Jodi Meadows - Infinite

My friends had been right after all. There were good people here.

At my feet, Sam grasped my ankle. “Help me up.”

I bent and wrapped my arm around him, taking as much of his weight as I could bear while he found his feet. He swayed, but steadied himself and added his voice to those standing up to Janan.

“I won’t be part of this!” someone shouted.

Hope flowered inside me as people closed in on the cage, on Janan standing there with his knife. The phoenix watched people turn on their leader.

“Very well,” said Janan. “If you will not all accept my gift, I will give it to no one.”

“No!” Toward the back, someone threw a punch. A fight broke out, and screams again rang through the night. Blue targeting lights flared and people yelled, calling to Janan for help, but he just stood on the dais and watched chaos erupt through the industrial quarter. What was left of the city would destroy itself unless someone stopped it.

Stopped Janan for good.

But what could stop something like Janan? He was human, but immortal now. He had nothing to fear.

I’d once thought dragons had nothing to fear, but they were terrified of Sam and what he held. If the phoenix song was life and death, if it could destroy something as formidable as dragons, maybe it could affect Janan as well.

As the crowd pressed closer, louder, and Janan’s smile grew wider, I bent for my backpack and removed my knife and flute case.

“What are you doing?” Sam gripped my shoulder for balance.

“There’s a phoenix. I’m going to make it use its song. Unless you think you can do it on command?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes grew wide. “I don’t know how.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” He was broken. Dying. All his hope and confidence stripped away. I held his hand as he staggered with me to the cage while Janan was distracted by the fighting.

The phoenix was quiet now, watching everything, though I couldn’t guess its thoughts. I left Sam leaning against the bars while I searched for a latch. But if there were a way to open the cage, it was near Janan.

“Hey, phoenix.”

The black eyes turned on me.

“I want to free you.”

Its head tilted.

“But I need you to use the phoenix song. The one dragons are afraid of. Sam knows it, but he doesn’t know it. And his arm is hurt too badly to play my flute. I need your help.”

“You just go right up to anything and talk to it, don’t you?” Sam closed his eyes and smiled. “I love that about you.”

“Everything else has talked back so far.” I turned to the phoenix again. “I need your help. Please.”

The phoenix shook its head.

No?

Because it wouldn’t take a life and risk its own cycle of rebirth?

Then what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to stop Janan? How was I supposed to ensure newsouls had a life?

I’d already failed the sylph.

Hadn’t I?

On the dais, Janan lifted his knife into the air. A man went flying backward, like the dragons had earlier. Janan was just adding to the chaos.

If he’d consumed the sylph when they entered the temple, were they already gone? Or slowly digesting as the newsouls had?

Fine. I’d try it myself. I lifted my flute and started to play.

The flute whispered a song, high and thin with my nervousness. But Sam looked up. The phoenix softened. And Janan spun, looking for the source of silver sound and defiance.

I began with four notes, hesitant but hopeful as the flute’s voice swelled into a familiar waltz. I played waves on a lakeshore and wind through trees. Lightning strikes, thunder, and pattering rain.

It seemed impossible one flute could do all that, but I wasn’t alone. Sam hummed with me, heat and anger and honey sweetness as I played the music of my heart. His heart.

He was doing it, the magic. We were doing it.

When I looked at him, he was smiling.

More voices joined. Men and women close by caught the note Sam hummed, and sang with him. They formed a wall around Sam and me, the cage. And when Janan raised his knife to flick them away, nothing happened.

Another rush of voices raised up, strange and unearthly and coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, but they sang wild harmony and countermelody.

Even the stomp of boots and the clash of weapons joined our song, weaving into the music with the thunderous bass of surging pyroclasts.

I poured my soul into this, the threads of voices weaving into sound that seemed to transcend music. This was something altogether new, strange and lovely and magical.

Music thickened over the night as though this was the only thing in the world, the only thing that mattered. Janan dropped to all fours and shuddered as smoke peeled from his body, black and undulating.

Sylph.

The fighting stopped as more people began to notice what was happening, began to add their voices to the song. Lightning snapped through and Janan screamed as blackness overwhelmed him. All my sylph freed themselves and left Janan lying on the dais, unmoving. Scarcely breathing.

As the voices rose higher and sylph added their own melodies to the waltz, I lowered my flute and approached Janan.

My knife, a slim rosewood handle and tiny steel blade, found its way into my hand. I climbed the dais and crouched next to Janan, looking up only a moment to find most of Heart watching to see what I would do. A few people held back others, but most—most just sang and watched, because somehow this was my choice.

Oldsouls or newsouls. Beginnings or never-endings.

Sylph flowed around me, Cris next to me, and waiting by the phoenix was Sam. He looked tired, barely alive, but when I closed my eyes, I remembered the way he’d held me after I hadn’t killed Deborl. He’d said he was glad I hadn’t.

I looked back at Janan. Could I show compassion for a man who’d caused millennia of pain for newsouls, who’d captured a phoenix twice now, ready to sacrifice it for his selfish desire to live forever?

Who was I to decide who lived and died? That was a decision Janan had been making for others for thousands of years. I wanted to be nothing like him. I wanted to value life, all life, regardless of how despicable some of it could be.

And who knew—maybe there was something else after death. Just because it was unknown didn’t make it bad. It could be good.

I sheathed my own knife and took Janan’s bloodstained knife from his hand.

Light and power flooded into me, dizzying and far too much for one soul to hold. I fell back, and the last thing I heard was the phoenix singing four notes.

THE SKY WAS deep violet when I opened my eyes.

My skin tingled and my heart thrummed too fast. Maybe this was what it felt like to be struck by lightning.

Janan was gone, as were most of the citizens of Heart, though the skeletons were still there, their silver chains dull and tarnished. The expelled temple rocks were murky white now, no life left in them. The sylph were gone, too.

“Sam!” I jerked up and scrambled to my feet, stumbling down off the dais before I realized Sam wasn’t standing by the phoenix cage anymore. He was slumped on the ground, breathing shallowly. Someone had placed my flute in his arms, but it slipped from his grasp as I dropped to my knees before him. “Sam.”

He made opening his eyes look like agony. “Ana. I waited for you.” His voice was a pale breath, a memory.