Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Asha looked again and saw that the dog-headed man did indeed have human hands at the ends of his arms and what appeared to be human legs striding about between the flaps of his robe. She also saw that the fine sheen of the black fur on the man’s face only fell as low as his throat, and from that point down he had the same smooth brown flesh as a normal man. “It’s only his head, just like Wren’s ears, isn’t it?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What are they doing? What do they want?”

  “Well, if they’re digging in the rubble, I can only assume they want to find someone or something that was in the temple,” Omar said. “Something of value to them. But of course, that only raises more questions.”

  They watched the strange pair leaping and digging at the ruined Temple of Osiris. When the soldiers approached the woman, she would shriek and blast them back with a sweep of her wings, and then glide away to another part of the ruins. No one approached the man in black. And gradually, the raging bellows from the dog-headed man receded into soft growls and the winged woman’s quick flitting about became a calmer procession of walking and gliding.

  “I think they’re getting tired,” Asha said. “Should we do something? They seem crazed, and people could be hurt by all the rocks flying around. Should we go out there?”

  “Are you joking? This is what I do, kind lady.” Omar grinned, straightened up, and strode out from the corner and waved to the two strangers, calling out, “Hello there!”

  “Lunatic!” Asha grimaced and then followed Omar out, keeping him between herself and the two creatures, and wondering what sort of angry memory she should use to summon the dragon, should its power be needed. She saw the soldiers looking at her, but they held their ground and kept their weapons pointed at the monstrous looters.

  Are they holding spears? They look very short and heavy for spears.

  “Hello!” Omar called again, his right hand raised in greeting as his left hand rested on his sword. “My name is Omar. Can I help you?”

  The winged woman and the dog-headed man both jerked up and peered at him, and then both of them screamed. The woman leapt into the air and man dashed across the street with his canine fangs snapping and dripping with white foam. Several of the soldiers’ weapons fired from every side, barking and echoing sharply off the walls.

  “Good Lord!” Omar drew his seireiken and the blazing white sun-steel blade lit up the shadowy street, painting every stick and stone in milk white, charcoal grays, and deepest blacks. He waved the flashing sword over his head as the woman soared down at him, and at the last moment she bent her feathered arms and streaked up into the evening sky.

  Asha squinted against the glare of the seireiken and saw the dog-headed man veer around Omar in a wide circle and come racing toward her instead. For a moment, a cold panic washed through her breast and she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. But then she felt her own fingernails biting into her palm and she remembered what she had to do.

  In a flash, she recalled a small house in the mountains of Rajasthan where she had argued with a young mother over the life of her child. Asha had been angry that day, and regretted it later, but now as she looked back on that day her anger wasn’t directed at the mother but at her younger self, at her own arrogance and close-mindedness.

  It was a very specific sort of anger, and it woke the golden dragon in a very specific sort of way.

  Asha felt the heat rippling down her arms as the golden scales armored her flesh from the elbows down to her fingers and her shining ruby claws. The hot scales formed over her neck and chest, protecting her vital points, and the last of the transformation was in her lower legs, armoring her with golden greaves and ruby talons to grip the earth at her feet. When the beast man finally reached her, she was rooted to the street and already swinging one of her armored fists at his head.

  The black snout of the creature snapped aside as she struck it, and in that instant she saw it clearly, saw that it was no dog’s head at all, that it was some other animal entirely. The muzzle was too long and slender, and the ears were too tall and square. Whatever it was, it was hideous.

  He stumbled, but only barely. The robed man swung back with his own bare fists and Asha shielded her face with her scaled arms. The first three punches glanced off with only a slight tremor, but then his open palm slammed into her chest just beneath her arms. Again the golden scales protected her, but the force of the blow threw her back several steps as her ruby talons tore free of the dusty road, and she fell back on her rear.

  “Asha! Stay down!” a young female voice cried out as the soldiers’ weapons barked again in a haphazard pattering like hail on a metal roof, and many small white clouds of smoke appeared around the men.

