by Peter Newman
Sunslight falls suddenly bright, the world reasserting itself, claiming back old ground, burning away stray wisps the Yearning has left behind.
Vesper falls to her knees, clutching the sword to her. Eyes still squeezed shut, she howls in despair, the sword catching the note, echoing it, extending.
Around her, trees shake, chunks of crystal flaking away from brittle branches, smoking in the hostile air. Gradually, the sound dies away, leaving behind the soft sobs of a lonely girl. After a time, they too pass.
The sword has waited long enough. It takes action; wings beat once, languid, pulling Vesper to her feet.
She opens her eyes.
Without the strange mists, the landscape is exposed. The rocks have been stripped bare of vegetation and blasted clean, their surfaces left smooth, rounded. And everything shines, from the mundane stones to the bizarre crystal trees. Of these, the ones that hang in the sky begin to burn, breaking into fragments that rain musically onto the ground below.
Vesper holds the sword high and opens her mouth. Only a soft song comes from it but it is enough to chime against the blade. The air around her shimmers with sound and, above her head, crystal chunks explode into harmless powder.
Protected now, she walks south. The kid is tucked under her arm, a small ball of fear that refuses to look anywhere but in her armpit. She taps the sword against any trees that she passes, and the crystalline bark shivers, the sound screaming through it, shattering.
She travels for several miles, seeing no one, the sword drawing her on, until at last she finds a great gash that runs across the land, a rough edged chasm yawning wide in the distance. The Breach.
She is the first human to see it in her lifetime. It too has been picked clean of history, giving a false air of timelessness. Since the Yearning’s arrival, the Breach itself has been silent. No newcomers have found their way through and there is no hint of any on their way. From this distance, the Breach appears like an ordinary feature of the landscape, fixed, natural. Only by looking inside would an observer be able to tell any different.
In front of it, the Yearning settles, folding itself inward, vapours thickening, darkening, not quite solid but more substantial than air. Essence so potent it becomes a kind of slime, existing partway between the physical and the ethereal.
It still dwarfs the girl but in a conceivable way, as a cloud might dwarf a mouse. Infinitely preferable to what was before.
Even so, she stops. Feet fidget and shoulders twist, suggesting a desire to turn away. An eye swivels to look at her. She meets it and finds its gaze softer than usual, understanding. Guilt stirs inside, stamping down fear, and she nods to the sword, tired, and keeps going.
Within the quivering viscosity that the Yearning has become, something moves. A tiny sphere, a pearl of essence, the purest parts of Duet’s need to be joined to something bigger, to not be alone. It travels through the Yearning’s insides at incredible speed, orbiting internally within the colossal infernal.
And the Yearning treasures its new companion-component, totally absorbed in self-reflection. The outside world is rendered irrelevant, a bad memory that does not bear revisiting.
It does not notice Vesper as she approaches, nor the Malice singing at her side.
They get closer, the girl not stopping until she is inches from the translucid being. She watches Duet’s remains rush past, again and again, noting the way the Yearning shifts each time. She wonders if it is expressing pleasure.
The sword is eager in her hand, keen to finish the job.
But Vesper hesitates. There is a kind of beauty here and an absence of threat. Perhaps the Yearning would remain like this if she left it alone. Perhaps she has done enough. She shakes her head and tears fly from cheeks. Duet’s words echo in her mind: ‘I would rather die than become an infernal … I would rather die …’
Her friend’s sacrifice has exposed the Yearning’s heart and Vesper knows what has to be done.
When the pearl’s orbit brings it close she cries out, giving voice to grief, and plunges the sword into what passes for the Yearning’s flesh.
Singing steel slides easily inside, the point piercing the pearl, infusing it with deadly malice. She pulls the sword free and watches as the pearl continues on its way, changing. Gradually, the sphere brightens, a tiny star trailing sparks that spread behind it, birthing new spheres that immediately start new orbits, whirling faster and faster until the infernal’s innards appear like the night sky. The essence comets follow their orbits doggedly, chasing their own light trails until they catch them, forming bands that burn, widening, blurring together, until the Yearning is eclipsed.
The multitude of lights blend into one, a chorus of wounds that build to a final flare, dazzling, deafening, overwhelming, peaking, then calming, echoing in pulses, each softer than the one before, fading away.
When they are gone, nothing of the Yearning remains.
One Thousand and Seventy Years Ago
Massassi punches the air as the report comes in. Finally, she is ready. After years of war, the world is hers. From the Dagger states in the west to the Constructed Isles in the east, from her outpost in the far south to the Emerald Peaks in the far north, all comes under her banner. All are loyal to the Empire of the Winged Eye.
And the flag is more than just an image. The Empire’s role is to watch and it has many eyes to do so. Human ones scattered far and wide and metal ones on the deep of the sea and the dark of the sky, flying, floating, unblinking. Should the eyes discover a problem, the Empire has other tools at its disposal. Soldiers armed with her weapons, with fire and spinning shot. Swords, imbued with her song and placed in the hands of knights trained in their use. The forces of the Empire wear armour to protect their bodies but protecting their essence is more difficult. Massassi fears that she alone is strong enough to stand in the presence of the infernal and not be broken. To prepare her knights, she trains them in simple techniques to anchor their simple minds. It is much easier for people to cling to a narrow idea than a complex one.
