Queene Of Light

His expression softened and he released her. She knew it pained him to show anger. It made him unattractive. “I apologize. I am merely fatigued. Mabb sent a squadron out to search for you, but they were unable to penetrate the Darkworld border. I feared you were lost.”

She turned away, dragging the staff to the weapons rack. Mabb’s troops could have easily breached the border of the Darkworld. Unlike the heavily guarded entrances to the Lightworld, the tunnels leading into their enemies’ territory were defenseless. But she would not risk threatening the denizens of the Darkworld with her troops, possibly starting a war. Certainly not over Ayla, who Mabb strongly disliked.

Ayla reached for a broadsword, though her muscles screamed from overuse and her brain begged for sleep. More training, more time to think, that was what she needed.

“Ayla, please,” Garret soothed, his footsteps indicating his approach. “You are tired. We can train tomorrow, but now I would like you to sleep. Stay with me tonight. I can take you to Sanctuary in the morning.”

Sanctuary. The word held such a sweet promise of rest and spiritual calm. She could meditate at Sanctuary, bathe in the pools, be renewed.

Be free of the memory of the Darkling.

The very thought of him steeled her resolve to keep working. “I will go to Sanctuary in the morning. Alone.” As I will sleep alone tonight, she added silently.

Garret gave a heavy sigh. “As you wish it.”

She watched him as he left, his slender form disguised by his voluminous Guild robes. His wings lay at his back, transparent as water, swirled with gossamer color like oil polluting a puddle. He was much admired by the ladies at Court, as Ayla had seen on the occasions when she’d gone to the Palace to make her reports. To have the attention of the Queene’s brother was an envious thing, and Ayla appreciated her position even if she would not accept his love. It was no secret that her Human father had won her place in the Guild in a gambling house on the Strip, but that Garret had chosen to tutor her, that was a touch of luck she could never count on again. She was grateful to him. Most students and mentors were assigned unless prior arrangements were made, and Ayla had been in no position to buy a better one.

“But when I saw you in the assembly,” Garret often told her, “I knew I had to be near you, if only as your mentor.”

She did owe him her gratitude, but she found it difficult to parlay that debt into a lifetime bound to him. And she knew what was whispered about her. That she was proud, that she did not know how unrealistic her expectations were. It was not as if one could aspire higher than an heir to the kingdom. That the kingdom, indeed, their entire plane of being, no longer existed did not matter. Nor did their immortality. Mabb could rule for eternity, so long as she was not harmed. It seemed unlikely that the Queene would fall to injury or illness with her retinue of guards and healers. Still, for a half-breed like Ayla, a match with Garret was more than she should ever have hoped for, and she knew it.

So did Garret, and that was some of the problem.

Why could she not simply accept his affections for her own gain? She did not like living in the barracks, constantly guarding her possessions from the Pixies and Tricksters that shared the quarters. Of course, she would not have to worry about her meager possessions if she went to live with Garret in his home outside the Palace. She would have possessions worth guarding. A fine rug instead of the coarse, cold cement of the tunnels beneath her feet. Food and rich wine that she didn’t have to fight for, stolen from the Human world above, where things were clean and worth stealing. There weren’t many luxuries Underground, but Garret would give her anything he could, simply because he wished to.

She worked through defense with the broadsword, waiting until she was certain Garret had left the Guild compound. It was nearly morning by the time she stumbled from the training room. Soon, it would be the Human noon hour, and the sun that Ayla had never seen would be directly over the surface of the Earth, spilling light into the grates and gutters, illuminating the Underground with secondhand dawn.

Ayla had not been born yet when the Humans had destroyed the Astral and Etheric planes. Garret had been there, and like all of the Fae who had fought in the wars against the Humans, remembered it well, though nearly three hundred years had passed. He sang songs of it at times, strumming his harp with a look of regret so keen it seemed woven into the enchantment of the music itself. There had been a spiritual war amongst the Humans, one side wielding their sacrificial God like a sword against “nonbelievers.” Like a pendulum swinging, Human society embraced this way of life, then rejected it. It was during the last shift that the boundaries between what they believed to be real and the lands of their dreams and nightmares were severed.