  Asha threw up her arms to shield her head again as the man in black rushed at her, his eyes a bright white haze unbroken by pupil or iris. It had the uncanny effect of making him appear blind, and of hiding where he was looking. But Asha’s only concern was his bare foot as he leapt at her, intending to stomp her into the earth.

  A cold white wind ripped across the street and Asha felt herself being gently tugged and lifted, but she stayed right where she lay. And as she sat there, protecting her head with her golden gauntlets, she saw the white wind yank the robed man up into the air and hurl him back across the road onto the pile of broken bricks.

  Asha hastily looked around for the source of the cry and the wind, and found both standing behind her at the corner of the building where she herself had hidden a moment ago. There, standing in a dust cloud, was the pale girl in black, Wren. She was just beginning to lower her arms and the silver bracelets rang out on her wrists. Priya stood just behind her, one little hand resting on the northern girl’s shoulder.

  “What was that?” Asha asked.

  “Look out!” Wren pointed at the temple.

  Asha looked up just in time to see the robed man rush at her again, this time ducking low and scooping her up from the street with both arms to lift her up over his head. Asha twisted about in his grasp and reached down to grab his shoulder with her left claws and his throat with her right. She knew the intense heat of the dragon’s ruby talons would burn him and he would be forced to drop her.

  But he didn’t.

  The inhuman head screamed at her, its vicious white eyes stretched wide, and the man shook her body up over his head. Asha dangled above him, kicking and struggling, but she couldn’t twist free of him.

  “Enough!” she yelled, and she felt the dragon soul in her chest unwinding, expanding, reaching up farther into her flesh. The scales swept outward to cover the rest of her arms and legs and back just as the robed man dropped her body down across his knee, smashing her spine across his leg.

  Asha crashed to the ground, breathless. She blinked, and then felt her arms and legs moving.

  I’m alive. And I’m not hurt. But this has to end, now.

  But still she lay on the ground, her chest heaving as her lungs struggled to recover the wind that had been forced out of them as she struck the man’s bent leg.

  “No! Asha!”

  Priya?

  Asha rolled over and looked up to see the blind nun running out into the street, her long black hair full of white lotus blossoms flying out behind her. From her shoulder, the mongoose Jagdish leapt to the ground in a bolt of light brown fur. She was running across the road, running out toward Asha, running straight toward the robed man with the beastly head.

  “Priya, no!”

  The nun tried to stop, but she only stumbled into the robed man’s hand as it reach out to grab her by the throat, lift her off the ground, and hurl her back down into the dirt. Her head bounced sharply on the corner of a stone, and her arms splayed out to her sides.

  “Priya!” Asha sat up and the world spun drunkenly to the side as she gasped for breath.

  The nun did not move. Jagdish darted away. A light breeze lifted some of the dust and cast it over the still body.

  “PRIYA!” Asha began to crawl toward her.<
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  The nun lay still and silent.

  “PRIYA!” Asha stopped and stared. Priya’s blindfold her torn free and now her beautiful face lay bare and as still as stone.

  No, no, no, please get up, please, please, please get up, Priya…

  Asha ceased to exist. The last thing she saw was Priya lying on the ground, her red robes wrinkled and dirty, her hair strewn out beside her, and the dark shadow standing over her. The next thing that Asha saw was a world painted red and scarlet and crimson. A white figure lay on the ground, and another white figure stood beside it.

  As she got to her feet, Asha felt her tail lashing the earth behind her, and she felt her tall horns weighing heavily on her skull. The soldier’s strange weapons were firing but the sounds were only muted crackles in the distance and the metal pellets that struck her body felt as soft as snowflakes. She exploded into motion, dashing across the short span of empty road. She grabbed the beast-man by the throat and leg and lifted him up over her head. He flailed about, beating on her arms and skull, but she could barely feel it.

