His fingers instinctively tightened around the hilt of a sword crested in feathers of rose-quartz that took form in his hand. The blade itself shimmered between hues of white and blue and as Poe examined it, he realized that it was not the blade itself that had any power; it existed as an expression of all he had inherited. While he was distracted, something had crept up on Poe that he was unprepared for.
He began to scan the room frantically—he hadn’t changed locations, hadn’t even moved a step, but he was no longer certain he was standing in it. Just as he was aware of this hollow chamber, so too did he feel the stairwell he had climbed, the interior of the castle beneath it, and the landscape of the island it sat on.
As he dropped to his knees, Poe gripped his skull, trying to stifle this overwhelming sense of awareness. His demands of “What is happening? What’s been done to me?” went unanswered, and his senses blossomed onward, oblivious of his desires. He felt them soaring over the seas and over the mainland in every direction. They did nothing to illuminate the finer details—the people and all the creatures and objects surrounding them were lost on Poe—but his awareness consumed TseTsu, until he was aware of the whole world.
And it was only one of many.
As Poe’s mind throbbed painfully, he slumped to the ground and convulsed. The cruelest moment was the realization that he had become effectively immortal, and the only way to escape this agony was to endure it. He cursed Einré for abandoning him with no warning of what was to come, but tried to crawl for the stairwell just the same, desperately seeking her help.
His efforts were futile. He could not will himself to move and had only a faded sense of reality. Day and night seemed to pass as he settled into motionlessness, having merged without his noticing.
Day and night. Morning and evening. Dawn and dusk.
All had become one.
The past and the present. Where he had been, where he was. Distance had become relative to Poe, both spatial and chronological. Memory flooded his eyes, which were wet with tears. The death of his father, his claiming of the Dark Sword and surrendering Fainshild Moira. His murder of hundreds in the woods—he had thought himself hardened against the worst of this guilt, but saw it all now as though it had just happened.
“I need to escape…” he sobbed.
There were more than his own memories at play. He saw the pasts of others, the machinations that set his victims in his way, and Poe in theirs. It was coming all at once, and it was too intense to bear.
“Escape … escape…”
And as he willed it, so he did. He was gone, as though he’d never been.
*
By Shea’s reckoning, it took less than ten minutes to climb the spire steps and half that to come back down. Poe’s business should have concluded in half an hour—perhaps a full one, to be generous. But when she snuck up while the goddess and her attendant were away, there was no sign of Poe save for his father’s sword, abandoned on the floor. A layer of petals had wafted in through the windows, and told it had not been abandoned recently.
“He was there,” Flynn confirmed. “For a moment, I was able to sense him.”
“Where’s he gone off to?” she asked. The Searing Truth hung at her side, intended for return to its owner.
“He vanished. Poe’s gone. All we can do is wait.”
And for Flynn, that seemed that. They had been waiting for days on the speculation that Guardian Poe might return. Whether or not he did had no immediate bearing on Shea’s circumstances; she had come to another world and was only now beginning to take it in. Though Chari had nothing favorable to say about her homeland, Shea believed she could remain comfortable for a spell.
“Thought you were outta cigs?” Jean asked of Shea, who was sitting on the castle steps, smoking.
“Was. Einré said Ellis would tend our needs. Needed a smoke.”
Jean reached out and Shea, who recognized the gesture, passed the cigarette on. She had a case-full again, all hand-rolled from local leaf. She could share the one.
“Didn’t know you fancied ’em,” Shea commented.
“Usually don’t,” Jean said as she examined it. “Seems a good time, though, ya know? No damn clue what’s happenin’ once this is all done. And it looks to be done real fuckin’ soon.”
“That a worry?” Shea asked. “Figure mess handled, we travel on.”
“Nah, not so sure for me.” Jean took a drag, then passed the cigarette back. “Whole point of ditchin’ Earth was findin’ a new home. Wherever we go, though, there’re problems.”
“No perfect world?” Jean had no immediate response, and Shea pondered the notion in silence. “Seems set to be one, this Renivar bloke ’as ’is way.”
