The pillar of flame painted the sky a momentary red. The looming storm clouds parted, giving way to a rushing flock of wyverns. The ones who had broken the entrapment with their sorcery and were now leading the escape from the dome of flesh were a knight and her scarlet wyverness – Rosa Mundi and Cardinalis of Ala Vernal. Even as I looked, they led the desperate charge from the depth of that unknown pit.
Gladiola halted our ala. And so did spreading confusion stayed the other squads. Time slowed when a mere second of indecisiveness could seal our fate. And yet panic set in as our commandant was nowhere to be seen. But erelong Rosa Alba emerged from the gaping hole, her long gown torn, the light blackened – last she was but she climbed skywards with as much haste as the others. Even as she fled, the horn was upon her lips, and she blew three long notes: the signal for retreat.
At once, Hortensia wheeled. “Go now,” cried her knight, “beat wings!”
And so Litzia turned, stumbling, exerting all the strength she could muster from her limbs of membrane to beat an escape. I flattened my form along her back, holding the staff uselessly on my side.
All about the tide had turned. A wave of fleeing alares now fled back to the ship, or as far as could from the source of terror. A frantic gale punctured by distressed horn cries.
My mind went blank as the wave of panic swept us along its course. I could not think properly to be frightened in earnest. Only that there was something terrible coming to existence. I turned to see what was to descend upon us.
Whatever Rosa Alba had alone remained behind to contain was breaking free. Oozing from the gaping hole the Anemone had worked on its back, a blackness rose and spread at an alarming speed and very soon had bloomed into a gigantic billow. It was no simple smoke but darkness itself; where it went, light ceased. Gradually, like a blotch of ink coming to wipe beings from the page of existence, it gained on us. We would not make it.
“I cannot see!” at last cried Litzia.
It had taken us. I brought my hand to my face but saw only a pitch black. No stars or moon pierced this veil of invisibility. As my nostrils were buried in the foul stench and my ears deafened by an unending dullness, most of my senses had been rendered useless. I could not hear, I could not see. Only the touch of Litzia existed now, and the thoughts of hers in my head. But the world beyond our skin had ceased to exist. Save for the seldom collision with another life form, Galanthuss’ or Marigold’s wings perhaps. So we knew they were there and had not been completely erased. Still, we were helpless, unable to speak or to see them. We could not move meaningfully, nor did we know port from starboard.
“We must climb higher!” in my despair I told Litzia. We were aloft the beast’s back before the darkness came; should there be an end to this darkness, our most hopeful way was up. Heeding my words, she swam high, which I could only tell from the conscious intention in her mind and the faint rush of air downwards. But no matter how long and high she carried me, we were in the dark still. There was no change in its density or a release for our senses. If the beast yet lived, and was plucking the unwitting Anemone off the sky one by one with its evil limbs, or a slow death was all awaiting us, I did not know. This blindness stripped me of all hopes, and I knew only one thing for certain: death. It was to come, for black was its color and despair its herald. The how was of little concern, only the ultimate end. All of which I felt keenly.
So I succumbed.
For a long time, we groped in the perfect dark, isolated from all things that be. My sullen and growing corrupted mind affected us both, dragging down Litzia’s withering flame, an anger that seemed the only light here in the dark. But I could not act against it. For it was the complete truth that there was no way out. It could be for hours or days that we had floated aimlessly so. So it was no mere irrational fear but real despair. If there was any light to be sought, it must come from without. Once, I fancied we had brushed it: a strangely familiar light. Another alaris, I thought. Someone with enough optimism, innocence, and by extension, foolishness to combat this affliction. But that presence soon passed and we were left again on our lonely island of consciousness. Now that is false hope, and false hope is worse than no hope at all.
Needless to say, we had attempted this direction and that, but never encountered another soul. I attempted a shout, but my voice was quieter than the void.
More time passed. We did not get used to the dark aught more than death row inmates in front of the gallows. A coldness set in, perhaps a byproduct of despair, or the coming of death.
