Halcyon Rising_Shadow of Life

by Stone Thomas

  The mantid gladiators climbed down from their perches on top of Valleyvale’s sinking buildings the second we were visible. They stalked toward us, dozens of lumentors following behind as floating orbs of evil light. The first gladiator tilted its wide, insectoid head and lowered its mandible jaw. A burst of white curse magic gathered in its mouth, then shot toward me.

  “Come on now,” I said. “I may not have read the Free City Pact, but I know the gist of it was be nice to head priests.”

  The second one shot at me now, but I stepped away and let the curse fly past me, useless. It would get harder to dodge the closer they came.

  “This is sexism,” I said. “You wouldn’t hurt me if I were head nun. You’d be hella scared of me then.”

  I had no weapon, and no access to my polearm skills. I stepped backward, leading Valona’s familiars away from the temple, away from their goddess’s swirling dome of protective magic, and toward the still-sinking frame of the city’s former front gates.

  The rex fulmin’s body beamed brighter than ever as it raced toward Valona. It crashed its head into her dome again, then slithered away, summoning lightning every few seconds.

  The mummers clapped their hands together and activated their signature skill. Bands of black magic sprang from the ground and raced toward the rex fulmin. They were like long pieces of rope or strips of cloth, bouncing along the mud, but the rex fulmin had sped away before the spell could reach it.

  The only thing the mummers managed to do was tick off the mantids. They charged.

  The first mantid raised its arms toward me. Everything from the elbow down was curved and sharp, like a scimitar. I caught the mantid by the upper arms before it could sink its bladed hands into my body. Then I spun one arm over its head, forcing the gladiator’s body to complete a half-turn. All that dancing with Mamba must have paid off. I pushed the familiar face first into the mud.

  I expected the second one to come at me, but something stopped us both cold.

  The air filled with the rex fulmin’s hiss. It loomed over us, standing tall. Then it crashed its body down right on top of Valona. Her protective shell shattered into a cloud of glistening shards that vanished when they hit the ground. She lay there on her knees while the snake monster pulled back, preparing another attack.

  A dozen new rifts tore open the sky. In the west, along the horizon, the sky from my world was black with a smattering of stars, but in the rifts overhead the sky was growing lighter.

  The rex fulmin’s body towered over Valona, but it wavered. It hesitated.

  The Great Mother’s familiars turned their attention toward the goddess of life after life. This was it, the execution they had waited centuries for. As they prepared another round of curses for the snake they had enslaved, the lumentors that swirled around them began to shake inside their spherical shells.

  The demigoddess was in the air now, on her way to the battlefield. I should run to Valona. I should try to help her up. But that didn’t feel right. My mind got that funny feeling it always did when an idea was coming alive.

  “Reyna!” I yelled. “Release the lumentors!”

  “No!” she yelled. “I won’t give up!”

  “You have to trust me!” I yelled.

  She bit her lower lip, but she did as I asked. Hundreds of glowing orbs burst at once, releasing men and women whose bodies were formed from radiant light. The army of rotten souls raised their weapons and unleashed their battle cries.

  They didn’t turn on Reyna or me. They didn’t move for the rex fulmin or Valona. It was the Great Mother’s minions they hungered for.

  Those large familiars spat their last round of curses from their jaws as Duul’s lost army ravaged their bodies. Lumentors’ swords and spears, maces and bare hands, tore at the mantid gladiators. They drained the familiars of energy, leaving their limp bodies to fall into the black mud where they sank and vanished.

  The rex fulmin didn’t escape the mantids’ curses though. That magic reinvigorated the Great Mother’s hold on the poor snake. It summoned an unrelenting lightning storm that struck entirely at random, bolt after bolt after bolt. No place was safe now.

  Another round of battle cries roared through the air. As the lumentors turned their attention toward me and the mummers, I stepped back again. I was under the frame that once held massive metal doors to protect the city from intruders. Ambry had melted those doors down, so now all that stood was a stone beam across stone pillars.

  It formed an arch.

