“All right, we don’t have time.” Already the black smoke was trickling around them, darkening the shadow hanging over them. She sneezed, wiping at her nose, and a trickle of crimson was painted from nostril to cheek. “Get on my back. We need to run.”
Viktor eyed her dubiously. Rook might have been strong but he wasn’t exactly a featherweight. “Help me up. I’ll run.”
The first hint of numbness tickled his skin and fear gripped him hard. He couldn’t lose himself again, not like he had in the midst of that terrible fog. Struggling to his feet, he nearly thought he could do it when his knees buckled and he crashed into her, gasping desperately for breath. With a weary sigh Rook leant forward and wrapped his arms around her neck. Wisps of silver light emanated from her, shining bright against the darkness. Viktor held tight as she slowly lifted him from the ground and hoisted him up her back, muscles straining in her arms and back. They ran through the city streets, storm clouds like obsidian on the glass surface of the canals.
“Try and find the rift. It’s breaking down. Your strength should increase when it does.”
This close he could feel her sharp breaths as she streaked through the gathering smoke. Viktor looked behind him and his heart lurched at the stretching skull of the riftspawn above them, huge mouth gaping even wider, and between its teeth an endless, seamless black that absorbed the light so severely that it looked like the gateway to death itself. If he had been asked to describe Var Kunir’s Locker beneath the waves, he would have imagined it exactly like that: nothing but pure and utter darkness so oppressive that light couldn’t catch breath.
“You’re choking me,” Rook breathed, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes.
In his fright he had tightened his grip around her neck. “Sorry,” he said, loosening his hold. The choppy motions of her gait were only tiring him further and he felt his head drifting.
“Viktor, I need you to try and find the rift. Don’t fade now, you hear me? I need your help here.” Her cheeks were flushed, sweat dripping down her temples. Her fingers dugs into the meat of his thighs as she held him up. “Find the phoenix.”
She was feeling the effects of the guardian riftspawn above them too. The creature’s otherworldly aura was overbearing, clinging to him, slick and oily like tar. He struggled to latch onto the various currents, his senses so worn down he could hardly tell one from another. The creeping dread in his mind contemplated that without the phoenix he simply wasn’t capable of understanding the currents of the rifts. Maybe he wasn’t special at all, but just the chosen jam jar for the firebird.
Siklo. You cannot run from me. Where will you run that I will not sense you and find you?
He was so startled he nearly fell from Rook’s back. Ringing between his ears, the words struck painfully true; he knew how easy he could be tracked because of how distinct and powerful his signature was. A sense of futility plunged him into a state of depression. How could he ever escape this creature if she wanted to find him? She knew him. He knew her. Many, many years of a deep seated hatred, feuds bleeding into the human world, so many felled before weapons that changed through the eras, but the reasons never did.
They hated one another. Life and death. One would always be the opposite of the other and together they would find no peace. Viktor remembered that. The feelings behind the knowledge had been cut off from him, finding himself unable to access the memories beyond a fleeting understanding that they had been fighting for longer than he could even comprehend. But he understood the depth of their conflict.
“Sorry I dragged you into this.”
Viktor turned back to Rook who was struggling down to a small dock, boats bobbing against the black water. “I think I have more to answer for,” he murmured. His neck ached so he rested his chin on her shoulder, her hair tickling his nose. “At least you’re not an evil prince bonded to a creature that lives forever.”
Rook snorted, the sound weak. “There is that, I suppose.”
“You can let me down now. I can make it to the boat.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can.”
She took a heavy step and paused, letting him slide off her back. Viktor barely had the strength to hold himself upright but he latched onto her arm, unsure who was supporting who as they hobbled through the smog creeping in on them no matter how fast they moved. That was death, after all. Inescapable in the end. Maybe Viktor’s ancestors had found a trick to cheat it in their own way but they all still died in the end. Viktor wasn’t any of them – he was Viktor and he would die as Viktor, in the end.
