Chapter 32—Memory

Rashawn was staring at the Spear of Hell. Peter had been watching him for a few minutes, confused why the scarred man was so fixated on the strange structure. He was mesmerized, and while Peter had to admit he had a reason—had to admit that the structure did just randomly repair, he couldn't see much to lose himself in, besides the clouds that closed the wounds. Maybe that's where Rashawn was? Maybe with the eyes of a Scion, he could see more than Peter could? He heaved his shoulders as he pulled his eyes away. Whatever went through Rashawn's mind, he might find out about it later.

Peter turned to Fiona next though, for while Rashawn stared up, she stared down, into the black pool where her arrows sank before. She was focused, as if she could see within it, waiting for the moment she reached her marks. Corrosion was gone, and this was why. Peter went over to stare beside her, trying as best he could to see with whatever eyes let the two of them see through the darkness.

“What’s up?” Fiona said, focus unbroken.

“That’s what I want to know. What are you looking for?”

“I’m not really looking. I can’t see anything. I’m just sort of holding things together, you know? Gifts of being from the coast.”

“That means I should be a lot stronger, huh?”

Fiona smiled. “You fought one of the royal children and got away with your life.”

“You did too.”

“Yeah, but I was better trained than her. You beat someone who had all the privilege of being a Klein and being from Sector One. You’re pretty strong, Pete.”

“I survived, but I don’t think I beat him.”

“Even if he can pull himself back together, think of it like this. You were the mouse that took down the cat. You’re more than willing to do it again.”

Peter had to nod at that. She was right. If he had to have a rematch with Elias, he wouldn't back down. What would be the point when death was on the other side? Maybe it was something worse than that? Maybe it'd be something like the foreboding feeling he got as he stared into the abyss. The abyss was staring back.

“What’s down there?” He turned to his sister.

Fiona considered the question with a finger pressed against her lips. “Hell, you could say. Places like the freezing court, except you’d wish you were in the court if you got trapped down there.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could call the Azure Coast a paradise, if not for the shadow that day. We all lived in peace and prosperity, wanting for nothing more than knowledge and adventure. The Azure Coast was heaven, and people will do anything to get into heaven.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. Even fall into hell. A light appears at the end of the tunnel, and they desperately follow it, hoping heaven will be on the other end. Even when they suffer. Even when it goes on for eons. They’ll say they suffer as a service to god, swearing that if they bear it, they’ll pass the final test to reach paradise.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t they realize they weren’t serving god eventually?”

“Nah.” Rashawn said suddenly. “People get like that sometimes, y’know? What if you make a mistake and it really is the big man? Now, you’re off to the “real” hell, and it’s gonna be worse.”

Fiona nodded. "People will always dream up nightmares, then do anything to run away from them."

“I can’t even imagine what you mean.”

“Be glad we can’t see down there then…”

⁘⁛⁘

Down there, in a place where the sun shined bright and nearly white, a crowd gathered in an amphitheater, where a priest in black stood with an ax in his hands. To either side of him squirmed shackled men, little more than boys with similar faces. The brothers fought against chains binding them to tables, trying to free themselves from what would eventually pull them down. This was their end, and the older looked at the younger with eyes overflowing with apologies. He had got him into this mess, even though he didn't want to. He tried his best to keep him away, but his younger brother always followed his lead.

“Ladies and gentlemen we are gathered here today to punish the impure!” The priest boomed. “We have known the devil was among our ranks for sometime now, and lo we have found him in the bodies of two of our own flock! But we knew the devil was a tricky type, a slithering scaled man that looks more lizard than human. And we know that this tricky devil can slither his way into another man’s flesh, slipping past our watchful eyes to whisper venom in our ear. We know that the devil takes thralls and leaves them, making sure to infest the world before god is ready to return! But I tell you good people, we are God’s sword! We will strike these brothers down in his name, once again banishing the impure from our holy realm!”

