by Sean Wallace
Before Edu could answer, a big male sounded a warning call. Edu’s young cousins moved close to their aunts’ sides. Even they could smell lions on the wind.
Bellies low to the ground, a dozen lions crawled down the hill Edu had passed only moments earlier. The big males trumpeted again, asking for instruction from their matriarch. Old Kula’s eyes looked to the sky, as she did when contemplating where to graze next or the proper time to visit the graveyards.
“Let the lions come,” Kula responded.
The males trumpeted again, this time in protest.
“Let the lions come to me.”
The big males parted, opening an unobstructed path to Kula. The lions cautiously entered the circle, heads moving back and forth, watchful eyes scanning elephant feet and the fascinated faces of the tusk-less little ones.
A lioness strained her head up to look into Kula’s eyes.
“Azilba, Lord of Lions, wishes your permission to speak with the herds of the Black Orophant,” she said, a guttural sound rolling from her throat.
“How is it that I can understand you? Elephants cannot speak with lions.”
“It is the hour of need,” the lioness responded. “Times are strange, strange things gather behind the barrier wall, and Azilba has returned to us.”
High on the monolithic, gray barrier wall, Edu watched a spider thing wave its tentacles and scuttle away.
“If Azilba is real, I will see her,” Kula said.
The lioness roared and as if on cue hundreds of lionesses crested the hill.
One big cat stood in front the rest, golden fur glowing in the hot orange sun.
Walking unguarded and holding her belly high, the big cat strode into the circle of elephants.
“Azilba,” the lioness proclaimed. She and the other lioness backed up and stood side by side with the encircling elephants as Azilba approached.
Azilba, tall as a zebra, humbly stopped before Kula. Her eyes met Edu’s.
“This little one is brave and a great benefit to your herd,” Azilba said, gesturing to Edu with her head. “I watched him kill a demon unaided.”
“You know of these things?” Kula asked.
Azilba turned her head to the barrier wall. Kula looked just in time to see another spidery form disappear over the wall.
“They come from the fires falling from the sky. The world outside the barrier wall has changed. They hunt the last of men, as men once hunted us.”
“How can a lion know this?” Kula asked.
“I am more than lion, just as the Black Orophant is more than elephant.”
This seemed to satisfy Kula, but not Edu.
“Isn’t the enemy of men our friend?” Edu asked.
“You are brave,” Azilba said, “but remember you are little and the world is big. Since the building of the barrier wall, men have let the herds and the prides flourish in peace. They were close to fulfilling their duty as caretakers.”
Kula glanced sternly at Edu.
“His reluctance is important to address,” Azilba continued. “The barrier wall encloses much of the land that was once called Africa by the men. Outside men once lived in homes they called cities. “ She nodded to a shimmering area of air high above the trees.
“There, that is where the last of the cities will appear. It is a city called Phoenix from a place once known as Arizona. War with the demons reduced the world of men and their homes to rubble. With great effort, the men ripped one of their cities from the earth, and hid in time to escape destruction.”
Edu did not fully understand the meaning of “time.” He knew he would grow tall and his tusks would lengthen and curve. That was time.
“Why do they fight? Surely they do not vie for each other’s brides?” Edu asked.
“I do not know how the war started, young one, but perhaps men roused the demon’s anger. Perhaps the demons pursue the men for reasons that make no sense. Now it is only important how this will end.”
“I still don’t see why we should fight for them,” Kula said.
“You remember much in the tales and stories you pass to your children. Would you have your children know men only in stories like the rhino and the leopard?”
Kula shuffled in place. Edu recognized the thoughtful faraway look in her eyes.
“You owe men nothing,” Azilba said. “But would you make the same mistakes as they almost did and stand idle in the face of a threat when you could render aid?”
Kula squinted and looked at the shimmering air. “How can this be? Men don’t have wings. These cities don’t just appear. Do they?”
“The Black Orophant said I would see things that don’t make sense,” Edu said.
“The young one is right. What matters now is that the demons have come for the city. We must be ready to help the Black Orophant in the coming battle.”
