Spring 18 (Afternoon)
Alisandra jerked awake to a whisper across her halo. Laying in bed with Esmie, she held her breath – an easy feat – and listened for the source of this unease.
A faint whiff like burning paper tickled her nose, but the sensation vanished without resolution.
The drums of war remain frustratingly reactive, she thought. In theory, she might evoke her senses higher in hopes of catching threats with a precognitive flourish, but the world was full of noise. She would have to endure every foolish mage-whisper and every bar fight in hopes of catching the future in flight!
She glanced at Esmie, but her sister snored softly against her shoulder.
Delicately sliding away, the angel checked the time; she had slept eleven minutes.
I require no rest. Requiring no rest, I find no reprieve in it.
Alisandra remembered the peace of falling asleep at Lynne’s side during an over-long play on a rainy day, but she could no longer summon such peace by merely flicking a switch in her mind.
For all that she was a Power and a Principality now, she had surrendered precious things to reach these heights.
Setting aside her melancholy, Alisandra changed into the Azure bandeau and set out on her rounds.
***
Opposite the lands of men, there were other lands. The Stormmother had claimed them for herself years before, setting the currents of the world so that no vessel would escape her grasp.
At that time, the goddess had thought this appropriate. Men made mess enough of the lands given; why should they despoil more?
Yet it was angels that had broken these lands after all.
A straight line from Lumia, piercing this sphere, led to an exposed wound of lava and smoke.
A hole that pulsed with flickering fire, its depths descending until the rock swirled like water.
Somewhere deep in that scar, the molten heart of this star stuttered in its rhythm. Its heartbeat was slow, and mortal man did not yet recognize the signs of distress. The northern lights grew weaker by the year, but they and mortal memory both were fickle.
On the timespan of planets, Alisandra’s home clutched at its chest in pain.
More immediately, the angel knelt to run her fingers through the ash and dust that ringed the puncture wound.
Fine and smooth, matter without substance.
The colors were dimmer, the lava without its bite, and the air refused to stir despite the demands of convection. Even the sky stammered, holding overlong to twilight…
The wounds of Lumia went so much deeper than mortals knew.
Stepping further out, Alisandra caught the glint of golden veins. Soon she emerged at the location where she had met that smuggler amidst the petrified forest.
That particular pipe had drunk its fill. The last scrub brush lay dead; the last pond black and still. The golden pipe had grown thick and fat, though it too would fade in the coming days.
Alisandra’s foot caught the thin bones of an ungulate; they snapped underfoot. The ossified corpse jerked from its thin grave, staring at her.
She stared back.
Willed herself to remember the cost of these sacrifices, no matter how small.
“Will we make it?” she whispered.
Busy with the Work, Lynne ignored her.
Alisandra sighed. “My apologies. Please do not let me distract you.”
I am Archangel. I must endure.
Abandoning the desert, she leaped skyward and strained to hear the drums.
A faint note, sour and foul, pulsed from the distance.
The angel cocked her head, frowning. What beast is this, its beat so weak?
Then again, she had just complained of missing the drumbeats, so she chased the notes and her curiosity.
Erupted into the sky above – of all places – the Bones.
Fifteen years after the end of their storm, these lands bloomed. Vines grew along the edges of every cliff, grasses grew on the dry hillocks, and swamp reeds filled the muddy centers of the gorges. With the curse lifted, once stagnant water formed into creeks that began to cut the mud into channels that would become rivers. A lively wind from the south brought the Jungle’s heavy scents to her nose, and birds swirled overhead.
Ancient bones; become bird nests; above beds of wild flowers.
Alisandra grimaced. Her poetry still reeked of adolescence.
The weak pulse tickled her halo again, and she glanced down from her floating perch.
Beneath her, a squat settlement nestled at the junction of three gulleys, its crooked buildings anchored to wooden posts. A bridge of planks, coated in muck, acted as the street, and great piles of untended mud lay in a ring around this eyesore.
At the center of town, a brawl of thirty men milled about, throwing fists and curses.
“A weak echo indeed,” she muttered, letting herself descend.
The brawl escalated; someone shattered a bottle and brandished the sharpened edge.
She dropped into the middle of the fight, heel first, and let her strike peel the mud from the planks. It blew into the men, coating them in grime to the gums.
“Public disorder at its finest. Shall I ask what grievance started this?”
A man leaped forward and smashed a bottle of liquor over her head.
Wonderful. Inebriates.
Alisandra gagged against the rank assault of cheap swill, stronger than the blows that landed on her shoulders and back. What did they fill their kegs with – dead rats and last year’s bread?!
Then men began to grasp at her hair and clothes like dogs clamoring for a juicy bone.
