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  The Armor of God

  Diego Valenzuela

  “The Armor of God”

  Copyright © 2014 by Diego Valenzuela.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.

  [email protected]

  Cover & Logo Design by: Álvaro de Cossio

  Edited by: Gabriella West

  “Labyrinth” Art by: Meister

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.diegovalenzuela.org

  Acknowledgments

  This is my debut novel, so I feel like every single person who has ever read or influenced my writing in any way deserves a shout-out. Sadly, if I actually named everyone to whom I owe the existence of this book, I would probably have to publish this section in a really boring separate tome.

  So here’s the abridged list:

  First, my teacher and friend María Amaparo Escandón. If I ever know what success feels like, it will be thanks to her unconditional support, mentoring, and the hopefully warranted faith she has in me.

  My parents, for absolutely everything. They also sincerely believe I have a future as an author, and never pestered me (too much) about the “quirks” that come with the craft.

  My brother Santiago, who convinced me to give young adult fiction writing a try, and read every word I wrote as I wrote it, giving prompt feedback. My sister Mariana, who read an unedited manuscript in the span of three days, and was enthusiastic enough to boost my confidence. My eldest brother Rodrigo; he may not read much (though I expect he will read this!), but I’ll be damned if I haven’t learned a lot about “older brother” characters from him.

  Every author who has directly or indirectly inspired my writing. The great Piers Anthony, who always took time to give my work a read, and never failed to give great advice. Scott Williams, who read the gargantuan first version of my first novel and taught me the meaning of the word “clarity” in writing (all while comparing me to a caped superhero!). Laurie Lamson, who is responsible for my very first published work. Maya E. Bo, without whom I would still be writing fantasy fan-fiction at an eighth grade level. Thank you for everything.

  My editor, Gabriella West. She assures me the manuscript was very clean to begin with, but she needs to be thanked for making absolutely sure it passes as serious, professional fiction. Same goes to Alvaro de Cossio, whose phenomenal work helped market and give a handsome face to this book, and its sequels.

  A definite thank you to Elizabeth Vargas for streamlining a process that could have been a bureaucratic nightmare, and would have done my crappy temper no favors.

  Of course, Rodrigo Xoconostle, Alejandro Serrano (the wisest of raccoons), and Densho S. Words cannot express the gratitude I have for their invaluable lessons about the horrifying and uncharted world of marketing (uncharted for me, of course; they are cartographers). If this book has any initial success, a big chunk of the credit is theirs. If to a lesser capacity, the same goes to Humberto Cervera, who came in last second to bitch-slap me with some important tips that may have helped put this book in your hands.

  Cris; she may not be in my life anymore, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still have an important effect in it, and in my writing by extension.

  Gina T. Arrufat, Beatriz Rivera, Ana Adame, Bea Harper, Hunter Bishop. I never expected that kind of enthusiasm from alpha readers, and I need to give them a lot of the credit for keeping me writing with reasonable discipline (even if some of the twists included in this book earned me a couple of probably deserved insults in caps).

  Oh and while we’re at it, I’d like to thank all the anonymous alpha readers who first read this story on Wolf in a Gorilla Suit. I don’t know your names, but you are the cat’s pajamas, and deserve to be a hipster about this book if it is successful.

  I’ll be ‘this guy’ and thank Devin Townsend. I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t listen to his stuff 24/7.

  And because I’m not afraid of the occasional cliché—as you’ll find when you read the novel—I want to thank you, the reader, for giving this book a chance. I know investing a few dollars and a few hours to read the novel of a total unknown is too much to ask, so I’m glad you took that risk. I hope you enjoy what follows.

  The Armor of God

  Diego Valenzuela

  Not every labyrinth has a way out

  For mom and dad.

  Contents

  The Armor Of God

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue: For Every Body a Soul

  Chapter 1: A Matter of Blood

  Chapter 2: Looking Up

  Chapter 3: The Outsider

  Chapter 4: Zenith

  Chapter 5: To Each His Own

  Chapter 6: Assimilation

  Chapter 7: The Minotaur

  Chapter 8: A New Skin

  Chapter 9: One Last Day

  Chapter 10: When the Stars Weep

  Chapter 11: Faces on the Wall

  Chapter 12: What the Dead Leave Behind

  Chapter 13: Inside and Out

  Chapter 14: Outside and In

  Chapter 15: A Lifeless World

  Chapter 16: The Golden String

  Chapter 17: The Shattering

  Chapter 18: Tomorrow Comes

  Chapter 19: A Tower of Fire

  Chapter 20: No Return

  Chapter 21: Flight

  Epilogue: For Every Creux a Pilot

  A Word from the Author

  About the Author

  Prologue

  For Every Body A Soul

  Onno’s foot was bleeding. Somehow, the iron spike had been sharp and sturdy enough to cut through the sole of his sandal. Had he been a heavier person, or had he been running, his entire foot would have been impaled. With the sun at the edge of day, it was a good thing such an accident had been avoided.