Garret spoke with disgust about the behavior of the Humans who’d claimed their practices were a revival of the old ways, marketing crystals and oracles and glossy books claiming to hold the secrets to powerful magics. “Some claimed to be Druids,” he’d scoffed once, when he’d used his pipe a bit too much. “Druids. I walked with Amergin. He gave me this harp. The fools, if they had any idea of what it meant to be a true Druid…ah, but half of them don’t even eat animals. They believe it is too cruel.”

But it hadn’t mattered. With the followers of the One God calling on him in prayer for even the most mundane situations and the pretenders invoking spirits and attempting to force their consciousness onto the Astral plane, the veil rent. The Gods “Seemed to disappear as mist into the air,” as Garret described it, and the creatures the Humans had long thought of as myth had spilled onto Earth with no hope of ever leaving. They were welcomed at first, celebrated even. But when they did not show themselves to be the helpful sprites consumed with admiration for the Human race that the mortals expected, they turned on them.

It was said the war began when the Fae races drove the Humans Underground, though the story that existed outside the Lightworld was that the Humans had fled below the Earth of their own volition. They abandoned their world for the caverns they had hewn from the dirt, tunnels for sanitation and great vehicles that shook the ground as they traveled on rails. The Humans drilled passages to connect them and create the great cities of the Underground.

As more Humans fled the world above, a mortal rose as leader among his people. Uttering his name was forbidden in the Lightworld, but Ayla had not always lived there. In her childhood on the Strip, the neutral zone between the borders of Dark and Light, she’d heard him spoken of. Madaku Jah, the Prophet. Or the Traitor, depending who told the tales. No matter if he was reviled or praised, he’d raised an army against the creatures above them and forced them into the very Underground they’d made the mortals endure.

Now, the tides shifted again. Only a fool would ignore the signs. Another battle brewed, but this one was not against the Humans, the common enemy of the Light and Dark worlds. This war would be fought in the Underground. The grim thought haunted Ayla as she shuffled to the barracks, her body on the verge of collapse.

Inside, only the Pixies had begun to rouse. They always rose early, desperate for what little sunlight they could get.

One of them stopped her with a wide grin. “Ayla, you look terrible. Come with us to Sanctuary.”

“Of course I look terrible. I have been training all night. Now I need rest, while I can still have it.”

“Suit yourself.” The Pixie flashed another winning smile. Any creature with a drop of mortal blood would look terrible in comparison to the Fae races, preternaturally young and strong. And they had gotten rest. They had not been plagued with thoughts of a newly mortal creature lying helpless in the Darkworld.

Neither had she, she scolded herself. There was no reason to think on the creature. Not to pity him. That had been her first mistake. Not to revel in her victory, obviously. All she needed to think of was a good enough reason for her failure.

So, why then, did she fight for sleep on her hard bunk, ignoring the sounds of the other Assassins as they rose, unable to chase away the memory of the Darkling’s voice and anguished face?

Four

Malachi opened his eyes to a strange, mechanical whirring and a pressing weight on his back as he lay on his stomach. He remembered the man in the tunnel, the one who had stabbed him and drugged him, the shock and horror as he realized he would be defenseless against whatever would come.

Panic seized him, and it was an emotion he did not like. In fact, he did not like any of the emotions he had experienced thus far. He jerked up, bracing his hands beneath him, the bite of cold metal meeting his hands where his flesh had not warmed it.

“Don’t move, I’m almost done.” The command was most calm, considering the man had abducted him.

Malachi swallowed, his newly mortal throat as dry as parchment. “I am thirsty.”

“Sorry, nothing to drink during surgery. It’s unsanitary,” the man responded. A flare of something passed Malachi’s face, and when he peered over the rolled edge of the table he saw the withering remains of those addictive tubes of paper the mortals in the Underground despaired of finding regularly enough to feed their habit.

Mortals lived in the Underground for two reasons. They sympathized with the denizens of the Underground, or they had been banished from the Human world for practicing magics. But the man’s reason for being there did not concern Malachi so much as what he was doing. “Surgery? I do not understand.”