Jean laughed. “Only one where we ain’t welcome. What’s that say ’bout us?”
“Can I try?”
The two looked back and saw Zaja behind them. Shea glanced at her, then back at the cigarette pinched between her fingers before asking, “You old enough?”
Zaja walked around to the front, holding her hands up defensively. Shea couldn’t avoid noticing the discolored skin creeping out beneath her gloves, the dark pattern like paint she’d stained her hands with.
“Look,” Zaja said, “I can pretty much guarantee that I’m not going to die from smoking.”
Shea looked to Jean, who shrugged and asked, “Any fuckin’ point not to?”
“Yay, adult stuff!” Zaja grinned as she accepted the cigarette. She and Jean both watched with concern as Zaja pressed it to her lips and took a drag. After initial success, Zaja proudly proclaimed, “Hey, I’m pretty good at—” before promptly choking. As she turned away and coughed into her fist, she hastily offered the cigarette back to Shea. “Never mind. Never mind.”
Shea returned the cigarette to her lips once more before commenting to Jean. “No need for a perfect world ’ere. Glad enough to sleep without bullets ripping my bloody tent.”
“Gets down to it, I’m not really sure what I want,” Jean said. “Can’t stand boring, but I’ve been afraid for my life too much to wanna take the chance. Maybe…” She shook her head, and groaned, “Fuck…”
“What’s”—cough—“what’s wrong?” Zaja asked, trying to clear her throat.
“Earth was the only place I belonged. Only one where I fit in, knew how shit worked and what kinda scene I could make an’ get away with. Hated it there, long before knowin’ there was anyplace else I could be. But it was home.”
“So you want to go back?”
Jean shot Zaja the dirtiest look she had in her repertoire before softening and shaking her head. “Not in a million fuckin’ years. But bein’ on this train, people who I trust … hell, even those I can’t … kept me feelin’ safer than I have in years. What’m I gonna do when it stops?”
Zaja reached out and touched Jean’s hand sympathetically. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Shea looked up at her and asked, “What of you?”
Zaja’s smile was melancholy at best. “I’d love to keep moving,” she said. “I just don’t think I’ll always be able. And I won’t let myself weigh anyone down.”
Jean borrowed Shea’s cigarette and took another drag. Shea had nothing she could say to make either feel better. When Jean offered the cigarette to Zaja, she accepted it hesitantly and took a smaller, more reluctant drag, which was followed by a small cough.
*
Of the three sisters—Amlia, Hapané, and Einré—only one was worshiped. Only one served as the cornerstone of a church that in the passing centuries had gradually overtaken TseTsu. Chariska Jerhas had lived a guided and sheltered life, obliged to preach to the masses of Cordom that she might conceal her own heresy, and so she had never traveled beyond the walls. But she had heard stories, and knew there were few free people left.
When she cornered Einré Maraius, she was tempted to shoot her right then, for what good it might do. The goddess would survive and could retaliate, but it seemed the only chance she might have to vicariousl
y assassinate the goddess she’d suffered to worship all her life. But she found words, ones she hoped would pierce Einré in a way her bullets never could.
“Things on TseTsu have grown terrible in your inaction.”
Einré, to Chari’s displeasure, was not so easily flustered. “What obligations have I to TseTsu?”
“When we met Airia Rousow, she impressed upon us that the so-called gods should not supplicate themselves to humanity’s worship,” Chari said. “You spoke of her as a mentor. Did she not convey the same warning to you?”
“And my sisters,” Einré confirmed. “We all heard it. We did not all listen.”
“And you did nothing,” Chari retorted. “Regardless of your disinterest in worldly affairs, you cannot tell me you are blind to the inquisitions and crusades that even now take place. Yet you deny even the basest onus when you could have stopped this?”
The way Einré looked down on Chari disgusted her. It felt like a demand of worship for worship’s sake, when the Mystik of Growth had done nothing to earn this respect other than inherit an office.
