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The Last Human IV - 61 - Some Kind of Saint
🕑 Added 2025-01-23 04:46:52 +0000 UTC< First | < Prev | Next >
This was not Thrass et Yunum.
Then why could Agraneia hear the artillery? Giants, walking. Their footsteps shook the ceiling. And she could smell the trees, and the smoke from the campfires, and the earthy rot and salt and fresh soil from the lowland jungles.
Plants grew on everything. Ivies climbed up the machine gantries half-hidden in the shadows. Vines coiled in the corners of the cavern, old rainwater still dripping down their stalks. Roots twisted around wires and bright red leaves sprouted from the Sovereign’s limbs and scanners and strange, blinking devices.
Even Laykis’s corpse was overgrown with life. Green tendrils tied knots through her ribcage, and a crimson flower bloomed in her empty eyesocket.
“Where…?”
Overhead, the Sovereign’s instruments clinked and swayed. A thousand red eyes glared down at her.
“I wanted to wait for this,” the Sovereign said, “But time is shorter than expected. Look into the Scar.”
Something hard grabbed her head, and twisted her neck, forcing her to stare at a wall of Light. Everything went white. And the white stretched into forever. Reality folded into the unreal, and her mind split in ways it was never meant to. Vaguely, she was aware she was screaming so hard that her throat was starting to tear itself open, and that her muscles were ripping themselves to pieces.
Her body shook. Her teeth chattered so loud, she couldn’t hear the Sovereign, demanding answers. “Who pilots the Ark? Who is alive? How did Khadam keep them alive? Tell me everything, cyran, and this will go away.”
“I’m sorry,” Agraneia said, but not to the Sovereign. There were millions of faces in the Light, and somehow she could see each one in perfect detail.
People she’d killed. People who’d tried to kill her. People she’d helped—she was surprised to see how many there were.
And some of the faces were not dead at all. Strange. She had never noticed the living ones before. Not just lassertane, but cyrans, and avians, too. They did not laugh. They did not whisper vile thoughts into her mind. Nor did they insist that she descend into an eternity of pain.
They only watched. Grim and quiet. Waiting for something.
“Isn’t this what you wanted to see?” Agraneia shouted hoarsely, “Isn’t this why you’ve always been here? To watch me die.”
“Is that what you thought?” a corvani crowed over her shoulder. She felt Eolh, prowling around in the dense foliage that hadn’t been there before. He moved, always out of sight, so that she could only see the leaves and branches rustling in the corner of her eyes.
“Then what do they want from me?”
“To see you become saved.”
“Me? Why would they want me to be saved?”
“Because you brought them here. You kept them in here,” she felt a feathered finger tap on her skull. “When, otherwise, they would have been lost long ago. You are alive, Agraneia, and only the living can create meaning. So, they wait for you to create it. To make something worthy of all this pain.”
“I can’t,” Agraneia said.
“What did Talya say?” Eolh whispered. “Oh yes. Don’t underestimate the strength of others.”
“Talya,” Agraneia sighed. And the agonizing whiteness of the world was filled with her scent, and the soft brush of her feathers. Then, black despair gripped Agraneia’s heart. “But I ran from her. I abandoned her. She can’t help me.”
“No,” the dead avian chuckled darkly. “Not now, you fool. But He can.”
“Can he?”
“He’s listening. He is always listening.”
So, Agraneia tried to send her prayer with a whisper. It came out in a gravelly rasp. “Poire, Maker Divine. Grant me nothing but a chance at redemption.”
And even when she closed her eyes, she could still see the faces. Watching her.
***
High above the surface of Cyre, Eolh took off his helmet. There was no air up here this close to the Scar. The Light devoured everything, and he hoped that suffocating would speed this up. He could feel his feathers turning to ash, and his bones crumbling apart. Death was every bit as painful as they said it was.
But this death was worth it. With it, he had saved his friends, and millions of innocent xenos. Eolh had created time so that Ryke could escape with her life.
Besides, Eolh’s pain would be over soon. He might as well close his eyes and enjoy it. His last thoughts were of Ryke. What had he promised her? Whatever it was, he couldn’t deliver. I only hope you’ll forgive me.
And the Light wrapped around his wings and hooked into his flesh. He wondered what it would be like, when he became nothing. Would it feel like falling asleep, or more like falling down a deep tunnel?
He was still wondering, when the Light bent away. Streaks of multi-colored brilliance warped around him, as if he was surrounded by a liquid glass bubble. Hot, colorful droplets rained down on him, shimmering as they pooled into his wounds. The cracks in his bones sealed. Withered muscles thickened and ashen feathers were made whole again. Breath filled his lungs. Blood surged in his veins. His heart thumped, as if it was the first time it had ever beat in his chest.