  She couldn’t feel anything except the rage and the unquenchable thirst of the golden dragon for blood, the desire to take the entire world by the throat and crush the life out of it, and the yearning to plunge her talons into the very heart of the world, to feel its hot blood pouring over her claws, to tear the entire universe to pieces, and to see the very stars themselves trampled into dust beneath her feet.

  Asha hurled the robed man down across her own knee and felt his spine cracking and grinding across her scaled leg. She lifted him again, and broke his body across her leg again. And then she lifted him up a third time, tilted him head-down, and smashed his head into the road, and dropped him.

  Asha raised her fists over her head, fell to her knees, and smashed her curled claws down on the ground, punching two small craters in the earth and blasting dust up into the air. She punched the ground again, and again, and then leapt up, grabbed a huge section of the broken temple wall, and hurled the massive block of stone high over the wreckage, where it fell with a thunderous boom and started a small landslide of debris. She saw the white figures of the soldiers running like rabbits, vanishing down the side lanes one by one with their strange weapons. Some of them were screaming.

  “Asha!”

  Asha spun around and saw the one white figure lying where she had thrown it, and the second white figure where it had fallen, but now there was a third white figure crouched by the second, and it was talking and it was touching HER.

  Asha roared and ran at the crouching figure.

  NO ONE TOUCHES HER.

  She jumped high into the air, her tail writhing and whipping behind her, her blood-red claws raised to rend the intruder to bloody shreds, her jaw stretched wide to tear her prey open with her fangs.

  DIE! EVERYTHING DIES! NOW!

  As she fell upon the crouching figure, a blast of freezing mist struck her in the chest and threw her back against the pile of rubble. Her vision wavered, the red world blurring into a red mist, but she shook her head and rose to her feet with bits of stone and wood spilling off her shoulders and back.

  NO ONE HURTS ME! I AM THE DESTROYER!

  She ran at the crouching figure again, and the figure rose to its feet, and again a blast of cold white mist threw her back, sending her tumbling through the darkness into the ruins of the temple.

  MUST… DESTROY… DEVOUR…

  Asha struggled up, shoving a piece of a wall off of her, and took several loping, limping steps toward the white figure. This time, the white mist shoved her down to the ground and held her there. The white figure walked over to her, and knelt beside where she lay.

  “Asha? Can you hear me? Asha?”

  PRIYA!

  Priya…

  …oh gods, Priya…

  Asha blinked, and blinked, and the world grew darker and dimmer as the reds faded to browns and grays. Wren knelt beside her, her small hands gently petting Asha’s hair as she whispered, “It’s going to be all right now. You’re all right now, it’s over. You’re back, and everything’s going to be all right.”

  The strange girl in the black dress with the fox ears went on petting her hair and talking softly, and Asha lay face down in the dust, and wept. She cried and gasped and wailed, clutching at her own face and hair, clinging to Wren’s hands. Her body grieved, pouring out more pain and sorrow than Asha had ever known before.

  Slowly, the tears ran thin and the gasps faded to sighs. Asha’s throat and chest ached, and she felt cold and hollow. After a moment, Wren helped her to sit up, and they sat together, their arms wrapped around each other, staring at the body of the nun. Asha shook and exhaled, and sagged against the girl.

  “It’s my fault…”

  “No, no, no,” Wren said. “You didn’t hurt her. You didn’t do anything wrong. That monster over there did it. It was him, and only him, not you. And you…”

  The robed man with the hideous head moved. His arm jerked, and his fingers pawed at the dirt, and then he rolled his head up out of the hole in the ground that Asha had made with it. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, shook the dust from his deformed snout and ears, and then stood up. He turned and stared intently at the two women huddled on the ground.

  Wren lifted one arm, pointing her hand at the creature and making her bracelets clatter. The robed man snarled, turned, and ran off into the shadows and out of sight. Wren let her arm fall back into her lap and Asha rested her head on the girl’s shoulder, feeling fresh tears tumbling down her face sideways and pattering on the girl’s lap. Slowly, she sat up straight and sighed, and stood up. Asha walked over to the body, gently lifted the nun’s head, and let it rest in her own lap so she could brush Priya’s hair back from her face, and wipe the dust from her eyelashes and lips. Jagdish scampered over, sniffed at Priya’s foot, and then scurried up the red robes to the nun’s shoulder, where he curled up and whined.

