by David Beers
“Nicki?” she said.
The girl didn’t move, just sat there staring straight ahead.
Rebecca went forward, walking across the transport to the front. She peered over the small separator to where Nicki sat. The girl still didn’t turn around. Rebecca could see tears on her face.
“What did he say?” Rebecca asked.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re going to the Nile River.”
Seventy-Seven
“What was that?”
Yule watched as Daniel turned from the question, paying it no mind. He kept watching as the man started across the room, his head down.
“Stop where you are and answer me,” the One Path’s Minister called from her desk.
Daniel didn’t listen, gave no sign that he even heard her directive.
“I’ll have you detained,” Trinant said.
Daniel only went to his spot across the room, sitting down where he could watch the sun finish its descent.
“Take him,” Trinant said to her general.
“No,” Yule spoke, his voice not loud but his word firm. He looked from Daniel to Trinant. “Don’t.”
She raised her eyebrows, and Yule knew the boundary he had crossed. A foreign Minister commanding another in her own Ministry. He could be detained himself, though he didn’t care at his point.
“What did you want him to say, Trinant?” Yule asked. “Did you want him to call her here, or tell her to go there? What exactly did you think we would get out of that conversation?”
She looked at him, her lips in thin lines, but said nothing.
“He did the only thing he could. He told her to make the decision, and she knows the magnitude of it. You just want control over this, Trinant, and there is none to have. That’s what he’s understanding, and it’s what you’ll have to realize sooner or later.” He turned to stare at Daniel again, and when he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “We’ve done everything we can. Our fate, and the world’s, will be decided by others.”
Yule left the Ministers then and walked over to Daniel Sesam. He sat down on a chair next to the man and watched the sunset. Neither said a word.
The transport lowered from the sky at a slow and steady pace.
Rhett stared out at the world around him, seeing the Nile for the first time. He’d known of it—all of David’s followers did. The river lay in front of him, growing larger as the transport descended straight down. Beneath the water was a doorway that only the Prophet could access.
That only David could access.
Rhett knew Veritros had come here 1,000 years ago.
And now it was David’s turn.
The river flowed uninterrupted, having no idea what was to come, nor what it held inside. A doorway to gods.
Christine stood next to Rhett, looking out the transport’s window too. Reinheld and the pilot were on the other side; only David remained sitting.
“It’s beautiful,” Christine said.
Rhett nodded, himself in a sort of awe. They were finally here. All the years behind them, all the miles traveled, all the people lost. It was for this.
Rhett scanned the entirety of the river. There were huts sporadically across it, but for the most part, the bank was barren.
“They never rebuilt after Veritros,” he said, mostly to himself. “They just left this place forever.”
The transport gently touched down on the ground, the air propulsion system shutting off and a weighty silence replacing it. No one spoke.
David stood, and the rest stepped back unconsciously, making room for him. He walked to the transport’s door, though not opening it.
Rhett saw no one across the river’s bank. There was almost nothing here at all—shacks and then the water rushing endlessly before them. David had done this perfectly. The world wasn’t here, everyone tied up in war somewhere else, most likely unaware the Prophet even lived, and now he stood at the only place that mattered.
Without fear of interruption.
“Would you two please step out?” David said, looking at Reinheld and the pilot.
“Of course,” one of them said, though Rhett wasn’t sure who.
The transport’s door opened and they exited, hot air tumbling inside as they did. It swarmed over Rhett like tiny insects, inescapable and covering him. Sweat almost immediately appeared on his forehead, yet he hardly noticed it.
His eyes were only on David.
The two outside the transport continued walking, clearly not wanting to hear whatever was about to be said.
David turned to them after a few more moments, his back to the river.
“For whatever transgressions I’ve made against you, I apologize, and ask your forgiveness.”
Rhett didn’t look to Christine; he simply went down on his knees, only recognizing once there that she was next to him. Both kneeling with heads bent at their Prophet’s feet.
“If there has been failure,” Rhett said, “it’s on our side.”
David knelt down, a bit slower than Rhett and Christine, and the three were then in a circle. Rhett looked up, seeing David’s eyes. David’s eyes, not the gray static of the Unformed.
“Then we forgive each other,” he said. “I love you both, and you have made this life inexplicably wonderful. If I don’t see you at the end of this, I promise that I will see you again when you enter the Unformed. We are not separating, we are but following different paths to the same destination.”
Rhett and Christine both nodded. The time for tears was done, and there were none in David’s eyes either. They were soldiers, all of them, and the job they had come to do was nearly finished. The war they had waged nearly over.
“I love you, too, David,” Christine said.
Rhett nodded. “I love you.”
David grabbed the back of both their heads and brought the three close, their foreheads touching. The last time they would be so close.
When the Prophet stood, the others did as well, and the three warriors walked onto their battlefield, unknowing of the pain rapidly approaching.
