Emre crumpled to the floor. It was his parents, the Regents Benld. And they were daemonized.
One to each side of the obsidian throne, the glass prisons came to a stop. On the right, his father Edric. Suspended in the liquid, his now-white hair undulated, long and flowy. Hooked nose that Emre had inherited, chest-long beard the same color of a Kanjan tundra. His mother on the left. Alandy’s gentle brown skin parched and dried with age. Both wrinkled, skin pulled taut. Both with claws and spikes sprouting where hands and bones were meant to be. Both with banded scars wrapping their necks where their severed heads had been reattached. Both with horns protruding from the center of their skulls where the pikes had pierced them when their heads had been brandished to the people of Drenth. Both with ruby eyes filled with unmistakable hate. Both with tubes piercing their scaly flesh, attached to Lu Har, the red blood within passing into The Fallen and vice versa.
“By the Pentax,” he whispered into his hands.
Tears fell unchecked down his face; the steely resolve having fled. Seventeen years catching up all at once. His insides felt dirty, felt empty, felt barren. All words escaped him. He, gods, how?
“I hear it told you have sound knowledge of my endeavors, Benld. Stray snippets from my bikrome that was designed to allow you to think you’d be able to best me.” Val stepped away from Lu Har’s knee as he descended from the throne, the tubes connecting him to Emre’s parents stretching. Cinder flicked its tail, scratching at its mouth. The Fallen placed a hand upon the tank holding Alandy Benld. Those daemon eyes finding its master. “Could you ever have fathomed something such as this? I doubt you have the capacity to understand. This is how immortals die.”
“I’ve…”
“Daemons are but simple creations of Nocturne,” Lu Har said as if explaining to a child, which, truth told, Emre was in this instance. “A simple twist to what the Pentax has given with Their aether. The Four Tenets as you mortals call them. Take these husks that were once your parents. Their bodies given over to the throes of desiccation upon their deaths. To what purpose? Why must our bodies return to the earth when they can become something greater? To fill my army, it gives them a purpose, their flesh.”
“Are… are they still alive?” Gods, did he really want to know?
“Portions of their souls remain tied to their bodies. What you see is but a fraction of the torment they suffer in the Pit where the battered and broken are forever ground under the will of Nocturne. Your parents suffer greatly, Benld. As will you.”
“You bastard.”
“And that’s what makes you weak. You try to fight what you cannot withstand. Death comes for everyone. Do you truly think Zenith cares about you as you pass the veil to the void? No, Zenith cares not.” Lu Har lovingly fingered the glass over Alandy Benld. “But it’s what’s inside that is the crux. You call it Godsblood. Everyone borne able to burn aether contains blood of the gods, but a true Godsblood, is rare. One in every thousand or more back in the time of Eminence. Even rarer now as Nightingale’s blood dwindles. Do you know the truth of who Nightingale is, Benld?”
Steel it, Benld. Try not to think of them… “I know all about your Godsblood, Lu Har. I know why you need it. Why you crave the blood in my daughter’s veins. I know all about the First Wife.”
“Do you now? I imagine not. Did my bikrome ever tell you the reason why a Godsblood is the only force that can destroy the Seals? Because a Godsblood must be of all the gods, not just your holy Pentax, Benld. Of Nocturne as well. Of draconem.” He glanced back toward Val. “Dunleith, if you will be so generous?”
“Noctis and Eminence are but two sides of the same Crystal,” the bikrome said. She was turning a wheellock in her hands, his pistol. “Life and Death. Just as we are borne of the spark of Life, we all carry the seed of Death. Immortality does not come from the proliferation of Life, but upon the wave of Death. The seeds of both lie within a Godsblood, but not just as their blood, but their connections to each. To Soul Form and Void Form. Of the heavens and the void. Of Zenith and Nocturne in the Pit. And of the First Wife, Nightingale. And Her draconem.”
Emre released a choked grunt, his calm slowly returning after the initial shock of his parents being… alive. He grabbed at that steadfastness, harnessing it. “You must be confident that such a thing can be of both.”
“O it does, Benld,” Lu Har said. “Your wife was but the first test.” Emre stiffened. “She bonded to the Strix, a creature of the Pit. The first in centuries who could hold the power of the Pit, the grace of Noctis. Of Nightingale Herself. Cadrianna has served me in more ways than one. And into your daughter, the nectar of all the gods resides. Eminence from your line. Noctis from Cadrianna’s via Nightingale.” Emre was rattled. “Let the truth wash over you, Benld. It’ll be the last truth you ever learn. Except the turmoil of everlasting pain in the Pit.” Lu Har smiled. “Cadrianna would have been my general, commanding my army of daemons with the Strix at her side. But, alas, she’s fulfilled my needs and brought me your daughter. Both you and her will turn the Godsblood to my side. With your deaths, she will become mine.”