“You wish to admonish me now for presumed missteps taken many centuries prior?” Einré replied. “Very well. And what would I have done, High Priestess?” The title stung Chari. “I could have clashed with Hapané and potentially sent the heavens into disarray, just as Airia and Taryl did. Or would you prefer I settled things with her passively? A church dedicated to the worship of the Goddess Einré might have sprung up from quieter intervention. Even were I willing to approach her in deed, I’d have not had the heart. She is my sister.”
“Yet even now, you suffer no regrets?” Chari asked, ignoring Einré’s sentimentality. “Having seen the fruits of your reclusion?”
“My sister did not step into the light to be worshiped. Our people—those of our family, the children and grandchildren of our cousins and neighbors—were warring with one another. She did not intervene that she might be worshiped, but that is what she received: worshippers. Saryu.”
Chari mulled on the word for a moment. ‘Saryu’ had never had any meaning for her but the denomination she’d been raised in, and the phrase of greeting they were conditioned to speak with one another. She shared it then, without thinking.
“Ure dun’as Saryu qi.”
Einré smiled sadly, and translated the words of the sacred tongue for Chari. “Do not worship me.”
Their conversation ended there, and Chari later found herself speaking to Ellis, who had taken a break from his writing to provide her company. At first, she took it as a gesture of kindness, but Chari remembered he’d been ordered to tend her needs, and surmised this was no exception.
“How can you worship her, knowing what you know?”
“It’s the way she makes me feel,” Ellis replied. “I’m safe. Connected. I may die one day, but I die knowing that there’s something greater than what I see and feel. Isn’t the security of that knowledge worth a lifetime?”
Chari shook her head. “All I’ve done and seen, and still I feel nothing. There is no longing in my heart for truth—indeed, only a contempt for all I’ve learned. The gods are neither absolute nor just, and most have no love for us. And those who do … their love is biased. Perverted. Warped.”
“I’ve always felt safe here,” he replied. She wasn’t certain that an offer wasn’t buried in that statement.
“On your island, apart from humanity.”
“I still interact with people!” Ellis protested. “Her Holiness sends me to the mainland all the time, usually for supplies. The occasional errands too. So I’m hardly apart from humanity.”
“Have you others to adore?” Chari asked. “Family? Friends? Lovers?”
Ellis faltered. He had no shame, but knew any answer he gave would be cast in an unfavorable light. “I’ve watched my family from afar. Seen them grow up, and grow older than I was when Einré took me in. But aside from acquaintances in Cordom, she’s my friend and my…”
Chari found it difficult to fault him, though she found the whole thing distasteful. “Understand, you are being used.”
He nodded. “I know. No matter how old I become, I’ll always be like a child to the Goddess Einré. But even if it’s just for her pleasures, I am here to serve. It’s not about what we want, but what is asked of us.”
Chari grimaced but said nothing. She felt very much alone, though home was not so far away.
*
By the time the world stopped spinning, Poe recognized his surroundings. It was not where he had been—the soot-dusted walls of the castle spire were gone. The trees growing from the root-laden terrain were all familiar—he knew each of them like friends. These were the woods he had grown up in, those that bordered Heaven’s gates in the World Between Heaven and Hell.
“How is it that I’ve come here?” he asked aloud. But he was alone, and no answer came.
As he walked the uneven terrain, he began to recognize discrepancies—an unbroken branch here, a thinner trunk there. The sunlight that shone through the foliage seemed brighter, but the surrounding colors were faded. It was very much like his forest, but it was not the one he’d left.
A sound caught Poe’s ear, a steady scratching. He followed it without fear, for he knew these woods better than anyone. Too many victims of his blade could attest to that.
In the distance ahead, he saw a pair of legs lying limp on the ground, tangled in one another. They were being dragged along with their owner, and soon disappeared past a trunk. Poe hurried ahead and saw a young boy with white skin and matching hair hauling the body off the main road. The Dark Sword was strapped unevenly across his back, more than half the length of the boy’s body.
“Is that…?” Poe was scarcely able to believe what he saw.