“The Black Orophant will fight for the men?” Kula asked.
“The Black Orophant will fight, but more importantly he has something for the men of Phoenix. We fight so he may reach them.” Azilba turned to Edu. “You have seen the Orophant, young one. What did he tell you?”
The herd, Kula, and the thirteen lions listened raptly. A shiver ran through Edu as he lifted his trunk to speak.
“The Black Orophant said to tell the herds that he has returned. He is coming with an army of the great leaders of the herds of old.”
Edu looked at the silent and confused herd. His young cousin squeezed through two pairs of legs to get closer. He understood their confusion. When an elephant fell, they became bones and nothing more. He would not believe otherwise had he not seen the Black Orophant raising the fallen himself. Edu knew the herd wanted more, but he had no more to tell.
“What would the Black Orophant say now?” Edu thought. He looked at Azilba. She seemed to know what he would say next.
“My herd,” Edu trumpeted, “the Black Orophant says not to fear.”
Azilba and the lions retreated to defensive positions in the low hills. She instructed Kula and the herds to do the same.
Above the trees, the shimmering air where Phoenix was to appear spat a bolt of blue electricity. It fizzled to the ground like lightning as the sky exploded into a cloud of blue sparks. Edu watched Kula flick her tail nervously and he felt afraid.
“It is Phoenix,” Edu grunted. “Just as Azilba told us.”
The city of Phoenix, an island of rock and dirt, floated over the hills. A mass of buildings, tall silver shapes—crowded each other right to the edge. The overwhelming smell of exhaust and the waste of men wafted to the animals waiting below.
As if responding to a silent cue, the demons on the wall moved to attack. Hundreds of red beams of light raced to Phoenix but were absorbed by a shimmering blue cloud that surrounded the city at the last instant before they hit. Edu saw the city through the cloud, though hazily, like a reflection in water.
A smaller cloud of sparking blue appeared on the barrier wall. Six bulky men emerged, almost identical to the ones Edu saw earlier except they were silver from head to toe.
The demons atop the wall attacked. Their red beams reflected off the silver men as they fired back. A spray of blue from a silver man’s weapon hit a demon and for an instant it froze, then it moved backwards in a perfect mirror of its approach, before simply vanishing.
Hundreds of demons crowded the wall, surrounding the men holding them off with their strange showers of blue. Then one demon floated up, like a spiderling caught in the wind and began to drift towards Phoenix. Three more, then hundreds of the spidery things silently took to the air, floating slowly but steadily to the city. Bolts of blue arced from the floating piece of Arizona, pushing the attackers backward before they vanished.
“Phoenix’s weapons send them back in time,” Azilba said to Edu.
“I don’t understand.”
“Just lead the young ones away if the fighting gets too rough.”
Edu shuddered as another wave of demons took to the air. As the demons float
ed up, a crack spread across the wall beneath them. The crack opened into a fiery hole, collapsing the area where the silver men stood.
Spider demons and men alike toppled and were crushed by rubble. As the dust began to settle, a giant shape emerged from the smoking hole. It resembled a spider demon, but ten times as large. Shiny protrusions jutted from its segmented body.
Explosions tore more holes in the barrier wall and more giants crawled through. Azilba raced up and down the line of lions and elephants, calming and readying them. Edu feared they were too greatly outnumbered.
A giant spider thing spat an orange fireball that streaked past the floating demons and penetrated the shimmering cloud around Phoenix. Dirt and rock rained upon the herd.
Edu heard a growing rumble and a buzzing hum as a black cloud obscured the sun. The colored bolts flying back and forth glowed brighter in its shadow. The black cloud, a swarm of locusts, flew into the crossfire, protecting Phoenix by absorbing the demon’s red blasts.
The locusts coated the floating demons and crawled into the soft places where their legs met their bodies. Demons dropped from the sky and crashed to the ground.
Azilba’s ears stood straight up. The rumbling shook the dry earth. A cloud of dust moved towards the battle.
