More than sixty feet tall, she filled the cavernous room whose roof stretched a good ten feet above the creature’s head. Her skin was smooth and white, without the slightest wrinkle or blemish, so that it more resembled porcelain than skin. Chains looped around the creature’s wrists, neck, waist, and arms, bolted into the walls and ceiling of the spherical room to lock her in place. Piercing her luminous skin were a legion of tubes. Thick, giant tubes sank into her spine, while hundreds of smaller, thinner tubes pierced the exposed flesh of her arms and legs. Pearlescent blood pulsed through them, traveling up the tubes as they vanished into the pale gray walls surrounding her.
The creature stirred, leaning closer to him as she strained the chains binding her. Even that slight motion shook the walls and vibrated the floor beneath him. Her face was smooth, hairless, a marble mask with eyes that shone gold. A soft glow emanated from her, and he felt it on his skin like he would the light of the sun on a bright summer day. Her presence was calming, peaceful, and only it kept him from fleeing the room in fear. Though she had lips, they were sealed, without any actual opening. When she talked, the lips never moved, but her voice sounded clear in his head.
“You come at last,” she said.
Kael’s knees were weak, and he struggled for something, anything, to say.
“I have,” he said. “Who are you?”
She tilted her head. The rattling of chains echoed on and on.
“You don’t know?” she asked. It was hard for Kael to describe, but he felt a shift in that glow. Curiosity and worry tinged the calmness he felt radiating from her.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” Kael said. “Are you...are you an angel?”
She straightened, her shoulders widening slightly. The mountain of tubes moved with it, groaning as they stretched and shifted.
“I am L’fae, lightborn of the heavens,” she said. “And ‘angel’ is one of many names humanity has used for my kind. Now tell me your name, stranger, so we may be strangers no longer.”
“Kael,” he answered. “Kael Skyborn.”
“Welcome, Kael,” she said. “For many days I have called you. Your presence has shone in my mind, in ways no human has before.”
“Calling me?” Kael asked.
“In dreams. In visions. Have you not seen them?”
The voices he’d heard from the L’fae’s doors when he stood before him. The fleeting words when he’d crashed through the cathedral roof. The dream he’d had just before Jason Reigar’s kidnapping attempt, of wings and a face piercing an endless battle. Not any face. L’fae’s porcelain visage.
“I have,” Kael said. “But always faint and fleeting. I never knew what it was.”
“Only my fellow lightborn can hear such a call, yet you did, human,” L’fae said. She tilted her head again, and Kael felt like a simple curiosity, a piece of string before an amused cat. “Our blood is within you. I do not understand. How do you survive with the blood of an eternal in your veins?”
“Eternal?” Kael asked, his head spinning. “I don’t understand. I didn’t even know lightborn existed until meeting you.”
The bright glow about her body faded, and Kael felt it stronger this time, a mixture of sorrow and disappointment.
“You...don’t know,” she said. “What of the others of Weshern? Do they know of my suffering?”
Kael hated upsetting her so, but he felt a strong impulse to tell the truth while in the angel’s presence.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think they do.”
L’fae sank into the chains, her entire weight supported by them. The walls groaned as she, too, groaned.
“All our blood,” she said, softer, a whisper in Kael’s ears. “All our pain, our suffering, yet we mean nothing to you. You don’t even know our names. Is this what the world has become over the centuries?”
“It’s the theotechs’ doing,” Kael said, feeling his anger rising up to counter the angel’s despair. “They’ve lied to us, hidden your existence from us. They’re the ones that did this to you, aren’t they? They trapped you in this prison.”
L’fae slowly shook her head.
“This is no prison,” she said.
“Then what is it?”
“The hope of your people,” she said. “The continued existence of humanity. The only choice left to us come the Ascension.”
The Ascension. Growing up, Kael had always believed the stories exaggerated, particularly the account of winged knights battling demons as the angels lifted the islands into the sky. Deep down, he’d assumed it a fanciful retelling of their flight from the Endless Ocean as its waters buried the world. Now he’d witnessed the demons, and he stood before a bound angel of heaven.