And a voice, gravelly and deepened by age, spoke to him from outside the bubble of Light.
“Hello, old friend.”
Eolh squinted through the brilliant colors, trying to make out the man who had spoken from behind the glassy veil. His robes rippled and billowed around his body, like living things caught in an underwater torrent. Yet it gleamed as if it was made of polished titanium. His white beard trailed down to his chest, and white hair fringed a dark face, cracked and wrinkled.
“Gods, Fledge. You’ve aged.”
“You haven’t,” Poire’s ancient face crinkled. His smile was just like the one Eolh remembered him wearing, when he was still a boy.
Poire held an object lightly in his fingers. A jewel? A pearl? Whatever it was, it was so bright everything else seemed dim. Only, Poire had cracked it open, and its brilliance was already fading.
“But how are you here?” Eolh asked. “You left. You went through the Mirror.”
“And it seems you found a way to follow me.”
“I thought dying would feel more like a dream,” Eolh said.
“Maybe it does,” Poire said. “But you’re not dying. The Scar would have eaten you, but I pulled you out.”
“Pulled me … where?”
“I cannot believe I found you.” Poire’s face crinkled again, and this time, his eyes were dark and sad. “I almost don’t want to let you go.”
“Go?”
“You made a promise, old friend.”
“What promise?” Eolh furrowed his brow feathers. “I was on Cyre. Then, I went to push back the Swarm. And then … Ryke.”
“You promised her you would come back.”
But the Scar had opened, and swallowed him whole. “I had to do it, Fledge.”
“I know.”
“Did they … did she …” Eolh hesitated, almost too afraid to know. “Did anyone survive?”
Poire held his gaze. The old fledgling’s deep, brown eyes widened, until they eclipsed the sky and became the entire universe. All the Scars, all the worlds, all the Light was contained within Poire’s eyes. And Eolh could see everything. The Scar had opened over Cyre, swallowing the Swarm whole before turning toward the planet below.
But a flash from the surface melted the anxiety that gripped Eolh’s heart. He watched the Gate open, taking Ryke and Talya and thousands of refugees back to Gaiam. To safety.
Eolh sighed, and started to turn away—yet couldn’t. Poire’s all-encompassing gaze held him fast. Forced him to watch the years flicker by in the Cauldron. The city was brimming with new xenos. The refugees helped rebuild the city, and then transformed it with the help of Khadam’s newest gifts. Eolh watched Agraneia and Talya. And Yarsi and Khadam, working on her Ark. He saw Laykis, kneeling at the Mirror.
And he saw Ryke. And though the years flickered past, her face remained unchanged. Cold. Lost. In public, she stood strong for her people, but something was missing from her face. No spark. No joy. Only a hollow look in her eyes.
Ryke…
Her anguish caused him pain. Nothing had ever hurt worse in his life, and he had taken a dagger to the back. He could barely speak, it hurt so much. “I didn’t meant to lie to her.”
“Then don’t,” Poire said.
“What do you m—”
The human blinked, and Eolh was thrust into a new vision.
Oh, gods. Ags, what have they done to you?
The cyran warrior was tied to a chair in a dark cavern, deep within the machine-bowels of the Earth. The crumpled remains of an android lay at her feet. Eolh’s stomach clenched at the sight. His blood boiled and all his feathers prickled with rage.
Above, a massive machine loomed over them both. Its long, spidery arms gimbaled in circles as they cut into the cyran, injecting new terrible things into her body.
“Look at her,” Poire said.
“Oh, I’m looking.”
“Do you know what you must do?”
Eolh blinked. And realized that, yes, actually. He knew exactly what he had to do. The corvani nodded.
“You will only have one more chance.”
“More than I could have ever asked for,” Eolh said. But then, a new thought dawned on him. “Poire.”
“Yes?”
“If I do this—if we get it right—what happens next?”
Poire smirked, and the years seemed to fade from his wrinkled face, until Eolh could only see his fledgling human friend once more. Just a boy, growing into a young man. Eolh couldn’t help but smile back.
“So,” Eolh said, “It’s like that, huh?”
“This will change everything.”
“We will change everything.” Eolh put his feathered hand on the glass bubble. But the bubble it seemed wasn’t solid. His hand slipped through and the Light stung the tips of his fingers, burning the feathers before Eolh could pull back.
Poire held up the cracked pearl. Its glow had diminished, and Eolh could actually see the Light swirling out of it. Poire’s smile changed once more. This time, he looked sorry. “I only wish we could talk a little longer.”
“You know,” Eolh said, “I was never the praying type. But after this, well, my favorite god will hear from me every single night.”
“When you speak to me, I will listen to every last word.”
“Goodbye, Fledge.”
“Goodbye, Eolh.”
