“Sorry. Forgot that you don’t know about retractable curtains,” Beatrice apologized. She went to Pearl’s side, looked out the window with her, and pointed to the blue planet. “That’s Earth.”
“Earth,” Pearl gasped. She looked down at her feet as though the ground beneath her would disappear. “Then where the hell is this?”
“The Moon.” Beatrice’s smile wavered as the radio crackled and another man’s cold, rigid voice replaced the music.
“Attention,” the man commanded. “All personnel. Evacuate the blast site immediately. I repeat. All personnel. Evacuate the blast site immediately. This is your final warning. Testing will begin in ten minutes. If in need of assistance, activate emergency locator now. Once more. All personnel. Evacuate the blast site immediately. Command, out.”
“What is he talking about?” Pearl asked as the song resumed playing from its interruption. “What’s happening?”
Beatrice didn’t hear her. Her vacant eyes stared at the Earth above them. “A day will come for you, Pearl. It has already passed me, but you may be able to stop it yet.”
“Now what are you talking about?” Pearl demanded in frustration.
“Mankind was evolving,” Beatrice explained, her voice sober and filled with a haunting calm. “Humanity has been evolving slowly for thousands of years, but the true results of these changes couldn’t be seen until…god, when was that? It feels like I’ve been trying to clean up this mess forever.”
A tear rolled down Beatrice’s cheek. She lifted a finger to catch it and looked at it as though she didn’t know where it had come from. She continued, “It was foolish to believe so, but we thought the changes had reached their apex with Homo maximus, but we were wrong. I…I was wrong. In the end, Homo maximus became just another stepping stone, but at the time, it shook humanity to its core. Their genetic successors had sprung forth, and mankind feared for their survival. By the time the Ascended arose, the fear had turned to unwavering hatred.”
“Who?” Pearl couldn’t piece together the puzzle of Beatrice’s warning, the final image impossible to know.
“Some misused their powers, but that’s not an excuse to hate a whole people. They may have been more than human, but they didn’t deserve to suffer, god damn it.” Beatrice fell to her knees and punched the ground. Pearl could feel her inner pain, but, lacking context, it meant nothing. “Promise me you won’t see them as monsters. Promise me you won’t make the same mistakes that I’ve made. You must protect them. Or no one will.”
“Please, why are you telling me this?” Pearl asked, countering Beatrice’s hysterics with a calm voice. She knelt next to the crying woman, wrapped an arm around her, and held her tight. “What happened? Who are you, Beatrice?”
“Detonation in five minutes,” the commanding man’s voice announced from the box.
“I made a mistake.” Beatrice shook her head as she lifted it from her hands “A terrible mistake. So many suffered for it. Years of hiding in the shadows as the planet’s guardian, only to be ripped into the light when I became its greatest monster. So many hated me, but what’s worse is I hated me. I had, I’ve always had, the power to stop it from happening, and I failed. This power…is useless in my hands. I—I—I…”
Beatrice stood up and looked at the Earth. “By now, not only have I become immortal, but also invulnerable. Nothing can hurt me. A bullet to the skull vaporizes before it can reach my brain. Blades slide off my flesh without shedding any blood. Ropes snap, poisons fail. I have found no release, until today. They’re going to test a quantum bomb here, and it just might be the only thing that can kill me.”
She looked back at Pearl. Tears filled her eyes, but the light of hope glowed within her pupils as she smiled at Pearl. “The trials of your life still lie ahead of you, but you’ll be ready for them. I know you will. Trust yourself to do the right thing, no matter how challenging, and always follow your own path.”
Pearl opened her mouth to say something, but Beatrice raised a finger to her lips, silencing Pearl.
“Detonation in three minutes.” Silence persisted for a few seconds after the announcement, and then the song began anew.
“I thought it was funny,” Beatrice admitted as she swayed to the music. “That they would choose this of all songs, but apparently someone at mission control thought Frank Sinatra would be appropriate for the testing of a bomb. A lullaby for a mechanism of death, the ultimate sleep. How oddly fitting.”