  The structure was sinking into the abyss, but it still stood four feet from the ground. I reached up and placed Avelle’s idol on top of that beam.

  “Vee!” I yelled. “Now!”

  The idol began to blink. The lumentors raced toward me, and lightning struck the ground by my feet. Valona’s mummers prepared to send long strips of black magic to bind our attackers, but it wouldn’t stop them. It wouldn’t slow them at all.

  Still, I waited.

  Just when it looked like the lumentors would close in, the idol’s blink became a steady glow. I reached back and activated hell’s first portal arch.

  Once the flash of green had rippled and faded, all I could see was Halcyon’s hill. The arch looked over the forest where the night sky yielded to the first orange haze of a new day.

  The timing was right. Dawn was breaking.

  I looked at the lumentors and laughed. “But soft, what light through yonder portal breaks? It is the east, and Halcyon is the sun!”

  I can hear you in there!, Nola said. I can hear you through the portal! THAT was iambic pentameter!

  Oh, I thought. That wasn’t so bad.

  The lumentors had nothing to shield their bodies with and nothing to hide behind. The sun’s rays streamed through the portal, evaporating the spectral army in a matter of seconds.

  Arden, Nola said. Arden, we’re breaking up.

  We’re what?, I asked.

  This long distance stuff isn’t working out, she said.

  What are you— The idol. It was crumbling. Greggin’s low quality scrapestone couldn’t contain the energy Vee had filled it with.

  It’s not you, I said. It’s me.

  The idol went dark as it fell apart. The portal closed.

  Reyna had landed next to her mother. She held the elf-shaped goddess in her arms, covering her with Reyna’s black, leathery wings. Lightning crashed around them as the rex fulmin circled. It reared its head back, preparing a frontal attack.

  Mamba’s voice echoed from the temple’s tower. “No more Lady Nice Mamba. You. Will. Listen!”

  The storm stopped. The giant snake lowered its head and curled its body into a perfect circle. It closed its eyes.

  I pushed Valona’s familiars toward it. “Act fast, little mummers!” They summoned powerful bands of magic from the ground that crisscrossed the snake’s back, wrapping its body and binding it to the mud. It didn’t fight back. Its body still glowed with the Great Mother’s curse, but it would wear off gradually now that the mantids were gone. For now the threat had been subdued. The rifts above us pulled themselves closed.

  Mamba, Isilya, Greggin, the gypsy women, and the Valleyvale citizens that remained all rushed from the temple toward us, cheering.

  “You did it!” Mamba yelled. She threw her arms around me.

  “No, you did it!” I said.

  “No,” Greggin said, “we all did it! I’m a superhero!”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “We still have to find a way home. The portal idol didn’t last long.”

  Mamba approached the rex fulmin. She pet its scaly back. “Poor snakie.”

  The sound of tiny cymbals clashing drew my attention. Walking toward us was a man with a tambourine in his hand. “Gorinor,” I said. “Done hiding at last.”

  He banged his tambourine against his hip, forcing a ten-foot ridge to erupt from the ground. It wasn’t made of hard rocks though, it was hell mud. It collapsed under its own weight, revealing a handful of mucker-mites
that were dragged up from the depths.

  They scurried and scrambled back into the thick ground.

  “Why would you sacrifice your own people?” I yelled.

  “He promised I would lead,” Gorinor said. “But where is he now that I did my part?” His speech was slow and labored. Reyna jumped into the air and flew toward the temple while Gorinor approached.

  “A true leader would have protected those women,” I said.

  “It’s too late for them,” he said. “Their cursed wombs are lost causes.”

  Gorinor shook his weapon harder, forcing a larger ridge to erupt from the ground. A dozen surprised mucker-mites fought their way back underground this time.

  “Don’t you understand?” he yelled. “Duul is using us. All of us! Even when we think we’re in it for ourselves, it’s all for him. It’s always for him.”

  Reyna sped toward me with my spear and my boots.

  “Those women,” he continued. “They’ll bear his children now. That’s why he wanted them hidden. He knocked them up and didn’t want you to find them!”