And if the knights lose a little creativity or a little empathy along the way, it is an acceptable loss. But she does not stop there. The best way to protect the essence of her knights is to give them a shield, something to prevent any contact between them and the enemy. For that, Massassi uses other humans. A pair is allocated to each knight as guardians. These pairs work in tandem, drawing strength from each other, giving up independence for a shared sense of self. They fight and live and think together. Massassi calls them the Harmonised. It is their role to hold off attacks both physical and other while the knights bring their swords to bear.
So far, there is only one breach between her world and theirs but Massassi knows that as things degenerate, more could appear. Outposts are constructed in all of the most likely breach points, patrols set over the others. Maps are made, exhaustive charts for every inch of sea and land. New islands are discovered, their populations quickly overrun and assimilated. A whole branch of the Empire is dedicated to the maintenance of these maps and the monitoring of infernal activity. They have many names but are commonly referred to as the Lenses.
Massassi has had to break many hearts to get to this stage. Stealing corporations and levelling cultures, appropriating scientific discoveries and crushing other smaller dreams in pursuit of her own. But, at last, her forces are prepared for what is coming.
She has been conservative in her predictions, terrified that the Breach would open too soon and spill death on the unwary. A year before Breach date, she returns to her outpost, the ex-quarry where first contact was made. Her forces come with her, giant warmechs and multi-segemented snakes of metal, wave after wave of foot soldiers, legions of Seraph Knights and their Harmonised sentinels.
They take up positions around the Breach, covering it from all sides, ready to eviscerate the invaders before they can get a toehold in reality. Armour sparkles in the sunlight, silver buffed with gold. Nervous hearts are mastered with quick prayers to their
leader and hands hold steady on a thousand thousand lances.
High, high above, metal eyes orbit, whispering to each other, relaying positions, organising, delivering the picture, complete, into Massassi’s HUD. She surveys her preparations and is content. If her empire fails, she will feel no guilt.
At the thought of guilt, faces swim up, a long line of lives snuffed out too early. Some were killed by accident, some by intent, all by her hand. But here, in this place, she is able to return their gaze and say, ‘Look! This is what you died for. This is why I had to do it.’ She dismisses them easily, empty phantasms compared to what waits before her.
The Breach itself appears quiet, no different on this side from the image she has stared at like an obsessive parent for the last thirty years. The sky distorts around it as it always has, threatening to burst but never actually tearing, a tease of cosmic proportions.
Her troops have unquestioning faith in their leader. They know that something is coming because she has told them so and for them that is enough.
For Massassi, however, there is a flicker of doubt. The phantasms return as quickly as they went, dead eyes questioning. What if this breach is just a hole in the ground? The horrors on the other side merely imagined by a mad woman? What would justify their deaths then?
She climbs out of her warmech, gliding down into the blast zone that exists between the front line of her forces and the Breach. Her jump boots catch the rocks, absorbing weight, storing energy, then spring off again, sending her forward in decreasing hops.
She skids to a stop in front of it. A tiny line of darkness in the rock. She can see bubbles of silver along its edge, marking the place where she sealed it shut many years before. Her seal has begun to peel away, suggesting the earth has shifted in her absence but it is clear that nothing has emerged.
There is only one thing to do, one way to be sure.
Massassi takes a deep breath and raises her metal arm, allowing the iris in her palm to open. Blowing out air through gritted teeth, she steps forward, pressing her open hand against the crack, and closes her eyes.
As before, she feels them as much as sees them. Formless things that flow through the void, rushing towards her like a great shoal towards a fresh meal or a river of poison towards a sinkhole.
For the second time they see each other across the fathomless distance. Without a doubt they are closer than before and she is able to perceive differences in them, to identify one from another, to see that some are more potent, that the larger ones effect some kind of pull on the smaller.
But they are still far away. Too far. She pulls her hand back, forces herself to remain upright and maintain the appearance of strength for her forces. Her head shakes from side to side, unwilling to accept the implications of this new data.
Her predictions are wrong.
The demons are coming, that remains true. The threat they pose is undiminished, the need for humanity to prepare just as relevant.
But they will not arrive when she thought. Not in the next few months, nor the next few years. Based on her new readings, the invasion will not begin in her lifetime. Not for hundreds, or possibly even thousands of years.
Humanity’s only hope against the tide has arrived too soon and all of her power and preparation is suddenly meaningless, a joke.
Her life has been given for this one purpose: to fight the demons. But when they do come, in unimaginable numbers, and with unquenchable fury, she will be dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Vesper walks along the edge of the Breach, following curves and jagged corners. Occasionally, she stops to look over the side. The walls of the Breach are smooth and grey, like volcanic rock, long cooled. Small indentations can be seen, darker spots where bubbles have burst. There is nothing to interrupt the vertical view and Vesper finds herself leaning out, squinting, trying to see to the bottom. Mercifully, the sunslight only goes so far, preserving mystery.
