by Ren Cummins
Rom released her breath in a rush. “But I…” she began, but stopped. “I’m sorry, I know. You’re right, I just… I don’t know what to do.”
Memory placed a soft hand on Rom’s left knee. “Think back on the first time you ever learned you could jump as far as you can. Did you know where you would land when your feet left the ground?”
“Well, no, but that’s ‘cause Ian pushed me.” In spite of the frustration she had felt at the time, thinking back on her old teacher made a combination of happy and mournful thoughts cross her mind.
Her hands smoothed her dress again, flattening the fabric down against the plush and enigmatically bright orange fabric of the chair. It made the dark black of her dress seem darker still. As she looked more closely, she noticed that the brilliance of the orange created highlighted glimmers in the threads of her dress – adding a layer of fire, insinuated in the shaded textures.
When she raised her eyes, Memory was silently watching her. “No, I’m sorry, you’re right. When I first jumped, I didn’t know where I’d land. I jumped and hoped for a landing, but didn’t realize how far I would go.”
Memory nodded. “The first step is the most important – even more than the last.”
Rom nodded as well. “I’ll try, Memory. I… I will try.”
“Good. I have spoken at length with Yu and Terenaa, and they will help as well.” A faint breeze entered through the window, smelling of blossoms and rainwater. “On my second point: Artifice’s new grasp of power is unlikely to have come from personal development – so she has done something to artificially increase her magical aptitude. I suspect this growth will impact her magics in the waking world even as it is felt here.”
Rom searched Memory’s face and came to a realization. “You already know what’s caused her new powers?”
Memory’s nod of assent was slow. “We believe she has captured your old friend and Master.” She paused before continuing. “She has taken Ian.”
“How is that possible?” Rom said, jumping to her feet in the suddenly too-small room. She wanted to break something – anything – but dared not. “He died! She can’t do that…can she?”
“She is the guardian of the departed souls, Romany. Over the souls who enter and depart from this world, she is their Mistress and Goddess, even as you govern the souls who will not freely depart your own world.”
Rom walked around behind the chair she’d been sitting in, and gripped the back with her hands.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was here? In this world, I mean.”
Sighing, Memory shook her head. “We did not find him when he first arrived; and when we did find him, only a few of his memories remained. At first, he did not recognize us at all; we think much of his thoughts must have remained with his mortal life.” She paused before adding, “We felt for you to have seen him like that would have been too hard for you. And then, several weeks ago, we could not find him at all, and suspect the worst.”
“Where is he, then?” Rom’s fists tightened. “You’re sure that Artifice has him?”
Memory stood and held up her hands in an effort to calm Rom down. “For her to manage his power and gain utter control of it, she would need him close. But this is something else, entirely. She had stolen his gem, and had stripped him of the core of what it means to be a Gatherer – but shortly after he died in your world, her strength took on new levels entirely. The weather here changed, the animals trapped in this world now follow her mind; and she has been able to find us far more easily than ever. This has begun to cross over into the world of the living, now, as well. It is all indicative that the worlds are out of phase with one another. And only a Sheharid Is’iin can bring that balance back.”
The young girl’s head lowered, white locks of hair falling to conceal her eyes. “What can I do?” she asked simply.
“We do not yet have a plan, Romany,” Memory said calmly. “Inertia has travelled to Artifice’s home here in this world, and she has built up a tremendous castle in the corresponding place to the Queen’s palace in Aesirium, so we suspect this might be where she might be keeping him. It is the only place in this world we cannot easily travel, and we have seen no trace of him at all in the rest of the world.”
Rom breathed deeply. Memory was correct – the last time they had spoken (less than a year ago), Memory had chastised her for not more rigorously pursuing her fundamental talents as a Sheharid. It was said that each had a particular area of expertise – some elemental aspect of reality in which they were uniquely adept. But the realization of this skill depended upon rigorous exercise and practice of their other skills. They had exchanged words, and Rom had yelled and refused to listen, and she had tried to avoid talking to them again since then. And, the more that time passed, the easier it was to simply avoid the very confrontation in which she now found herself.
However, it felt nowhere near as tense and confrontational as she had expected. She wondered now why she’d avoided it in the first place.
A loud thunderous explosion rocked the house, shattering several of the windows. Terenaa bolted inside, while Yu’s silhouette filled the doorway.
“She is here!” Terenaa said, leaping onto the back of the nearby chair and from there onto Rom’s shoulders.
“We must talk again later, Rom,” Memory said urgently. “We must cover your escape.”
Another loud explosion followed, and an entire section of one of the walls exploded inwards, scattering wood and plaster to fill the room. Something large plowed through the furniture, sending it flying in all directions. Memory moved quickly towards the door, her soft voice somehow carrying through the chaos of sound and matter. Rom’s eyes followed the projectile to its landing point, and realized it was no object but a man, with darkened skin all but concealed by dust and blood. Fiery gleams brightly shone from random points across his skin – Rom covered the distance between them in a single leap.
“Inertia!” she yelled. From somewhere outside her, Rom could hear a pair of women’s voices – one calm and methodical, the other enthusiastic and furious. Artifice and Force, Rom noted.
