.
Once her target was selected, she simply provided the energy, and the Razor did the rest. The Mantle of Suriel, a river of raging white flame that hung from her back like a cape, rolled with power as it drew on the Way. She funneled that power to her weapon, which flashed so brightly they would see it on the surface of the burning planet, kilometers beneath her.
Millions of lights blinked into existence all through the atmosphere, a blanket of tiny stars. Each light flashed, spearing down to the surface, and then was gone.
Her connection to the Way slackened immediately, like a sudden flicker of weightlessness in the center of her stomach. Humans anchored a world, their lives and their minds tying it to the Way, and when they were gone…chaos reigned. She had cut this world adrift.
[Targets eliminated,] her Presence informed her, the voice feminine and impersonal inside her mind. [Ninety-nine-point-eight percent population reduction. Proceed with manual elimination?]
In her vision, points of green ignited all over Harrow, indicating those that had survived her purge. These were the scraps that remained pure, even with their world corrupted. The last remnant of Harrow’s population.
Abidan regulations stipulated that she complete the elimination, as the chaos could infect survivors at any time, but she was Suriel. She had fought her way to one of the highest positions in existence in order to save the lives that couldn’t be saved.
She denied her Presence’s request.
All told, there were two million, one hundred six thousand, three hundred and forty-four survivors scattered all over the dying planet. A huge number of lives, but only a speck of dust next to the number she’d just killed. Days ago, there had been five billion people on this planet. After the violent merge of Limit and Harrow, only twenty percent of the population had survived. Now? A scarce fraction, a handful of sand, easily swept away.
A weight settled onto her spirit, another slab of lead in a tower that was growing too high to manage. She knew the elimination was necessary, but she had still taken so many lives. How many had she killed now?
Her Presence could tell her, but she didn’t ask.
The previous Suriel, her predecessor, had not died in the line of duty. He’d passed the Mantle and Razor on to her when they grew too heavy for him, and then he’d walked away. He lived the life of a mortal now, his power forcibly veiled. She hadn’t heard from him in millennia.
&n
bsp; The things he’d done in the name of his office had burdened him, broken him, and he was the Phoenix. His job was to save lives, not to take them. How much heavier was the weight borne by Razael, the Wolf?
Or Ozriel, the Reaper?
The world’s problems had not ended with the destruction of mankind. If they had, the Reaper’s job would not be necessary. Anyone with the power of an Abidan Judge were capable of eliminating a planet’s worth of people, and most Iterations only had a single inhabited planet.
Beneath where she floated, high in the outer atmosphere, the planet rolled in visible turmoil. Seas appeared and disappeared, caught between Limit and Harrow, continents flickered and boiled as though trying to decide on a shape, cities crumbled to dust and were rebuilt in seconds. Clouds spun in rapid circles, taken by chaotic winds, and fire raged across such a vast territory that it was visible from space.
Now, the difficult and painstaking part of her task began.
Gadrael, a compact and muscular man with dusky blue skin and tight-packed horns instead of hair, hovered nearby. His arms were folded so that the black circle on his forearm, the Shield of Gadrael, was pointed out. He wore the same liquid-smooth white armor as she did, and a Judge’s Mantle burned behind him as well.
He watched the world beneath him die without the slightest crack in expression. “Quarantine protocols will remain in effect for approximately six months Harrow time, after which my barriers will vent all fragments into the void and dissolve.”
The role of the Reaper was to eliminate a world without leaving such fragments behind, which could give birth to the most dangerous elements in existence. The best she could do was a messy approximation.
“Acknowledged.” She still didn’t leave.
She had six months to save as many untainted lives as she could.
Of course, that was Harrow time, which was notoriously unstable. This world had drifted from the Way, which governed the proper flow of time. She felt as though she’d been here for minutes, but another world may have seen days pass.