The Creators Ch 20

Chapter Twenty: Collision

Part One: Mountains

ASTRID

"Is that all of it?" Willowbud asked Nona.

"All that I could carry," Nona replied, dumping her volume of obsidian shards into a pile.

Willowbud selected a wide flat piece, and nodded. "I can work with this. Has anyone seen Bianca?"

I peered out into the darkening skies, but couldn't see anything moving. Bianca would keep a low profile to avoid the Breytan's watchful gaze, so if I couldn't see her, she was either doing a very good job, or she was dead. Five minutes later, she emerged from the top of the cave's mouth.

"I had to go around," she said breathily. "Fucking Breytans have a radius of five miles. Luckily, the pyres to the west are still burning beneath their crosses." She lowered her arm from above the cave's mouth, and produced an obsidian torch carrying a persistent black flame.

"Careful with that shit!" Willowbud hissed, and beckoned her over urgently.

Bianca held the flame outward before her, trying to keep it as far from her body as she could while still bearing it. I didn't know how she'd flown with it. From twenty paces away, I could feel its warmth. The black fire cast a bright white light on the cave's walls, illuminating everyone in monochromatic hues. When it approached Willowbud, she cringed horribly, though given our experiences with Julia's fire, it was admirable that she didn't run away. I wasn't getting any closer to it. Bianca secured the torch between two rocks. Willowbud turned one of the obsidian shards into a long pair of tongs, then she pinched the wide flat piece of plate, and hovered it over the fire. The obsidian didn't glow with heat, but darkened with it, absorbing the energy until it was smoldering black. Willowbud pulled it away, then nodded to Bianca. Bianca rushed to the back of the cave, then came sprinting back with Arya in her arms. The bandage below her severed shoulder was dripping with black blood, and in the monochrome of the firelight, her face was even whiter than mine. Bianca set her daughter down, and hurriedly peeled away the bandage. The stump was swollen and weeping with puss, and the smell was horrific. Arya moaned weakly, her eyes blurry and ignorant of what was around her. Bianca planted a kiss on her brow, then pulled out her belt, and stuck the leather between her teeth. Willowbud pulled the plate from the fire and pressed the searing metal to Arya's arm. Meat sizzled, the smell of burning pork fat filled the air, and Arya's eyes bulged with clarity. Her muffled shriek echoed in the cave, and her mother whispered sweet comfort and planted kisses upon her feverish brow. Willowbud pulled the metal back, leaving a clean and closed stump on Arya's shoulder. Arya's wails turned to sobbing moans, and Bianca wept in relief.

The same procedure was done to fifteen of the other amputees, but those who had sustained wounds to the abdomen or pelvis could not be healed in this way. They were provided with whatever comforts could be given to them and kept in the darkness where their dimming vision would not have to feel the pain of the bright light. After the last of the salvageable soldiers were burned, I presented my own wounds to Willowbud. She looked up at me with a woeful expression, and I smiled reassuringly down at her and bit into the belt. It was funny; I remembered very little of what had happened to me in that hole beneath Drastin after I'd slashed Julia's back. All I recalled was the flash of blue light, and then the red eyes of my blood-mother sometime later. But in that moment, when I felt the incredible heat eating right into my flesh, the memory of that searing agony came surging back into me, and I shrieked around my gritted teeth. Willowbud hastily pulled the iron away and began apologizing profusely, and I had to snatch her by the wrist and force her to press the iron to the rest of my wounds. By the time I was done, I was suffused with adrenaline, clammy and cold, and the sweat that dripped off of me was red with blood. I dunked my burns into an awaiting tub of water and whimpered with relief as the steam rose around me. Willowbud carefully placed the small black flame into the bottom of an obsidian caldron and beckoned the awaiting bucket-brigade to extinguish the evil. It took fifty buckets before it finally died.

"Alright," she said, wiping her brow, "give me that piece of obsidian right there."

I handed Willowbud a piece of obsidian. She held it, studied it, then shaped it into a breastplate, and handed it back to me.

"Cup size is a little small," I muttered, struggling to put it on.

"That one was for Nona," Willowbud snickered.

Nona angrily snatched the breastplate from my hands. "I'm not sworn to you, Your Holiness, so I can tell you to go fuck yourself."

Willowbud laughed, grabbed a smaller piece of obsidian, and shaped a ten-inch penis out of it. "Look, my very own Ofanian." She waggled it in front of Nona's face. "Do you wanna watch me make it disappear?"