“Praise God!” Cheered the crowd, and the priest looked at the brothers.

“This is your last chance sons. This is the last chance you’ll get to force the devil from your souls! What color is God’s light?”

The brothers looked at each other, eyes pleading with the other to give the right answer. Only one of them needed to live. Each was fine with dying if the other got to go on. The right choice was the way out of this situation, but the priest was more than ready to close all the roads.

“Tell me now, sons. What color is God’s light? Gaze up into the sky and tell me now. Tell me what color you see! Show us that god is still merciful, even after you’ve come this far. Speak to the crowd, sons! What color is God’s light?”

The brothers looked up, though they knew nothing would be different. For months they had been following the footprints of a lie that was centuries old, searching for the truth in forbidden places, expecting to find a corpse instead. They looked up even though no one could be correct. People just repeated what the priest said, certain that so long as they lied loud enough they'd convince the light they always saw it. But the brothers knew better. They knew that what they were supposed to see was one color, but the ball that burned nearly white above shifted, cycling through different faces. What color was God’s light? This was a trick question. The priest just wanted proof he had to kill them; he just wanted examples for everyone else. The younger of them began to cry.

“Can we say it together?” He asked. The priest nodded with a long and thin smirk.

The brothers looked at each other, then looked up again. There was no answer they could agree upon. The cycle was different for every eye. Still, they looked and smiled in defeat.

“Crimson.” They said together. The priest’s smirk broke.

“What?”

“Crimson.” Something hissed into his ears.

He tried to swing his ax but an armed stopped his body. It was skeletal, bones sitting in liquid red flesh. It led to more of the same at its shoulder and a horned-skull head. As terror filled the priest’s eyes the demon took hold of the back of his neck, lifting him from the ground as its fingers dug in. The crowd shrieked, and the demon dug harder, silencing them with the priest’s screams.

“Look what you’ve done!” He cried at the brothers. “You have summoned the devil into our holy land.”

“No.” The demon hissed. “They did not summon me and I am no devil. I followed the stench of decay. I am the rot that it precedes.” The veins in the priest’s neck bulged out as something coursed into them. The demon pulled the man down, bringing itself back to his ear. “I am Corrosion, The Crimson Prophet.”

“What do you want you wretched creature? Why do you torment a just man!" The priest wailed. Corrosion shoved him to his knees.

“I want you to pray for salvation.”

⁘⁛⁘

“I finally understand!” King said again with more fervor.

It all started to make sense when the power filled Micaela’s body. Even he could feel the room pulling pieces of blue light together, feeling it the most when it pulled something in his chest. Something inside crashed against a wall it couldn’t break, slamming into it at full speed. He wasn’t rattled but he felt it move, the crash echoing through him like the ringing of a bell. He finally understood. He finally wrapped his head around what made him and the others so special. Luster was different things to different eyes, and that included eyes in the dark.

“Are you interested in filling me in?” Khalaf asked.

“He understands,” The woman who was not Micaela started. “The gravity of this situation. Isn’t that right, my little lost lamb?”

He understood how heavy her words were. Not those, but the ones she spoke before. Finally, I have returned.

“And isn’t it a grave situation? I can hear the prayers even this far down. I can hear their cries and desperation. I can hear the people starved of god and how desperately they need one. Their salvation is almost here. Almost.” She looked to the dark ceiling. King spun his glaive into being. “Are you going to stop me, lost lamb?”

“Yes!”

“You could only run before. Are you sure you don’t want to call your Dark Master?”

King understood that too. This place was familiar and the soul lanterns were not unlike him. This is where things started. This was their first test and in the last room, he was the only one to pass it. He could almost hear his master's voice still. It was a whisper, void of age or gender.

“You can hear me lost souls. There is more to life than flesh and bone. You can live again, but first you must remember how. Memories can be written into the soul, but it is only in the light that they will stay.”

