The Creators

Chapter Nineteen: Checkers

Prelude: Floating

ANGELA

I didn’t have lungs, but I was coughing. Every wretch sent black smoke billowing from my ethereal mouth and nostrils, the bile stinging in my throat. When I was done vomiting out Corruption, I wiped my lips and soldiered on.

The desert wind blew through me, carrying the coarse granules of sand and the dry bushels of tumbleweed. Oh, how I longed to feel the harshness of it on my flesh. The sun beat down overhead, evaporating the scant dew from the ground in steaming vortexes. Oh, how I wished to know its oppressive heat. As I floated over the bloated corpses of orcs and valkyries, I even longed for the putrid scent of rot. More than anything, I wished I could go faster. Whatever force that propelled me through space seemed to be dependent on my distance from Brandon, and he was so, so far away. It would take me days to get to Droktin’s Pass. I didn’t have days. He didn’t have days.

I paused and looked over my shoulder. Astrid had taken my body with her, but my blood still stained the obsidian bowl of Droktinar. I had screamed at them as they fled, I had punched and kicked them to get their attention, but none of them could see me. There were only three people who could. Well, four, actually. My eyes ran down the river of blood and fell upon the iron door. In twelve hours, I’d only managed to get a few thousand feet from it. The closer I got to Brandon, the faster I would go, but there was no denying that distance wasn’t the only factor slowing my trek. That door was pulling me. That place was where I belonged.

I turned my gaze back to Droktin’s Pass. It was miles and miles away. I looked over my shoulder at the door. She would be waiting for me. She had to know by now what I had become. The moment I stepped through that iron door, I would be greeted by a pair of black eyes, and she would take from me what Diamond could not steal with her lips. I took a deep breath, but no air soothed my anxiety. The tension wound tighter in my nonexistent chest as I stared at the iron door. It seemed to come closer to me even though I was standing still. It was pulling me in. I turned toward it and moved with the tide.

“I love Brandon,” I whispered to myself as the door neared me. “That is who I am. No matter what, that is who I am.”

I glided down the bowl of Droktinar, hovering over the river of my drying blood, casting no reflection in the growing pool at the basin’s bottom. The door grew larger. I could see the orange tinge of rust and the tendrils of vines clutching to the frame. A cloud passed over the sun above, but the iron handle still gleamed with light. It was so close now that I could see the pits of corrosion, the thorns of the black vines, the sheen of astral light through the cracks. It was right in front of me. I reached out and clasped the handle. I turned it.

The door creaked open. An eclipsed sun shone over a vast jungle. I stepped forward, and my foot pressed into moist soil. I could feel the mud between my toes, and for a blissful moment, I almost forgot where I was.

"Close the door behind you," Corruption said softly. She stood twenty paces away from me, beautiful, sleek, and black, her body bound with the white patterns Lucilla used to wear.

"So, you're a Creator, huh? Those patterns on Julia are yours. Is that how Diamond became the Water Dancer?"

She just smiled politely. "Please close the door."

I reached back and closed the door. The hinges creaked, then the latch clanged shut. When I tried to twist it again, it would not budge.

"Ok," I said, taking a steeling breath, "let's do this."

Corruption cocked her head and studied me. "Do what, exactly?"

"You know... that thing. Turn me into a psycho-bitch."

Her black eyes twinkled. "Do you know what you are?"

"Untethered, like Diamond."

"You are untethered, that is true, but not at all like Diamond. Your realm is your own, but you are not tied to it." She gestured broadly to the space around us. "The thing that once lived here had a name before he was Wrath. Not Halok, for that was his earthly name. No, the name he had was 'Fortitude.' Much like you, he was untethered, but he did not inherit the realm of a Tethered One. Nothing chained his realm to his soul, and so his soul left when Furok died. That will be your fate as well. There is no point in giving you my gift, for you cannot leave this plane through your undeveloped realm, and you will become Silence before tomorrow's moon; just another abstraction."

"Cool, so I can just do whatever then?"

She smiled thinly. "There is very little that I can do to stop you. I must stay out here to imprison you, and that would leave my mother quite incapacitated while a hostile Earth Former lurks in the world. So I will shut my gate to you, and leave you out here in my wildlands. You may spend your last day marveling at the wonders I have done. Perhaps you will find some measure of peace knowing that the plane below will soon become as free as this one."