You would dare?!
Alisandra spun in place, two full revolutions on her toe, and sent the lot of them hurling back. She came to a stop, her heart pounding in her throat.
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Careful, Ali!
She had almost spun a bit too fast; almost flung a few of them into the sides of buildings.
Gentle steps! Like Father.
She took a deep breath and spat the booze from her lip. “Enough! At least state your grudges!”
Whether Grace or liquor, the cowed men answered her as an Azure priestess, not a god.
“…useless horse-lovers caved in a month’s work!”
“…damned leafmunchers dug under the hill into our claim!”
“…half-silver for lodgings as he sits on his fat…”
And so forth.
Sadly skilled in this exercise by now, the Archangel sorted complaints into categories. The top three? Egregious rents for threadbare tents; dangerous work in unstable tunnels; and tensions between at least five different sets of prospectors.
From comport and accents, she marked the most numerous faction as Plateau delvers. Second came Deepbloom scavengers. Newest to arrive were a company of men from Waves, flush with cash for their expedition into this uncharted land.
Naturally, the previous arrivals were eager to part them with that money. Preferably without actually selling anything.
She started with the Azure men, most likely to respect her station. “What drew you here?”
“Fortune, priestess.”
The other scavengers retreated a few feet, scanning scanned for any surprise elemental beasts.
A temporary armistice – an opportunity to regroup.
Alisandra resisted the temptation to conscript the Azure men. Better they thought her a mere priestess; she might receive honest answers!
“When did you arrive?”
“Only this last week,” one admitted.
“Yet you found the Bones already occupied by…”
“Archaeologists!” the man spat.
Archaeologists?!
“Ruok, tell her about…” whispered a man behind the speaker.
“Right!” Buckles now burnished, Ruok puffed. “Seeing as you’re the ranking authority, we’ve a complaint!”
“Ranking authority? Says who?!” shouted a jungle man from behind the angel.
“These louts stole our claim!” Ruok shouted louder. “Tore off our flags and started digging our section!”
Arrived last week and already planting flags? How industrious. What are the chances they asked permission first?
“Flags aren’t worth spit, you morons. You want a plot, you better put a claim on the board!” the Jungle men retorted.
A board sure to be tilted in the Jungle’s favor.
“Priestess, you’ve the law on your side. Bear witness!”
The law of it? How generously interpreted! The nation-states agreed on a few common courtesies such as the last rites for the untended dead, the aldersman council, and the Gold Concord. Courtesies alone were a poor armor this far from any army!
The other factions withdrew, leaving only Jungle and Azure on the field.
Now satisfied this priestess had no serpent, the Jungle men began to creep closer in a half circle like a tightening noose.
Alisandra raised her hand. “We all stink of the last bottle, but cool heads might still prevail. Ruok is correct. Unless there is one of Verdandi’s chosen here, I may bear witness. Is that not just?”
The Jungle men, confident in their numbers, smirked. “We prefer our own law.”
Survive of the fittest
“Are you sure you’re the biggest fish in this pond?” Alisandra warned.
“Big talk for a lonely harlot.”
Very well. The angel planted her hands on her hips. “Hurry up. I do not have the time for useless bluster.”
“You heard her boys!”
The Jungle men withdrew snub-nosed pistols from their jackets.
Alisandra blinked in surprise. A new model! I should keep one for analysis.
They mistook her expression for fear and tightened their fingers on the triggers.
As the first rapports cracked the air, the angel of Valor bared her teeth at the challenge.
She accelerated, her thoughts quickening to match, and lunged forward through the air to swat at the deadly hail.
More followed the first, the Jungle men intent on emptying their clips into her body, and she buzzed with the thrill of plucking their shots from the air.
She flicked the pellets away, letting them crack like thunder between men, and watched as their expressions slowly began to register fear.
Foul behavior, even by frontier standards.
You would claim the Jungle law when it serves you!
See if Verdandi rises to save you then!
Then – as she swatted the thirtieth bullet – the drums of war hammered hard with death in the north.
A ravenous hawk dives for Highbranch
The thunder of death rattling his pinions
Hunger fueled by the scale in its belly
She measured the gap between bullets; knocked one away from its course towards Ruok’s ribs; saw her moment; and stepped directly for Highbranch.
Taking the direct path – through stone and earth.
Carving her way.
***
Tura strolled towards his theater, enjoying an afternoon out with his wife and son. He smiled at his wife’s jokes, waved when she nudged him in the side, and privately mulled his next sky-escapade.
Ah, if only Mirielle was still here. She would have understood this obsession of mine!
