The Creators Ch. 18

My eyes fluttered open. Brandon held me gently in his massive hand. I was too weak to merit the strength of his grip. My head hung between the space of his thumb and forefinger, and I watched the sun glare through the pale desert sky. Oh, it was hot. I wished I could just cool myself with a little water, but every part of me was numb. I couldn't even lift a finger. The air around me was arid and dry, and the scant moisture that blew within it was inaccessible to me. Dread slowly crept into my belly. I wasn't supposed to feel dread. If I felt dread, it was because Corruption wanted me to feel it. Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. Why was she so old? Why were her patterns so dim?

Mom. The answer came to me as a slow and creeping realization. Mom was in trouble. Had Willowbud gotten to her? Had Tera? Why the heck did I leave her alone with a fricken assassin?! And now I was bringing a hostile god of immeasurable power right to her doorstep, and there was nothing I could do. But I had to try.

"You're going to die slow," I croaked up at him. "Mom's gonna bake you like a fricken cake."

"Maybe," he said in his gruff voice, his gargantuan hairy face looking toward the horizon.

"Maybe?" I scoffed. "Maybe I'll cut a slab off you and have some dinner. I'm a vegetarian, but you're basically a plant anyway, you fricken soy-boy."

"Did Angela give you that line?"

"She did!" I cackled bitterly. "And now she's spoiled forever!"

"You're going to give her back to me."

"Or what?" I snickered.

He closed his thumb and pressed it hard against my ribs. They bent against the pressure, shooting pain deep into my sides, pushing harder until they were to the point of snapping. I squirmed and squirmed beneath his thumb, but he just held me there, watching me from his emotionless eyes until I was screeching for it to stop.

"Fine! I'll fix the twat!" I gasped. "But you're going the wrong way, you idiot!"

He pulled back his thumb, and relief washed over me, accompanied by a cold sweat of terror. My head fell back between his forefinger and thumb, swinging upside down. An image of the Droktinar crater came into focus a few miles to the north, and beyond that, just behind an outcropping of sandstone, was Tera's carriage.

"Hey, butthead!" I called. "Didn't you hear me? Angela went north; you're going east!"

"I'm not giving you a second to recover. We're going to see your mom, and you're going to suck Corruption out of her."

I cackled again. "Oh, it'll be that easy, huh?"

His face darkened. "I'll make the choice very easy for her."

"She'll make it hard for you though. She's got Tera with her. Maybe you're a cock-sure rooster, but you don't wanna play chicken with this hen!"

He worked his massive jaw. "Tera is expendable."

I laughed. "Trying to convince yourself? Because you sure convinced me!"

He looked darkly at me. "Everyone is expendable, Diamond. Especially you."

"Not Angela though," I said slyly. "Who knows what she's up to right now? Who knows what she'll do?"

Brandon stopped for a moment and turned his great hairy head toward the south. His mouth formed small words that he didn't speak, and his eyes seemed to become unfocused. He paused, then waited as if expecting an answer. There was only the whistling desert wind and the low rumble of a distant battle. He waited for a second longer, then forced his head toward the wagon, and continued his journey with renewed purpose. He walked, then he ran, then he sprinted across the desert.

ANGELA

Angela? Brandon called for me.

I didn't answer.

Angela? he called again.

I ignored him and continued my journey. I wouldn't let him fuck it all up again.

Angela, get back here! It's over! I've got Diamond, and I'm going to have Julia too! We won!

I kept moving.

I can fix you! Just stay... where... you... are... and... don't... do... anything... the feed faded the closer I got to Droktinar's rim, and then his voice was gone.

I paused for a second, then recommenced in the opposite direction. I didn't need fixing; I was perfect as I was! I always knew that anyway. I was classy, beautiful, intelligent, witty, desirable, and deadly. I was the coolest bitch in the whole fucking world, and I was done playing the better half of a man who couldn't even tie his shoes without falling dick-first into another fucking crisis. Oh, I would still always love and cherish my brother, but he was done wearing the pants in this relationship. It's not like he ever wore pants anyway; he thought a bathrobe was proper formal attire.

The drone of battle faded the further I went. I scurried through the sand as a scorpion, keeping my profile low, avoiding the manic footsteps of orcs until there were none. Behind me, the great fury of fire and screams raged in a dusty vortex, but before me, there was nothing but red sandstone. I climbed up the wall of rock, then entered a maze of canyons and rifts. I didn't know what compelled me to go this way, but I didn't question my intuition. My intuition was always right. I scuttled up the sides of cliffs and down into dry gorges. Black rocks were scattered about, and they became more numerous the deeper I went. I could sense something in the air... well, actually, I didn't sense it in a physical sense, or even an intuitive sense. I sensed it with a part of me I had rarely ever used. My astral sense. I followed that signal, using it to guide me ever closer to my destination. I felt a touch of excitement in my arachnid chest with each little tap of my many legs. I knew what awaited me at the end of this journey, and I knew what I had to do. The excitement didn't come from the unknown, but the prospect of what I was greatly assured of. I could do it. I would do it. No hesitation.

I crested the edge of an uplift, and a great bowl opened up beneath me. The sides shined with glossy black rocks; their continuity shattered like fractured glass. At the base of the bowl, were two figures. I transformed into an orc and began walking down the slope.