“Maybe you can’t call your master? Perhaps his time came and he fell like those before him.” She frowned. “How very tragic, but it will not be in vain. His fall will let me rise, and I will answer the prayers. All the sorrow, all the pain, I will answer it and I will be a goddess like no other. And you, lost lamb? As you have shown me the way back you have also shown me the way forward.” She tapped her glass skirt, breaking shards into dust she swirled around her wrists and fingers. She swirled a bit onto her chest and smiled at King. "This world is truly meant for me. It has changed so much. The people have learned new things. Now they can move their light with a tool." The shards solidified, forming silver versions of the chest piece and Luminance band. "But I can improve them, with a touch and with a word." She swirled dust around herself. “Luster. Remember.” It took the gaseous form of a planetary ring, circling her chest and shoulders as if she were a world herself. Her light gloves grew into sleeves upon her arms and she raised a finger to point at King.

Everything exploded in a pale blue light, searing hot and sharp as glass; darkness burning away. King shot like a jet, but smoke still fell from his body. His armor did its best to protect him, but the look on Khalaf's face told him it wouldn't hold up. He might have realized it himself if his mind wasn't still somewhere else. A warning flashed across his visor and he stopped. Another explosion blossomed, spreading a blue sky over his head. A second warning flashed and he swung his glaive around. It cut into something he could barely see, spreading it like a school of fish, swimming hurried circles around him. A beam fell like lightning from above. He plummeted into a graceless nose dive, saved only from a bloody crash by Khalaf’s quick hands. A silver floor sparkled beneath him; the goddess at its center raising her finger again.

“King! You have a plan right?” Khalaf’s desperation made his chest go cold.

“Luminance Break!” He yelled, and the explosion only blasted him away this time. King righted himself and kept on the move.

“What is this woman’s math?” Khalaf glared as they buzzed through the sky. "It's beyond me! Like a calculator trying to match a supercomputer. She's solving the problem on the first number." Sparks crackled beside King, spewing a beam. His left arm smoldered as he pulled away.

“I should have known Micaela would be the perfect vessel." He hissed through his teeth. But how could he? Before this point, everything was still shrouded. He only had the memory of life.

“So you do know her then?” Khalaf asked as King cut. The school surrounded the Number again and Khalaf swung his arms, wrapping him in a bubble of glyphs. Beams lanced through them still, writing lines upon King’s body.

“Of course he does.” The goddess rose, fluttering in the sky in front of him. “His brilliant little mind is a product of my rule.”

King swung the glaive and she brushed it aside, turning its blade to glitter in the wind. She pointed and the air-popped, flinging him with sudden thunder. Silver shrapnel raked across his armor as he crashed into the ground. For a moment the armor flickered back to the familiar black glass, making his chest tighten before it returned to its new shape. Khalaf's eyes jumped from him to the woman above. She was watching… No, frozen! He snapped back toward King.

“I’m guessing she fell into a little trap?”

“When she broke my glaive.” King huffed. “She doesn’t realize that I can hack her. It doesn’t do enough for her to notice, but this is about all I can do for now.”

“Well, while we have the time, want to tell me why she’s so focused on you? Not that I like getting into other people’s business, but you’re my ride you see, and I’d like to make it home.”

“When I met Dr. Gupta, he was already dead. He had an Orange luster though, that he split between himself and butcher. They shared one light in an effort to keep it from growing.”

“Interesting. Must have been after my untimely death. I don’t see what this has to do with anything though.”

“I didn't realize how he got his hands on it at first, but it was looking me in the face all this time. The Spear of Hell tears the God Eternal apart, right? It pulled out every part of that wasn't orange, then pulled apart the rest." King looked at the goddess. "Gupta said disciples were the only ones who answered the spear’s calling. It was all because we never knew luster was separate from light—we never knew there was anything to it.”

“I’m following along so far.”

“We were all reborn through the darkness instead of the light. Dark Disciples, not Radiant Acolytes like Micaela.”