“Of course you don’t.” Another burst of whirring, accompanied by an acrid scent that Malachi recognized as burned flesh, punctuated the man’s words. “Your kind are ethereal. You never need patching up, or at least you’re not supposed to. But you, my friend…you were in bad shape when I found you.”

Though the man’s words were strange, his meaning was clear. Malachi cursed him silently and rested against the table once more. “You should have left me to die.”

“It was tempting. I haven’t ever gotten my hands on a pair of these beauties. Promise me if you kick off before I do, you won’t mind me keeping them?” Another burst of whirring, then, “Okay, all done.”

The man jumped down from the table—it must have been his knee causing the pressure, Malachi decided—and helped him to sit up. Malachi teetered under the weight of his wings. They’d been too heavy from the moment he’d turned mortal, but they were lopsided and unwieldy now. “What have you done to me?”

“Saved your life. And your wings.” The man touched one of them, and Malachi hissed involuntarily at the pain. “Well, they’re gonna be tender for a while.”

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” Malachi moved to stand, but his weakened limbs would not support him. Light danced before his eyes, leaving the room darker with each starburst, and he fell onto the table again, bending the tips of his wings beneath him.

“No, no, don’t go passing out. You’re too big for me to catch if you fall.” The man steadied him, then held out one blood-crusted hand. “Name’s Keller. And I’m doing this because I hate to see perfectly healthy folk go down for things that are easily fixed. You would have bled to death out there. Don’t let me tell you how to live, but I’d much rather live a life that’s worth something than die alone in the Sewer District. Place is a hellhole.”

“Where am I?” His vision cleared, Malachi surveyed the room. Pipes made a grid of the low ceiling, and the Human had used them to hang too-bright electric lights that gave off a terrible fizzing sound. He’d covered the walls in a wide, wire mesh fence, forming crude walls around their space. Everywhere were boxes and steel cabinets, and tables strewn with mechanical parts and tools.

“You’re in my shop,” Keller said with forced pride. “In the Sewer District. But hey, the rent’s cheap, and at least I found a dry place. You wouldn’t believe some of the hovels around here—they have to sleep in hammocks to stay out of the muck.”

Malachi said nothing. He’d seen many homes in the Darkworld. Creatures mortal and immortal fought to survive in the harshest half of the Underground, and their ingenuity knew no bounds. Keller’s humble shop seemed a palace in comparison to some Darkworld dwellings, and his numerous boxes indicated he had some way of earning material possessions.

“I outfitted you with some lightweight aluminum I won in a card game. I heard it came from an airplane.” Keller tapped one of the sore spots on Malachi’s wing, and the resultant clang distracted Malachi from the pain. When the man faced him, Malachi saw one arm was completely missing from the elbow. In its place, an intricate system of metal and wires imitated the severed body part. In fact, the man’s head seemed to be fitted with metal, as well, a long, curved piece of shiny steel that scooped around his ear. Keller scratched at the metal fragment in his skull with the false hand, and sparks jumped from the contact. “So, now you know why I’m not living the life fantastic up on the surface.”

“Yes.” There was nothing else to say. The man was clearly a Bio-mech, a creature who believed the Human body an appliance with replaceable components that could outlast the ravages of time. It was not as the Lord intended, as evidenced by the high number of souls the Death Angels claimed from experiments gone awry.

“Yeah, well, I saved your life, so go to hell,” Keller snapped, and only then did Malachi realize he’d been staring.

“I did not ask for your pity. I prayed for death, and this is how I am repaid?” Malachi shook his head. The motion seemed oddly natural. “I am not meant to be here.”

“I can always put you back.” Keller sounded…insulted? Malachi had such a difficult time putting the word to the tone of voice.

“You are not pleased.” He could not summon up more empathy for the man’s reaction. Malachi’s only concern was for his mortal body, and the death that had been stolen from him.

“I’m a little pissed, yeah. I did save your life.” Keller turned to one of his worktables, moving some equipment there. “That’s worth something, whether you believe it or not.” After a long pause, he tossed something heavy onto the table with a clatter. “What were you doing in that tunnel?”