Pearl sat down and listened to every word Beatrice said, drawn to this strange woman. “But having listened to this song so many times, I’ve come to realize it is more than lullaby. It’s a good bye, and a lamentation. Like a mother putting her child to sleep, before leaving the child’s life forever. There’s pain in these lyrics the two of us can empathize with.”
Nobody spoke for the rest of the song. Beatrice performed a melancholy swaying as Pearl sat on the floor and watched her. As the song reached its end, the world disappeared in a flash of light, save for Beatrice, who looked into Pearl’s eyes and gave her a reassuring smile, before breaking apart into a cloud of specks. The ground below Pearl fell away and Pearl fell with it. She didn’t scream, despite not knowing where she would land. As she descended, she listened to the last notes of the lullaby.
Applause faded to black silence.
Chapter 21
Pearl awoke to find herself within another dream, so she forced her eyes open again, only to enter another dream. Waking over and over again, she ascended the levels of her dreaming, traversing the dreams of a thousand slumbers. Every layer she breached brought more life to her body. Her muscles exploded against the steel casing her skin had hardened into, yet her skin never felt softer and her body never felt lighter. A mighty, unstoppable wave of mana surged through her, the greatest magics danced at her fingertips. Her thoughts…if only others could understand the speed of thoughts has no limits and as they race towards infinity, thoughts transmute into energy and matter. The metaphysical becomes physical. It…Pearl’s grip on reality slipped away as the machinations of her mind worked faster and harder, fueled by the energies of the Artifacts.
The tree hollow, she remembered, and imagined herself sitting with it, the influences of the Artifacts bombarding the tree from all sides. She centered her mind and brought the Artifacts to heel before she lost herself to them. As the hot ore of her new powers cooled, reality pieced back together. Her body laid upon cold, rugged stone. Her lungs breathed dry, dead air. The dark of the tomb surrounded her, yet there was movement nearby. The orange light from the Ghost Boy’s helm jumped into sight just above her face, blinding Pearl. The aching all over her body confirmed the dreaming had ended, and she had returned to the labyrinth. The Ghost Boy knelt over her, waving his hand in front of her face, and when Pearl propped herself into a sitting position, he threw his hands up in celebration. He moved to embrace her, but a small binging sound within his helm stopped him. He leapt back and raised his fists, but didn’t shoot, waiting for Pearl to do or say something.
“Don’t worry,” Pearl assured him. “It’s me.”
He didn’t lower his guard. Pearl needed something more. Something he would understand.
“The center is whole. I have bound the three into one,” Pearl explained, the words coming to her faster than she expected, her thinking clearer than ever. This gave the Ghost Boy pause and he lowered his arms, though he remained armored. Pearl elaborated, describing the fusion of the three Artifacts and how her will held them in check. She stopped her tale short of her meeting Beatrice, for that conversation felt more intimate, a secret Beatrice entrusted her with and one Pearl intended to keep. At the story’s end, a plane of orange light extending from the Ghost Boy’s helm swept up and down Pearl’s body. After the third scan, the light faded. The Ghost Boy stood still for a moment, then his armor clicked and clacked into its armlet, anklet, circlet, and belt forms. The knight had vanished and the boy had returned, running to her and hugging her with the unspoken promise
of never letting go.
“Where is Theseus?” If anyone could make sense of what she had experience, he could. The Ghost Boy released her, his face grim as he pointed behind her. Pearl turned, but saw nothing. Then, her eyes made out a dark figure laying in the shadows several yards from where she had laid. She approached, her breathing catching in her throat when she found a charred black body with a lantern locked in a death grip. She released her breath and tears clouded her vision. Staring at Theseus’s corpse, Pearl choked on her sorrow and gasped for air through her sobs. Losing her father once had hurt enough, and this felt like she had lost him again.
Angry at the world for cheating her once more, she punched the ground. Even though she pulled her punch as it struck the ground, the blow shook the entire chamber and forced the earth beneath her to crater until it was deeper than she was tall. When she stepped to climb out of the crater, her feet lifted of the ground and she drifted up without trying. The Artifacts within her grew excited, an annoyance no more bothersome than a mosquito bite, but demanding caution nonetheless. She landed next to Theseus and returned to her sorrow.