“The Black Orophant, the Black Orophant has arrived!” Edu cried. A line of gray elephants with the Black Orophant at their center stampeded towards the fight. Eyes black and trained forward, the Black Orophant’s herd charged with no indication of fear or emotion Edu could see. He smelled nothing on the wind.
Azilba roared, sending the prides and herds to join the Black Orophant’s attack. Tusks gored and trunks swept slender legs. Lions jumped atop the giants and ripped whatever they could.
The demons shot red fire in all directions. A tuskless one shuddered.
“Don’t worry, their fire doesn’t harm us,” Edu said to him.
The fight erupted into a cry of snarls and trumpets as the red beams ripped into the lions and elephants. The tuskless one next to Edu turned his head away.
They burn us now, Edu thought as he gagged from the stink of flesh and locusts.
Edu wanted to fight, but he did as he was told and ran back to the hill to move the group of young ones away. Edu looked up at Phoenix and saw a silver craft emerge from a small cave in the floating rock. It sped to the ground like a hunting bird. The Black Orophant veered toward it, a swirling cloud of locusts surrounding him.
“Why is the Black Orophant running?” Edu thought.
The Black Orophant stopped in Phoenix’s shadow. Edu noticed a little man-child holding onto his back. The silver craft touched ground and a door in its side slid open.
A fireball raced across the plains and slammed into the Black Orophant, sending the man-child flying off his back. The Black Orophant fell to his knees and rolled on the flattened grass. The orange fire burned him, and did not extinguish no matter how he writhed.
The man-child flattened to the ground, avoiding beams of red fire. Without thinking, Edu ran towards him. Another fireball exploded somewhere nearby. Edu felt its heat on his side. In Phoenix’s shadow, Edu lifted the boy with his trunk and placed him into the waiting arms of a silver man. With the boy safely in the man’s arms, the door closed and the craft sped back to Phoenix.
The demons fired at the ship. Edu thought for a second it might fall from the sky. When it disappeared into the rocky cave, Edu turned to the Black Orophant. He smacked at the flames with his trunk but they still burned. Edu felt sick as he recognized the look of resignation in the Orophant’s dark eyes.
“What can I do?” Edu cried.
“What you were born to do,” the Black Orophant answered, the flames running up his trunk.
“Who was the man-child?” Edu asked.
“All animals have their prophecies and leaders, even men.”
The blue sparking cloud around Phoenix changed to silver and then the city of Phoenix faded and vanished with a pop and hiss of rushing air, just as quickly as it had appeared. The Black Orophant trumpeted a powerful cry, a sound both dark and hopeful.
“They are gone now,” the Orophant said. “The last of men. The demons will go now.”
With Phoenix gone the demons no longer fought. Edu thought they could have easily slaughtered the entire herd, but instead they crawled their way back to the breaches in the barrier wall.
Azilba ran to Edu and watched as the flames consumed the Black Orophant.
“What will happen?” Edu asked.
“The world will go on. With the men gone the demons will not return,” Azilba said, with a mix of sadness and hope. She shook her head and turned to where the lions were licking their wounds.
Edu watched the Black Orophant roll until he moved no more. Upon the Black Orophant’s last twitch, the herd of reborn elephants lumbered away, the fury of their stampede gone. Their lack of an odor and dullness in their eyes still made Edu’s spine tingle.
Edu nudged the smoking mass that was the Orophant with his tusks.
“You are special, little one,” he heard the Orophant say in his head.
Edu heard another voice, and then another and another. Thousands of voices, the thoughts of all the elephant leaders echoed in his head. At that instant he knew that the Black Orophant could never die—that the Black Orophant was reborn in him and would be reborn in another should he fall.
Edu felt himself growing larger and stronger. He knew Azilba was right.
The world would go on. It would be a world without men. A world of elephants and lions, living beyond the barrier wall.