***
Agraneia was nothing but a mote of dust, and the Scar was the gaping maw of a dead universe.
“Gods!” she screamed, blood and spittle flying from her lips, “Send me your strength! Help me!”
“There is nothing left for you,” the Sovereign’s perfect voice grated in her ears. Too loud. Too close. “There is no one coming to save you.”
“Poire, I beg you—”
Lightning poured out from her restraints, and into her veins. Her limbs danced. Her body shook. Her mouth convulsed and bloody froth poured from her lips.
“This moment,” the Sovereign whispered, “Will expand into eternity. You are alone, cyran.”
The Light from the Scar cast shadows over everything. The Sovereign’s monster was only a shape. Its huge, mechanical arms descended from the ceiling, dripping with wires and awful appendages. Its bulbous head swayed in front of Agraneia, glaring at her with a complex of eyes.
Then, the Scar pulsed. Brighter than Agraneia thought possible.
The Sovereign’s head swiveled, and its eyes tilted away from Agraneia to face the strange shape that floated out of the Scar.
A body.
An avian body.
A corvani, whose black feathers were outlined in a sunlight glow. Agraneia laughed at the absurdity of it, even as tears rolled down her scales. Now I have truly lost my mind.
“Are you the angel of death, then?” Agraneia taunted the vision, “Come to take my mortal soul?”
But the Sovereign’s eyes were tracking the corvani, too. And its monstrous head swerved around his glowing form, and Agraneia realized the Sovereign could see him, too.
“Hello, Ags,” the angel croaked.
Agraneia squinted into the Light. “Eolh?”
“In the flesh.”
The Sovereign’s thousand eyes flickered and blinked. Somewhere, a klaxon shrieked. The sound, it seemed, was intended to mask the movement of the monster’s great arms. They whipped down from above, three hulking serpents, tipped with sharp drills as long as Agraneia’s dead metal arm. They pierced the corvani before Agraneia could open her mouth to warn him. Only…
A wet hissing sound and the scent of burned metal filled the room. And when the Sovereign’s arms pulled back, they came away spewing sparks and dripping molten metal. The drills hadn’t melted, so much as evaporated into stinging, acrid smoke.
And Eolh, wreathed in Light, was untouched. If anything, the aura around his feathers glowed brighter than before.
Gimbals screeched as the Sovereign’s head pulled away from the corvani. It barked a rapid series of commands, and the ceiling came alive. Hundreds of spindly arms and long, narrow claws and twitching, blade-tipped appendages unfurled toward the floor like a living canopy of vines. Instruments whirred and hummed and snapped with electricity. A drill arm whined as it snaked toward Agraneia. Not threatening her anymore. This time, it was going in for the kill.
Only a few days ago, she would’ve let it happen. She would’ve embraced death. But now, Agraneia fought like an animal against her restraints, growling and screaming and throwing her whole body into useless action.
The drill’s whine pitched as it followed her thrashing movements. It slid toward her like a waspish stinger. Closer, until she could feel the air twisting in front of her face.
If this was her death, she would not close her eyes to it. She would watch, she would—
Light erupted across the cavern. Eolh threw out his arms, and rays burst from the tips of his feathers, piercing the Sovereign’s canopy, slicing arms and wires and overgrown masses of cables at their roots. The drill in front of her face gave a final pitiful whine before it crashed inches from her chair. A dozen more lines sliced through the Sovereign’s head and half the sphere dropped to the floor. Claws and wires and liquified metal crashed with an unholy noise. Once more, Eolh flapped his wings. Thousands of sheared electronics rained from above, and the burning scent of metal and plastic filled the room.
He threw his wings out one last time, and the Light faded from a bright white to a soft glow. Then, to black. Agraneia’s eyes stung. She blinked, and saw only red and white. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open, or closed. Every joint and bone in her body ached. Her head was swimming.
And the boom of distant artillery shook the floor.
Was this real? Or had the pain made her truly mad?
She was afraid to speak. Afraid to find out that hope had only been a dream. She spoke anyway. “Eolh?”
Her heart hung in her throat.
Something moved in the darkness. Feathers so black, they were almost blue. “Yeah, Ags. It’s me.”
“But you’re dead.”
“Guess we were both wrong,” he chuckled dryly, and Agraneia had forgotten the sound for so long, hearing it again made her heart melt.
He crouched next to her chair. One hand was made of metal, and it pinched through her restraints as if they were made of butter. The other hand was warm on her cheek. “What do you think, Ags? A dead corvani come back to life. Reckon that makes me some kind of saint?”
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Comments
PizzaNachos
Yes! I was hoping for this.
Vanguard
Eloy IS a great character, at first cynically wise to ways of the world, but evolves to a different perspective of hope, faith, love, and goodness,
