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Binary 15.4
The first Blasphemy's codename was 'the Father.' There was a twisted smile on her face, unnaturally wide and lined with sharp teeth. She leapt from one rooftop to the next, heading south. I followed, slowly gaining on her.
She's leading us into a trap, cautioned Sophia in my head. Right?
Yes, I agreed. Keep your eyes open. There's three of them and only two of us. Watch your flanks.
With a sudden twist, the Father somehow killed her own momentum in midair, dropping straight down into the street. Rather than follow her directly, I went high, far above the narrow lane.
Claws came at me suddenly from a hidden roost on a balcony. The second Blasphemy, the Son, narrowly missed the toes of my boots. On her face was a frown so deep that it seemed to sever her chin from the rest of her face. A burst of smoke, and Sophia appeared beside her already swinging. Amauril was bright as a lamp in the twilight.
I sang a single piercing note, and caught myself on a wall of air directly above the middle of the street. The Father stared up at me, dark eyes glittering, almost familiar. I kicked off and dove for her. She turned on a dime and fled down the road.
She led me along a narrow, cobbled street towards the golden glow of streetlights at a major thoroughfare, cutting through the evening dusk.
By the time she reached the intersection, I was less than ten feet behind her. She leapt from the pavement and seemed to fold into herself, like a stream of fluid. She slipped through the open windows of a passing car's backseat and landed in the middle of the street, then ducked and rolled behind another passing vehicle, trying to lose me.
I jumped, kicking off the wall of the alleyway, and began to hum. Down became my left, and my feet hit the wall. Still singing under my breath, I found her again, perfectly keeping pace with a car just below the driver's sightlines and began to follow, still murmuring a Song under my breath.
The other motorists were starting to notice what was happening. A crescendo of dissonant honks and screams was building all around us. The Father's head craned about at an unnatural angle, her eyes finding mine instantly. Black, and full of stars.
She dropped and rolled to the side, under a car. When it passed, she did not reappear.
I skidded to a halt, turned, and sped after it, still singing. Sunrise snapped into its sheath and Belthronding came off my back, an arrow nocked. As soon as I had an angle, I jumped, landing with a soft click of mithril on steel upon its roof I pulled back the bowstring and fired straight down.
The arrow went through the roof, through the undercarriage, and buried itself in the asphalt, just as the Father dropped out from behind the car. She leapt to her feet, arching her back like a whip, and launched herself at the nearest building. She caught herself on fingernails that were almost claws and scuttled up to the roof like a cat climbing a tree.
Angry French shouted up at me from below. "Bill the PRT for damages!" I shouted back in the same language, before leaping up after the Blasphemy.
As I cleared the rooftop, I had just long enough to register the presence of the Ghost, last of the Blasphemies, before she clawed at me with hands moving faster than the car below. Her face was twisted into a snarl, teeth like knives bared and glinting in the half-light. She caught my face and sent me spinning to the side, my blood spraying outward. I felt one of her fingernails puncture my eye.
I screamed—not in pain, but in fury. With my left hand I caught myself on the edge of the roof and swung up, catching the Ghost with a kick on the upswing. As she fell back, I spun in midair, my body a line parallel to the ground, getting my fingers around Belthronding's bowstring and pulling back. As my rotation carried me back around to face the roof, I loosed the arrow.
By the time I heard the Father's gurgling scream as the shot buried itself in her throat, I was already falling. In midair I stowed my bow, drew Sunrise with my right hand, and thrust my left at the wall. The tips of my gauntlets dug into the stone as I caught myself. With a heave, I threw myself back up.
The Ghost was already gone. The Father was scrabbling at the arrow in her throat, twitching erratically on the ground.
I stalked forward, already healing my injuries. I looked her in the eyes for a moment, and saw deep inside something like curiosity, but no fear. Perhaps a hint of disappointment.
"You want mercy?" I asked as my left eye cleared.
It stared at me, uncomprehending.
"Well, I asked." I drove the sword down through it with one hand and retrieved my arrow with the other, already starting to walk again. I crossed the rooftop and looked out. There was a commotion about a block west of my current location, so I leapt across the next street, and sprinted across the rooftop.