She moved a large slab of wood from atop Inertia as he kicked free a large picture frame which had torn free from the wall. Blinking, he rose unsteadily to his feet, coughing up a bit of dust from his throat.
“What are – you have to leave, Rom!” he said in a voice far more scratchy than he ever previously would have allowed. He then added, in a tone more characteristic of his genial nature, “Not that it isn’t delightful to see you again.”
The rooftop was at that moment torn from the rest of the building, its pieces scattered across the wind. In the tumult, much of the smaller pieces of furniture and rubble were likewise sucked from the room and into the sky. “I can stay,” Rom yelled above the noise. “I can help!”
Inertia gripped her by the arm. “My lovely, if you stay, we must work to protect you and ourselves; Artifice will use that division of our energies to find a way to defeat us. But if you go, we can fight in less… charitable methods.” His eyes locked on hers, his face more serious than ever she had before seen. “Now, go!”
The house was rocked by another powerful wave of invisible energy, knocking both Inertia and Rom to the floor. The center of the room was depressed downwards as though a giant ball was slowly being crushed into it – at the center of this sphere of nothingness appeared a light, pale at first, growing rapidly in intensity.
All sound in the room instantly vanished, replaced by a sudden swell of toneless noise that threw everything in the room towards the walls. Coughing, Rom threw the orange chair off of her, and stood on uneasy legs. There, in the center of the room, was Artifice herself. It was at that moment in which Rom realized she had never truly known what Artifice looked like. She had appeared once before as an old woman calling herself Cera Tifi – but this, Rom realized, was her true self; frozen in time as all Sheharid Is’iin were, once fully awakened into themselves.
To a casual observer, she
appeared no older than perhaps 18 or 19 years, but with greenish-blue hair and a series of blackened gems glowing upon various points of her skin. From neck to knees, she wore some form of ceremonial armor, with a sword hanging from one scabbard and a holster on the opposite hip. On her left forearm she wore an exaggerated shield on which was emblazoned either a xanos or a giant flaming bird – Rom couldn’t quite tell which. But in her cold grey eyes, Rom could see a predator of ageless experience, who had betrayed all to which she had once sworn fealty in pursuit of a life devoted to the acquisition of power. As Rom watched, Artifice’s features changed slightly, her hair shifting into ringlets of copper, in which rested an elegant crown. Rom had seen that face on signs and posters all throughout the city of Aesirium, and she gasped at the realization.
Those same grey eyes focused now on Rom to the exclusion of all else and her lips parted in a terrifying smile.
“There you are, child,” she whispered.
*****
The next few moments felt like they passed in slow motion. A blur of deep blue from Rom’s right flashed across the room to slam into Artifice – Yu, lashing with claws and fangs, his tail whipping across Artifice’s face. Almost imperceptibly, she waved her left hand and sent him flying back across the room, and managed another step towards Rom before another person landed between them – Rom recognized her from the golden shock of hair standing straight up on her head as Force, the third of the three Sheharid Is’iin who lived in permanent exile in this world of spirits.
Force lifted her hands and summoned an immense war hammer, which materialized even as her hands swung it downwards. It was stopped at the last possible moment by Artifice’s arm-shield; the corresponding clap of metal on metal threw Rom back against the wall and made her ears ring painfully. Rom reached an arm up to her bracelet, intending to summon her crook. Across the room, Inertia saw her gesture and raised his hand - a cone of energy snaked past the battling Artifice and Force to strike Rom directly, sending her crashing through the weakened wall and out into the open garden behind the home.
Rom growled. She knew Inertia’s decision was the right one, but that didn’t make it any easier to abandon her friends. Before her, the wall repaired itself. She knew Inertia well enough to realize that he would do all he could to keep her out of the room now, if only for her own good.
But her friends couldn’t possibly stand up to Artifice if she was as powerful as Memory suggested. Rom gripped her bracelet and her staff appeared in her right hand – but before she could move, she was suddenly overcome by thoughts of home – of Mulligan, Kari, of Cousins, of Goya and Briseida and even Favo. She turned around to see Memory standing behind her.
“We will be well. Go.”
Rom blinked and awakened in her bed, her staff still in hand. Beside her sat Mulligan, whose eyes moved between her and the crook. His expression was not pleasant.
“I let you go off by yourself for a moment, and you get into trouble,” he said dryly.
She rolled up into a sitting position. “It was Artifice. We were just talking – Memory and I – and Artifice showed up. She…” she took a deep breath before continuing. “She’s gotten really powerful. Before, Force and Inertia could hold her back… but now…” She shook her head, looking down at her crook. She released it back into the bracelet – it had suddenly felt too fragile, too insubstantial against the sheer might of Artifice’s abilities.
“I’m not strong enough, Mully,” she whispered. “I’m never going to be strong enough. She’s just picking up more and more of us, and I can’t stop her.” Her voice broke slightly as she added, “She’s got Ian.”
Mully’s eyes narrowed. “So, she kept him from passing completely on? Kept him in the world of Spirits?”
