The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) Page 6

  “This doesn’t look natural,” mused Ezra.

  “I don’t think it is,” Garros said. He kneeled down to confirm that they were indeed standing on dirt and mud, and not some kind of hand-carved dais. “But what does natural mean, anyway? We’ve been living in a whole other world for too long, right?”

  Ezra nodded, considering Garros’ point. In an ironic twist, the world they knew wasn’t the world of their ancestors—the land of origin had become an alien planet. They hadn’t been around to see it change over centuries, and the result was decidedly unrecognizable.

  Jena had removed her boots and rolled up her pants, exposing delicate ankles and strong calves. She took a few steps in the water, then turned around. “Water isn’t as cold as it was in the others.”

  Garros nodded, drying his hands on his shirt. “It’s not. Kind of warm, actually.”

  “I don’t like it. Something’s wrong with this place,” said Erin, but Ezra had grown far too interested not to investigate; the patterns of water and grassy earth told him that there was something of significance behind this mystery—something that would give them some answers, maybe even an advantage in their fight.

  Imitating Jena, Ezra removed his boots and socks, and rolled the pant legs up until they were up to the level of his knees. He joined Jena, feeling the warm water wash his aching feet. The mossy surface beneath tickled him delightfully.

  “Careful,” Erin said when Ezra took a few steps ahead, closer to the center of the patterned body of water.

  “There’s something underneath us,” Ezra said when he was waist-deep in water. His adventurous confidence—a remnant of a childhood he was just beginning to reclaim—vanished when he saw something particularly unusual: there was a thin stream of bubbles making their way through the warm water, from the ground below. He didn’t know where they were coming from, but they were definitely not air; before meeting the surface, they appeared to be a pale blue gas that met the world as mist, and then vanished in the wind.

  There was beauty in them, but they felt like a warning, like they were coming too close to some dangerous Unknown.

  “What is that?” Jena said, leaning closer to the bubbling water.

  “I don’t know but—this stuff smells,” said Ezra.

  “Don’t you recognize that smell?” Garros said. He had walked up next to them, but hadn’t bothered to remove even his boots. “It smells like home. Like the synchronization chambers. The docking bay.”

  Ezra nodded. It definitely did, and that familiarity let the confidence return. “Should we see what it is?”

  Garros knelt and dunked his hands into the water to feel the floor under the surface. Ezra couldn’t see his hands move, but suddenly, there was a new stream of pale blue gas. When it bubbled into the surface, Garros whipped his hand back as though something had bit it, splashing water all the way back to Erin.

  “What the hell’s down there?”

  “Garros, wait. Cool it,” said Erin from the riverbank. “There’s definitely something beneath this pool, but we’re not going to risk sticking our heads in ourselves. I know we said we shouldn’t synchronize for a few hours, but—”

  “I can do it, no problem,” said Jena, eyes on the streams of bright blue pearls. “I agree it’d be much safer to do it from the Creux.”

  “All right,” said Erin. “I’ll go back with you, then. I need to make sure everything’s fine with Phoenix after what happened anyway.”

  “Erin—”

  “It’s just a moment, Garros; it’s not going to be a problem,” she said, and Garros didn’t argue, even if the look in his eyes told Ezra that he wanted to. “Come on, Jena.”

  After Jena got dressed again, they went back through the forest, leaving Ezra and Garros alone.

  Half an hour later, when the two men were sitting by the riverbank, deep in conversation about what Garros had begun to call the Creux Crazies (a term that was too awkward to pronounce, so Ezra decided not to adopt it), they heard the tremendous sounds of a Creux coming to life: a loud horn, and the roars of enormous mechanical pieces shifting positions, reconfiguring themselves to grant the giants their mobility. Birds that had been hiding in the tree branches flew off, startled by the rumble.