The only boats moored to the docks were worn-looking rowing boats. Viktor looked between them, both weak and shaky, barely able to stand let alone row, but he met the conviction in Rook’s eyes and nodded in response. They wouldn’t give up, not until they could move no longer.
“You have always been persistent, Siklo. But you are weak. If you really cared about your power you would gut out each new body you take. But you horde the memories and it weighs you down.” Vlankya cut through swathes of fog that weaved around her like a cloak. “You could be so much more if not for your arrogance. Your human arrogance.”
“I am human!” Viktor spat, taking a step forward. Rook took it with him so he could brace himself again her. “I am human.”
“You are not.”
Anger flared up in his chest. He was tired of feeling lost. Tired of letting others tell him who he was, when in the end only he could be the one to decide. “You don’t get to be the one to tell me that.” He clenched his fist and a growl ripped from his throat as flame erupted around his knuckles. The thread connecting him to the rift – the otherworld – was stretched thin but it held on. The rift was morphing, changing. Somewhere an ancient door opened.
“We may end this now. I will take you in and teach you the truth.”
Rook stepped up in line with him, pulling her riftblades from her back and crossing them before her. The thin metal shone from within with her pale, silver-white aura. “We don’t fear you,” she said.
It was a lie, of course, but the untruth made him bold, chest squaring out.
The girl merely gazed upon them, raking them over with a gaze so impassive she could have been a doll. She did not see them as a threat, and to a younger Viktor it would have made him reckless with anger. Now, however, he knew there was power in being underestimated. An ancient being – a god in every sense of the world – didn’t know the power that came from fear. It didn’t know the raw greed to live because it didn’t know the possibility of death. It didn’t know anything other than inevitability, and as long as neither he nor Rook gave up, no matter how slim the chance, nothing was inevitable. Perhaps that was what distinguished human from god. Knowing he couldn’t win and trying anyway.
It was still inconceivable. His fire was nothing but a weak trickle of emerald flame in the drain of his hands. But as she strode towards them, smoke coalescing around her and distorting her form from view, he focused as much as he could with so much adrenaline coursing through him and blasted his fire with a strained cry, crashing onto his knees.
It hit her straight on, billowing up into a green mushroom cloud. She was thrust back with the force of it, punching a hole in the layer of smoke. Taking advantage of the blast, Rook surged forward with a swing of her blades in a flash of silvery white light. She moved so fast Viktor could barely catch the motions. He sat up to try and see through the haze. He thought maybe, just maybe together they might be able to hold the girl back.
But a hand lashed out and caught the blade with bare flesh, her face unflinching as it tore through meat and tissue until it crunched against bone. Unfazed, the girl stood, taking the blade with her. Blood dripped down the pale flesh of her arm but she barely seemed to notice. She kept pushing a stunned Rook back before wrenching the blade with her bleeding hand and casting it aside. Viktor heard it rattle on the ground, quickly engulfed by smoke.
Vlankya lashed out and Rook managed to duck o
ut of the way, rolling down and then popping back up, hair grey in the gloom. She swung with her remaining blade, twisting to aim for the chest area, but Vlankya slipped easily from its reach, barely looking like she was exerting any energy. Through the smog the riftspawn faded into view. One moment he blinked and it was barely a smudge on the bleak sky, the next it was all he could see, drifting so unnaturally it was almost as if it wasn’t moving at all. All around him the air smelled of death. Like dank water and rotting flesh, the aura around the creature clogged up his mouth and nostrils, making it hard to breathe.
A powerful blow with her fist smacked Rook across the face and she teetered, evading the second punch. Blood was streaming from her nose, the only colour in an otherwise monochrome world. The flash of colour startled him into action, throwing himself into the fray with the faint sparks of energy he had left. The flames were weak sputters of light that fizzled out when they hit the pale aura shimmering around her. Exhausted, he could push no more into his flailing limbs, and the dread was creeping in again as the smoke grew thicker and thicker until he could barely see ahead of him, tendrils wrapping around his limbs and numbing him to touch.
