Faith Hunter - Seraphs

The seraph and Forcas met in the mouth of the hellhole with a crash. The humans fell and rolled close to me, Eli facedown, Durbarge looking at the sky. His eye was open and didn’t blink. His patch was gone, the empty socket black in the night. Malashe-el rolled down the incline and landed below me in a heap of tangled limbs. The Dark and the Light fought sword to sword, blades ringing.

Checking my weapons, I found the walking stick sword restored to its sheath beside the tanto that I had last seen in Forcas’ jaw. Two throwing blades had been left in the corridor outside the Mistress’ prison. The silver-hilted sword I had worn over my spine now belonged to Barak. I had only my two blades and a single throwing knife, amulets, and a feather, which I may or may not be able to use. Ducky.

I tested the amulets on the necklace tied to my waist and I found them half empty, or worse, drained to uselessness. The seraph stone felt like a null, a stone with potential power, but sealed, locked away. Beyond the ledge, lightning flashed and hit the ground near me. Dissipating energies flayed my body. Eli yelped nearby. If I’d been human I would have been hurt too. Instead, power flowed into my amulets, restoring them. But not enough.

Through the mountain beneath me, I felt familiar tremors, regular and evenly spaced, like footsteps. I remembered the Dragon who had been imprisoned by Mole Man’s sacrifice and blood, remembered the chain drenched with seraph blood, the links made with the blood of Mole Man’s progeny. Made with Lucas’ blood. Raziel had mentioned a war in the heavens. My muzzy brain put it together. Crack the Stone of Ages. Forcas’ boss, the Dragon, is loose.

The last time it was free, it took dozens of seraphs and the self-sacrifice of a human to chain it. I closed my eyes. The Dragon was loose, the Mistress was wounded, and someone seemed to think I had her wheels. I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But I had to.

I gathered myself, seeking my center, that calm place of nothingness in my mind. And I reached down, below me, into the rock heart of the mountain. Ancient energies reached back to me; the might of stone, cold and hard and without remorse. I pulled them in, fast, storing them in my blood, my muscles, my nerves, and bones.

Drawing on the strength of the Trine, I opened the blended scan, feeling a sickening lurch as the otherness caught me up, the world and my stomach surging drunkenly. Through my torn and acid-pocked dobok, light flared, yellow and dark blue. I pushed away the tattered cloth and pulled the pear-shaped citrine nugget and the sapphire owl out, the wild-mage-stones glowing. Through the otherness, they scintillated like small suns. I touched the owl and felt the otherness settle as power trickled into me from the sapphire.

I had a moment, a moment in time, to study the sensation. Finger on the amulet, I saw movement, the river of energy, of Light. It flowed beneath me, through me, picking me up and floating me along the current. It meandered through its flat plain: the river of time, I was pretty sure. Whatever that meant.

In the world, lightning hit the ground again, a huge burst. I felt my body jerk as the power crackled through me. But it wasn’t important. Almost as an afterthought, I directed the energies into the amulets at my waist. I felt Barak’s feather shimmer with power.

Swords clashed, seraph-steel and demon-iron. I smelled fresh seraph blood. The footsteps of the Dragon were growing nearer as his might pounded the mountain I was drawing upon. The earth quaked. Dust rained down from the boulder, covering me. Beside me, the river flowed. In it were stones and boulders and eddies—incidents and people?

From the otherness, I studied the entrance to the hellhole; sickly yellow-orange-reddish light emanated from the rocks and from the ground. The stone of the mountain itself had been polluted, a malevolence much more powerful than the first time I saw it, as if my ability to see it was growing. Or as if it was gaining power. Tears of Taharial, I’m pulling that into me. With a wrench, I cut off the draw of power. Something was coming. Something big. Fear tightened my body.

Relinquish her wheels, Raziel had said. I recalled the huge purple cobra that had entered my conjuring circle, the snake made of eyes, the snake that had filled my lungs. A snake that was part of Amethyst’s wheels, I was sure of it. I concentrated on the purple eyes that had nearly drowned me, remembering their concentrated stare. “Come,” I said.

Overhead, in the otherness, thunder boomed, a concussion that knocked Raziel and Forcas to their knees. Hanging above us was a massive, interconnected ring of lavender stones, faceted amethyst hoops the size of a football field pulsing. It looked like a gyroscope turned on its side, concentric wheels within wheels, each turning its own way, each releasing mists of blue plasma. And on one end, a golden nosecone, its navcone, bursting with Light. It was Amethyst’s wheels, her vast crystalline ship, healed and whole.

The stone sang, a single note of joy and hope and life. And it opened its eyes, eyes on every square inch of its lavender structure, dark purple eyes, hundreds of them, thousands of them, all looking at me. The song of the wheel changed key and hummed a softer tune, an audible caress.

“Crap,” a voice murmured nearby.

Instantly, I was back on the Trine. Smoke, fire, and a ghastly reek of death whipped in the icy wind. A golden rim of sun glanced over the mountains to the east and cast long rays onto the world below. Shadows still gripped the valleys, streambeds, and Mineral City. Below me was a ledge of rock; above me was another. I was still sandwiched between them. I blinked and remembered to breathe, surprised that I still could.

Eli held me, our bodies wedged beneath the boulder edge. In his fist shone the healing amulet I had given him. And in this reality too, hanging in the air before us, was Amethyst’s wheels. As one, the eyes blinked, crooning. “Saints’ balls,” Eli whispered. I laughed brokenly. His arms tightened about me.

In the dawn sky far overhead, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled. A battle was taking place there, in the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere, in the here-not here. In the small, nearly level space, Raziel and Forcas were locked in combat, bodies writhing and straining as they wrestled. Below us, the earth shook. The big, bad Dragon was dangerously close.

Two Flames zipped under the ledge and did their little dance along our bodies, whizzing and burning their way through us and back out. “That hurts like heck, but it’s better than being dead,” Eli growled. “Ouch, quit that.” The Flames obeyed and converged together, hovering before me, as if awaiting orders. It hurt my eyes to look at them.

“If I ask you questions, can you answer in English?” I asked them.

“Yessss,” they said, their voices a strange sound, as if bells were being rung by a current of electricity.

“Who fights overhead, and who’s winning?”

“Zzzadkiel and Holy Amethyssst battle the Dragon who wasss chained. Without her wheel, Darknessss winsss.” As they spoke, the sky darkened. Clouds boiled, huge thunderclouds reaching for the heavens.

“The same Dragon I feel coming up from the deeps?” I asked. I looked up at the wheels, and gripped the sapphire owl. Taking a chance that the owl allowed increased communication to the wheels, I said, “Save the Mistress.” And they were gone. The air concussed, rushing to fill the vacuum. A feeling like icicles bored into me. Eli tensed with shared pain. Careful not to look at the remaining Flames straight on, I said, “I don’t guess you could find some more of you guys?” Flames popped away. The icicles in my blood shattered and I shivered hard. Once could be coincidence. Not twice.