“Why would you submit to something like this?” Kael asked. “What happened during the Ascension? All we have are stories of that time, and I don’t believe them anymore.”
L’fae lowered herself as far as the constraints allowed her, and she stretched her right hand toward him, the rattle of the chains nearly deafening. Fingers the size of tree branches neared, and Kael straightened his spine and swore to be brave. The lightborn’s forefinger stretched out, closer and closer. As the aura of her existence bathed over him, Kael felt his many cuts and bruises healing. It only frightened him more.
“I will tell no stories, Kael Skyborn,” L’fae said. “I will show you.”
Ever so gently, the lightborn’s finger brushed Kael’s forehead. Her touch was soft and surprisingly warm. An electric feeling pulsed through him. His vision swam with color. All sensations faded away, and suddenly he occupied a body not his own and saw from eyes not his.
* * *
Ocean waters stretched out before Kael, thousands of miles to the horizon. His eyes stayed still, unfocused, scanning the wide rocky shore. Trees stood behind him. They didn’t need to be in his vision for him to know. He sensed them through the noise of the wind rustling their leaves, from the soft touch of life that flowed through their trunks.
A man joined Kael’s side. He stared down at the man, such a small thing reaching no higher than Kael’s ankle. His robes were a faint red tied at the waist with thin strips of brown cloth. A name came to him as he spoke words that were not his own.
“Is it as we feared, Barukh?” he asked.
The man tried to hide his reactions, but Kael felt them so clearly they might as well have been his own. Unease and fear gripped Barukh’s chest, but bravery fought equally hard, and Kael was proud at the dark-haired man’s strength.
“Worse!” Barukh said, shouting despite the effort being thoroughly unnecessary. Kael heard the beating of his heart, heard the blood pumping through his veins. “The Oceanic Wall collapsed last night.”
The words meant nothing to Kael, but he felt sorrow at hearing them. Whatever the Oceanic Wall was, it had been important.
“We covered too great a space with the wall,” Kael said. He realized his lips weren’t moving at all when he spoke, but still the words emerged as audible sound. “Collapse was inevitable.”
“Inevitable, but not so soon. We needed more time. Much of the greenlands is yet to evacuate, and boats from Eshern arrive daily.”
Kael shook his head.
“Did Y’vah and Gh’aro escape the fall?”
Barukh’s silence was answer enough. A weight settled on Kael’s shoulders.
“I feared as much. L’adim continues to strip away all that was good in this world of yours.”
“That bastard won’t be satisfied until everything is crushed and burned,” Barukh said.
Kael’s eyes closed, and in the darkness he saw far-off shimmering orbs of light, somehow knew their distances. Names for each orb came to him immediately. The nearest was Ch’thon, and Kael sensed an immediate bond between them.
“You may be right,” he said, “but we will not allow it to be this day. I sense the shadowborn’s approach. We must prepare. We failed at war. We failed at fortification. Only one path remains if humanity is to escape extinction.�
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“You speak of cowardice,” Barukh said. His disgust radiated off him in waves.
“I speak of survival,” Kael said, a shudder of fear in his own heart. “And there is nothing cowardly in choosing the fate awaiting me and my brethren.”
He turned from the ocean, eyes now falling upon the great forest before him. Kael offered his hand to Barukh, who climbed into his palm and sat. Kael stepped forward, but instead of smashing down the tall pines, he hovered over them, rising up as if the world were but an inconvenience he could ignore as he wished. The miles passed below him, and Kael relished the abundance of life. Squirrels raced up the sturdy trunks, birds nested in a thousand branches and hollowed spaces, wolves and coyotes slumbered as they waited for nightfall. A river ran through the woods, and Kael knew the presence of every little bug racing across its top, every little tadpole squirming through the mud of the slower branches and pools.
Below was life, and Kael cherished its feel, for he feared he might never bear witness to it again.
A city of stone sprawled across the countryside, stopping just shy of the forest’s edge. Ch’thon stood in its center, towering over the buildings as he patiently waited for Kael’s arrival. Kael landed opposite him, and he lowered his hand so Barukh might climb down. Barukh bowed to them both, then hurried away. The streets were crowded, with many men and women staring from the corners of their eyes as they walked. Neither Kael nor Ch’thon let his words be audible as they conversed.