Now he ran, eager to have a look at the boy. Poe passed through the space between two trees, and when he emerged, the boy and the body were gone. But the woods were not empty, for he had come across a grislier scene—three fresh corpses scattered around him, each cut into as many pieces, and there the same boy stood, hunched and panting heavily. He gripped the Dark Sword with both hands bowed toward the ground, but it was not the blade’s weight that burdened the boy—it was the kill and the exhilaration of success.
“You must cease this,” he pled to his younger self, but the child took no notice. When his breathing steadied, he rose up to survey his handiwork.
And he smiled.
When he walked off, leaving the bodies to rot in the sun, Poe knew he shouldn’t follow. No sooner did he round the bend in pursuit than he found himself witnessing another familiar moment.
Poe the younger paced across the road, flaunting his Dark Sword menacingly. He had grown a little, in his early teens now and at absolute ease with the killing. Poe the elder leaned against a tree trunk and watched helplessly.
“Turn back,” the younger warned. “I’ll not say it again.” There was glee in his voice; he knew they would not. None turned back. None had the will.
A couple stood before him, a young man and woman both dressed in the dull garments of Purgatory, the village below. The woman clung to the arm of the man, trying futilely to hold him back.
“Kaldin—” she pled.
“It’s alright, Sahra,” he cooed. “I shall clarify this.” He approached Poe the younger with confidence and ease. “You seek to turn us away in fear that we’ve come before our time? That we wish to raid the splendors of Heaven when we’ve not yet heard the Call?” And then Kaldin gave a friendly, hearty laugh. “Oh, no! You misunderstand! Heaven wants us here!”
Poe the younger shared a sinister smile. “Heaven doesn’t want any. None at all.” And he swung the Dark Sword, brandishing it with just one hand. The first stroke cleaved one of Kaldin’s legs, crippling him. The second removed a full arm and the third opened his belly. He might crawl away, but he would certainly die.
The girl, Sahra, screamed in horror. She reached her left hand out and cried Kaldin’s name. The young Poe accepted the arm she offere
d, slicing it off past the elbow in a single stroke. The elder Poe winced, seeing his own brutality with new eyes. As Sahra cried, and stumbled away, Poe the younger walked after her. The elder Poe turned away; he already knew how this ended.
“Enough,” he growled. “I’ve seen enough.”
Still, Sahra’s screams shook the trees, as Poe tried to push the memory from his mind. In the flesh, she had made no special impression, but her suffering now felt like a splinter buried in long-healed flesh. Poe tried to run, and realized the terrain had changed from uneven root to cold and steady stone.
“I’ve returned…?” he asked when he recognized the castle around him. But just as quickly, that recognition turned to black, for it was not the castle he expected.
The ebony stone harkened back to darker days, when a young Guardian Poe and Fainshild Moira traversed the inhospitable Dark Lands in search of the blade that even now hung across the grown Poe’s back. The scene before him was all too familiar, the Dark Madam’s chiding still echoing in his ears.
“Don’t do it,” Poe begged, even as his younger self wrenched the struggling, disbelieving Moira by the arm and threw her before the Madam, a matronly woman clothed in shadow. She pulled Moira up without effort, and although the girl struggled to get free, she held her back with one arm as though she were nothing.
“Let me go! Let me go! Poe! Poe!”
Moira’s cries would not move the young Poe, who avoided looking at her.
“And now, your prize,” the Madam said as she produced the Dark Sword, wrapped in black leather cords. The kneeling boy accepted the blade with both hands, but its weight was tremendous and he fell forward.
“It’s too heavy a burden,” he complained, struggling to lift it.
The Dark Madam leaned over and lifted the boy’s face. Even now, Poe remembered what it was like, the allure of her pure black eyes, the creases of her matching lips. He remembered what the boy was feeling now as her long nails stroked his forehead, before coming down to settle on the blade. As the bond was forged, Poe the younger rose up; the blade now held no weight at all. She did not give him council or wish him well; she only said, “Go,” and so he did.
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways: Outcasts of the Worlds, Book II Page 36