“I’ll do whatever you ask of me, master you are.” He was too wild in his need to prove.
“Heed me and I’ll show you the realm of aether. And its pleasures.” Solanine’s brow rose at his hardened crotch. “O yes, child, there is felicity in the blood. Immortality does not come from the proliferation of Life, but upon the wave of Death. Your training will start soon. But we must break your body, reform it into the mold of the Divine’s warriors.”
Like most children of the streets in Drenth, Evander was wiry, bereft of fat upon his bones. “Whatever it takes, I am yours.”
Without answering, Solanine turned toward the man crucified to the wall. His head rose, alive, though his eyes had been sewn shut. Tears had dried long ago.
“Please, mistress. No more. I can’t. O Zenith protect me.”
“Ease, Nocturne will take you soon. No longer will Zenith have need of you.” Solanine leaned close, inhaled the burnt flesh, the offal. Aether was strong in the air. “First you must bring me the Fallen.”
Solanine’s hands moved over the man’s body, the aether in the mist above the blood rune on the floor flew forth, and the man screamed as the poisonous haze filmed over him, diving into his innards via his wounds. While chanting, the scarred and bleeding runes on Solanine’s breast and spine burned as the aether wept from them. The man began to thrash, the spikes holding him.
From the three-legged stand, Solanine took one of the glass vials and poured it into a saucer. A handful of black powder followed the opaque liquid. It fumed with a sulfuric odor. Carefully, Solanine set the saucer below the writhing man’s legs. Lifting the knife, Solanine pressed it into the man’s side. He screamed loudly as the blade plunged into his kidney. The man mewled as a stream of urine fountained into the saucer.
Taking the saucer to the misty blood rune on the floor beside where Evander stood, Solanine mixed the contents with the tip of the knife. The saucer began to pulsate. Laying down the knife, Solanine lifted the foul brew and drank. Repulsiveness washed through Evander; his Divine laughed within the void of the Pit.
Over the rune of blood and mist, Solanine spat.
Instead of falling to the ground, the liquid hung suspended. Finally, Solanine took a pinch of yellowed powder from the table of elements and tossed it. The entire liquid shimmered and then, a picture began to form, the shape of a man atop a massive red firedrake. So lifelike, so real, Evander could almost envision the wind gusting from the wings of the drake, the ripples of air threading his hair.
“Solanine,” the hazy visage of the Fallen said. Full onyx eyes took in Evander. “Is this the boy He sends to us?” Evander couldn’t help but shrink back from the Fallen’s scrutiny. He felt so inadequate, so unworthy.
“OBEY AND YOU WILL BE WORTHY.”
Yes, forever, my master.
“He is. And he knows the girl. The Gutter King will make his move soon. My forces are ready. My best scourge remains entrenched and will bring our child to us, threshold crossed. She will not betray us a second time.” Evander noticed the pained look on Solanine’s face, if only there for a moment.
“My favored scourge will hunt down the Gutter King and the child.”
To Evander, Solanine seemed taken aback. “Are you certain that is wise? If she were to discover the truth, we could lose everything.”
“Everything hinges on her,” the Fallen said. “The Matron has seen the future, Solanine. Our path is now set. The war has begun, my army awakens from its slumber. Break the Gutter King and bring me the Godsblood. Kalderim cannot hold without either. But beware, the Sword of the Golden Throne will rise in this war, he must not. The bikrome must remain true. Our master’s guile upon you.”
Solanine waved a hand, and the air began to shimmer again. With a splash, the aetheurgic spell broke and the rune of blood sizzled.
Solanine faced the Gutter King’s man, who was sobbing. “Please, mistress…”
“Mors expectet.” Solanine slammed the knife into the man’s heart. To Evander, “I told you, I am no one’s mistress nor master. I am Solanine.”
Evander waited until the man’s chest fell for the last time. “What of me?” All he wanted was the power of the void.
“AND SO YOU SHALL.”
“Find the girl,” Solanine said. “She must cross the threshold of Life before she can become one with Death. The test of flesh must happen. See it so, our master knows what designs you have on her body. You shall reap it once her purpose to Him is done. Go.”
XI
Cadrianna
NO MATTER HOW hard Cadrianna tried to forget, every time she set foot onto Gargantua, the vivid details of her entire family’s decimation tore through her.
The lines around her father’s eyes burned into her memory. There was blood upon her eldest brother’s face as a black-armored scourge clocked him with the butt of a wheellock rifle. The body of her middle brother lay dead, another scourge’s blade protruding from his back. Terror emanated off her mother as they grabbed her and bound her hands in coarse rope. Babe Brynn cried uncontrollably in her beloved Emre’s arms as the brutes covered their heads with black hoods.
A drake’s roar was the only thing that drowned out the sobs.
Ever remembering.
“RELIVING THEM AGAIN, CAD? MUST IT BE EVERY TIME?”
Cadrianna brushed off the Strix as she exited the airglider into one of Gargantua’s many docking bays found within the rocky underside of the floating fortress. The daemon would never understand what this place meant to her.
Aside from the steel propellers that circulated to keep Gargantua afloat, the underside was mostly stone and metal. The four tethers wormed into massive portals of the underbelly’s exterior. Fifty-foot interlocking blocks pocked with slots for weaponry had steel doors for airglider access and slips for larger transports to dock. Aere-infused spotlights were set at six-feet intervals around the middle.
Topside was altogether a different realm, one that triggered the most hateful of memories as she emerged from the interior.
The smooth-stoned walls rose upwards into six points, complete with towers, crenellation, arches, spires, and flags. But the castle-like comparisons ended there. The interior and topside were a mash of fortified bases and extravagant living compounds. Like any mega-city, buildings rose taller than the walls. Gardens were full of color and paved avenues were large enough for trucks to fit three times over. In fact, it painted a portrait of grandeur, the antithesis of what would be expected of a flying weapon of the apocalypse.
Predator automatons stood like statues on the streets. Even though the Fallen had mastered the horde of mist daemons in the Sea, his automatons were a force to keep them cowered if they broke the walls. Spikes and weapons protruded from their chassis, standing fifteen feet tall and were difficult to destroy.
In the very center of Gargantua rose a singular tower made of ebony stone. A series of stairs led to a squat, square base, and from there, the spire shot upward. There were no balconies, save one at the highest apex where the Fallen had his chambers. Window slits lined the spire at every story, plain and simple. In fact, the simplicity of the tower made it feel out of place amongst the rest of the topside beauty.
Ignoring the guards standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the tower entrance, she approached and climbed. Dull aethecite lamps lined the stairway, light layering the holy residence in obscurity despite the sun above.
A massive firedrake, easily sixty feet from snout to tail, lazily looped around the base of the Fallen’s tower, its grand bulk hugging it while its folded wings draped the stairs. The drake’s—one of the four greater orders of draconem; the firedrakes, seagandr, aerovern, and the terrisvvyrm—head was massive, the size of a full-grown auroch, snout-like, eyes as big as dinner plates, teeth forearm-long. Garnet orbs narrowed at the sight of her, and its finger-length spikes furrowed like eyebrows. It had a red-scaled, sloping neck with a single row of progressively larger spikes until the largest was up to Cadrianna’s waist.