  Garros and Ezra got on their feet at the same time and took a few steps back, away from the tree line, to see Jade Arjuna rise. Despite the time knowing Jena and knowing her Creux, it was difficult for Ezra to associate both, especially when he was such a tiny, powerless speck beneath the giant’s feet.

  And to think he could look down on Jade when in the guise of Nandi. What a difference several dozen feet in height made.

  Jade walked around the forest, its large feet making careful and deliberate steps, avoiding any unnecessary harm to this closed environment. Behind her walked the even more striking Phoenix Atlas; there seemed to be no lasting damage in Erin’s Creux.

  “She seems to work fine,” said Garros, looking up at the two giantesses.

  Once she had come close to the strange painting of water and earth, Jade Arjuna seemed to look down, trying to locate Ezra and Garros. Garros raised his big arm and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Jade nodded and raised her huge thumb in response before putting one knee on the wet floor, and her huge hand on the opposite side of the pool. Once she had found a stable position, she asked them, with a very clear motion of her left hand, to take a few steps back.

  Garros and Ezra did as Jade asked. Erin’s Phoenix Atlas stood several yards behind her like a bodyguard, ready to engage if the secret beneath the patterned pool proved to be dangerous.

  There was no careful way to go about doing it, so Jade only plunged her huge hand through the layer of water, and into the ground.

  Light exploded from the points where her fingers had stabbed the muddy bottom, and Ezra immediately recognized the light.

  “What the dusty hell—?” whispered Garros, taking two careful steps closer to the pool, now even more curious about its secret.

  Jade started digging more aggressively, pushing away handfuls of mud and letting it pile on the side, liberating more light and more gas that filtered through the water in beautiful, colorful rays.

  Phoenix had come closer, looking over Jade’s shoulder. Ezra was the only one who kept a relative distance.

  The water’s surface bent downward in a bizarre vacuum, suddenly pulled by potent gravity. He could hear the earth groan and bubble, and then—

  An explosion of light and thunderous sound. He was blinded for one moment and covered his eyes before he felt water hit his knees, pushing him a foot back. An intense rain that soaked all of him in just a few moments followed. He opened his eyes, removed wet hair from his face.

  The light was gone.

  The explosion had sent a wave crashing against the trees, leaving nothing but a hole hidden behind a thick veil of blue mist.

  Ezra and Garros coughed, covering their mouths. He wanted to speak, tell him that he could sense danger, but any attempt would only make him cough more, feeling as though he would choke.

  Jade Arjuna took a startled step back, away from the hole in the ground.

  Covering his mouth with his shirt and returning his capacity to breathe somewhat normally, Ezra walked closer to the space where the patterned pool used to be. The mist began to dissipate, revealing the secrets it kept.

  Six feet below, when the water started pooling again through streams cascading down the muddy sides of the pit, there was a silvery gleam.

  It was an unnatural structure, like a small obelisk placed on top of something else—

  “Is that . . . Blanchard—,” Garros said, throat still raw and coughing.

  Ezra tried to piece together the seemingly unrelated segments of polished silver and gold covered in mud. The construct slowly took a recognizable form in his eyes: the obelisk was a horn. The structure beneath was a giant helmet.

  It was a Creux.

  “That is impossible,” said Garros, barely able to give breath to a
whisper.

  They knew this Creux, and its presence here was entirely absurd. As Garros said: It was impossible.

  “Is that . . . Milos Ravana?”

  ф

  Waking up had become more and more of a chore, as the list of reasons to do so grew small.

  It had been weeks since the beginning of the Shift, and with every passing day, hope continued to fade. Not just in him—as he was notoriously cynical, and an outcast for it—but in the rest of the citadel. Every morning he’d step out of his hut, and he’d make the hour-long trek to his watchman post, and remain vigilant. That was depressing enough, but in the past weeks, since the Shift began, he’d also have to give the same grim news to everyone he walked past, begging him to share his knowledge.

  Yes, the monsters were still making their horrifying pilgrimage into the Asili.