Rom nodded. “That’s what Memory thinks, anyway. She said that Artifice has built something there that’s in the same place as the Royal Palace here.”
“Do you think the Queen knows? You’ve been thinking that the two might be allies.”
“No, I think it’s worse than that,” Rom explained. “When Artifice showed up, her face kept changing – you know how we look there like we think we look here? Well, her face changed to look just like the Queen! Though,” her face wrinkled as she thought back, “She looked like someone else, I just can’t place it, now.”
“Perhaps”, Mulligan said noncommittally. “Perhaps if she’s been impersonating the Queen for a long time, it’s starting to take over her own spirit-image.”
A low hiss filled the room for a moment, followed by a single descending tone and a metal ring as a message dropped into the receiver of the aethernet tube.
Mulligan flew across the room to collect the small envelope from the copper box and open it to read the contents.
“Work?” Rom grimaced.
Mulligan nodded. “They’ve got more creatures in the lower tunnels.”
Rom felt as tired now as she had when she’d lain down to sleep, perhaps even more so. She walked across the room to pick up her worker’s overalls where they hung from a marginally painted hook on the wall. “Why can’t I have a job with pretty clothes?” she asked rhetorically.
“Because you work in the sewers?”
Rom sighed, appreciating the irony of a flying horned speaking animal telling his magical Reaper friend the grounded reality of a situation.
Chapter 5: The Induru Il-Faraon
The city was a different place in daylight. The days themselves were something of an anomaly for Rom, as they not only involved her walking (lest she be easily seen jumping at inhuman distances across the rooftops) among the rest of the citizens of Aesirium, but also because she was forced to leave Mulligan at her apartment. His species – feranzanthum – were all but extinct, but he also had the unfortunate habit of speaking his mind, and had nearly done so on more than one occasion in front of others.
Today, Rom wore her white hair beneath a red scarf, tied snugly and pulled down low over her brow. She’d pulled her hair back and bound it so it hung out through the back of the scarf to just beneath the middle of her back. She wore her simple grey worker’s tunic, pant legs tucked into her boots, with a bag slung across one shoulder containing the general tools needed for her job.
The first thing she’d learned after arriving in Aesirium was that everyone – everyone – had a job. It reminded her a bit of the apprenticeship process back in Oldtown, but much more aggressive and inclusive. When she’d first applied for her work permit – she’d had to lie and claim she’d lost hers – they run her through a series of aptitude tests designed to establish which job she would be most successful at. In the end, she’d qualified for a great many jobs involving physical labor (in spite of pulling back quite a bit so as to not reveal her excessive strength, speed and endurance), but her age, gender and lack of scientific academia relegated her to the Mechanical Union. From there, it was a matter of evaluating what jobs were available, and of those, which of the field captains wanted her. In the end, an older husband and wife team said that she reminded them of one of their press-children and welcomed her to their group.
She’d worked on pipe and tunnel maintenance for the first two months, but when one of the regional biological hazard wranglers was wounded by some sort of six-legged creature, she and two of the other toolsmiths were nominated to clear the tracks.
Rom found the creature first – fortunately, none of her team were nearby so they did not have to wonder how this slight figure of a girl managed to draw a mystical weapon from the air and cleave the beast into several smaller and non-functional pieces.
But however she’d managed to accomplish this, it elevated her value among the team substantially. Now, she only worked when new beasts were discovered, and she earned three times the food chits she had earned previously – nearly as much as the team captains themselves earned.
When the man she’d replaced came back from medical leave, he was temporarily downgraded to toolsmith until another Wrangler position opened up on a different team,
and he was traded out; same pay rate, no hard feelings.
A low hiss shook her from her thoughts, announcing the arrival of the train at the next station – her stop. It was a few hours before the afternoon shift change, so the cars were empty enough that not only had Rom had a seat to herself, but she was able to walk to the large segmented doors without the usual pushing and shoving that the average commuter encountered. The bells at the ends of each car rang out as the train stopped, and the doors slid open. Rom stepped out onto the platform with a handful of other riders as another random handful squeezed their way in before the doors closed with another bell ring. A moment later, another loud hiss of steam heralded the departure of the train.
Rom paused to adjust her shoulder bag and movement through the steam caught her eye. It was a tall woman, shapely and elegant, a long white gown flowing around her petticoats, little flashes of her shiny black shoes darting in and out of the ruffles. Her blonde hair was gathered beneath a small (and thoroughly impractical, Rom thought) frilly hat, and descended in finely crafted sweeps and sworls. Glinting bits of jewelry were randomly scattered through her hair on fine braids, catching rays from the sun and casting her with the illusion of otherworldliness. In her hands she carried an iridescent parasol with a handle that looked like the head of a bird. Her face, though, was the most striking. At first, Rom had a flashing reminder of Molla, Favo’s old partner, who had betrayed them all and killed Ian, who generally wore a plain white mask. But this woman didn’t wear a mask – it was simply a thick application of makeup, coating the skin of her face and darkly outlining her eyes and lips. The texture was smooth and carefully administered, giving her the appearance of a doll, expressionless and mechanical. Rom felt inexplicably plain and dirty.