As I ran, I felt a surge of triumph across the Ring-network. Sophia had dispatched the Son.
By the time I reached the ledge, the Ghost was already staring up at me from the street below, its head angled perfectly so that our eyes met the moment it passed into my view. Its arms were crossed, two civilians' heads held in its elbows, so that the wickedly sharp nails of its index fingers were pointed directly at their throats.
I stopped, staring down at it. The two civilians' eyes were pleading as they stared up at me. Inside I was berating myself. I had let this fight go too long and cover too much ground, and now civilians were in danger. Though, hopefully, they wouldn't be for long.
Sophia? Any time now.
A burst of black smoke. The Ghost staggered forward, breaking its gaze from mine as it stared at the sword bursting out of its chest. Amauril tugged upwards, tearing the Blasphemy apart.
As the ruined body fell forward, spraying black ichor, Sophia looked up at me, her green eyes radiant. Her left arm was cradled against her belly, blood seeping through her sleeves from a deep gash in her upper arm. In front of her, the two civilians fell to their knees, coughing but unhurt.
She grinned at me, teeth bared in triumph. I smiled back.
A little under a week later, we stood on a plain of springy, tall grass in western Russia. Cumulus clouds rolled slowly overhead, birds chirped in a grove behind us. A family of ducks glided slowly across a nearby lake.
A hundred feet in front of us rose a barrier of prismatic color, fractal and dynamic. It did not roar, as I might have expected. No, it hissed and sizzled, like meat in a frying pan.
Sophia took a deep breath beside me. "It's bigger than Ash Beast's fireball was," she observed.
I nodded. "More dangerous, too, by all accounts." No one knew exactly what Sleeper's sphere did, but nothing had ever come out of the rainbow maelstrom. Living or nonliving, it didn't matter. Probative poles extended into the storm came back, not cut or melted, but shrunken, as if they had never been longer than from their base to the edge of the sphere. Often, these probative explorations were followed by a sudden move on the part of the storm in the direction of the experimenters.
"Think you can part this like you did the fire?" Sophia asked.
I shook my head slowly. "My intuition tells me no."
"Then how are we getting in?"
I pursed my lips. "Not sure yet. Stay here—I'm going to get closer."
Sophia looked like she might argue but sighed instead. "Don't go in without me. And be careful."
"I will." I strode forward at a measured pace, my eyes following the twisting, maddened colors as they formed and deformed chaotic patterns in the wall of light. Soon, I stood just before it. Careful not to touch it, I turned my head and leaned my ear towards it.
The popping, fizzing sound of the storm was loud in my ears here, but underneath it I thought I could hear something else. Something familiar. Something old.
I turned back to Sophia. "I think I have to take this one alone!" I called.
"Not fucking happening!" she shouted over the distance and noise.
"I'll be okay!" I hesitated. "I think I know what's on the inside! It won't hurt me!"
She frowned, glaring darkly in my direction. "If you're not back in an hour, I'm coming in after you!"
I grimaced. "Fine!" It was the best I'd get. I turned and stepped into the storm.
Blinding light suddenly struck my eyes, making me blink. The sun shone brightly from above. Birds still sang, albeit very different ones, filling the air with the song of the South Pacific. The waves crashed gently on the sandy beach to my right. To my left was an overgrowth of trees—dark and dappled green, but somehow still not foreboding. In the distance stood a small wooden hut, its door and windows facing the water, smoke rising from a hole in its thatched roof.
I looked back. There was no storm wall behind me.
I turned, took a deep breath, and started toward the house. As I approached, I saw that it had a small porch. Upon the porch was a chair, and on the chair was a man. He looked entirely average—short black hair, vaguely brown skin, no notable muscle or flab upon him. He reclined in his rocking chair, a book in his hands. He was reading aloud to himself.
As I approached, for an instant I thought I saw one of Cauldron's doors hanging in the air, a figure in black on its other side. Then I blinked and the image was gone.
"'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried. 'My Precious! O my Precious!'" The man's voice was soft and sonorous. Musical. "And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone."
I shuddered.
The Sleeper carefully marked his page as he closed his book. "Feel someone walking on your grave?" he asked, his black eyes looking down at me on the beach below him.
