by Daryl Banner
The way she bit the word made Aardgar flinch. “If what you say is true,” he reasoned, “then they have great need for me and require what I know. They will return.”
Zema didn’t seem to like his response, but Aardgar led the way back upstairs, and she followed.
The pair of them sat in the King’s chambers on a bed no one had ever slept on in all its existence. The purpose of a bed changed over the thousand or so years since humans lost their ability to sleep. Aardgar wondered if there would ever live a human again who’d use a bed for its intended purpose beyond the age of two. Somehow, he doubted it.
“Seeing as I am … undying … I’m not so concerned with being able to endure a siege myself,” Aardgar muttered to Zema at his side, “but I am rather concerned with you and your … mortal needs.”
“I have endured enough surviving on two measly meals a day even the slummiest slummer would find revolting.” She smirked. “I think I will get by.”
“I … must apologize for the way you have been treated these past few—”
“I would have been much more use to you at your side,” she cut him off, a slight bite to her tone. Then she turned her gaze halfway to him. “Poor, poor Aardgar. You put your trust in the wrong—”
“I have not broken trust with my brothers on account of your claim,” he interrupted at once. “Do not overstep, Zema. You are only free because you have a use to me. It is not a sign of my condoning the alleged actions of you and your two … Marshals.” Aardgar gave a sudden sigh, then gripped his head, feeling it was about to spin right off. “Such curious titles, such developments since my time as King. Why does a King need such ridiculous titles for his Council?”
“Three Marshals,” Zema volunteered softly, shaken by his words, yet determined to maintain her regal, stiff-spined demeanor. “One to keep the order among the people. One to maintain peace of living by hearing and responding to their unique interests. And one to survey the Legacies of Atlas’s citizenry. Order. Peace. And Legacy. The three members of the King or Queen’s Council also check one another’s actions so as to avoid corruption.”
“Oh, do they?” asked Aardgar mockingly. “Didn’t seem to work well for former Queen Vivilan Rubylight.” Aardgar looked upon the side of Zema’s gaunt face. “Seeing as her ‘trusty Council’ was so quick to turn a knife to her back.”
“I will admit I had a significant role in it. But our actions were not without warrant, King. You must understand that. Queen Vivilan had betrayed the trust of all her Council long ago. She ruled for over sixty years, longer than any King or Queen since even before the bombing of the twelfth. And that’s a woman who used to be a Royal Legacist herself, like me. But the woman was corrupted deeply by her desire to see Atlas returned to a state of … dictatorship. She so hated having her every action questioned by us Marshals. Then her Marshal of Order was slain and replaced by Halvard. Yes, I had a role in that, too. And so then went the Marshal of Peace, who was replaced by Thad. I was the only one she trusted.” Zema peered down at her hands.
The room shook, then stilled again. War cries echoed up from the feet of Cloud Tower. Aardgar ignored it all. “And then you betrayed her, ended her life, and took the throne for yourself.”
“I did not take the throne. I don’t wish to be Queen. It was never about that.”
“What, then?”
“Vivilan. She believed she was … Goddess-born.” Zema took a deep breath and let it all out over her palms. “She was a zealot of the worst kind. She believed she was destined to rule the Last City of Atlas for all of time. She believed she was chosen. Poor, foolish Vivilan. The Goddesses warped her mind, even if they hadn’t done a thing. I trusted them not.” She lifted her gaze to Aardgar. “I don’t mean to speak so brashly of them. I know you and your brothers … have an … affinity … for Three Sister. But I cannot share that love.”
Aardgar’s words came out in half a bark. “It is not love I feel for them.”
“But isn’t it?” Her voice was soft and her eyes were alight with empathy. “You devoted your existence to their power. When you ruled, you did so with one of them at your side, did you not? Or are the legends wrong?”
Aardgar shifted uncomfortably.
“I won’t push it.” Zema clasped her hands together over her lap. “But I might ask if maybe there’s a thing to your brothers’ intentions. Maybe the Goddesses can save this crumbling city from itself. Maybe you should act more out of your love than your hate.”
