This time, it wasn’t just Lowtown.
This time, the whole Cauldron burned together.
All the Midcity folk, grown fat and happy on the backs of the Lowcaste, and all those Highcity nobles, trapped in their massive estates by the suffocating heat . . . all were kindling for the same flame.
Eolh felt no joy at the irony. The Magistrate, however, was laughing.
Most of his guards had fled. Some of them stayed to kneel and whisper old devotions.
“Makers, remember us. Ancestors, deliver us.”
Eolh had never heard a cyran pray before. Their prayers sounded oddly similar to the ones said in avian temples.
Well, let them pray, Eolh thought as he crouched down to the Magistrate. Means nobody’s going to stop me from doing this.
He tugged at the fingertips of the gloves, peeling them off the cyran’s fingers. The Magistrate tried to fight back, but he was weak, and the best he could do was smear his blood on Eolh’s feathers.
“You dare?” The Magistrate coughed, his lips red and wet. “You dare to touch me?”
The gloves were sturdier than they looked. Something inside the fabric gave them shape. For a brief moment, Eolh thought about keeping the gloves to himself. But he still felt guilty about palming the nanite.
“Hey, Fledge,” he called and tossed them to Poire.
Then, Eolh grabbed the Magistrate by the scruff of his collar, hauling him to his feet. The old, skinny cyran flailed and screamed, but his hands were nothing compared to Eolh’s metal fingers. He dragged the Magistrate’s long, slender body through the broken stones that littered the top of the tower. None of the centurions moved to stop him, though a few did watch him walk to the edge of the tower.
“Unhand me, you savage!”
“Turn it off,” Eolh growled.
“It cannot be stopped!” He hissed, “You will all burn!”
The Magistrate started laughing again, until the blood caught in his throat and he was choking instead. Eolh stepped to the edge of the tower.
“Look down,” Eolh said, shoving the Magistrate’s head over the precipice. An unbearable gust of heat rushed up from the city.
With one bloody eye, the Magistrate glanced down the dizzying heights of the tower, at the wilting gardens of the Highcity far below.
“Last chance,” Eolh said, his voice void of emotion.
The Magistrate tried to spit on Eolh, but Eolh simply let go.
The Magistrate struggled against gravity, trying to regain his balance on the tower. But the wall of the parapet was gone, blown out by his own hands. The cyran leaned wildly, his fingers scratching at the stone, slipping in his own blood.
The cyran’s screams fell a long, long way. Eolh did not bother to watch him bounce against the side of the tower or listen for the splatter his body made on the stones below. He had seen too many die that way.
So this is how it ends.
Nobody wins. When it was over, there would be no Cauldron left. All this heat trapped by the cliff walls that had protected this city for generations.
How fitting.
A dozen or so guards were still here, at the top of the tower. Praying? If they did not run, they would all burn.
Gods, even if they do run, they’ll still burn.
Lowtown was blackened wasteland. Mirages over the Midcity made it seem as though it was melting. And that huge ship only poured more and more light into the city.
Nowhere left to go except up.
Well, Eolh’s wings still worked.
The Queen’s bonds were easy to cut. She fell so heavily into his arms that he almost dropped her.
“Come on,” he gasped under her limp weight. “Wake up, Ryke. We’ve got to go.”
He wasn’t sure if he had the strength to carry her, but . . . Damn it. I’m not going to leave her.
Ryke’s eyes struggled to open.
“The Savior,” she said weakly. “Take him.”
Where was he, anyway?
“I will,” Eolh promised. “But we’ve got to get you out of here too.”
The fledge, who was covered head to toe in that metal skin, walked around the crater of bricks where the Magistrate had fallen. He was talking to the kneeling soldiers. Trying to get them to stand, to run. But they flinched away from him, or they buried their heads in shame.
One cyran dropped to the ground before Poire, sobbing. “Have mercy, Divine One! Oh gods, have mercy on me.”
Poire offered his gloved hand, speaking gently. “You are forgiven. Please, go somewhere safe. All of you!”
The soldiers did what the human commanded. Only Eolh and Ryke remained.
“You must take him,” Ryke rasped in Eolh’s ear.
“Not letting you go.”
“Eolh,” she tried again.
“We need you. How can we live without our Queen?”
“The Savior . . .”
“Please,” Eolh crowed. Holding her so that their eyes met and their beaks scraped against each other. “Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me leave you.”