"What do you mean? What are you trying to do?"

Corruption opened her mouth, then shut it, and shook her head. "I must confess that I would love nothing more than to have an intelligent conversation with a living soul. The company I keep is... not very enthralling, but I would be a fool to reveal anything of pertinence to you."

She turned around, and the jungle opened a path of stones for her. The stones levitated from the floor and created a staircase to the heavens. She looked back at me, and her expression was wholly woeful. "Do you think that I am evil?"

"Of course."

She nodded, and I saw a tinge of sadness in her eyes. "No one will ever know all the good I have done. They will only see evil until they know naught what evil is, and by then, I will be dead." She looked up at the eclipsed astral sun. "Wrath told me that I would die in ignorance of my victory. I want to believe that he is wrong, but I know in my heart that he is right. We are not what goes beyond, Angela. The flesh you left beyond that door is not you, but the thoughts you brought with you are. We exist between two planes and the piece of us that moves on views us as nothing more than that corpse you left on the rocks."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she shrugged. "I do not know. No one does." Then, she walked away, her steps careful and full of pain, like those of an old woman. The stones of the staircase fell back to the jungle as she stepped off each one, and the jungle grew over the stones, barring any path for me. She narrowed to a dot in the sky, then disappeared into a star.

I knitted my fingers together and burred my lips. I looked around, attempted to pull the door open, then sighed when I could not. After pacing the small clearing, I stopped and looked to the sky. There were millions of stars despite the sunshine, but ten of them shined brighter than the others. The dimmest of those ten had a slightly green hue to it, and it elicited a strange sense of familiarity.

"Serenity," I whispered. I kept my gaze locked on the star, and began to walk through the jungle. With every footfall I took, the sky shifted above me, moving like a great dome to reorient itself to my perspective. I kept walking until the star of Serenity was level with the horizon line, and I walked straight for it. She said I couldn't leave through that place, but then again, why the hell would she ever tell me the truth?

Part One: Cage

BRANDON

My wrists and ankles were wrapped in obsidian chains. The flesh beneath them was raw and bloodied, and would not heal with them on. I doubted they would've healed with them off. I was sapped of all energy, drained to the point that I could barely sit up. Everything I had was devoted to keeping Angela, but even that wasn't enough. She was so far away, and all my strength was being sapped in the distance between us. I was dying. Slowly and surely, my flesh was becoming sallower, my muscles were atrophying, and my heart was slowing. My throat was so dry that I couldn't even swallow, and my eyes were so bloodshot that the act of seeing was painful. My sandpaper tongue searched my mouth for the opium capsule behind my teeth, but it was gone. I hated myself for even thinking of doing it. She was coming for me. I'd hold her again if I just held out a little longer.

I was in Tera's carriage. The comfortable ornamentations had been removed from the walls and floors, leaving everything wooden and bare. The only decoration at all was its former occupant's head hanging from the ceiling, slowly rotating with the changes in the wind that drafted through the open window.

Julia sat cross-legged across from me. She was clothed in a white robe, and softly reading passages of the Maternal Bible to me. Her voice rose and fell as if giving a sermon, then it stopped with a solemn 'amen.' She closed the book and looked up at me with her black eyes.

"What do you think of that passage?" she asked me.

I just looked at her.

Julia waited patiently, then smiled, and opened the book. "I believe it is about redemption. The lute player is a dissembler and a trickster, but after the duke cuts off his lying fingers, the lute player finds the Maternal Path once more. Only through pain can we heal. That is why healing is so painful. The metaphors are quite obvious—the holy word should not be subtle—but it is still very true. If you cut yourself, then you have erred in some way, and the body must punish you for that error. The same is true for the wounding of your soul. It is a lesson all of God's creatures must learn."

"You don't think I'm a creature of God."

Julia steepled her fingers. "The Bible foretells a battle at the end times. A champion of God leads the righteous hordes against the forces of Satan and faces his earthly champion. You are a womanizer disguised as an awkward boy, a deceiver disguised as a flappable fool, and a killer disguised as a healer. Yes, you would certainly fit the bill, but a more obvious candidate has taken your place." Julia set the book down between us and continued smiling at me, though her eyes did not reflect the mirth of her lips. "Where is Willowbud?"