“After all we’ve gone through, all he’s gone through, and he’s dead,” she sobbed to the world. Could she have done something to save him? The weight of the question pained her, the lack of answer even more so. She blamed herself. She blamed the Black Heart. She blamed everything, until there was nothing left to blame. Yet Theseus was still dead. “He saved my life, and didn’t even know.”
Pearl stared at her hands and more mana than she had ever controlled pooled into each of them. So much power…she could bring him back. Theseus had told her never to raise the dead without their permission and hadn’t taught her the basics of necromancy, but with the Artifacts, she could do anything. Reality bent to her will. “I need you, Theseus. I need someone. After my father…you were there. Now you’re gone and I’m alone, when I need your help the most.”
“Tsuneni hikari ga sonzai shimasu.” Pearl looked up at the sound of Theseus’s voice. The blackened corpse lay silent, but his words came from behind her. Armor covered the Ghost Boy’s left arm and above the palm of his hand hovered an image of Theseus kneeling beside an unconscious Pearl, the Fire of God in his hand. The image spoke again, “There will always be light.”
With that last prayer, Theseus pushed the Flame into Pearl’s chest. It resisted, as though caught on something within Pearl, but with all of his weight on it, Theseus pushed the Flame all the way into Pearl’s body. Theseus sighed when Pearl didn’t burst into flames and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something, but fires erupting out of Pearl’s body consumed him and the image disappeared. After a second’s wait, the image reappeared, restarting with Theseus speaking. “Tsuneni hikari ga sonzai shimasu.”
The Ghost Boy closed his hand and the image disappeared for good. Pearl wiped away the last tear on her face and a smile spread across her face. Theseus wouldn’t want to come back like this, if at all. And to bring him back against his will would go beyond disrespectful and dishonorable. The mana in her hands flowed back into her body. “Thank you, Ghost Boy. Could you gather Theseus’s things? His body won’t survive the journey home, so we’ll have to bury him here. Don’t think he would mind that. He would probably approve in fact. One last spit in the face of the Khaous.”
The Ghost Boy nodded, ran off, returning soon after with Theseus’s hat and two swords. She considered taking Akuma no Satsugai-Sha with her but she laid it next to Theseus, laying the longsword Caliburnus Major on his opposite side. The two of them took a step away from Theseus, and the Ghost Boy watched Pearl work. With a point of her finger, Pearl pulled the ground under Theseus up as a rectangular altar until it reached waist height, the task no more challenging than pulling a loose string from cloth.
Around the altar, Pearl manipulated the stone to form a four side pyramid, sealing Theseus within. Then, on each face of the pyramid, Pearl inscribed an epitaph. In the months while training with him, Theseus had never mentioned his date of birth, and without a date of birth, the date of his death seemed morose, so she included neither. Knowing only a fraction of Theseus’s life, Pearl buried two men: the Theseus she knew and the stranger she would never discover. So she wrote the truths she knew, and prayed it did enough to honor him.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE LIGHT
HERE LIES THESEUS AEKER
PROUD MEMBER OF
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE STOLEN FLAME.
WARRIOR. MAGUS. PROTECTOR.
SMITH. TINKER. TEACHER.
FRIEND. BROTHER. FATHER.
Underneath all of this, she drew the symbol of his attunement, a fist grasping a bolt of lightning, within the simple flame insignia of the Brotherhood. The little she could do for him shamed her, after all he had done for her.
“I love you.” Few tears fell now, but her heart ached as though someone had ripped it from her chest. The Ghost Boy’s fingers skimmed hers and they locked together. She smiled at him and he smiled back, his smile full of holes where baby teeth had fallen out and adult teeth had yet to grow. Pearl chuckled and squeezed his hand.