  “No.” I glanced back at Mamba’s mommas.

  “We didn’t opt for this,” one woman said. “We had no choice.”

  “I have to kill them, and his unborn children with them,” he said. “I have to show Duul he can’t use people like this — use me like this!”

  I ran at him, barefoot but armed. He ran at me. With a clap of his tambourine, a burst of mud erupted beneath my feet, spitting out a handful of angry mucker-mites. I Vaulted from it, taking control of my momentum. My foot landed against his chest on my way back down, knocking him into the muck. I pressed my Vile Lance against his stomach.

  “It’s over,” I said. “You gambled with other people’s lives and you lost. Come back to Barren Moon and face justice. Whatever version of it gypsies deal out.”

  Gorinor lay there with my weapon pressed against him. He laughed. This wasn’t the first time I had my enemy pinned and failed to act.

  He kicked me in the leg and I rolled away from him.

  “I don’t think ‘superhero’ is overselling it,” Greggin called out.

  I looked back at the blue elf. He had a rune held up to his mouth. Gorinor’s tambourine chimed behind me as Greggin spoke a single word. “Zeiterestflugund.”

  When Gorinor’s weapon crashed against his hip, a mountain of muck erupted higher than Valleyvale’s temple ever stood. As it reached its peak, the mud exploded in every direction, leaving a mucker-mite exposed that was two stories tall. Its long bone arm whipped upward, then crashed into the mud, splashing black clumps of it everywhere.

  “No,” Reyna said. “The mother-mucker!”

  The bone-covered insect thrashed her arm to the side, caught Gorinor in her grips, and latched on. In a giant splash of dense mud, she dove into the ground and took the gypsy tambourinist with her.

  There was no question what happened to him. A rift tore open where he had stood.

  “How’s that for a coincidence?” Greggin asked.

  +53

  “Your enemy was all but slain,” Valona said. “What stayed your hand?”

  “I’ve never killed someone before,” I said. “I don’t know if I could.”

  “Prepare yourself to,” she said. “You may not have the luxury of second guesses next time.”

  I nodded, even if it was advice I might not take. “Reyna, now that we’ve settled everything here, we have another lumentor problem. The ones Kāya led out of here are camped outside Halcyon. Can you Encapsoulate them? Bring them back here?”

  “No,” she said. “Not without leaving the world of folding stillness. Even if I could leave, I wouldn’t. Not while my mother is under attack.”

  “The attack is over,” I said. “The rex fulmin is under wraps. Literally. The mantid gladiators are gone.”

  “More will come,” Valona said. “The Great Mother does not forget a grudge. You have secured me a welcome reprieve, and for that I am grateful. The attack, however, will continue.”

  “And I’m powerless to help,” Reyna said. “I don’t have any weapons and my soul warden class only works on, well, souls. When more familiars follow…”

  I looked down. I knew what I had to do. “Take this. It’s strongest against deific enemies like familiars. You should be able to slay any other mantid gladiators with a single strike.”

  Her wide eyes grew wider as she looked at the Vile Lance in her hands. “I know, but— We could, I guess…” She was lost in conversation with her swarthling. “I can’t though… In front of my mother? Oh that’s just lewd! No, he can have a kiss this time. If he wants more he’ll have to find us someplace private.” When she looked up she wrapped one arm around me and pressed her lips against mine.

  My hand found her lower back and brought her in close. Her skin was warm and soft. When she pulled away my cheeks flushed. Everyone was staring.

  “There is one thing you can do without leaving,” I said. “There’s an elf named Ferrah Soff. She died young and her father Mercifer is in Halcyon now. Can you arrange a conversation between them?”

  “Maybe,” Reyna said, glancing back at her mother.

  “Tell me,” Valona said. “You serve the goddess Nola, and yet you leave her side. You put yourself in danger to come to my aid. Why?”