Nona snatched the dildo from Willowbud's hand. "You're supposed to be making us weapons! And don't you dare turn that into a joke!"

Willowbud bit her lip impishly. "You're not going to give me that back, are you?"

"Gonna add it to your collection?" I whinnied.

Nona actually cracked the barest of smiles. "It's rather small for me, actually, but it is an Ofanian copy, so that's understandable. Here," she tossed it to Bianca, "you can use it to replace the one you lost. It doesn't come with any balls, so it's perfect for you."

Bianca sniffled a laugh as she tended to her daughter. "I'll make you choke on it someday."

With the dour mood somewhat lightened (by Nona fucking Cloudwhisper of all people), Willowbud busied herself with outfitting every able-bodied soldier with armor and weapons. The vambraces, greaves, helms and breastplates were all paper-thin and flexible, connected by chainmail joints that conformed perfectly to the body of the wearer. She shaved fine featherings to create armor for our wings, and they were so light that I barely noticed them when I slipped my span into them. For herself, she made a full body suit, covering every inch of flesh, then reinforcing it with two-hundred pounds of granite from the wall for good measure. She was practically a sphere when she was done, but she walked around as nimbly as a cat, and helped the others don their new armor. I cut some leather to make lacing for my breastplate and greaves, then tied my helmet down, adjusted my faceplate, and secured my gauntlets with a tug. When I was satisfied, I looked up, and caught Willowbud staring at me.

"What?" I asked, worried at her expression.

"Nothing," she said, "I'm just trying to remember what I have to live for."

My heart melted a little. "Oh, Willowbud, you—"

"I can't wait to fuck you in that armor," she said huskily.

My heart melted even more. "Will you keep yours on too?"

She looked down at herself. "I'm a cannonball."

"The sexiest little cannonball in the whole wide world."

She looked back up at me, her forest-green eyes full of love. "Kiss me, you magnificent—" The world exploded.

DIAMOND

The face of the Gratoran Wall was a perfect slab of verticality, smooth and flat all the way until it reached the sloping mountain peaks high above the world. The ancient mountain chain was made of dark granite, and Gratora had smoothed it to a perfect polish, making it look nearly like a dark pane of glass from a distance. Mom stretched lazily, cocked her head this way and that, then pointed her finger at the wall. A line of black energy shot from her finger, its breadth barely that of yarn. When it hit the Gratoran Wall, nothing happened at first. Then I heard a low boom. A small crack formed in the rockface. The crack spiderwebbed, traveling outward in sudden fractals, each new pathway accompanied by a deeper and deeper boom until the fissures traveled past the top of the wall, and up the slopes of the mountains. Mom gave me a little twerk of her brows, created a tight ball of fire in her free hand, and squeezed it until it was barely the size of a grape. She placed the ball on the energetic line, and sent it shooting down. It made a whining sound as it departed, and the whining grew higher as it accelerated into the night, its pitch reaching such screeching limits that it seemed to chisel against my eardrums. Then, I couldn't hear it at all. There was silence. The earth shook. I looked at Mom. She grinned. The world exploded. The face of the Gratoran Wall erupted from within, the massive rocks blasted from their fractal patterns by a volcano of black flame, the chunks turning to meteors, the mountaintops firing into the heavens like granite rockets. Hunks of stone the size of city blocks were sent tumbling into the ranks of orcs, rolling through thousands in a second. They didn't care. They raised their arms and cheered the destruction as the meteors and rockets arced miles above us, as the black fire plumed into a behemoth mushroom of acrid smoke, rising and consuming itself, growing larger until it umbrellaed the desert in its shadow. There was a massive crater in the Gratoran Wall. Two miles of the wall's face had been outright destroyed, and the wound was at least twice as deep, gouging into black rock, releasing great rivers of steaming aquifers like volcanic blood.

"Holy crap," I whispered. Blood ran from my ears as the sound echoed in my head, but I hardly noticed. I just stared at the destruction before me, and felt a thrill of terror crawl beneath my skin. It was very easy for me to forget what Mom was. I was a god, Willowbud was a god, Brandon was a god, but she was the Destroyer, something so mighty and terrible that the very earth shook in her presence.

"Do you think I got her?" Mom mused, dusting the debris off her shoulders.

I looked past the crater, to the high peak that now towered just above its rim. "She could be in Iona."