  He looked at the spike again and began cleaning the blood off his foot. The three-inch barb poked through the dirt like an iron claw pointing the way to the heavens.

  Only one thing was obvious: it wasn’t natural—someone had put it there.

  But who? This was still his father’s land, and Onno thought he knew every inch of it; if it served some kind of function, he didn’t know what it was.

  His curiosity got the best of him, so he limped his way closer to the blue spike. His blood still crowned the tip. About five feet away from it, a small mound of dirt and rock promised to be a comfortable place to sit on to rest his foot and examine the mysterious spike.

  It wasn’t. The moment he pressed his hand on the dirt to test the mound’s structural integrity, he felt a prick on his palm.

  He dug and found another spike, identical to the one that had rendered his left sandal useless. Onno began to dig, removing dirt, grass, and rocks. A minute later, he considered the two spikes he had unearthed: they curved subtly toward one another like an animal’s horns. Could they be connected beneath the ground?

  He hurt his hand by digging further, tired his shoulders from the strain, and when he was finally out of breath, hit something else. The two spikes went on for another six feet, growing thicker on the way down and, just as he had suspected, they were connected by a large base made of the same incredibly hard material.

  Onno grabbed o
nto the horn-like spikes and tried to move them, but they didn’t budge. He tried to pull them out of the dirt, but this thing was deeply rooted.

  So he kept digging.

  An hour later, night was upon him. There was a hole, six feet deep and about the same in diameter, around the horns (which is precisely what they turned out to be). What Onno found buried in this apparently random location in his father’s land made no sense:

  It was a horned head belonging to some kind of giant iron creature. It had no discernable nose or mouth, but it was definitely a face under those horns. It could be some kind of mask, or helmet, but it was far too large—and probably far too heavy as well—to be worn by a human being. Could this head, this helmet, be part of a full suit of armor? What kind of creature could even wear it? It would have to be taller than the buildings in the city!

  Onno looked at the metal giant’s head. Its eyes seemed to look at him under an angry brow. It was horrifying to stare this thing down. Onno took a deep breath and looked away before running back home to tell his father.

  Would this discovery be a blessing upon his family, or a curse?

  Ю

  This one had been found by a teenager—a produce farmer’s son. The kid had explained how he had stumbled upon the tip of its horn by accident. Just a matter of chance. How long would it have remained buried had the kid not gone out for a walk?

  Lance Corporal Brice Kemper had really begun to believe these things were being sent to them by gods no one believed in except him. There was no other explanation, or at least none in which he believed.

  The farmer’s land would become an excavation site for months, but the process of exhuming this new monster had begun as promptly as possible. Dozens of people—scientists and soldiers of Zenith—had crowded the site in just a few hours. The machines had already removed earth as far down as its chest. There was still a lot of work to be done—this one was bigger than most of the others.

  “What is this one, the twentieth?” Dahlia Mizrahi said. The young scientist looked at the monster as though it was a god: with a unique blend of fear and admiration.

  “Twenty-first, if you count Milos,” Brice replied.

  “I wonder what its match will be like,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe the matches can exist.”

  “Of course they do,” Brice said, staring deep into this horned monster’s many eyes. He would never get used to those eyes, and how they seemed to look at his deepest fears. He scratched the stubble on his chin and sighed. “For every body a soul—”

  “—and for every Creux a pilot,” Dahlia finished.

  Chapter 1

  A Matter of Blood

  The line was slow to move and the minutes long to pass.

  Though time was something Ezra had enough of to spare¸ patience was not. He had turned eighteen three months before, so he could no longer blame his nature on youth—he just disliked long, drawn-out affairs that didn’t immediately interest him.

  As a confessed cynic (and someone who tried really hard to live up to that self-appointed reputation), there weren’t many things that actually interested Ezra. People around him found that side of him unflattering; he didn’t care, of course, and at least now Ezra had every right to be impatient and bored.

  There were still at least thirty people in front of him, all of whom were noisier than any eighteen-year-old enlisting in military service had any right to be. The soldier at the end of the line was taking too long with each. Ezra wondered what was taking so damn long. Wasn’t he just checking ID cards, taking blood samples, and handing out further placement instructions?

  It could be worse, he thought. At least he had left his house early enough to beat most of the others; a casual glance back at the line behind him let him know that some people would be here for much, much longer than him.