Nicki had told Rebecca Hollowborne to go to the Nile River and now she rode in silence. Less than a half hour had passed, but a pressure was growing inside of her. It centered in her chest, and seemed to be expanding outward, as if unaware or not concerned with the organs it pressed on.
She knew the pressure meant something was happening outside of her, and if she looked in herself, she would see the gray static swelling right there—ready to burst.
Her father had said do what she wanted.
The woman—Laurel—had said it didn’t matter what she wanted, that something was moving them around like chess pieces. She could no more stop this movement than she could the rise and fall of the sun.
The people outside of here all wanted different things … or rather, they wanted different paths to the same goal: safety.
And the voice inside her? It was quiet now. It had wrenched her from a self-imposed coma, and now said nothing as the ship hurtled forward. Nicki had to take that to mean she was doing what the voice wanted.
She was heading to the dark man. He had been there first, in the restaurant when the fire rushed over her, burning her alive. He’d been on the side of the road when Nicki fled the Church’s men, and again when the transport fell, and yet again in the sky building.
He had been there over and over, always seeing, always watching—but never speaking. Never a word passed between the two of them, though they were somehow connected.
Laurel would say God connected them.
“Rebecca,” Nicki called.
She listened as the woman stood and came to the front.
“Yes?”
Nicki didn’t care if she sat or not, she only wanted to talk for a few minutes. She understood better than anyone that time was running short. The pressure in her chest was growing. She thought that Laurel might be right and wrong. Perhaps something was hurdling them forward, but Nicki also believed she could get off the unseen train if s
he wanted. She could let that pressure rip forward and simply kill her and everyone around her. The unseen train couldn’t stop that.
And yet, as long as she was here, the train would keep going—and it was nearing its final stop.
“Your brother. Can I stop him?”
Rebecca moved slowly, gracefully, to the seat next to Nicki.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “I don’t know. A month ago, I would have said no way. That nothing could stop David. The only reason I came to find you was because I had no other option. I do know the Unformed fears you, or at least wants you dead, but perhaps those come to the same … Whether or not you can, Nicki, you’re all that’s left. There is literally nothing else.”
“Will you tell me what he’s like?”
“What he’s like, or what to expect?” Rebecca asked.
“What he’s like.”
Nicki didn’t turn to look at the woman as she spoke, but she heard a shift in her tone. Thoughtful? Yes. Longing? Perhaps.
“He believes,” Rebecca said. “Fully. Nothing else matters to David; he may love those that follow him, but his purpose was defined long before this.”
“Do you love him?” Nicki asked.
“Yes.”
“But you want me to kill him?”
“There is no other way. He won’t bend. He will only break.”
Nicki was quiet for a second, then said, “He’s close. He might already be there.”
Rebecca looked at her. “Can you see him?”
“If I want to, I can. He and I are … we’re connected now. Almost constantly. I didn’t recognize it earlier, but I do now. He’s probably known I was back for some time, since I first appeared in the building.”
Rebecca shook her head, and her voice shuddered when she spoke. “We’re too late.”
Nicki went to her well, the one filled with static and brimming over—creating the pressure in her chest. Her eyes lit gray and suddenly she was no longer in the transport.
She stood on the banks of a river she had never seen. It stretched for miles in each direction, though Nicki knew that didn’t matter.
A ship sat further back, and in front of her were five people.
David Hollowborne was in the middle, his back to her, and only feet from touching the river.
He turned around and the two looked at each other. His eyes weren’t gray and Nicki saw that she was blackness to him, just as he had always been to her.
They stared for a few more seconds, Nicki looking at her fate.
And then, the Prophet’s eyes blazed with static.
Battle
Nicki drew back into the transport, her eyes still glowing.
“There’s no more time,” she said, turning to Rebecca. “If you stay here, you’re going to die.” She looked to Raylyn who sat in the back. “Both of you.”
Nicki was calm, a steadiness possessing her that she couldn’t fully explain. It was as if she’d finally stepped into the front of that unseen train and simply sat down next to the conductor. It was as if the seat had a sign on it which read ‘Nicki’, and now that she was in it, she was where she should be.
“What do we do?” Rebecca asked.
“You come with me, or you die here, but we are out of time.”
“Not much of a choice,” Raylyn said from the back, her voice shaking.
“Bring us, then.”
Gray static exploded from Nicki’s eyes, and it swept out across the transport, obliterating it immediately. The static didn’t stop, though, but swept over the entire sky. Anyone outside, anywhere, saw the world turn the color of the Unformed. A gray that only meant death for all who took its mantle.
We will see Veritros once more now, and then like so many others in this story, leave her to wherever she may fall.
And that is just as well, because Rachel Veritros had finally found whatever happiness could be afforded her any longer.