  If someone in Clairvert knew what was really happening, why the monsters in the outside world had begun to peacefully walk into the mountain, never to come out, they were keeping their cruel silence.

  He could see, from his post so high up the mountain, through the window carved into the earth, the world stretching far away, forever. For days he would see up to fifty or sixty monsters, sometimes travelling in groups as they were wont to do, disappear into the fissure in the side of the mountain.

  The larger ones shaped like monstrous spiders could not fit through the fissure, so they had to be brought in piece by piece. Their comparatively smaller comrades had never showed any sign of remorse in tearing them apart. They didn’t even scream as they died. Solis had almost vomited the first time he saw the brutal deed.

  At least they were no longer hostile. Some believed it was a good sign, that maybe the creatures were somehow leaving the planet, giving it back to the ones who inhabited it all those centuries ago. That maybe if they held on a little longer, they’d be able to tread the world again.

  But most, including him, knew that wasn’t the case—there was something far bigger and far more sinister behind the monsters’ pilgrimage. After all, they had always feared the citadel of Clairvert, and it had to be some great faith that led them to the fissure right next to it.

  He wished he shared any such faith.

  Solis had been sitting at his post for six hours. It was noon. There had been no signs of any monster, wild or passive, anywhere near the mountain. He wondered why. Had all of them finished their trek?

  If no more came today, it would be at least a little exciting to be able to go back home and tell the others that no monsters had been sighted; that should make a few people’s night a bit brighter.

  Solis rose to his feet, putting his little book of stories on the table, and looked through the window.

  At first there was disappointment when he looked through the glass eye to find a creature coming.

  But then his disappointment turned into confusion and even fear when he realized that, if that was one of the monsters, it wasn’t of a kind he had ever seen before. It was too humanoid to be one of the Laani, and far too big to be a human being.

  What the hell was it?

  The thing was moving slow, as if wounded, dragging its feet in the sand, large arms barely hanging onto his shoulders. It took it several minutes, even at its tremendous size, for it to come close enough for Solis to realize that it was neither man nor monster, but something in between.

  It looked like a cloaked giant wearing war-battered armor. Its dark skin was covered in thick plates of silver, its head with a mask forged to give him an intimidating appearance. There was a pylon shooting upward from its left shoulder, and the base piece of another on its right, broken—maybe lost in battle?

  Covering most of it was an enormous tattered cloth that fluttered behind it like a cape.

  Had it been fighting the creatures? Maybe someone else?

  It appeared to be coming, not to the fissure through which the creatures had been disappearing, but to the citadel’s small and well-hidden entrance—the miraculous entryway that allowed no monster-sized creature in.

  The armored giant stopped its exhausted walk and brought one knee to the ground. Solis looked down at it with his own eyes and it was hard to believe what he was seeing.

  Pieces in the giant’s armor began to shift, particularly in the area of the abdomen, until they opened to a hollow space.

  Solis held his breath, terrified, when he saw movement, and a man stepped out of the giant, which appeared to be left lifeless.

  His extraordinary eyesight had “earned” him his position as watchman, so he could see that the man who had been in control of the giant needed help. Like the huge thing he had brought all the way to Clairvert, he could barely walk, tired from what had to be a very long trip.

  Solis stepped away from the window and approached the horns. There were three of them, each shaped to give the air blown a specific pitch and a specific timbre.

  The red one—a menacing low note—would warn the people of Clairvert about an impending threat; the blue one—a higher note that sounded like the howling of a dog—would let them know that a survey troop had returned.

  The green one he had never sounded. He had never needed it. No foreign human being had come to the citadel in decades.

  He blew the green horn, and rushed down to help the man.

  When Solis was back in the citadel, he had to fight his way through crowds of concerned, confused citizens begging him to explain what they had heard, why he had sounded the horn, and what that new and exotic sound meant.

  “Who is out there?”

  “Are my children in danger?”