  There were many stages to this process; Ezra had studied them to mentally prepare himself for this day of waiting and bureaucracy. After this line, Ezra would be sent to a classroom in another wing, where he would take an aptitude test. Then, depending on the results of said test, he’d either take another one, have a physical examination, or be sent home. He hoped for the third option, but knew that would only happen if his test results branded him unfit to partake in military service—either because they found him too weak, too stupid, or in general too lame to be part of the nation’s defense force. The White Card, the item everyone in here was trying to get, was a stupid little piece of paper that only assured Johnny, Mike, or Sylvia had completed military service and could be considered an adult citizen, granted all the appropriate powers, benefits, and responsibilities.

  He couldn’t hope too much; Ezra didn’t consider himself either strong or smart, but it was extremely rare for the country to find you unfit. He’d have to be missing an arm and a leg to be sent home.

  Ezra wondered if he could chew them off right there. It would almost be worth it—sure, he’d be a child forever in the eyes of the government, and with an arm off to boot, but at least he’d get a good nap before his usual lonely dinner.

  The photo of a man so unpleasant-looking it made Ezra angry stared at him from the wall. Governor Heath, Ezra thought; as did everyone in the city of Roue, he knew this man. Everyone seems to love him, but right now it’s hard to.

  After a few more minutes, a whooping noise made him and several others look straight ahead at the end of the line. A very big kid who looked way older than eighteen—someone whom Ezra had noticed earlier due to his stature—was whooping his joy, and the soldier who had just given him placement documents shared it with him.

  “I can’t believe it!” the large kid yelled, looking at all the others, some of whom joined in his happiness by cheering him on. Ezra wondered what made him so happy. He couldn’t possibly have just been deemed unfit—this kid looked bigger and stronger than half the armored and uniformed soldiers in the base. Even if he was as dumb as he looked, he could still be used to lift heavy things from one place and put them in another place.

  Maybe Biggun there actually looked forward to military service.

  Ezra hadn’t even considered that notion. It was too absurd to him.

  The brilliant idea of having more than a single soldier working on a line of at least a hundred people came to the geniuses at the army base twenty minutes later, and the lines began moving much more smoothly.

  Ezra finally got to the end of the line and was called by the same soldier who had given Biggun the documents that made him leave with such happiness. The soldier was black-skinned, thick-necked, generally large, and bald as a knee. He wore a ring on his nose like a bull; Ezra thought it actually looked cool, but said nothing.

  “Name?” the soldier asked, taking Ezra’s ID from him.

  “Ezra Blanchard.” He paused awkwardly, trying not to feel intimidated. “Uh, sir.”

  “Blanchard,” the soldier said, looking at Ezra’s ID card. “I knew your sister, if she is who I think she is.”

  “Taller than me, all pretty-like, and with the sense of humor of a frying pan?” Ezra said, and this made the soldier laugh.

  “That was her. We went through military service together four years ago. She got out, and I stuck around,” the soldier said and then kept on talking. Ezra could only think that it was no wonder the line had been taking too long—this guy was way too chatty.

  “Your wrist.”

  Ezra showed him his bony right wrist, which the soldier grabbed with one huge hand. Then with the other, he pressed a tiny machine against Ezra’s skin. It pricked at his vein and drew a bit of his blood, gathering it in a small vial.

  But before the vial was filled, when Ezra’s blood came in contact with the machine’s sensors, it emitted a rather alarming beep that startled both Ezra and the soldier. The man looked at the machine in disbelief, then at Ezra, then back at the machine. Then back at Ezra.

  “Boy howdy,” he said. “Two this year.”

  “Two what?” Ezra asked.

  “You’
ll see soon enough,” the soldier replied, grinning. “The good news is you won’t need to take any of the standard tests today; the bad news is your military service is probably going to be quite a bit longer than anyone else.”

  Dammit all to blood-splattered hell.

  He was all fire in an environment that begged for stoicism, so even if he desperately wanted to flip over every table he saw, he really couldn’t.

  Now, an hour after that first vial of blood was drawn, he found himself in an office, away from all the other kids who hadn’t been as unlucky as him.

  It was just his luck, of course. If he hadn’t been in the less-than-one-permille of people who found themselves in his situation, he’d almost be done and would be back home. Sure, he’d still have the regular year of military service ahead of him, but it would no doubt be easier than—

  He had stopped listening again. The uniformed woman at the other side of the desk had been talking for a while, but Ezra had barely registered anything she was saying. He had been too busy trying to plot a plan to weasel out of this pointless responsibility, whatever it was.

  Hell in a jar!

  “Mr. Blanchard, are you listening?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I was?” he was bold enough to say after a beat.

  She was not amused, and her exasperated sigh testified to that. “All right, look: I know you’re at that funny age, and that you come from an important family, but you’re going to be stuck with us for a while, so you either make a few adjustments to your attitude or we’re all gonna have a very crappy time—especially you.”

  Silence filled the office for a moment after he nodded, feeling embarrassed. His eyes wandered to a picture of the woman in formal uniform during what had to be some kind of graduation ceremony. She could look pretty, apparently.