A ghostly white hand snapped through the smoke and grabbed him by the throat, fingers tightening enough to cut off his air. Then she appeared, her figure silhouetted by the white fire of her aura. The huge jaws of the riftspawn opened impossibly wide as its head dipped down towards him as he batted weakly at her grasp, sipping air desperately into his lungs. Panic settled in, nestling deep in his heart. The more Viktor struggled, the more breathless he became.
“You should have listened to me,” she said. “Your human arrogance has cost you.”
He couldn’t tell if his vision was spotting due to lack of air or because of the thick carpet of smog numbing his senses. The fear of being trapped within it, unable to tell what was real and what was not, forced him to push everything aside and focus on survival. With a sudden sense of clarity, everything narrowed down to the one thing Viktor knew best: the desire to live. He might not be able to use his power but he could sure in the Locker fight.
Smashing his knee into her face, he yanked her hand from him and then swung for her face. He could see the surprise in her eyes when he lunged for her with a vehemence he usually only felt under the influence of the phoenix. Perhaps it was a sign he was too far gone, corrupted by its lurking on his consciousness. But Viktor didn’t care. His anger was his own. It was raw and it was human. He kicked her in the stomach and then grabbed her hair as she doubled over, bringing her face to his.
“My human arrogance is what makes me a fighter.” Then he thrust her into the smoke, uncaring what happened. Beneath the puppet master was a young human woman but he didn’t have the luxury of guilt. Sometimes survival came at the cost of morals.
“Viktor!” screamed Rook, and he nearly missed the looming jaws of the riftspawn above. A hand yanked him back and then she whipped the blade across the expanse of its skull, a tearing sound echoing through him as the creature reared back with a cry that raked claws down his spine. The rumble vibrated through him, jarring him enough that his teeth clacked together and his head throbbed, pressure pushing into his eyes. Rook crashed back to the ground, tumbling into him so that they collided into the smog, knocking the air from his lungs.
The riftspawn was still shrieking. It was angry, now. Before it had merely been toying with them. Now it wanted to tear them limb from limb. The fog settled in thick layers that blocked out all light. In the dreaded dark Viktor lost himself again. He couldn’t see or feel Rook; couldn’t see or feel anything. He was quickly losing all physical sensation, nothing but a collection of memories drifting in a sea of black mist. He couldn’t remember what he was doing there, or in brief spurts, who he was. There was no anchor he could scrabble for to hold himself together. In the end he didn’t really know what it was that made him himself and that might have been the thing that frightened him the most.
But then through the layers of dust and cobwebs came the throbbing heartbeat of the rift with the lifeblood of its currents running like veins between this world and the next. Feeding ravenously on the one sense left to him, Viktor felt himself reconnect to that well of power, feeling it flow through him. The rift was cracking apart, the door swinging open. Without the barriers to keep them in place, riftspawn spilled through. The more they passed into the world, the more the worlds merged, the less confined he was to the limitations of his physical body.
Where are you? I know you’re there.
An ancient eye cracked open. The whip crack of wings unfolding. The snap and pop of flame. It reared its head, haughty at being reduced to such a state. It thought he was weak, for succumbing so easily, but Viktor knew it was only relying on anger as the anchor for their bond.
“Show them!” he shouted out, words slurring from lips he couldn’t feel. For all he knew he wasn’t saying anything at all, his vocal chords trembling and far removed from him. “Show them your power! Show them you won’t back down!”
It wouldn’t listen. Their connection had frayed too far beyond repair and now he couldn’t draw out the fire, missing the rush of it through his veins. His rejection of all that had come before – of Vallnor, and that boy in the desert, and all his other lives – had angered it. It wanted to use and consume him and then bleed him dry. For what else were humans good for, when it came down to it? It was the god, and a god had no use for humans.
“No, you don’t get to do that! You don’t get to abandon me now!” He tried not to let his fear show, turning it into fuel for his ire. “You and I had a deal! You don’t get to back out now because you’re scared!”