“Right, because Micaela was revived by the Cerulean Arbiter. She was a gray before.”

“And what are Grays?”

“People who’s light were stolen by the God Eternal.”

“And how does one become an acolyte?”

“By getting a new Luminance?”

“Yes.” King nodded. “Their Luminance was terminated by the God Eternal. They were blank slates anybody could write into. The soul remembers the shape of the body, right? Well, doesn’t that include the mind? The ridges, the bumps, the way it developed. Cerulean only needed to fill those lines in. That’s why Micaela doesn’t remember being a gray.”

“They copied over her existence!” Khalaf wrote hundreds of glyphs, preparing them for the paralysis's end. "That explains her but not you."

“We were reborn through darkness by passing a simple test. We had to witness the light without falling for the allure of their world. We had to summon our own Spears of Hell to prove we were ready to go beyond. I summoned a spear and used her world as an offering.”

“An offering to whom?”

“My Dark Master.”

King had a memory. The sun was blue above the domain of Queen Adale. Towers stood proud, shining silver, with waves undulating between them. People flew on platforms to greet their neighbors, traversing this world through the air and air alone. When the waves rose and crashed against windows the people celebrated the vitality of the queen. They would build their towers to stretch even higher, each one serving to let her shape the world. King remembered waking in this place one day, with a voice in his ear.

“Make your way back to me.” It was his master’s voice, coming from an inky black seed that sat in his palm. He was small at the time, belonging to no one, the only orphan child in a city where orphans had long ceased to exist.

He roamed between the buildings on platforms he could barely control until one family found the strange anomaly and made him theirs. He was fed like one of their own and slept in a waiting room as if it was always meant for him. There was even a name he couldn't quite remember, buried under years and years of changing numbers. This was the first place he ever thought of as home, and to make it back to his master, he had to throw it all away. Did he hesitate to summon the spear? Was there a moment when he thought this life might be better? He was too small back then to remember all the moments, but he could see the spear he built, rising from the churning waves in a shadowy imitation of the city.

“What was the point of the offering?” Khalaf asked.

“To prove we couldn’t be tempted by false light. Making it back to New York wasn’t going to be a simple journey. Even here, where the rooms shape themselves to our designs. We’re still so far down, and the effort of rebirth would be wasted if we couldn’t make it back to the proper world.”

“Your spear consumed an entire world for the sake of your revival. What did your master do with it?”

King could only remember half of the answer to that. Half of it was in his chest, caged away from its point of origin. Queen Adale was much like Gupta in a way, making him Butcher.

“By making this offering my master changed my soul, replacing it with the Umbra necessary to let me have a Luminance. He turned me into a living God Coffin, which allowed me to be reborn.” And if he had to guess, going off of Adale’s words. “The rest of it he used in a fight against the God Eternal.”

“Yes!” She called down, finally free of her paralysis. “That master of yours took my right away! I was meant to topple that gluttonous wretch and he stole my hard work, only to lose in the end. I could have become the One True God, but you and him together took it all from me.”

“And all the souls we saw, lighting the way down here, they were taken from domains like hers. They’re all waiting for their god’s return.”

“My lost lamb is so very clever. Your time under my rule has made you better than anything this world could ever create. You should have abandoned the darkness, little one, you would have found your perfect place by my side.” She raised her finger to the sky. “After all, what could a thing of darkness ever teach you about the light?” Rings spread out above her, schools swimming in opposing circles as a star ignited at the center. “It is a shame, but thank you for helping me come this far. I’ll build my power off the misery of this world and slay the Cannibal Glutton myself.”

King remembered the shape of that star, brightening the sky every morning. With just a finger she twisted the light to remake the world. With just a finger, she'd forge a new one on his grave. Queen Adale was what Cerulean hoped the Arbiter would be. She was a true goddess, and her wrath could destroy and create anew.

“Thoughts?” Khalaf said with wide eyes, mind trying to track the addition before him.