  “He’s just having a laugh! He’s probably drunk again!”

  He ignored them as he always did, and was allowed passage into the atrium, the maze of narrow stone passages that separated them from the world outside.

  Two armored soldiers were kneeling next to the man, and several others were looking outside, no doubt at the monstrous vehicle that brought him to the citadel. Solis approached him, just as he was asked his name.

  “Thank you,” the man—who turned out to be very young, albeit physically large—said, accepting a drink from a soldier’s canteen. He was wearing a black jumpsuit, something military, no doubt. “My name is Akiva Davenport, and I need to talk with whoever’s in charge. We are all in danger.”

  Chapter 5

  Cage of Lights

  Her voice scattered across the forest, carried by the wind.

  Some have been lost

  Vanished into broken mists

  Some have seen hope

  Beyond the cage of lights

  It was not easy for Jena to sing, Ezra could tell, and not because of an unprivileged voice. He had heard her sing once before, and he didn’t like to remember the scene—the memory had been tainted in more ways than one, a once beautiful painting ruined by the careless blood-red strokes of death’s brush.

  It had been back in Zenith, during a short period of inactivity before a lecture. He had spent the morning training in the equivalency suits with Garros and Akiva, trying to grow stronger and more agile—to become a better pilot, one truly prepared to save the world. After, they walked together towards the lecture hall when the sound of music caught Garros’ ear, and Ezra followed him to its source: Jena, Tessa, and Alice, alone in an otherwise empty classroom.

  The girls never knew Garros and Ezra had overheard their musical session, though he was sure it would not have stopped on account of their presence. Tessa had been playing sad harmonies with her violin, and Alice set a soft rhythm through a small set of drums she’d slap with her hands. Meanwhile, Jena would sing the melody softly, drawing the words from memory. It was an old song, one written centuries before their birth, and it was titled “When I Am Home.”

  Bring down the sky, and scatter the stars

  Don’t let hope die, there’s still a path

  She was singing it again, now that they had, in a way, returned home—or some sad analog of home. He did not like the memory the scene was invok
ing, so Ezra’s eyes tried to remain on the floor, on dancing shadows cast by the blades of grass barely lit by weak embers. He was cross-legged and shivering, goose bumps on his skin.

  He looked up. Jena and Garros were closer to the fire, hands raised to catch its warmth. He could see the telling shimmers of tears pooling in Garros’ eyes, swelling with the song.

  Of course Garros associated the song with the same memory Ezra did. He had the same thoughts Ezra had. He remembered Alice through this song, but unlike Ezra, who wished not to hear it, Garros was humming a deep bass to give it more power, to accentuate its sorrowful notes.

  And I hope god cries, when I am home

  There was a roar in the distance that sent a shiver down his spine.

  Alice and Susan didn’t make it home.

  Barnes and Kat didn’t make it home.

  Ezra shook his head and rose to his feet. He wanted to be closer to the fire, but his wish to rid his ears of the tainted music was stronger, so he joined Erin at the edge of the forest.

  She had left the fire soon after helping start it using some basic equipment she took from Phoenix Atlas’ Apse. For her, there had been a powerful lure in the warmth of the fire, and the company, but it was not quite as powerful as the one created by the unburied creature.

  When Ezra reached the tree line, he immediately saw Erin sitting next to the area that used to be a pool, arms around her bent knees. Her eyes looked up at the giant as though it was the first time she ever saw a Creux.

  “It looks so much like it, doesn’t it?”

  Ezra sat down next to her; the grass was still wet. “It does,” he said. The massive Creux sat at the other side of the clearing, propped up against the deceptively strong trees. Its head hung back, and an opening in its face plate that looked alarmingly like a mouth, was open, like it was screaming at the skies, howling at the moon.

  “I wonder what it is. The helmet, the size, most of the armor—if I didn’t know Milos Ravana as well as I do, I would’ve swore this was it. I’m still not sure it isn’t.”