The Unlawful Priest of Todesfall
Penelope Love
The two travelers, exhausted from days without rest, stumbled out of the unclean wood onto the brow of a desolate hill. Their clothes, reduced to filthy rags, were sodden with sweat in the afternoon’s heat. The rains were close but it was not their time yet. The whole landscape sweltered in the oppressive humidity, and pleaded mutely for release. Olan season haze softened distances and rose in long lazy wreaths of clouds that hid sight of the sky. Before them swept a wide vale of tawny cropland descending to the city state of Uerth on the shores of the Lake Everlasting, created long ago by the damming of the Uerth River. The travelers’ cracked lips pursed with thirst at the sight of the water. But on that blue and placid surface no sails showed.
The city-states of Uerth were once a collection of isolated, fortified towns, but now they were all grown together. The huge city bristled with towers of the nobility, and was generously slabbed with the fat full squares of warehouses and crammed granaries. But there was no movement, no clamor of people and animals, no reassuring, living stink. No smoke rose to soil the soft haze. The city-suburb of Zaijian, the last and least of the city-states of Uerth, lay before them, abandoned mute and defenseless to its last agony.
“Where is everybody? Has Todesfall arrived and gone already?” cried Asneath, sick with dismay. She was a small, bony, plain, fair-haired woman, her large green eyes gray-ringed with weariness, her white face taut with strain. She wore torn and stained rags, once Frir’s robes of gold-trimmed green. Around her neck hung Frir’s amulet, a small greenstone with the circle and the sickle carved on it.
“No. There! Look!” Baoqian exulted. He was tall brawny bronzed man, twice his companion’s size, with a slab face and shaved head. His muscled body was naked to the waist, covered in Olan’s blue tattoos, and an immense axe was strapped on his back. He pointed with a thick finger at a dark shape that filled half the horizon, the merciful haze a veil between the living and full sight of Todesfall’s face. It was so large, Asneath had simply missed it, assumed it was a mountain or thunder cloud. She felt despair seize her as she realized for the first time how colossal Todesfall was. She strained her eyes to pierce the haze, even though she dreaded what she might see. She had so hoped, so hoped, for she knew not what, some gift or freak of the gods that would save them—but what could save them from this? Todesfall was immense, beyond mortal
hope of moving.
Then Asneath screamed, for the shape lurched nearer, all at once, tearing aside the haze like a veil and for a moment giving them clear sight of all except its face. Baoqian seized hold of Asneath, reflexively, as a vast tremor shook the ground. In the city below, paving stones gaped like lover’s lips. Stone walls rippled like water, water reared into walls, and some fair towers fell to ruin, with distant, pitiful roars.
An immense statue of black obsidian strode through the lake towards Zaijian. Yet, for all the terror of its unimaginable height and inconceivable weight, the statue had chubby arms with the useless plump little fingers of infancy. It had dimpled knees, and above a babe’s adorable penis rose a curved soft swell around the bulging belly button—all clearly visible, even from this distance, because of vast size in which they were etched in unyielding obsidian. The face hidden by haze was undoubtedly chubby, too. The watchers could imagine the rounded cheeks and soft features, the dimpled nose and double chin. Imagination pictured the face more vividly than the real thing.
The statue moved slowly, so each footfall took hours, so slow that it threw mere human watchers into an agony of impatience to watch it. Yet each step took it countless miles. When a footfall landed, the land ran like water and the water reared like land. The statue stepped, the towers fell, the aftershocks tumbled one after the other like echoes. The travelers neither moved nor spoke until all was still again.
“Let go of me,” Asneath said then, in a voice that cut ice blocks from the summer heat.
Baoqian let go at once. “Todesfall is much bigger than I thought,” he said, weakly.
“Of course, idiot,” Asneath snapped. Baoqian had saved her life, but his insistence that they echo the ritual relationship between Olan and Frir grated away her gratitude. Now he voiced her fears exactly and in that moment she hated him. “That’s what they all said, all of them that are dead. He grows,” she said.
“If all is as they said, there is still hope.” Baoqian dealt with dread of death better than Asneath. He was trained to deal with it, and meditating on Olan kept him calm and inspired within the world wreck. Besides, once the statue stopped the haze blurred its dreadful outline once again. He remembered his god could deal with everything, even this. “One day Olan went hunting—” he began.