"Don't!" Justina cried. She and the wasted Brandon were lying behind us. Brandon was awake, but barely alive. His cheeks were so gaunt that he looked like an old man, and he just stared at his mutilated hand, not seeming to comprehend it.

"Please, Diamond," Justina sobbed, clutching at my feet, "don't do it. She's not there, I promise you!"

I grinned back at Mom. "She's definitely in Iona."

Mom aimed her finger, and shot another line towards the heavens. It disappeared into the center of Iona's profile, then she sent the ball down its line. Again, the whine of its acceleration cut through the night, growing higher and higher until it was inaudible. A moment past, then Iona exploded. The snowcapped peak blasted into the night, the great triangular rim erupted from within, and the shockwave of dust traveled down the craterous slope, upended the sand, and slammed into us. I put up a shield of water, but I was still sent flailing onto my back. Mom's robes disintegrated as she wreathed herself in flame, and stood in defiance of the destruction she wrought. When the dust settled, Iona was gone. Justina let out a horrified wail, and Brandon groaned.

"Pity," Mom muttered, dusting herself off once more, "it was such a majestic mountain. I hoped to take you there one day."

"I'm there right now," I giggled, holding up the granite dust.

Mom smiled back at me. "What about the other side of Droktin's Pass? She could be there."

"More! More! More!" I cackled, clapping my hands delightedly.

Mom shot another line, this one diagonally through the entrance of Droktin's Pass, striking the side of it a mile in. Another ball of energy, and another explosion, this one blasting through the top of the uplift like a chain of volcanos, each mountain top consecutively erupting for miles until four of the peaks were hollowed. The shockwave boomed across the desert, a third mushroom cloud rose into the sky, and three acrid columns held the new ceiling of the world aloft as it drifted beneath the stars, and blackened the setting sun.

WILLOWBUD

We were deep underground. After the first blast, I'd taken our cave and forced it through miles of earth until it was so far beneath the bedrock that even the cavernous aquifers of Gratora would not reach it. We still felt the shaking. There was another tremendous earthquake that sent pulses through our cavern, then a third one right above us that shook with such force that the stalactites snapped from the ceiling, and crashed onto the earthen floor. We waited for more, but there was none.

Nona struck a match, illuminating the complete blackness.

"Put that out!" I hissed. "She can see flame!"

Nona extinguished it, and the blackness surrounded us once more. Though everyone else was blind, I could see clearly. I put my hand against the stone wall, and listened to the earth above me.

"What is it?" Astrid whispered.

"She destroyed the wall flanking Droktin's Pass," I send, furrowing my brow to concentrate, "and... and... she destroyed Iona."

"What do you mean she destroyed it?!" Nona hissed.

I looked at her gravely. "I mean the mountain is gone."

Silence fell in the cavern. There wasn't a sob, nor even a whimper; just a cold and building rage.

"Willowbud," Astrid whispered, her voice quivering, "if you love me, you will not stop me."

"Don't be stupid!" I snapped.

"We are not staying down here," Nona said, her tenor calm and commanding. "If you do not bring us to the surface, we will cut our way out."

"This is not negotiable," Astrid said, putting her hand on my rock-laden shoulder. "We did not prepare ourselves just to hide in the earth."

"OK," I took a deep shuddering breath. "Brandon is your priority. You get him out no matter the cost. If you have the shot, I won't stop any of you from taking it. Just know that it will be the last shot you ever take." I laid my hand atop Astrid's. "If you love me, you will stop yourself."

She didn't respond. Her hand stayed still beneath mine, and her breathing was shallow and heated. Finally, she spoke in just a whisper, but it carried such intensity that felt like a scream. "I love you with all my heart, Willowbud Autumnsong," she said, "but you're useless to me right now." She ripped her hand away and took a fistful of my hair. "Gods don't hide in holes!" she snarled. "Gods don't cower like worms in the earth! Gods stand in defiance of the sun! Gods cast a shadow on the world! Willowbud Autumnsong is no fucking god!" She pressed her lips to mine and locked me in a ferocious kiss. She parted with my lips in her teeth, and she bit hard with her fangs. "You've been asleep too long," she purred, "it's time to wake up, Night Eyes."

JULIA

The dust began to settle. Massive granite rocks littered the desert before the wall, standing like monuments of wreckage within the surviving ranks of orcs that surrounded them. I had killed so many, but I cared so little. It was Diamond's horde now, and she had little regard for the sanctity of life. The columns of smoke continued to rise from the craters, carrying the particulates of rock and matter that were now lighter than air itself. The convective forces swirled in the darkening clouds above, and the debris snowed down in the form of ash, blanketing the desert, muting the uproar of the holy army. A tense quiet came upon the world. I clenched my hands beside me, watching, waiting.