She walks on, keen to map its length. But a dry throat and empty belly conspire against her and she is forced give up. One last time, she looks out at the Breach: this is one of the narrowest places she has seen, less than half a mile wide. On the other side, the landscape is barren and she wonders if anything survives further south. Did all the infernals come north with the Usurper or are there more?
Bleak thoughts are shaken away.
The Breach appears dead. A scar left by history. Vesper knows better. She holds out the sword, letting it swing, to look along the Breach’s length one way, then the other. An eye narrows, then swivels towards her.
On impulse, she closes her eyes, letting the sword see for her again. Though there are no new infernals rising up, she sees empty threads of essence wafting and feels them play against the sword’s wings, gently tugging as they pass.
Eyes open and something passes between girl and sword. It dips a wing towards the Breach, looks at her pointedly, and then down, into the darkness.
‘No,’ says Vesper. ‘I can’t … I can’t go down there. I’m scared … and you’re scared, too, I know it.’
An eye looks at her, patient, unyielding.
‘We have to do this, don’t we?’ Vesper nods to herself. ‘Alright. Tell me what I have to do and I’ll try.’
Silvered wings quirk up, reminiscent of a shrug.
Vesper shuffles to the cliff’s edge, toes touching nothing. The sword bobs in her hands, made almost weightless by the updrafts of essence.
She senses the sword’s intention, starts to protest. ‘No, I’m not ready, I—’
And with a sharp tug, it pulls her over.
She falls, quickly at first, then wings spread, and the plummet slows, becomes a glide.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Sheer rock passes her by, the slice of daylight above becoming rapidly distant. She grips the sword tightly but it does not slip in her grasp. It is holding onto her just as tight. Essence binds hand and hilt securely, she could not let it go any more than she could let go of her limbs.
The kid is another matter. Only a firm arm keeps him close.
Deeper they go, beyond the reach of the sunslight, to the very bowels of the world.
And there, twitching, malignant, is the heart of the Breach itself. After being stretched wide to birth the Yearning, it has shrunk down, a puckered sphincter-shadow of its former glory. In time, it will recover and stretch again, refilling the crack in the earth with alien emptiness.
Vesper does not intend to give it that time.
Essence is visible here, arriving in constant gasps from the Breach, casting a greenish pall.
She glides down to a nearby ledge, stumbling, holding the sword out for balance. Briefly, she teeters, looking out over the crack that goes still deeper, seemingly without end.
With a single stroke of its wings, the sword pulls her back.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers.
The kid is placed carefully into a nook. He whimpers but does not move, head tucked firmly into his belly.
Together, girl and sword sing. Softly at first, Vesper’s voice is uncertain, slipping from high to higher in order to find the right note. The sword waits for her, keeping tune simple, soft, holding back its power.
She finds it, and briefly their voices swell together with strength, then she loses it, finds it again, struggles to hold the sound. She has not been trained for this but the instincts are there. Imprinted early in the days before her conscious memories.
The edges of the Breach retreat from the sound, sucking inwards, shrinking, wrinkling, like a slug doused in salt. On the other side of it, in the realms beyond, infernal shapes not yet born hear the disturbance, are drawn nearer. They see the Breach, notice the change, see their chance to enter our world vanishing, and, as one, they dive forward.
None have names, none are fully realised yet but they are different in size and potency and potential horror.
As the first three clouds burst into the world, Vesper staggers away, till back hi
ts stone, her mind unable to process what stands before her.
Briefly, she feels repulsed, afraid, then just as she starts to recover, grappling to understand the shapes that exist both inside and out of her perception, the sword’s sound changes and she is filled with grief and rage so pure it leaves room for nothing else.
Without thought, Vesper kicks out, into the space above the Breach, the sword’s wings beating down, catching currents, powering her leap. Air burns blue around the blade, crackling with energy.
She sings, swings the sword once, splitting a cloud and setting the two halves aflame.
She swings the sword a second time, and a third, shredding two more invaders.
For a moment she hovers there, the sword known as Malice held above her head, three eyes glaring down, daring any more to come forward.
None take up the challenge.
Then, slivered wings fold, and Vesper falls, straight down, straight towards the Breach itself. She grabs the sword in both hands, inverts it, so that the tip points unerringly towards the Breach’s centre.
Together they sing. Together they fall. A wordless song of woe, of loss, of anger.
The Breach recoils, shrinks still further, but not enough.
The sword plunges into it, searing its edges, blocking the flow of essence.
Vesper feels the pressure. As if they had just plugged a dam and the weight of an ocean was pressing against them. She stands on top of the sealed Breach, feet braced on not quite stone, not quite flesh. Smoke plumes at the point that Breach meets sword, and Vesper feels it shaking in her grasp where it works still to burn, to seal, to shut this door that should not be.
She struggles to hold it in place. The muscles in her arms are too small, the weight of her body laughable against the forces, elemental, pushing against them.
But she has to hold on, to give the sword time to complete its work. And so she commits more than muscle and bone. She gives song and heart and every part of her will.