“Zenith…”
“You’d be a fool to put your trust in Him,” Lu Har cut him off. “He who cast His own Brother into the depths of the Pit over his love for the First Wife, before casting her down? If you know the truth about Zenith, is that a benevolent god? I think not.” He resumed his seat upon the throne of black glass. The bikrome came forward once more, the engraved wheellock still in her hand. “Go see to my scourge. She grows unstable. We need her to witness her daughter’s triumph.”
“Yes, Master Lu Har,” Val whispered. As the bikrome turned from the throne, her bi-colored gaze fell upon Emre. “Forgive me, Emre. You know what the cost is. What is demanded.”
His head fell. “I know the tithe…”
She leaned close to him, the touch of Kanja’s coldest winters as she put one hand upon his cheek, the other into his hand. He wanted to tear away but held strong. “And pay it gladly, Emre Benld. That’s what you told me. Does that oath still remain?”
Emre grit his teeth. “Until the end.”
Valeria Dunleith patted his cheek, her bikromi bracelets vibrated. “The heart must rend to be pieced together again.” With that, she left the room, taking Emre’s anger with her.
He was calm now. Ready. His hand moved toward the detonator in his waistcoat pocket, another weight reassuring in his hand. Cad… for Brynn.
“He knew she was the spy,” Solanine said. To be true, Emre had almost forgotten the aetheurgist was there. Solanine withdrew a cylindrical metal casing from the dress. “The Dunleith boy had this on his person when the scourges took him. Another bomb meant for our control room.”
No, the final nail to bring down Gargantua.
“O, did he now? Amusing game you tried to play, Benld, but very stupid. Tsk tsk tsk. How could you possibly have thought a simple supply of bombs would spell the end of me when I have a bikrome feeding you the ‘the words of the Pentax’? Shame. Blowing the tethers was a stroke of intelligence, I’ll give you that. Truly brought the war to my doorstep, but you’ve done nothing but make my hold on this city stronger. Who have they run to in the wake of destruction you left in your city this week? Hmm? These people are fools. Fools to believe that they deserve the wealth of Eminence. They ate that up, didn’t they?”
“From the Guild to the vagrants on the street, they are but stones in a pile,” Solanine said. “Steps to be broken and destroyed as we march toward Eminence.”
“You’d kill them all?”
“Eminence will be mine. With your daughter gifting me the greatest power known, this forsaken city will be but a ruin. I will purge this city of any not willing to bend the knee. For the Divine will demand nothing less. The rest will become my army. Like your parents. I’ve already started it. My soldiers firing upon Drenth’s citizens, planted to look like your rebels. See, Benld? They are already being conditioned to see you as the enemy.” Emre glanced at the daemons who were once his parents, hoping their souls were at peace, not bound within the contorted flesh of a daemon. “Kalderim will fall. Nobody will remain standing who does not submit. A new god will rise next to the Divine. Me.”
For the first time since releasing Cadrianna, unburdening her from the lies created by the monster on the obsidian throne, void, maybe even since seeing Brynn as a woman grown, Emre truly smiled.
“You think that’s a bomb?”
Emre drew the detonator from his waistcoat as well as his pocketwatch. The time read midnight, the turn of a new day. The same time as the constant reminders to be sent out to the City of Sands for its dwellers to imbibe or inject their parch to shield their radiation poisoning. The messages sent all over the mega-city.
The key to his entire plan.
“That’s no bomb, Lu Har. That’s a recording device, connected to every aerescreen, every radio, every communication source in the entire city. Streamed all the way to the Dunleiths in Kalderim and the Guild in Alizarin. Everyone now knows the truth. And I’m certain they aren’t going to like what they’ve heard.”
Solanine dove for him with aetheurgy forming about mortal hands. Cinder unfurled its drake wings from the glass throne, a rumble in its throat. Lu Har slammed a fist upon the crystal chair, shattering it into a thousand pieces as his Void Form billowed in flame.
Emre pressed the detonator, blowing a series of bombs planted all around Gargantua, but more importantly, severing the two remaining tethers. With the wheellock pistol gifted to him by Val, Emre burned his aetheurgy and began shooting.
XLVII