"Dead."

Julia rolled her eyes. "Your sister confessed to Diamond."

"Angela lies all the time."

"I have thousands of eye-witnesses saying that they saw Astrid Skyborne with the Earth Former's marks on her flesh. Brandon, do we really need to begin the torture this early?"

I swallowed despite my dry throat and pissed myself despite my dry bladder. "Only through pain can we heal," I said, and wondered why the fuck I did.

The smile returned to Julia's eyes. "It'll take a lot to heal her, Brandon." She inclined her head to Justina, who was chained in the corner. Justina whimpered horribly and tried to make herself as tiny as she could, huddling into her shaking arms and knees.

I dropped my head, and let out a long breath. "I don't know where she is. She's probably halfway across the world by now."

"No loyalty amongst godless cowards."

"I guess not."

"I don't believe that you don't know where she is."

"I can't make you believe me."

"I will get the truth out of you eventually," Julia said as she ran her hands through her red hair. "So, you two were planning to kill me and my daughter."

I nodded.

She offered me a wry smile. "You weren't going to try to 'save' us as you did with Willowbud? I'm not sure if I should feel insulted."

"I tried in the end."

Julia's smile faded. "Yes, Diamond told me." She picked up the Maternal Bible, stood up, and walked toward me. I cringed against the wall, trying to blend into the wooden boards. Julia stopped in front of me and extended her hand. "Let's go for a walk."

I shuffled beside Julia as she led me through the encampment. It had moved last night, and now the horde resided in the immense shadow of the Gratoran Wall, flooding right up to the dunes that crashed upon the sheer cliffside like a static tide. Droktin's Pass opened up before us, and I could see the lush dwarven princedoms through the sliver at the end. It was only thirteen miles away, and yet it felt like a world apart from this place. The chaos of the horde had not been tempered by our assault. If anything, it had worsened. Horrific displays of debauchery surrounded us, blood and lust comingling through the manic crowd. They blocked our path, sneering and snapping like animals, leering at us with their blackened eyes. Julia paused for a moment and waited for her followers to move out of our way. When they did not, she simply raised her hands, and incinerated hundreds of them in a second, clearing a path.

"There is a battle raging above us in the heavens," Julia said, pulling the heat from the glassed sand. "A demon with a name feared even by angels marshals his horde. It seems that the Holy Mother wants me to draft soldiers for her cause, for I am constantly compelled to send her my followers."

"There were children in there."

Julia shrugged. "The purer the soul, the greater the angel."

"That's how you justify it," I scoffed bitterly to hide my horror.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "I don't need to justify anything, Brandon, least of all to you. My work is God's work, and only she can judge me. Who judges you?"

"What the hell do you mean?"

She scrutinized my eyes. "Who is Vitanimus?"

"Vitamins? What?"

She held my gaze for a long time, then directed her attention forward. "Never mind. Come."

Julia held my hand and guided me through the crowd until we came upon a raised platform. There, Diamond stood front and center, performing minor miracles of water-shifting for the amusement of the crowd. She drew her water from an obsidian caldron, making shapes of valkyries fighting in the sky, of dragons breathing fire into the horde, of gods battling across desert dunes. Though her display was spectacular, it was subdued, and I could see her wincing slightly at the effort, still drained from yesterday. Jade stood behind her, looking extremely stoic as she guarded what looked like a bag of potatoes. When Diamond saw us, her black eyes sparkled, and she hushed the raucous audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest for you today," she said, then gestured grandly to me. "I give you, Brandon Sorensen, the Life Giver!"

I had seen dozens of performances in the Pit of Drastin, I'd heard the roaring condemnations of the crowd, but never had I heard such an upswelling of noise as this one. The very earth shook with the sound, and it buffeted me like a gale, whipping my hair, filling my nostrils with the putrid scent of Corruption. Julia walked me up the steps as I endured the noise, then stood beside me and her daughter, and raised her hand for silence. After a few minutes, the crowd finally expelled the last of its rage.

"Good people of Gratora," Julia said with a motherly smile. "Servants of the Holy Mother, children of the rapture, today is the holiest of days. As we stand upon the eve of our deliverance through Droktin's Pass, so do we stand as victors on the battlefield!"