“Maybe that would be easier for a person with a heart.”
“Fuck your heart,” she spat back, whether she had learned through her Legacy’s ears the irony of that very statement or not. “Love does not come from the heart. It never did. It comes from here.” She poked her temple with a long, papery finger. “Intelligent people rule with love. They know the difference between lust and loyalty. If you loved your golden light once, you can love it again. That love may be our only saving grace, if you care for Atlas at all.”
Aardgar let the words sit upon him as a golden light of another kind broke across the sky. The sun dragged another day over their world, and the war cries from below died like the last embers of a fire.
The fire started again that same night.
Every single night, in fact. Zema paced the upper floors of Cloud Tower worrying and planning and plotting while Aardgar knelt at the balcony and prayed for the Goddess to return. She promised she would, didn’t she?—when Aardgar was in peril?
“This is peril,” reasoned Aardgar, murmuring to the sky, only to realize that his prayers could be heard by Zema if she reached with the ears of her Legacy. So Aardgar closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and drew his prayers inward. Evanesce, he urged, as desperate as the drumming and the noise and the shouts that threatened Cloud Keep and the Iron Floor that so barely protected them. He took Zema’s advice. He reached with his love—if love is what he was feeling. Evanesce, my love. Feel my dire plight. Heed my call. Glorious Evanesce. Atlas is falling.
When the thought passed through his mind, he felt his heart clench within his chest.
Of course, that wasn’t possible.
Atlas … our creation … our everything … it is falling.
Each time he thought the words, he felt warmer. He kept thinking them over and over. Atlas is falling. Atlas, our creation. Our Last City of Atlas.
Evanesce, my love.
The fire burned in his chest, the phantom fire.
Atlas falls.
The world around him pulsed like a great, big heart. It pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled, pulled, pulled.
Atlas has fallen. My love …
A sudden warmth engulfed Aardgar from behind. He spun around and opened his eyes.
For the second time in his long existence, a great and terrifying golden light filled the King’s Chambers. Its golden radiance blinded him, but he did not shield his eyes, not this time. This time, he was ready for it. He had long awaited the return of the light.
But he did not anticipate the way its return would make him feel. He didn’t anticipate feeling … happy.
It was like his heart had returned to his chest, a missing and vital piece of him, a part that made him whole again.
When the light revealed the slender shape of a woman with long golden hair, Aardgar held his breath. She was as beautiful as the day she dragged him down deep into the earth, every bit as beautiful as he remembered.
Could he have forgiven her in a thousand years? Had he found some way to reconcile his emotions between them in his countless dreams of countless imaginary lifetimes?
“Evanesce?” he croaked at the shimmering figure before him.
She didn’t move. She was a statue of golden light and frozen fire. She didn’t even blink.
Aardgar worried that, like the time she had come to his chambers and ended the short life of the human woman he loved and his unborn son or daughter, all of the humanity might be gone from her. And it had been far, far longer than just the thirty sh
ort years since he had seen Evanesce. Now, it had been over a thousand years since she last saw him. Aardgar felt the cold grip of her alien ambivalence tighten around his chest. He wondered if she cared whether he lived, died, or was still trapped in that tiny cave. She might have left him there for another thousand years, had Thad not found and disinterred him.
But Atlas was just as much her child as it was his own. Perhaps that would be his tack.
“Evanesce,” he muttered again, his voice gaining a hair of strength. “Evanesce … Atlas is hurting. Atlas … our Atlas … our creation to save all of humanity … it is falling apart. You have been gone too long. Please. You must help us, my love. Work your power and bring the city back to rights.”
Just as suddenly as the golden light filled the room, then came a sharp green glow that pierced through Evanesce’s light. It battled with the gold like a greedy fire until both of them shared the room equally. Within its center, a shape emerged. Like liquid emerald, the shape glittered green and glassy, and it too became a woman. She had long hair, much like Evanesce, but it was black as night and grew so long that tendrils of it coiled about her ankles. She was naked.