“Let’s leave this place.” She pointed at the corner of the chamber, energy crackling over her body to her finger and electrifying the air. A pea sized orb of pure mana formed at the tip of her extended finger. Pearl imagined her hand as a pistol and pulled its ‘trigger,’ firing a massive stream of energy, as wide as she was tall. The blast pierced through the walls of the labyrinth and then the walls of the cavern. Dust clouds filled the beam’s path and Pearl cleared it away with a simple wave of her hand, revealing a circular tunnel climbing up through the series of tunnels above and leading outside. Natural light flooded into the cavern, taking the place of the false light illuminating the labyrinth which had disappeared with Beatrice’s demise. Hand in hand, they left.
Bright stars shone in the night sky, celebrating Pearl and the Ghost Boy’s return to the surface. The tunnel brought them to the middle of the forest, though they spied the Black Hill through the trees. The cold, crisp air filled Pearl’s lungs, refreshing her body. Despite all the changes to her body, the wind still stung her face, reassuring Pearl of her humanity.
“Hold on.” She stopped the Ghost Boy from walking off without her. She looked back at the tunnel and clapped her hands together. As she pulled her hands apart, a ball of Chaos energy formed and grew to the size of an apple. She grabbed it and threw it down the hole. It flew down the tunnel without touching any of the walls or the floor or the ceiling. Pearl led the Ghost Boy to the clearing around the Black Hill just in time to watch the Hill collapse, piece by piece, into the hollow earth beneath it, as the small void Pearl created devoured stone and soil. The lake sunk into the crater and filled in the cracks of the debris. With time, the hole would fill again and the lake would truly return, larger and deeper than ever. Buried under the rubble and submerged in a lake, Theseus would lie in peace in his tomb. Pearl looked up to the sky and, hoping he could hear her, told Theseus, “It’s done. We did it.”
***
When they reached the clearing surrounding Lightholme, they found the house still intact and ready for its master’s return. Theseus’s golems had ceased their patrol of the forest’s edge and stood in silence to honor their fallen creator, or so Pearl wanted to believe. She knew Theseus’s will had animated the golems, and without it, they would spend the rest of their existence where they stood when Theseus died. Time and the elements would grind away at them, yet they would remain there as long as the gems powering them remained intact. As much as Pearl respected Theseus and desired not to tamper with his creations, she pitied the golems and wouldn’t allow them to waste their lives as statues. She closed her eyes and imagined being able to see the full structure of the spells surrounding the golems, like removing a clock’s face to better see the gears.
She opened her eyes, and gazed upon the gems within the closest golem. The unseen tethers and connections of magic, a crystalline construct linking the golems, became visible to her.
Components of the spells animating the golems and giving them purpose had been broken, receivers for Theseus’s presence severed by his death. Pearl focused on and reshaped this part of the spell, eliminating the need for an external entity, so the golems animated each other. All four shook with life anew and, without any display of gratitude towards unsurprised Pearl, resumed their patrols. When Pearl reached the front door, she realized the Ghost Boy had stopped following her and waited just within the golems’ marching path. “Do you not want to come inside?”
The Ghost Boy shrugged.
“Are you going back to the other Ghost People?” She asked. He shrugged again, looking at the bands on his body, then the forest, then the stars above him, and then back at Pearl. He searched for purpose, and Pearl had just the thing for him. A plan had brewed in her head since leaving the Black Hill and she would need his help. “Listen, Ghost Boy, there is something I have to do. Something that will leave me vulnerable and unable to protect myself. Until I wake up, will you stay with me as my protector? Will you be my knight in shining armor?”
He nodded with a smile, and followed her into the house. Nothing had changed since they’d left, unsurprising after two days. After giving the Ghost Boy a shortened version of the tour she had received, Pearl left him in her bedroom. The trying events of the day had exhausted his young body and he fell asleep before Pearl closed the door behind her. She tucked him into her bed and kissed him on his forehead, then made her way to the study.
Without a fire in the corner hearth, an invasive cold dominated the large room. The books on the shelves regarded Pearl as a stranger and the high ceiling tried to crush Pearl with its overwhelming height. Lightholme’s upkeep fell to her, yet it remained Theseus’s to Pearl. She sat in Theseus’s chair at Theseus’s desk, feeling like an intruder the whole time, and thought about Theseus and George Mallory. What would they think of me now? Would they be proud?
The Lamplighter (Lamplighter Saga Book 0) Page 21