The crowd roared again, unintelligible and wild, churning and cannibalizing itself in great maelstroms as if prompted to kill simply by the mention of death. Swirls of battle erupted everywhere, the dying screeched and cackled, and the reverberations of excitement moved through the horde like a wave until the entire sea was roiling. Julia shot a great beam of black fire into the sky, and the crowd ceased, only the trailing screams of the victims percolating from the mass. Julia donned her nun's smile again.

"Yesterday, the devil struck us at our heart. He inflicted me with a demon of jealousy, and while I exercised myself of his sin, he infiltrated our ranks with his minions, and he sent his so-called 'Life Giver' dog to kill my daughter."

Rage boiled from the horde, and they surged forward as one. They assaulted the stockade, they clambered up the steps with gleeful wrath in their black eyes, and Julia had to launch a wall of black flame into them, incinerating hundreds in the blink of an eye. The crowd ebbed backward and calmed.

"The enemy we face is ever crafty. He operates in the shadows of our minds and twists us with his darkness. But God's light reveals all! For even as the devil enacted his master plan, God's champion, my daughter and your deliverer, fought the devil's dog on the battlefield, and with her holy might, she

struck him down!

"

More cheers, and more death. Walls of bodies collided, bombs exploded, heads were thrown from the audience like bouquets to land at the Water Dancer's feet. Diamond stepped forward with her arms outstretched and basked in the chaos. I glanced over at Julia and saw the thinnest of frowns upon her lips. When the pandemonium reached a dangerous level once more, she fired a single jet of flame into the crowd, dividing the horde for a mile, blasting clear through Droktin's Pass and into the sky. When the crowd went silent, Julia cleared her throat and continued.

"Indeed, it was a great victory, but it is not the final victory. As this journey moves to a new chapter, so do we move to a new author. The Water Dancer is God's chosen child, and she—not I—will write the story to come." Julia looked to Diamond and offered a supplicating gesture. Diamond sneered back at her, and Julia bit down on her lip and continued her sermon. "It can be very difficult for us to know our place in the Holy Mother's plan. Even the worst amongst us has a place and a purpose. Yesterday, we were attacked by heathens, but most of those who drew weapons against us were not spawn of the devil. They were creatures of God like you and me—misguided into heresy, but her children all the same. We must always show grace to those who have been led astray. We must always give a second chance."

Julia turned around and nodded to Jade. Jade hoisted the sack of potatoes, walked over to the caldron, and dumped Helga Sunscraper into it. Her wings were cut off, her arms and legs were amputated, and her jaw had been shattered. My stomach dropped into my guts. Jade emotionlessly tied a rope around Helga's waist and hoisted her upright in the caldron by a pully from above. Helga squirmed desperately, her broken jaw clenching to form words that wouldn't sound. Her blue eyes flitted frantically, then fell on me. Her demeanor calmed, and her eyes filled with hope. Oh my god, did I wish it was hatred instead.

"She came to rescue you in the night," Julia said beside me and produced a capsule in her hand. "Once Jade incapacitated her, she tried to bite down on this. It was lucky that Jade's punch was so quick, or we would never have discovered what you and Justina had hidden behind your molars." She gave me a disapproving frown. "Brandon, suicide is a mortal sin. You were raised on the Maternal Path; you should know better."

"I'll do whatever you want," I hissed. "Anything, just let her go."

"I am letting her go."

As the crowd roared its bloodlust, Julia stepped beside the caldron and raised her hand for silence. This time, they gave it to her.

"Here is a fallen child," Julia proclaimed, resting her hand on Helga's shoulder. "One who has reveled in her sin and blasphemy all her life. With my daughter's purifying water, and my cleansing flame, we will heal her, but only the demon who brought her here can deliver her into God's embrace." Julia turned around, reached into her robes, and produced her bible. She handed it to me and smiled. "Now you will give a sermon, Brandon. There are fifty-three thousand four-hundred and ninety-two words in this book. When you have read the last letter, your follower will be exercised of her sin, and Jade will send her to heaven."

Julia lit a woodless flame beneath the caldron, then took Diamond by the hand, and began walking down the steps.