Aardgar could not believe his eyes. Another Sister? Was this second Sister a play on his mind? Perhaps he was never rescued from his tomb. Perhaps he was still caught in yet another of his dreams, positing what the other Goddesses might look like. Surely this was all just fanciful products of his imagining.
Beyond the swelling gold and the glittering green, there came a muted, gentler light. It was also greenish, but pale and sickly, almost yellow, like the color of turning leaves. It didn’t pierce like the others, but instead seemed to swell. A mist swirled smoothly behind the two Sisters, and from its cloudy, twisting fingers, a third woman materialized.
“Three Sister …” breathed Aardgar, overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure if he was identifying them or praying to them.
He was only expecting to meet the one. All three of them was too much for any one human to bear. All sense fell out of his thrumming ears.
Suddenly, Aardgar’s eyes picked up on a subtle pulsing in the golden light. It seemed to breathe, pushing and pulling upon the brilliance of Evanesce. When his eyes adjusted to an object affixed to her chest like a talisman, he felt a jolt of terror surge through him.
It was his heart. She still kept it.
It was a hunk of liquid gold that sat upon her chest like a heavy medallion, and it twitched and pulsed with his every heartbeat. And he felt it. Every single pump. Every push and pull. There was no blood in it, so what on this planet or the next could it possibly be pumping? Why did the severed, orphaned organ work at all? It defied everything he knew.
But of one thing, he was absolutely certain: all he needed to do was strike that heart, and he would end.
But now with Evanesce in his presence once again, did he really still want it all to end?
“Evanesce.” He was determined to maintain his strength before the Goddesses. “Atlas … All the citizenry … They’re rebelling. Please, they’re—”
“Yes,” Evanesce said suddenly.
She turned her head slightly, eyeing the sister by her side who glistened like a multifaceted emerald. The pair of them seemed to communicate with no words—just a simple look. It was unsettling. Was the “yes” to him? To her sisters? What was it a response to?
“Please, Evanesce.” Aardgar tried again. “I … I’ve waited human centuries.” He took one step forward. “The humans have this tower surrounded. Kings and Queens have turned over the city. Sanctum is collapsed. The people are in revolt. Our peace is lost.”
Evanesce looked upon Aardgar like he was a stranger from another life. He was. And so was she, a person who Aardgar no longer knew.
Yet still, he took another step. “Evanesce.”
Then it was Evanesce who took a step forward. The movement was so unexpected that Aardgar gasped and stumbled backward, only to find that Evanesce was upon him in the next instant, as if she was somehow able to cross the whole room in a single stride.
Her hands reached out and clasped about his head. Her eyes gazed into his as he stared up into her golden brilliance, terrified and awed all at once.
What was she doing?
His heart beat fervently upon the chest of the Goddess, reflecting his fear. Even apart from his body, his heart reacted to his every desperate emotion.
“Evanesce …” he whispered one last time.
And then she brought her lips forcefully to his.
The world flashed. He saw three trees; two of them withered while the third reached for the sky.
He saw three great black birds sitting in three thorny nests; two of them had their mouths stuffed, choking on worms, while the third held its wings about its young in the nest.
He saw an angry swirl of ruby red fire raging over a calm and silent sea of sapphires, and then a lightning bolt slicing the sky in half.
He saw a million young boys in robes made of water, then watched as they fell apart before a great flame, then watched as a flashing, electric current hopped stealthily between the puddles that remained.
And then he saw himself, a man on a throne with a crown of lightning atop his head. At his side, two beautiful women with long white hair. Before him, a dry riverbed. Behind him, ashes.
Evanesce pulled her lips away from his and let go of his head at once. Aardgar staggered backwards. He felt eerily calm, though the visions kept racing past his eyes. He felt like he was trying to grasp at them like tiny blades of grass carried off by a strong wind.
Like ashes from a fire.
Like droplets of water from the sky.