“I am her lost lamb.” King fiddled with his Luminance band. “There was much New Dawn didn’t know, and much the Enclave didn’t have in their lessons.” What could a thing of darkness ever teach you about the light? Nothing, he supposed, which was why he had to go to her world, to begin with. His Dark Master could not teach him how to use the light to live, but she could. His Dark Master couldn't teach him how to do much with the light, but even now, Queen Adale had given him a valuable lesson.

“Luminance Shift." He called, making his chest piece change shape. Normally a downward triangle with a circle at its center, it turned upward with nodes on each of its lines. For a moment the lines of circuitry in his suit glowed brighter than before, dimming seconds later as the silent change completed. Above his head the fish now swam in and around their star, pulling the force closer to completion. He was not going to match its scale, but that possibility was never likely with the enclaves training. It wasn’t likely for a dark disciple either, and it wasn’t time to terminate his Luminance yet. He lifted his arms, drawing back as light flowed into a bow and arrow. Taking sight of Adale, he thought about her world, turning the memory into a shot.

“Luminance Transplant." He let the arrow fly. It took off fast, flying at her eye as if he fired it from a gun.

She caught it between her fingers before it could make contact, snapping it as she shrunk her star down. Her finger came up and his did the same. Khalaf braced for a blast that would tear King's atoms apart, but the Number spoke instead.

“Luminance Consume.”

Adale shrieked as her arm suddenly went black. She tightened a fist and the color returned, only for the light to flicker out again. Glaring down, she discarded the cool joy she had before. King could see a memory in her eyes—the memory of the day she fell.

“What have you done!” She cried.

“I remember what we did under your rule. Giving you power to fulfill your promise. You'd pull us from the darkness back to a place where devils couldn't get in. You'd kill the Cannibal Glutton and rule as our queen, promising prosperity for as long as you had the throne." It was no lie or trick. Adale wanted this world and she needed her people to reach it. “I remember that you would never let a drop of light go to waste. Each bit of blue was a chance for you to grow stronger.”

“You vile child. You have placed a curse on me!”

“That's a good way to put it. I have given you the Luminance of a dark disciple, forever entwined with my Umbra; darkness that grew used to containing your power years ago."

Adale smiled despite it now spreading up her body. "How clever of you lost lamb! But is it worth sacrificing this girl?"

"No." King shook his head. "But she won't be sacrificed. It's my Luminance, and I'm going to reach out to her."

To Micaela, shrunken so much that atoms stormed around her. She didn’t know what to do or how to go back, and a part of her mind felt like it had already faded away. Words escaped her this far down, gone so much that she couldn’t name the arrow that flew toward her. It hit though, piercing her chest, reminding her of the shot Fiona made when Celine snatched her Luminance away. It reminded her of herself, and to who her body belonged. Her brow furrowed, and deep within Adale's light, now darkening along the edges, she lifted her arm as if to take hold of the sun.

“Luminance…” King called with another finger lifted.

“Amplify," Micaela answered, feeling her mind reach out like desperate drops of water trying to fill every crack and crevice. She grew until she flooded the atoms, drowned the bacteria, and left towering cells sunken. She rose until she stood beside Adale herself, who stared with a vengeance as the researcher shoved her hands into her pocket.

“I bet you think you’re having a pretty rough day.” She smiled. Adale hissed.

“I shall not be defeated by him again!”

“Yeah, that’s the sad part about this for you. You’re not being defeated by him.” The researcher lifted her hand; lifting Adale within it. “You’re being beat by me.” She smirked. “There’s a better word for making something smaller, though.” Her fingers rose like mountains around the goddess. “Luminance Condense.” She closed them, closing Adale off from the world.

There came a bright flash and when the light faded she found herself on the floor, with King standing over her. Khalaf clapped silently behind him, and she rose, dusting herself off as if a speck to cover her.

“So…” She answered the look in his eyes. “What’s next?”