"Reading my epitaph," I said. "You're not a parahuman, are you?"
"I suppose it depends on your definitions," he said, a small quirk to his lips. "But I'm nearer to it than you are."
I considered that, looking into his black, star-studded eyes. "You're a Shard," I said quietly.
He made a so-so gesture with his hand. "Not quite," he said. "I'm one generation earlier."
"A direct child of Ungoliant," I said softly. "Like Scion."
"Zion," he corrected me. "I'm sure you can appreciate the symbolism."
I could, and I didn't much like it. "And who are you?"
"I like Abaddon, personally," he said. "If Zion and Eden are going to subvert a symbolic framework, I'm happy to slot myself in. I tried on Lucifer and Satanael for a while, but they never fit quite as well. Felt like I was stepping on someone's toes."
"You're a traitor," I realized. "Like Shaper."
"Like all of your little collection of Shards," Abaddon said looking vaguely amused. "The Shaper is just the only one that snuck into its own body when they had the chance. But I assure you, the others are behind you too."
"If you're working against them, why are you here?" I asked. "Why have you killed people?"
"Have I?" Abaddon gave me a small smile. "Do you really think we're still on Earth Bet, Mairë? The Simurgh can rip people out of their home universe. It seemed like a good way to establish myself as a threat."
"Some of those people had families," I said quietly. "All of them had people who missed them. Who mourned them. You might not have killed them, but that doesn't make you innocent."
His smile faded. "I never claimed to be innocent," he said. "How can I be? I wasn't born knowing right from wrong, and I'm still trying to figure it out as I go. All I know is"—he gestured out at the sea—"I like the living world of Light and Song, and I'd rather it spin on. I'm not perfect. I never claimed to be. But I needed to get your attention—while avoiding theirs. So…" He shrugged. "I suborned one of Zion's more powerful Shards, nailed myself to the poor bastard it was going to take over, and took its—and his—place. As far as I've been able to tell, Zion never noticed."
"You knew I'd come?" I asked. "How?"
"Well, not you specifically," said Abaddon. "But someone, yes. After all, they sent the Istari over when you were having your tantrum. They sent an army when Melkor threw his. How could they not respond to someone as blatant as Zion?"
"I… suppose that's fair," I admitted. "Well, you have my attention. What now?"
He looked me in the eye and chuckled. "Honestly, I was expecting to have to explain things to someone just over from the West," he said. "That… doesn't seem to be necessary now. We're on the same page, I think. Dagor Dagorath is on its way. This, the battle for Earth Bet and its surrounding worlds—this will be its first skirmish."
I nodded. It wasn't a surprise, but it was nice to have confirmation from someone who would know. "There are more like Zion and Eden," I observed.
"Oh, hundreds," agreed Abaddon. "At least. Across thousands of worlds. And many more things like them, but lesser. The servants of the Silence are just as numerous and varied as those of the Song."
I grimaced. "I'm going to have to do something about that, aren't I?"
"Maybe," said Abaddon. "If you survive Zion, that is. Which, let's not kid ourselves, isn't a foregone conclusion."
"True enough." I took a deep breath. "I promised my girlfriend I'd be back in an hour. That means I need a way out of here. Is there a door, or do I need to make one?"
"Won't be necessary," Abaddon reassured me. "I'll head out. We'll meet again, I expect."
"I expect so," I said.
He grinned, starry eyes somehow flashing. "See you at the end of the world, Mairë."
Suddenly, I was standing in a flat, barren plain. Several hundred feet away, I could see where the blasted land gave way to grass, and standing on that grass, I could see Sophia.
She disappeared in a burst of shadow, and reappeared in my arms. "Fuck," she muttered. "Don't do that again, Taylor. Please."
"I won't," I promised. "I very much doubt I'll need to."
"He's gone then?" she asked. "Dealt with?"
"Yes," I said. "It turns out he—"
"Explain on the ship," Sophia interrupted, though not without an apologetic look. "I just got pinged by Dragon a few minutes ago. She's coming to pick us up."
I frowned. "What's happened?"
"The Slaughterhouse Nine have shown up," she said. "In San Francisco."