“Your Queen commands,” she said, her swollen eyes glinting in that too-white light. Her wounds were shining and glistening, some of them dripping with blood. “Fly. There is no time.”
The heat made it hard to think, and his beak was so dry it hurt to swallow. He was burning from the inside, his brain boiling, his limbs as heavy as stone. But he couldn’t make himself put her down.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He couldn’t . . .
Poire approached, that liquid metal rolling down his arms, over his hands. Over his neck and his head. He was covered in it, and it reflected the light in such strange ways. Brilliant metallic yellows and whites and reds contorted madly over all that chrome.
“Go,” Ryke rasped.
“I’m staying,” Poire said, his voice distorted by the armor.
“No,” Eolh said. Too tired to say anything else.
He was so damn tired.
“Take her, Eolh. And leave this tower. As fast as you can.”
“Can you stop it?” Eolh said. “Can you end this?”
“Not me,” Poire said, clutching the plastic switch still hanging from old, rotten twine around his neck. “But my people can.”
Eolh loosed a frustrated caw, feeling his feathers bristle in the overheated air. “This is not the time, Poire. Your people are gone. We have to go now.”
The metal rippled over Poire’s face, pulling back. Revealing the calm serenity painted over his features. A face more perfect than any statue.
“I have to try.”
“If you’re staying, I’m staying.”
“You can’t help me do this.”
“Do what?” And when Poire didn’t answer, he said, “Fledge, listen to me. Whatever you’re going to do, I’m here. You don’t have to do this alone.”
Poire inhaled slowly. Exhaled. His voice was almost peaceful. “From the moment I fell asleep to the day I awoke, I was never alone. Look.” He held up his hands, now gloved with white. The metal wrapped over his cuffs, exploring the blood-spattered cloth. “I am surrounded by the gifts of my people. They have been waiting, just for me.”
Eolh clenched his beak. Time was frozen, and not even the wind blew as they stared into each other’s eyes. He could not think of the right words.
“I know,” Poire said. “I’ve been wrong a hundred times before. But this time, I need you to trust me. Take her, Eolh. And let me do the rest.”
So damn tired.
He most likely wouldn’t live to regret this anyway, so what did it matter?
“OK, Fledge. You win.”
Poire helped him tie the Queen to his chest with the ropes cut from the stakes. It was awkward, painful, but it would hold.
Eolh trained both eyes on the cliff wall that circled the Cauldron. And jumped.
And sank.
He beat his wings as hard as he could, trying to gain altitude. Get to the ridge. Cross over it. That’s all you have to do.
Eolh cast one glance over his shoulder. Just one.
Poire had returned to the center of the tower and was sitting cross-legged in a sea of broken bricks. It almost looked like he was praying.
***
The protocol was wrong. He couldn’t abandon these people.
And these people who believed he was a god, they were wrong too. I’m only human. And I wouldn’t want to be anything else.
But together, they were almost right.
Yes, something had to be done. And yes, Poire was the only one who could do it.
As for the protocol? Well, that was nothing more than a guide. A series of suggestions and tools to help make his will reality. The only problem with the protocol was that it was too limited.
Poire had figured it out: in their haste to save themselves, humanity had given birth to new children. And now, those same children were in danger. Yes, even the cyrans.
Thus, Poire had to break the protocol. The door opens, just for you.
He hoped that was true.
Furnace winds burned his face. The scent on the air was unspeakable. Dust and burning thatch and rotting plants. And a hint of sweetness, from the pollen blowing up from the gardens below. He breathed it all in, filling his lungs with it.
He closed his eyes. And let the world melt away.
Focus on the pylon.
The Oracle had done all the work, had amassed power for countless years. All he had to do was talk to the tower. And hope it talked back.
The gloves were clumsy, unnaturally stiff around his fingers. He had never used them before, at least not in real life, but he knew how they were supposed to work. Fortunately, his wrist was working again, ready to enhance his impulses. A poor dam against the flood of doubts that threatened to spill out.
What if you’re wrong?
What if it doesn’t work anymore?
Shut up and try.
Poire cupped the palms of the gloves, aiming them at the broken floor of the tower. He lifted his hands. There was a tug, as if his hands—and only his hands—were submerged in thick tar.
Individual bricks began to shake, to vibrate in place. He pulled up harder, and cracks started to form in the mortar. One brick shot out, flying high above and away from the tower. His forearms strained under all the weight on his hands.