Though he knew rather more about Mirielle now than he had at first glance all those years ago – thanks to Oliver.
Enough to wonder if she would stroll into his camp one day as though nothing had ever happened.
It would be a shame if she were to find mankind exactly where she left it.
Though he had not admitted this to Oliver, he respected her even more now. Finally comprehending the delicate web of lies which had snared an auditorium of the smartest, most driven people on the planet…well, Tura believed in respecting all forms of craftsmanship.
“We were set back so much on that calamitous day,” he lamented, one finger tracing the complex tendrils of his chieftain’s braid.
Struck down but not defeated. The skies will yet be ours.
He would joyfully litter the plains with more wrecks.
For each flew higher, longer, further than the last.
Plus, they had conclusively tested three separate varieties of parachutes!
A shadow flitted across the sun, too fast for clouds. Then it dove for the crowds waiting outside the theater, releasing a vicious screech.
Tura threw his arms over his wife, looking up…
A flash of light blinked from the south…
And the world rang with heat and fury.
Tura tumbled before a sudden wind, his very bones ringing.
The perfect view to watch the decapitated body of a massive, mutated hawk drop onto the roof of his theater and crush the half-completed rigging.
Above, the sky was rent clean of clouds, and the air throbbed red with the afterimage of a blinding strike that crossed south to north, horizon to horizon, in a single unbroken line.
He laid there a moment, slowly patting his torso and finding himself somehow still whole.
His own safety confirmed, he asked his wife, “Are you okay, my sweet?”
Ever the poet, she spat, “Stormmother’s tits!”
Distant rolls of thunder rolled north, catching up with the lightning, and brought with them ship-sized chunks of granite and earth that pelted across the plains south of Highbranch like rocks skipped across the very sky.
***
Blade signing, Alisandra pushed. Faster! Faster still!
Time’s ancient gears dragged at her heels, ringing with warnings unheeded.
None are above the Law!
Keep your Law! I can save them!
She banked, letting her momentum and the last of the earthen debris smash into the northern seas, and retraced her steps south.
Her halo ringing; her Blade swiping; reducing debris to ash where it would have crashed into human settlements.
Her wake stripped the snow from the Four Hundred Twenty Some Odd Peaks on her way back south.
Approaching the Bones once more, she drew the heat of her passage inwards. Directed that energy into the Hand of God and swung skyward, releasing the heat in a rippling plume.
How well it obeyed! Her command and its action in a single sweep!
Alisandra dove once again, smashing into the planks of the Bones settlement, and caught the last bullet still a foot from Ruok’s head.
Still sizzling, she released her breath and relaxed her perceptions to mortal speeds.
“My apologies. Where were we?” she asked, releasing the crushed bullet.
A profound disappointment swept through her as she spoke – like the morning after a wonderful vacation.
She had not known if she could accomplish it, but she had. Driven by the need, she had stretched even further beyond mortal bounds…
…and now she was back in the Bones, facing a handful of miscreants with pistols and pride.
“Verdandi taught you lot hospitality,” she stated, her voice echoing off the valley cold and powerful. “I am ashamed to see it forgotten so quickly.”
One Jungle man defended himself. “We staked our claim by the right–”
“You stated the law you desired!” Alisandra roared, bearing down on the man. Her heels shook the entire town. “You demanded the strongest and here I stand!”
You wanted the Jungle. Too late for regrets!
The Tempest in her purring.
Defy me and die.
In the first sensible move of their day, the Verdant men dropped their weapons and fled for their lives.
“How do they plan to make Deepbloom with no money?” Ruok muttered to himself.
In the heat of the moment, Alisandra found she did not care. “They stated their contest, assured they would win. It would have been your body on the ground, Ruok.”
The Azure men turned to her, and his eyes filled with her shadow.
“Y-yes, Holy Tempest,” he agreed, averting his gaze.
“The claim is yours,” she stated, annoyance growing as she reviewed the facts of this case.
Annoyance at Verdandi for letting a foul philosophy of raw might fester in her children.
At Time for dogging her steps when Alisandra worked to resolve matters as peacefully as possible.
At herself for overlooking yet another shadow of the frontier.
How long have these Jungle men been driving all others out of town by strength of number? How many prospectors have they robbed blind and driven out of town?
How many more scoundrels lurk beyond my view?
Criminals and monsters, skulking just beyond her gaze. Even the Tempest could not be everywhere…
She exhaled like a bull and sheathed her Blade. “I will return to the Bones in the future. This land will fall under my protection. There will be law. Am I understood?”
Cowed, the Azure men bowed before her.
There will be law. For this and every other land.
I will not leave the rotten hole from which another Donovan will rise on my watch.