She had fought for a short while, and then simply watched for a time almost unimaginable. Then again, she had fought, though using different means, and finally, in the last moments of her existence, she watched once more.
Rachel Veritros let go of her fight, of her need to defend, because she finally saw what others only thought might be occurring. She saw the truth—the only one that had ever been, or would ever be: we play in something else’s playground, and though it may love us, it can keep that playground open, or close it whenever it pleases. It is best to simply enjoy playing while one can.
Rachel Veritros watched the two warriors head to battle, both born for it, but one dragged along the entire way while the other rushed toward his destiny.
She watched, and finally felt happiness, because what else could one feel, when acceptance was the only thing available.
“She’s coming.”
Rhett heard the words leave David’s mouth, but nearly as soon as he spoke them, the sky turned the same color as David’s eyes. No clouds, no blue, only burning static as if some strange fire had not only lit, but now burned on every bit of available oxygen.
He lost track of what David said, or really where anyone else was. All Rhett could focus on was the static, an electric heaven he had never imagined before.
“Is it the Unformed?” he asked, not knowing who he was talking to, but unable to think of anything else that might cause such magnificence.
Wind, seemingly from nowhere, ripped around Rhett, tugging at his clothes and whipping his hair across his head.
“Back,” David said. “All of you get back inside the transport.”
Rhett didn’t know what was happening, but he looked to his right and saw David’s hair rushing forward just like his own. Only he wasn’t staring at the space in front of him, but up in the air. Rhett followed his gaze, the others near him doing the same.
Three forms were descending from the sky. Gray static wrapped around each of them, cocooning them inside as it lowered.
“Now,” David said, his voice a deadly whisper yet still rising above the wind.
Rhett didn’t hesitate any longer, but reached for Christine’s arm and started back pedaling, his eyes never leaving the descending figures. Those on the left and the right were wrapped like mummies, but the one in the middle, the gray only danced across her.
Rhett could see her eyes.
Static, just like that around her, just like that raging in David’s own eyes.
Rhett reached the transport, stepping inside the open door with Christine at his side. The other two were running, having stopped looking into the sky and simply turning to make the transport before …
The war, Rhett thought. Veritros fought mankind. David will fight her.
The middle figure paused, and the other two continued their controlled descent. They landed, and as they did, the static covering all three fell away.
It was the same young woman Rhett had gone to, had tried to kill. Her short, blond hair and thin frame hung in the air as easily as David had ever done, and her eyes carried the Unformed’s blessing—that gray which spoke of unimaginable power.
Rhett watched his Prophet rise into the air.
Nicki saw him come, his brilliant eyes broadcasting death.
Nicki did not waste any thoughts about those beneath her. She was in a place she never wanted to be, controlling a power she didn’t understand, but this was where the train stopped, and she had never stepped off.
Something had propelled her this far, and Nicki wouldn’t deny it now. She floated in the sky, and was about to face a creature who had mastered this power long years ago.
Yet, at the same time, she felt like any great artist who sat down at their easel for the first time. She felt at home in this gray static, the well having spilled over and now possessing her completely.
The Prophet stopped his rise, 100 feet from her.
Static lines encircled his hands, and he paused, staring at her.
His lips moved, and the words were in her ears as if his mouth were next to her face.
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“Did you know? Did you always know?”
She shook her head. “No … I don’t think anyone knows where they’ll end up.”
“You can leave,” he said, his words traveling that impossibly long distance even as wind pushed and pulled across the expanse. “You can leave now, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure you survive what comes next. There’s no need to die here.”
“I can leave?” Nicki said, with a sad laugh. “I wish that was true. I really do.”
The Prophet stared for another second, no longer a dark image, but in the flesh.
And then the sky—in all of its horrific beauty—attacked Nicki.
“No,” Rebecca whispered. “Oh, blessed Unformed, no.”
How had she ever thought this girl might have a chance? How had she come all this way, bringing someone barely into adulthood, to face David?
Rebecca stood on the ground, Raylyn having rushed to her side the moment they both touched down. She knew Rhett and Christine were here, further down the bank inside the transport, but she never even looked at them. Her eyes were fully focused on the sky.
The two had hung there for a minute—so brief, and in those few seconds, Rebecca thought they might have been equals. That perhaps David was frightened, because he didn’t move toward her. He simply looked on.
And then hope died.
The sky fell, and David didn’t move a muscle.
Gray static surged down like mutant lightening. They fell in only one direction, at Nicki Sesam. A large tunnel jutted it out, thinning as it went down, and wrapped itself around her body. It tightened around her with bone crushing strength, and smaller strands broke free from the static, whipping at her exposed flesh. Over and over they came down, slashing across her face and arms.
Rebecca saw blood sizzling against the static as the strands’ beating intensified.