Then, the stone rippled like a great fabric sheet in the wind. It shredded open, and bricks exploded everywhere, clinking and cracking against his armor.
The top of the tower was stripped clean, revealing that which lay underneath. A huge disc of metal in the shape of a perfect octagon.
One of eight.
Poire stood in the very center of the pylon. He held his hands out, searching for that note in his mind. That feeling. That point of access.
And when he couldn’t feel it, he pushed his hands down, placing his palms on the metal disc. Despite the heat, it was surprisingly cold. Wisps of vapor condensed around his fingers.
Breathe. Just breathe.
There. A twinge in the back of his mind. Amplified by his wrist.
He pulled on it, like a thread from an old cloth.
He called to it. Waking it up.
How long have you been asleep? he thought. Will you open for me?
Each question cracked the dam of his mind a little bit more, allowing uncertainty to leak into his thoughts.
So he shifted his focus, thinking instead of who had been there for him. Those gone and those who now needed saving.
He would not ask. He would command.
Wake up, he thought.
The flicker in his mind grew to a whisper.
“Wake up!”
The whisper began to hum, a gentle light unfolding in the depths of his mind.
And then, the energy blossomed into him. All of it. All at once. Until all he had to do was reach within and grab it.
“Turn on!” he shouted.
The response was immediate. You do not have access to that command. Please refer to your administrator. If there is no administrator available, please connect to the nearest node and inquire for protocol number—
“Override, damn you, override!”
The voice in his head went silent. The silence dragged. Nothing moved, not even the blood in his veins.
It’s broken, he thought. Just like everything else.
Then, it began.
The disc was glowing, dull and dark. Growing brighter, as blue as flame.
Across the city, Poire could see the tops of the other towers doing the same. Energy crackled along the bricks, crawling and glowing through the stones.
Even the leaning tower, with its diagonal slant, was covered in that crackling energy.
And down the vium, where the eighth pylon once stood, a slender beam of blue light shot up from the ruins of Lowtown, bursting through the clouds of smoke.
Beneath Poire, the pylon began to sweat. Condensation formed on the surface of the metal, freezing in strange, fractal patterns expanding ever outward. Once more, his wrist buzzed an alert about the temperature, but now it was falling deep into the negatives as the pylon pulled more energy into itself.
The liquid armor sealed once more around his face, protecting him from the sudden snap of cold.
Poire had nowhere else to go. So he just stood on top of the pylon and watched it happen.
It began at the edges of the disc. A thin blur wrapped around the disc, coalescing into sheets that shimmered like glass. Where the sheets touched, they sheared cleanly through the stone and kept unfolding up. Like curtains falling the wrong way, or the flowers of a petal opening for the first time.
They faltered, stuttering in their movement. Flickering and becoming thinner as they spread away from the top of each tower. Stretching to cover the city.
The pylons were too old. Too broken. It’s not enough. This won’t work.
Poire closed his eyes and reached for the tower’s interface. He pulled with his thoughts, willing the glass petals of the towers to stretch, to blossom farther than they should. He groaned with the effort, too focused to feel anything but the energy in the towers pushing out.
The glass sheets began to tear. A great hole formed in the petal in front of Poire.
You failed.
So what.
Again.
So. What.
He could keep walking. Just one step further. And one step after that.
It happened over the Midcity: the petal of one tower touched the petal of another. And all at once, it was easy.
The first petals sealed together. The energy rose, bucking his control as the towers connected for the first time in thousands of years and began to feed into each other. All those flickering sheets solidified into gleaming sunlight, forming a massive, glowing shield over the Cauldron. Over the old biohabitat that humanity had built on Kaia so many eons ago.
The shield touched the hull of the terraforming barge. It sliced through the ship like a knife through water. Sparks, flames, the groaning of metal, the bursting of machinery. The barge’s Lantern ring went out, making the city below seem suddenly dark. Poire blinked in the absence of all that light.
Sweat rolled down his face, and his whole body was shot through with exhaustion. He had nothing left. But still, he held on.
The top half of the barge rested on the dome shield, as if it had always lain there. The bottom half finally sheared away and rolled like some massive jungle beast as it fell. It smashed into the city below, throwing up mountains of metal and stone and plumes of dust that climbed and climbed.
Poire let his arms drop. And the shield fell with them.
He fell to his knees, staring up at the sky.
All the heat in the city began to lift. To be carried away as a new breeze began to blow.