"Here she comes," Diamond sang beside me, giggling nervously.

There was no doubt that she was coming. I didn't know how I knew, but the hairs on the back of my neck were raised. I felt the dry heat of my magmatic firestorm raging in the clouds above, yet a chill was crawling up my spine.

"There!" Diamond hissed, pointing south. My eyes darted to where her finger indicated. On the other side of Droktin's Pass, there was movement along the Gratoran Wall. I focused my vision. It was a subtle thing, a slight vibration of the air. It took me a moment to realize that there wasn't movement along the Gratoran Wall at all...

the Gratoran Wall was moving.

A deep groan sounded in the depths of the bedrock, and the earth began to shake, then rumble, then quake. Shale facing fragmented from the granite cliffsides, tumbling down in great sheets to smash the horde below it. Fissures split the ground, consuming dunes and orcs in volumes too numerous to count. Magma erupted from dormant calderas, mountains swayed like treetops, and the world let out a deafening roar. Then, the pass began to close. The two halves slowly crawled toward each other, shifting with such torpidity that it could barely be discerned from this distance, but they were accelerating. She wasn't just closing Droktin's Pass; she was

moving the entire mountain chain!

The spine of Balamora began to close, the gargantuan vertebrae twisting upon themselves, turning the eternal mountains into fluid bodies that belched magma from their peaks. Breyta erupted in the distance, Ofan rose by the second, and the wall just kept sliding along its backbone, tearing the earth beneath it, creating a depthless moat of the bedrock that drain the Gratoran Desert. The sand shifted beneath me, ebbing away like the receding tide, then flowing faster, becoming a granular tsunami that swept the floor of the world away. I rose from the surface with Diamond, who carried Brandon and Daughter Justina with her in a bed of water. I hardly remembered they were there. I just watched with my jaw hanging ajar as the desert drained into the grooves formed along the driving range, carrying every last orc down, down, down into the crushing abyss until flesh and sand were gone, and the tideline of the great desert ocean that had once crashed interminably upon the mountainside was drained to its bedrock. Five miles behind me, the new tideline formed, the dunes sliding into the void left in the wake of preceding waves, forming a gentle thousand-foot gradient to the smooth granite shoreline. One mile before me, the gap of Droktin's Pass was closed. The two halves collided with a thunder of rock, then continued their merging. With nowhere else to go, the split spine of Gratora fused into a deific uplift, rising, rising, rising into the air, bubbling with magma, rupturing with volcanic explosions, but still stabbing its profile ever upwards into the heavens, passing the height of Ofan, then of Breyta, then even of the late Iona. The shockwave of the collision blew my acrid cloud from the sky, dissipating it over the stratosphere until it was nothing but a layer of grey to translucently blanket the twilight dusk, unfit to mask the ascension of such a majestic stone monstrosity. The mountain kept growing, propelled by the implosion of the continent, birthing from the very earth in a display that would've taken God an epoch to witness. The geological timescale ticked away in seconds that lasted millions of years, but such meager constraints of time mattered little in the providence of hell's begotten daughter.

The shaking stopped. The mountain ceased its growth, and stood before me, its triangular profile more impressive than any on earth, dwarfing the giants that had once flanked its position, towering so high that its peak seemed to touch the brightening stars above it. Glowing lava cascaded down its body, filling the meager divots I had made with my flame, pooling upon the flat floor of bedrock that now preceded the wall. The former tideline of sediment still marked where the sand had once touched, but now the wall's foundation was exposed, revealing that Gratora had not bothered to shape its base with nearly the same artistry, for it was jagged and wild like its snowcapped crown. And from the very base, a little door opened, and

she

walked out of it.

She was a speck in the distance, barely even discernable against the great wall of rock were it not for her pure white hair. Even from so far, I could see the familiar swagger in her gait, the ease of her shoulders, the nonchalance of her demeanor as she lazily cocked her head. I could practically see her little smirk of amusement from here. This was not the terrified little cockroach who had dug herself into a hole to flee me. This was the woman who had driven me past the limits of my will. This was the woman who had given me the devil's kiss with the lips of God. This is who I had been waiting for my whole life. This was the reason the Holy Mother put me on this earth. This was why she had bound with me.