The great firebird? More like a chicken.
Pure, unbridled anger raged in his veins, the only thing he could think or feel. It was all he knew. The anger was all he was.
The flame snuffed out. Left with nothing but the numbing darkness, Viktor was cast out into the abyss.
*
The sky had changed so quickly Janus had been startled to exit the tavern to a blue sky tarnished a deep charcoal, the sun choked by a thick shroud of smoke. His hand tightened on the package he had just obtained from Cliyo, rolling one of the bullets between his fingers. Something big was happening and he had little doubt that Rook and Viktor were at the centre of it.
“What took you so long?” Kilai said, peering up at the sky from the shawl wound over her head, shading her features.
“Avoiding the soldiers.” Kilai hadn’t wanted to let him go off by himself so they had compromised with her waiting outside to keep the company of the rift warden kid. The boy was too gangly and conspicuous, staring at everything with goggle-eyed wonder. Bringing him into the tavern would only have invited trouble.
A sharp intake of breath from Samker drew both his and Kilai’s attention and he watched bright blue eyes swivel before closing. The boy’s throat swallowed, eyes darting everywhere beneath his lids. “It’s – it’s –” His hands grabbed at his head, folding in on himself.
“Samker? Samker, what is it?” Kilai leant down, hand rubbing at his back. She bit her lip when he moaned and then her eyes were drawn back to the sky.
Janus knew he wasn’t even remotely sensitive to riftspawn but he couldn’t deny the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention when he gazed upon it. The riftspawn took up the width of the entire canvas of the roiling sky, a huge quadrupedal skeletal figure that glowed white against black. Its huge jaw hung open in what could have been a grin and it drifted so slowly the movements were barely perceptible, giving it the eerie feeling of having moved without him noticing. Its ribs carved the sky into stripes, fading at the points into wisps of smoke. Vacant eye sockets almost seemed to stare at him, making his skin prickle. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, and Janus had seen a lot.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing.” He didn’t look up as he loaded his gun with his new bullets. A comical effort it might have been but it kept him occupied as he
thought.
Samker straightened up so fast his body shook with the reverb, wobbling like a drunkard. His eyes were as round as the globe in Sandson’s office. Blood was trickling from his nose and ears, lines of dark crimson against golden skin. “It can’t be,” he whispered. He was trembling.
“What is it?” Kilai looked between them, her lip mangled between her teeth. “Tell me what’s going on. One of you!”
Janus had no idea. He had encountered many a riftspawn in his time – some so powerful they had been capable of such wonderful and terrible things – but he merely had to gaze upon this creature to know it was beyond the realm of anything he had experienced before. With the rifts that had been opened so far and with even more fraying, creatures of this calibre could become the norm. What would become of the world then, Janus could only guess.
“It’s the Shirtakk Kor,” said Samker, eyes never wavering from it. “The white tiger. One of the great guardians of the rifts from long ago. It’s a legend – it’s not supposed to be real!”
“What does it do?” said Kilai, grabbing his jacket. “Isn’t a guardian supposed to be benevolent?”
“Not necessarily. Guardians are supposed to be the strongest of the riftspawn. They guard the realm, gatekeeping those that pass in and out. But they have no morality. It does not care about humans. We are nothing to a creature like that.”
“What does it do? What are its abilities?”
“Death.” Samker paused, letting the silence carry the word’s momentum. The air was oddly still, sounds muffled to Janus’ ears. “It is a creature that draws life from around it to feed itself. In some of the stories it was a figure like Var Kunir; a reaper for the souls of those fated to die.”
Kilai blanched, hand covering her mouth. Janus knew little of the legends and stories of these islands other than what he had picked up in backwater taverns and ship’s galleys but he had heard the phrase bandied about by the older seadogs often enough: stripes in the sky, death on high. It seemed there had been more truth to it that he had realised. Craving a cigarette, he rolled the bullet more violently, feeling the edges of the metal press into the skin of his thumb.
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