  “Duul’s war isn’t just taking place in Halcyon,” I said. “He’s ruining lives everywhere he goes, killing people and gods along the way.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Valona said. “What does Nola obtain for your efforts?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” I said. “We’ve led people to Halcyon where they’ll find safety. Sure, she eats their souls, but no one minds that. We’re learning how to build better defenses, how to make allies. Nola just wants to stop Duul before it’s too late.”

  “Ask yourself whether her goals are as selfless as she says. All who seek power seek it for a reason. Still, if what she offers is an alternative to war, she may find allies yet.”

  “Does that mean you’ll help us?” I asked.

  “I cannot help your Nola,” Valona said. “I can barely help myself. It will take time to break down the forces that seal me inside this realm. Time, and energy that I do not have. I must evolve if I am to be free.”

  “We’ll build you a shrine,” I said.

  “A powerful gesture,” she said, “but only half the equation.”

  “You need a priest,” I said. “I can’t be that for you.”

  “Then here is your rift,” she said. “Should Duul make good on his promise to restore me to greatness, we may next meet as enemies.”

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Isilya asked. “That if Duul attacks Halcyon and everyone in it, you’ll just stand by? You’ll help?”

  No one answered.

  “What if I stayed?” Isilya asked. “Make me your head priest.”

  “But,” Mamba said, “we’ve only just started to know each other.”

  Isilya brushed a lock of hair from Mamba’s face. “I think we’ve always known each other, in one way or another.” She looked into Mamba’s eyes. “You have your father’s kindness, do you know that?”

  “Who was he?” she asked.

  “There was no great romance,” Isilya said. “I didn’t even get his name. A small carriage cart rolled through the forest and it was my job to distract the driver while the men I traveled with stole his cargo. I tore my dress and stood at the edge of the road, begging for help. ‘I was attacked,’ I said. ‘They took everything.’

  “Forest roads are dangerous, especially for elves who carry no weapons,” she continued. “He stopped anyway and I jumped into the passenger seat without asking. I threw my head in his lap and cried.

  “He just stroked my hair and told me it would be okay. He offered me coins from his own pocket. Then a sound in the back of his cart drew his attention. He couldn’t see through the wooden panel behind his seat, and I cou
ldn’t let him get out of the cart to check. I did the only thing I could think of. I kissed him.

  “He was a sweet, delicate man. Small, of course, and his skin was the same shade of red as yours. We spent a long time in that carriage together, and by the time we had finished, his cart was empty.

  “He knew why I was there the whole time. As I pulled my clothing back on, he said, ‘I didn’t have much of value. Will they punish you for that?’ Even as I helped steal everything he owned, it was my welfare that worried him.

  “‘No,’ I said.

  “‘Good,” he replied. ‘And thank you.’

  “‘For what?’

  “‘If I had checked on my cargo, your friends would have killed me, wouldn’t they?’

  “‘They would,’ I said.

  “‘And you didn’t have to do what you did to keep me away from their blades.’

  “‘No,’

  “‘Goodness,’ he said, ‘finds a way to shine, even in the dark.’”

  “And that was the only time I ever saw him.

  “I was never a mother to you. Our custom called for me to give you to the mommas and that’s what I did, without a second thought. I didn’t realize until years later how hard your life would be, the elf-eared girl with red skin and the wind her heart.

  “Let me do now what I should have done then. Let me protect you.”

  Both women’s eyes began to tear. After a long embrace, Mamba let go of her life-mother and watched the woman walk toward Valona.

  “I’m ready,” Isilya said. She bent on one knee. “I, Isilya, do take this post freely, despite the risks.”

  Her eyes turned black as pitch and she bit her lip for just a second before the effect dissipated. She stood, turned to me, and smiled.

  “That sure is some menu,” she said.

  “It gets longer all the time,” I said.

  “Before you leave,” Isilya said, “I Elementailored something I thought might reflect Mamba’s rare gifts. A zephyrine scarf. It attunes to the wind, and offers +7 to every attribute.” She pulled a sheer thin fabric from her pocket and tied it around her life-daughter’s neck. It wafted behind her as if caught in a perpetual wind, even here, in a world where the air hung with cold and permanent stillness.