Litzia tried to calm herself at times, taking long breaths and spreading her wings to glide in the windless air. Yet her temper did not abate
“I thought I would not mind death,” eventually, she said, lamenting, “But now it pains me to meet a pathetic end like so. What is the meaning of justice if I may not carry it out with my own hands?”
“If we die,” I said, “it will be over, and we shall not suffer aught more, not even regrets.”
Litzia went quiet. Conversations seemed pointless now. The evil thoughts that dominated our minds were not something to inflict gladly upon others.
Then all of a sudden, her back stiffened, she exploded, “Why doesn’t she come? Isn’t she very mighty? Kings and Queens bow to her, are they not? We ought not to die if she but lifted one of her little fingers of divinity! But to be sure, if she would come, I would fly for her throat right the instant!”
“How should I know? Maybe she did, but it was too late for us. And though the others were saved we have been left in the dark.”
“Oh, peace! You are no help at all. You would lick her toes had she so commanded, while I, why, I would offer my last breath to spit on the bitch’s face,” she said, turning her boiling rage against me, as if her whining would better help in this plight.
“Go on then,” annoyed, I said, “bid the captain come so you could sass her one last time. Or better yet, say pretty please, and beg her to help us, in treachery if you want, for you hate her. You are a wyvern, a real alaris, unlike I, she would listen to your prayer over mine.”
“Is that right? I got it well already. You’re a slave, an azure—woe is you. You would not piss or breathe without permission, that much I already know. But I am no different. My plea would reach only that bitch’s deaf ears!”
I shut my mind from her. Litzia was being unreasonable. I was not responsible for dragging us into this, she was. She had guilted me into being her pledge-sister, and made mutual graves for us in this dark. I had seen this coming. We both had. It was me who had the right to anger.
“No you do not!” she shouted. My effort to shut her out appeared futile. Then she went on to brood. Misery passed from her to me and then back.
I thought of Thea. I knew not if the Daybright had been devoured also. And if it had not, would Aurora drive them all to bitter annihilation for whatever she sought in this leviathan? Azures, slaves, sailors, servants – so many there were on the ship it would be close to the destruction of an army or a town. And there would be no one to tell the tale, only passing words of fear of how the crew of a mighty airship had one day mysteriously vanished from existence.
Litzia was being so quiet.
I wondered if it would take us long to die of hunger. Exhaustion before that, I would think. Litzia had been trying to go down rather than up. But even downwards we would not reach the beast’s back to risk a respite, and so on and on her wings beat. Despair doubled the weariness. We would succumb soon then be swallowed up by the dark. But what comes after? Death or rebirth as an azure? Not much difference between those two.
Litzia had been gliding. There was no wind but still air to ride.
“Star.”
“Yes?”
“You remember that flower in my room? Did I water it?”
I recalled she did.
“No.”
Why did I lie? Not out of malice, maybe.
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“I thought so.”
She didn’t believe me. I knew for our consciousnesses were connected. But strangely, she seemed to want to. As though to affirm her thought, and to convince herself, she spoke out loud, “Alas I did not water the flower! And without me it will wither and die a slow, yellow death. Even so, we die!”
I struggled to make sense of what should be yellow in the way of our death. I did not respond. If she is to go on with her raving ‘til the final hour, who am I to check her?
“You think I'm mad, do you not?” she asked, reasonably.
To this also I kept my peace. She already knew without my putting it to words.
“Yet one must needs be mad! Mad and dumb to keep up hope in an infinite dark. Even as I have been!”
“What say you now?” I asked, and in doing so, in profound exhaustion, I slumped along her back, resting my cheek on her arching neck. The soft scales grazed my skin, I felt the tension in her muscle underneath that thin layer of armor, that flimsy mental ward she still maintained.