“Are your preparations complete?” Ch’thon asked. The lightborn’s physical representation was similar to L’fae’s, despite a more masculine shape, but Kael could detect a thousand variations of white in their porcelain skin distinguishing them from one another. Ch’thon was most pleasing to look upon to Kael, his aura that of a dove recently bathed in spring waters, the feathers not quite yet dry.
“We will need years for them to be complete,” Kael said. “You know that.”
“Are they complete enough for the land to ascend?”
It was the question that mattered, and Kael felt the first inkling of fear in his breast when he answered.
“I believe so.”
“Good,” Ch’thon said, and he made a gesture with his shoulders and released a strange pulse of emotions that Kael interpreted as a form of a sigh. “Then it is time, L’fae. L’adim’s army has already begun surging toward these lands. Prepare the people. Call forth what animals will listen and find them homes. There will be no second chances.”
Kael put a hand on Ch’thon’s shoulder, light sparkling between them.
“Do not fear these sacrifices,” he said. “Embrace the opportunity to make amends for our failures.”
“I do not see it the same as you,” Ch’thon said. “I see a new failure to replace the old. What humanity asks of us, it may be our deaths.”
“We will die even if we do not make this sacrifice,” Kael argued.
“We are eternal-born,” Ch’thon said, and though he spoke no audible words, his rage was so potent that hundreds of humans suddenly dropped to their knees in fright. “For millennia we never felt death’s touch, yet here in this world, among these creatures, we suddenly feel its sting.”
Kael’s fear continued to grow deep in his chest.
“For millennia, L’adim was our brother and friend,” he said. “The light is gone from him. He is shadow, and he bears death’s kiss for even the eternal.”
Ch’thon’s body shuddered.
“All he represents is an affront to God,” he said. “Why has he not been struck low for such blasphemies? Why let this destruction befall the world without intervening?”
“This world was put into our hands to nurture,” Kael said. “It is still in our hands to save.”
“Or it was never given to us to begin with,” Ch’thon said.
Kael stood to his full height, and whatever fear he’d felt building vanished beneath waves of fury.
“Those are L’adim’s words!” he shouted. “And I will not listen to them. We were brought to this realm to protect it, and so we shall. Send for the Seraphim. When the armies of the eternal-born rise against us, we shall fight until the end is upon us, and we are given no choice but to take to the skies.”
More humans were cowering now. Kael looked to them, felt sympathy, and stabilized his burning emotions.
“Go to your lands,” Kael told Ch’thon. “Despite all the unknown in this world, know that L’adim’s hatred and slaughter is not righteous, nor just.”
“And so we hide,” Ch’thon said. “And so we are enslaved.”
Kael stood with his head held high.
“And so we fight, and so we live.”
Ch’thon took Kael’s hand and brushed it with his fingers.
“You are everything to me, L’fae, and I love you dearly,” he said. “But in this, you are wrong.”
The lightborn rose into the air, flying away over the city, light trailing after like a cloud. Ch’thon flew to his own designated spot, where the machinery and tech was being installed by theotechs like Barukh and thousands of others. Kael felt immediate regret in his chest. In all likelihood, he would never see Ch’thon in person again. What terrible final words to exchange with one another.
“Damn you, L’adim,” Kael muttered. He flew several miles north, to a sprawling field of grass beyond the city. A quarter mile of it was already excavated, dug into and laden with stone and steel in preparation for the ascension. In the very center waited dozens of tubes, and Kael winced at their sight as his feet set down.
“Welcome, L’fae!” shouted one of the older theotechs. “Come to oversee our work?”
“Not oversee,” Kael said. “I come to help.”
Time loosened around him. Days slipped, faster than a breath, until the sun had spun twice in the sky as he tore enormous chunks of soil up from the earth with his fingers and repositioned massive slabs of stone. Men and women scurried like ants around him, building, shaping their salvation, and L’fae’s cage.