  “I know, Jagdish,” Asha whispered.

  She heard dry footsteps scraping along beside her, and she wiped her eyes again before looking up at Wren. “Thank you.”

  Wren nodded, but she didn’t look down. She was looking out across the street and up at the tumbled walls of the Temple of Osiris. After a moment of silence, she asked. “Where is Omar?”

  Chapter 4

  Asha stood up with Priya cradled in her arms and Jagdish balled up in the nun’s lap. Wren stood beside her, surveying the street and the wreckage by the light of the evening stars.

  “Omar!”

  The cry echoed down the road.

  Wren jogged across the street, her black skirts swirling around her legs, and she scrambled up onto some of the smaller blocks and beams. “Omar!”

  Again the girl’s voice echoed through the dusty streets, and went unanswered.

  Asha looked down at Priya and saw how the little nun’s lip had been smashed and her cheek scraped, with her long hair twisted and dirtied. There was no hint of Priya’s serenity, no lingering trace of her endless good humor and mysterious joy, no final glimpse of the woman’s wisdom or bountiful spirit. All that was left was a dirty, battered body and a once-lovely face now bruised and bloody.

  She’s gone. She’s just… gone.

  Asha glanced up, looking all around herself for some wisp of aether, just a shred of the white vapor that might let her see Priya’s soul, let her see her friend’s smiling face one last time. But a cold wind was blowing and there was no aether drifting about her feet, and even if there had been, Asha realized, there was no reason to think Priya’s immortal spirit would awaken and take flight now, if ever. A ghost might sleep a thousand years before waking to walk in the living world again, or it might sleep forever, until the end of the world when all of creation returned to wherever it had come from.

  Slowly and carefully, Asha crossed the street and laid Priya down upon a thick wooden beam that had tumbled down from the pagoda and now lay flat on the ground. She moved numbly, trying not to think about what she had to
do, what was about to happen. She brushed Priya’s hair back and then she took the folds of the nun’s red robe and gently covered her face. Then she scooped up Jagdish and cradled him in her arm as she placed her other hand on the wooden beam. It took some effort to summon up the dragon again, but all she needed were the searing ruby claws, and only for a moment. She scraped the dusty wooden beam, and the scratches blacked, exhaled a white smoke, and flickered with yellow flame. The fire quickly spread down the beam and engulfed the robed figure.

  Asha watched the red robes turn to black as bright cinders fluttered away from the fire, and Jagdish shivered against her chest as she held him tightly with both hands.

  “Good bye,” she whispered. Again the tears came, and her breath caught in her throat, making her whole body ache.

  After a few moments, she noticed the girl Wren standing beside her, her pale little hands clasped in front of her. “Thank you,” Asha said with a rasping voice.

  “For what?”

  “You brought me back.” Asha petted the mongoose on her arm. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might have been lost to the dragon completely. Priya was the one who taught me how to control it, how to control my anger, and when I saw her lying there…”

  Wren nodded. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to wait at the café, but she said we should go after you. She said that even the weakest person can help, no matter how small or how blind. I should have stopped her, I should have said something instead of just going along with her. But she seemed so confident, so certain that it was the right thing to do, and I just… I just followed her.”

  Asha nodded and smiled sadly. “That was Priya’s way.”

  The fire crackled and the crumbling wooden beam began to break down, breaking apart here and there as the flames transformed it and the robed body into ash and dust.

  “You found no sign of your friend?” Asha asked.

  Wren shook her head. “I’m not too worried, I guess. I mean, he is immortal. But he can still get hurt, or trapped. If it was just regular people who took him, that would be one thing. But those creatures were something else. They were so strong, and vicious.”