“Is that not how I have been living? In the shadow of a dragon, or that of a leviathan, what’s so great the difference? And yet I lived. Lived, for I had hoped in madness and folly. Because when the wiser and crueler part of me kept me from blind hope, Begonia had made up for that deficiency. But now that she’s gone, senses of mine hold reins once more. And so hope is beyond me.”
Hope, eh? Hope, alas, is not one of those limited faculties an azure may possess. But even if an azure could have hope, there are despairs still far greater than hope. So one may not find any of use in an azure, not in this forlorn situation. In someone else, mayhap one who could inspire sunshine in the soul, who could even in the darkest time wear a brazen smile to defy the most daunting peril, someone whose innocence does not die though Fate herself conspires against them. Was Begonia such a person? I could believe it. Even as I had seen the way these two, Litzia and Begonia, had relied upon each other, though enslaved, though captives in the heart of an enemy airship. But I was not that kind of person. An azure is content in her squalid condition, and so she does not hope.
“But surely,” Litzia flattened her neck, “if you are not her – though you may not be Begonia entire – is it not possible that a tiny part in you, only one part of half of a mind, no more, could be deceived into having hope, Star? A person who exists inside you; someone who has on occasion gazed at the night sky and thought of the stars, the moon, and all the things that are boundless, without much a mind for her own empty existence. For that is a tiny thing to mind as you live in a world so vast? Someone who has seen beauty in things outside of necessities: a soft cake, a sweet song, a breezy afternoon, and all those tender feelings whose causes you never learned? Is it not possible that someone like so exists in you? Do you think, Star?”
She read my mind, and she had read my soul, as well my everything, far better, far deeper than I had hers. But were those things that she had said, and she was raving, could be trusted?
“And if she—if that part of me you speak of… exists, what then?” I said, “I know better. I am wise to despair at the least. And so that silly girl is shut up, for she stares in the face of the grim truth.”
“Has she not the right? Have I not the right? We both have needs of hope. We do. Even so, I am but one half, bereft of my other by a beast’s assault, while that part of yours, your own nature subdues! But it need not be so, for you at least. Will you not join me? Will you not lend me a little of yours to fill my missing half? So that made whole, and all the needless parts cast off, we be one who could hope even in this hour?”
Alas, but that should be folly. She raved. But her plea roused the foolish part in me, and it yearned like an idiot to believe in a light that shined still beyond the dark of our vision. Yet all the more, the other part of me, that rational one, knew one truth: there is no escape, no life before me. Had we not searched for an eternity and could not find a way out? That was true. That was the cold hard fact that could not be denied. If an escape had been indeed possible, then the mighty Rosa Alba and her sisters wouldn’t have been so frightened. And now that they had been captured in this dark even as us, they had yet to shine a light, after all this time. If even those beings could but flee in vain, what hope have we?
A situation of despair so grave it allows for but one way out: to rave and give one bitter, defiant laugh in the face of doom. So that one may forget even one’s imminent death.
“Very well,” I gave a hearty laugh indeed, though not even myself could hear it, “I hand you my half and everything else besides. Take mine and give me yours! So together let us be mad! We may yet live and be crowned living queens of the sky! And we shall laugh merrily and full of life at a later date, when all this has passed and well in the end!
“Ah! Let us be so!” A fit of emotions seized Litzia, so that the length of her body trembled entire, and I with her.
Later on, I learned from the others of the Anemone that what I was to experience then had been universal – every alaris captured within that darkness had been under the same spell, and none came out unchanged. It started slow, as no more than a faint caress upon our skin by a warm touch. A strange thing it was during our chilling and grimy despair. Then it enlarged, this weird sensation, it encroached on us. It passed cleanly the boundary, did not invade but invited itself in. For we would not reject it, craved as we were for a little warmth in the grim dark. Once inside, it bloomed bright, drawing us inward to some strange vision or another, as if sunflowers to the sun. And there it examined us. Reaching.