Come the third dawn, time hardened. Golden-winged soldiers gathered about L’fae, armor sparkling in the sunlight. Kael could sense every one of them, not just their innate presence of life, but also the lightborn blood pulsing in their left gauntlets, powering their wings. Theotechs walked among them, praying and blessing the elite soldiers for the coming battle.
“The shadow comes,” Kael declared after scanning the east. “Take to the air, and hold nothing back. The fate of your race is now in your hands.”
The Seraphim saluted L’fae, hundreds assigned to protect this specific stretch of land. With a great hum they flew skyward to join the distant legion of soldiers forming a perimeter a dozen miles long. They were the combined might of humanity, the final army to fight in what L’fae prayed would be the final battle. The lines of conflict were nearly fifteen miles away, but the miles meant nothing to him. He watched as the army of L’adim arrived with the force of a hurricane.
The stormborn led the way, as always the fastest of the elementals. Yellow and white energy crackled around them as they crashed into the line of soldiers, warping their forms to slip between shields and puncture flesh with long, sparking claws. Human soldiers hacked with swords and axes, doing all they could to keep their perimeter strong. Fireborn followed after, laughing with grating, horrible voices. They spat molten rock from their mouths and slashed at shields with claws that left deep grooves in the steel upon every strike. Last came the stoneborn, smooth and gray, lacking the long claws and gangly limbs of their other counterparts. Instead they battered down soldiers with bone-shattering punches none could withstand.
Seraphim swarmed overhead, elements flashing from their gauntlets. They unleashed devastation upon the assaulting eternal-born, focusing on the space just beyond the ground troops so their foe couldn’t mass together to use their greater numbers to their advantage. Lightning and ice shredded stormborn, earth and fire focusing on the stoneborn, charring the tiny slits for eyes and battering free chunks of st
one armor to expose weaker, tender flesh beneath.
“Where are the iceborn?” Kael wondered as the battle raged. He turned his attention north, and there he saw them, a rolling wave of frost that turned the grass to a crystalline sheen with their passage. The impish creatures crashed into a stretch of soldiers, leaping onto shields and bathing them with ice so their holders had to struggle against the weight. Seraphim broke off from the main battalion, fire affinity, all of them. Torrents of flame bathed the iceborn, melting them. Kael heard each and every shriek they made, horrible sounds of pain and trauma released in voices that were once crystalline and beautiful.
“How fare our troops?” Barukh asked. He stood beside him, and he saw little with his limited human eyes.
“Fighting well,” Kael said. “And dying.”
The Seraphim were destroying countless thousands of the eternal-born, and the military forces held strong against the endless tide, but Kael knew it could not last. Every life lost was one they could not replace, every step backward one they would never reclaim. Men and women died with every second, with every breath, and L’adim was yet to arrive. When the shadowborn came, and he unleashed his own fury...
Kael fell to his knees in the center of the mass of tubes.
“Let it begin!” he shouted to the nearby theotechs. The holy people scrambled, lifting the smaller tubes and dragging them near. Kael lowered his arms, and he endured the first of many stings as they pressed against his skin. They needed no needle or knife, for with a thought he opened his flesh to allow the tubes’ entrance to his body. Immediately his strength waned as his blood poured into the tubes. Just a trickle at first, but soon came more tubes, and his blood flowed more freely.
“The shadowborn approaches!” Kael heard one of them shout, and several more turned to see, Kael included. All across the horizon, like an ocean wave, rushed a towering wall of shadow. Fear blossomed in Kael’s chest, dampened his aura. It wouldn’t be long until it arrived. The eternal-born burrowed into one another, reshaping, growing in size. Fireborn the size of trees lashed into the air, roaring with mouths filled with a thousand magma teeth. Their tails snapped like scorpions, growing in length with every strike. Stoneborn lumbered with mighty strides, ignoring the blasts of fire and ice that shattered across their bodies, stopping only to rip chunks of the earth free in their clubbed fingers and hurl them through the air. With the skies thick with Seraphim, each throw took the lives of dozens. Any soldiers who tried to stop the onslaught were beaten back as if they were children’s playthings. Only the stormborn remained small, dashing across the grass to leap at the unfortunate souls who still battled on the ground.
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