Lightbringer

Eliana’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. Their eyes were not black, and yet…

What’s happening here? She tried to block out the echoes of screams tumbling down the road. What is this place?

My sight through your mind is dim just now, but if I see correctly, it is a world called Sath, the Prophet said, their voice so distant that it frightened Eliana. I recognize it. I have seen it myself. When your mother died, the shock resounded through the Deep. Holes opened into many worlds. Some angels lost faith in Kalmaroth long ago and have no desire to return to Avitas. They are making homes elsewhere.

Eliana’s bile rose. Why would any of them wait in the Deep to return to Avitas, then? When they could go to other worlds and escape the Deep’s torment?

The Prophet’s voice came quietly. Because Corien is a force unmatched, and has ingrained in so many angels a thirst for vengeance that cannot be slaked. Because some angels would endure a thousand more years of torment if it meant they could someday come home. A pause. Others despair at the devastating futility of war and want to protect humans from extermination. There are many reasons.

Eliana felt trapped between a great sorrow and an anger pure as ice. Is there no end to the ruin my mother has wrought?

Eliana, you must hurry. Do not allow the Deep to distract you. Remember what you must do.

She obeyed. A dim blue-white glow on the horizon caught her eye. She fixed on it and ran, her feet slamming hard against the road that wasn’t there. As the world of distant Sath sped by, darkness flashed and fluttered at the corners of her eyes: the true Deep, cold and endless, choked with beasts and raw power. The sky was teeming with cruciata, close enough now that Eliana’s tongue tingled with the hot rank stench of their massive bodies. Wings fluttered against her skin; something sharp and thin cut her upper arm. As she ran, she felt the air surge behind her. If she looked back, she knew she would see horrors swarming fast on her heels.

The beasts had been waiting for her. They were ready.

So was she.

Ignoring the dark brimming sky, she kept her gaze on Ostia, its light growing brighter and nearer as she ran, until at last she reached the fissure she had made—a jagged glowing cut through the Deep, and into Avitas.

Eliana went to its sizzling edge and sank carefully to her knees. Her original small cut had expanded to an area some sixty yards square. Shocks of light and color bloomed across it. Beyond and below rippled the faint shapes of Elysium.

Eliana’s pulse beat fast in her throat. She unfocused her eyes and let the empirium wash over her. Waves of gold, surging at her fingers. She could see how thin the fabric of the Deep had become within Ostia’s jagged ring. Only a thin membrane of power remained. A brittle pane of glass, ready to be shattered.

She pressed her toes against the hard road beneath her and believed it was real. She said a silent prayer that this would be enough. She gathered her power into her mind, imagined it as spears, sharp and ready.

Then she plunged her hands into Ostia’s bright edge and let her power explode across it. White light crackled against her fingers and snaked up her arms, as if she were elbow-deep in frothing water. Her castings blazed so hot that her instinct was to rip them off, but she gritted her teeth and kept pushing her hands outward, the pain shooting up her arms so specific and supple that it approached pleasure. Her vision lost all colors but gold.

Then, at last, the fabric of the Deep stretching thinly across Ostia’s mouth gave way.

There was a great hot shudder beneath her hands as of a beast heaving its last breath. A bolt of energy shot up through Eliana’s arms, and she fell back onto the road, gasping. Quickly, she braced her palms against the illusion of stone. She had to keep hold of the lie, for the thing happening before her eyes was so unthinkable that her head spun in protest.

Ostia had been opened. Angry light crackled across its mouth. It had at last become what Eliana had hoped for from that first moment when she awoke in her white rooms and thought of carving a door in the sky.

Her mother had opened the Gate.

And she had opened Ostia. A hole in the Deep. A door leading out from the abyss. Through it, Elysium was clear as a spotless reflection.

You’ve done it, came the Prophet’s voice, dim but triumphant.

Then the cruciata dove.

They tore down from the sky, plunging out of the Deep and into Elysium, a monstrous river of fury. Their clamor was so great it was as if all the beasts in Avitas had lifted their heads to the sky and howled as one. They screamed and wailed, clawing at each other, hungry to be the first to fly through and feed. Some were immense and bulbous, hulking beasts with flat snouts and paws like bludgeons. Others were slender and serpentine, and still others were avian, their hides a mottled mix of scales and feathers.

Eliana’s blood iced over as she watched the raptors fly. She remembered them from the attack outside Karlaine. One had grabbed Patrik and flung him to the ground, breaking his leg. Eliana had killed another with her dagger. The light of Ostia scorched them as they passed through it, leaving their feathers charred, but they flew on uncaring, their fanged beaks open wide.

The cruciata had come from another world. Hosterah, the Prophet had called it. They were mighty enough to survive the Deep.

But Elysium would not survive them.

Her gut clenched with horror as she thought of the innocent lives below that would end in claws and teeth. How many beasts had she already loosed from the Deep, and how many more would fight their way through?

But she did not see another way to fight him, not without this distraction to help her. And if she did not fight him, they were all dead anyway.

Only once did she allow herself to imagine Remy, pursued down a blood-stained street by a monster with gaping jaws. Then, slowly, her hands trembling, she crouched at Ostia’s threshold, its ragged hem sizzling around her. The force emanating from it threatened to hurl her back into the Deep. She clung to Ostia’s bright rim, watching the churning stream of cruciata. Not all of them were able to escape the Deep’s pull. Some were tossed away from Ostia; others clawed at nothing, pinned immobile by a force they could not fight.

But the stronger among them were able to escape. Eliana saw a nearing raptor and liked the look of it. The Prophet said something, a warning, but Eliana ignored them and threw herself onto the raptor’s back as it passed her. She hit it hard, flung her arms around its meaty scaled neck, and braced herself for the fall.

A ring of heat burned past them as they dove, peeling scales and feathers from the raptor’s hide. But then they were through, the beast shrieking as it steadied its wings. It tried bucking Eliana off in midair. Its tail caught an angelic statue and sent it smashing to pieces on the road below.

Eliana, her eyes blurred with tears from the wind, saw a rooftop nearby. She tried to roll as she landed, but she was out of practice and fell badly. The impact jarred her knees, and she cut her arm on a jagged slate tile. She slid down the roof, grabbed on to the cornice and clung there, legs swinging, until she realized the ground below wasn’t far and let go. On the road, she stumbled forward, gritting her teeth against the starbursts of pain that lit up her legs. As the Dread, she could have jumped onto that roof and felt nothing. The thought came and went swiftly, an echo of her former life.