Long before I became aware of it, Litzia had been moving, arrowing up. The rush of rank air hit me violently as she climbed and climbed up high. Then, abruptly, mid-flight, she reached her sought zenith. That very moment she halted, the gentle bloom erupted and drowned us in its radiance. It differed between individuals, and each was granted a different thing. For me, it was the past—a past. A lost self. A life I do not know. A person I have not met and shall never face in life. I saw it, through eyes that were not mine, and felt things that were not real:
There was long ago a naive girl onboard a humble airship. Her parents were merchants, long voyages bound them to the sky. I found their faces in decayed memories, in antiquated knowledge.
And in the looking glass, I saw that youth endowed her. Peering upon the high stars, she was a lovely and playful girl.
But her life was short also. She was onboard a voyaging ship. She was homesick and the remembrance of friends and places at home grieved her.
It seemed she resented her parents for taking her on the voyage and kept her far from friends and lover. So she cursed them all under her breath, and wished for the worst.
For which, Fate punished her.
A vile disease rotted away the airship. The crew crumbled one by one, and none knew what it was.
So far from land, having no alares, their Priest perished, they would never reach help.
And while help would not come, she stayed for a long time by her father’s bed.
Long enough that one day she could not bear anymore the stench.
And time drove on, the ship ever sailed an aimless course; the corpses ever decayed. She lived still, pardoned by the disease and fed on the ship’s store.
The dead were her only society. Living in that foul air, hopes and light became reduced to shimmering mindlessness.
Her sanity could not persevere. Ere long, she was an animal in human flesh. Until one day memories finally withered. And when at last she gave life anew to a changeling, born like a parasite out of the demented mind of a human.
There was once such a girl, who had had my appearance, and everything else that I had not.
But that was not yet it. The warmth sought for things buried deeper still. And gradually, it unearthed all, excavated the remotest corners. There it found happiness, and sometimes joy.
Spring blooms and grassland dews under her naked soles, she scaled hilltops, lazed upon the endless prairie when she was still too young for the voyages. Her world had not been perfect, but how she craved it when she was away. Mindless frolicking, unblemished sunshine, muddy laughs, tired feet, throbbing heart, summer days, childish wantoning. Then there were kisses, sweet night blooms, trembling hours, brilliant stars, quivering words. Promises unfulfilled a lifetime away. Faces now only relics and bygones.
All that was never mine and never would be. They were the remains of a young girl who once lived. Such things that I who have not lived may never comprehend. Simple as that.
What a devastating effect it had wrought on me. If my pledge with Litzia had revealed much of my unknown loneliness, then these memories had demanded in me what I had not. I was never a person. No joy, sadness, preferences, hating or liking, regrets or dreams. A human does not exist solely for survival, they want many things. Be it the touch of a lover, the sight of a home so sweet, a cake so soft it melts – in achieving those things they may fail or succeed but regardless they live. One who is loveless does not deserve to live. So creatures that could not crave even a simple thing are called azure. So bland and insipid they could blend into the dull, empty sky with ease. Parasites they are, existences born from a curse, a mistake of life.
What am I?
And what are you, Litzia?
A stray voice from without broke my thought.
“Look there: the dawn!”
Someone’s voice had reached my ears. The hearing-blocking dullness had vanished. And in the infinite darkness, a sun was born. Not a little one made of sorcery or memories, but the real thing.
It rose fast from the horizon, as though heavingly drawn by strong arms towards the heavenly deck. The bright, bright sun dispelled the evil darkness and basked us in most glorious light.
I could see and touch the wet and rough scales of Litzia now, and around us, Ala Estival flew in the same state of confusion.
The Anemones scattered about the sky.
Rosa Alba from afar echoed a sound with her horn: the signal for ultimate victory.
The leviathan fell away from the sky. The victory was ours, brought about by the sun itself.
Then the great fireball slowly vanished, leaving behind a cloudless heaven lit by familiar stars. The sun was now back in its proper place under the sky. There it rested after heeding the summon of its mistress, Lady Aurora of the Dawn.