“There was a reason I came to you that day long ago.” Her words were soft, almost human. If Aardgar didn’t know better, he’d think they were in love again. If I didn’t know better … “I felt light within you. It drew me to you. I knew it ever since I took your hand by the river. You are the only one, Aardgar. The only one.”
“I can’t be.” Aardgar ground his teeth. “I’m not. You are playing with me. Again. Always. I am just your toy. Your experiment.”
“And you can either succeed. Or you can fail.” She turned toward her emerald sister and placed a palm gently on her cheek. “And for our sake, I do hope you succeed, Aardgar.” She reached back and slowly took the hand of the third sister, the pale yellow one in the mists. “My sisters are awfully tired of dreaming.”
“Evanesce. No, no. D-Don’t.” Aardgar stepped forward urgently. “Don’t go. Don’t you dare leave me again.”
“I never left.” Evanesce let go of her sister’s cheek and placed a hand over her chest—over his heart. “When the world is right, you will find me again.”
His hand fumbled for the sword at his side. He pulled it out of the sheath and brandished it, showing his teeth. He could not bear even another second of this existence without Evanesce. What have you done to me, fell Goddess?
She took hold of her sisters’ hands. The three of them glowed furiously.
This was Aardgar’s last chance.
He raced forward with the blade, aiming for the center of Evanesce’s chest—his heart, his eternity, his chain to the world of mortals.
His blade struck. Aardgar opened his eyes.
The Goddesses were gone. His sword was now halfway embedded into the wall.
The image reminded him instantly of the human woman he once loved—the one who was carrying their child, the one who was impaled by a golden sword from the Goddess herself, a sword right into this very wall.
A sword that had since been removed and kept as an ancient relic through all the centuries—the sword that cast away the Immortal King, the sword that sliced the Kingship in half, the sword that Zema wielded and struck through Aardgar’s belly to prove his immortality.
This room, or that wall, or perhaps Aardgar himself seemed to have a unique and curious history with swords being buried halfway to the hilt into walls.
“Brother.”
Aardgar tur
ned. His brothers stood at the opened door to his chambers. Zema was held against Baron with a knife at her throat.
“The Queen Traitor had broken free,” announced Baal. “You ought to watch your back better, Aardgar.”
Visions from the Goddess still decorated Aardgar’s eyelids every time he blinked. “I freed her.”
Baal tilted his head. “Why?”
“Cloud Keep is breached. We need her.”
“For what purpose?” questioned Baal. “To have her stab us in the back as she did the former Queen?”
“And where have you been?” Aardgar spat back. “On an adventure through time? Neglecting the Kingship we are trying to hold?”
“Brother …”
“The only thing that separates us and certain demise is a heavy iron plate two floors down.” Aardgar abandoned his sword in the wall and faced his brothers. “She is more use to us alive than she is rotting in the King’s Keeping. Forgive me for seeking a companion, seeing as I was left alone by my own supposed kin during a time of great need.”
The floor shook beneath them. A groan of metal rang down the halls and met their ears.
“Iron plate, you said?” asked Baal, wide-eyed.
“It is being breached,” muttered Zema, alarm registering in her face. “I can hear them.”
“We all can hear them,” Baal spat back.
“I hear what they are saying,” she amended with a sneer at him, despite having Baron’s knife still firmly pressed to her long neck. “Their words. They have fashioned a simple way to manipulate the metal. A powerful Legacy assists them. They will be upon us in a matter of minutes.”
Baal shrugged. “Then it seems, our dear former Legacist, that you have outlived your purpose.”
“Or,” Zema countered, “perhaps it’s just that—” She cut herself off, and her eyes flashed. Zema looked at Aardgar right then with sudden urgency.
He stared at her, alarmed. Did she just hear something with her Legacy?
“Don’t say a word, Aardgar,” Zema told him at once, her tone changing. “Not a word. Run.”
Aardgar breathed in. The words were familiar to him. Deathly familiar. Someone made that same urgent demand of him a lifetime ago … someone important.