Astrid drew her bow the moment I took a step.

"It's me!" I exclaimed.

Astrid lowered her bow and said something to Willowbud. Willowbud looked up at me.

"Why are you here?" she yelled.

"We've been trying to contact you," I yelled back as I descended the bowl. "We can't start our attack until you're in position, you idiot! Brandon had to hold everyone and send me out to find your dumbasses!"

"Something happened," Willowbud called. "We need to hold off the attack."

"What? Where's Gloria?"

"Gone."

"Gone where?"

Willowbud stepped to the side, revealing a pale body behind her.

"Shit," I hissed, not really caring at all. I jogged down the gradient until I was only fifty feet away, then Astrid raised her bow again.

"That's close enough, Bound One," she said.

I rolled my eyes. "Sweet fuck, Astrid, we've been through this already."

Astrid notched an arrow. "Transform into your normal body. Remove the black from your eyes."

"Hey, idiot, we're not at the playground right now! There are orcs fucking everywhere!" I gestured impatiently over my shoulder. "You two need to get back into position! Julia's nowhere to be seen, and we've got Diamond surrounded. We have a chance right now to move the odds in our favor, and you guys are wasting precious time!"

Willowbud put her hand on Astrid's arm and made the disguised valkyrie lower her bow. "Angela," she said as she stepped toward me, "we can't go through with this."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Do you see that door?" Willowbud pointed behind her as she continued walking. She was only forty feet away now.

I nodded.

"Do you know what's behind it?" She was thirty feet away now.

I glanced over her shoulder. "It's astral. Oh my god, is that Wrath's realm?" I paused to look around me. "Is this fucking Droktinar?"

"It was Droktinar, and that was Wrath's realm," Willowbud said. "Now they're both gone."

I stepped toward Willowbud. Twenty feet. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I saw Corruption in the astral plane," Willowbud said. "She's not what we thought she was. Angela, she carries Julia's mark. Julia never bound with Diamond."

I stopped. "That's impossible."

"I know what I saw."

"You saw something from the astral plane. Have you ever been there before? I have. It makes no fucking sense at all."

"Why doesn't Diamond carry her mother's mark if they're bound to each other?" Willowbud asked from ten feet away. "We have no idea what we're walking into right now. We need to get the fuck out of here."

"We need to kill Diamond and Julia. I could give a shit about Corruption," I said. Five feet away.

"They have an astral god on their side!" Willowbud hissed. "Angela, get Brandon and call off the attack! We need to—"

My arm shot out, the end of it becoming a stinger, the stinger aimed at Willowbud's chest. It was so fast that she didn't even have time to flinch. Astrid was faster. Her fist rammed into my belly, the wind shot from my lungs, and I doubled over. My vision blurred with pain as I gulped like a fish for breath. When it came to me, I vomited blood all over Astrid's fist. There was something metal in that fist. I blinked stupidly, clearing the film from my eyes. There was a sword in that fist. I became suddenly aware of an ache in my upper back.

"Oh, wow," I muttered dumbly and took two staggering steps backward. The sword slid out of my guts, leaving a long thin gash that dripped, then poured, then gushed. "Oh... wow."

I looked up at Astrid. Tears ran down her cheeks. I looked at Willowbud. My stinger was embedded into her collar. Her mouth hung open, her eyes not quite registering what was happening. But I knew what was happening. It had happened to me before.

"Oh wow," I muttered a third time, dropped to my knees, then collapsed into darkness.

BRANDON

I pitched forward and smashed into the ground. The earth shook with the impact, dust exploded around me, and the boom echoed like thunder across the desert. There was something heavy pinning my arm. It was Diamond. She groaned and rolled off me. I couldn't move. Cold suffused my bones, lassitude sapped my muscles, and my head thudded with my pulse.

No. No, no, no, NO, NO, NO!

I felt the connections I'd made with those I'd touched. With Justina, with Bianca, with Arya, Nona, Willowbud, Astrid, and thousands more. Those connections were now thousands of straws that drank from me, sucking my body hollow, withering it into a raisin upon the sand, but all of them combined could not account for the one who sapped me from the marrow just to exist for one more second. Through the thundering cadence of my heartbeat, I could hear the distant battle, the screams, and roars, the clashes of steel, and the crackling of flames. Millions against just a few thousand, and I was the only thing holding them back from the tidal wave of blades and fists.

Diamond coughed up sand and climbed to her feet. She stared down at me, and her black eyes narrowed in confusion. Then the realization came to her, and a broad grin stretched across her ruby lips.

"Oh, this is precious..." she chuckled and crouched beside my head. "I guess Angela wasn't quite the badass she thought she was. You're still holding onto her, aren't you? Her, and everyone else." She ran her hand through my hair, and purred, "Decisions, decisions... what wonderful atrocities we commit for the people we love."

Tears filled my eyes and wetted the sand that surrounded my face. I wanted to scream, but my mouth was filled with granules, grating against my tongue, choking my throat.

Diamond giggled musically as she stroked my hair. "It was like Angela said: what's one life to thousands? Let her go, and save the others. That's what you should do, but we both know what you are going to do."

I tried to send out a message, but my mind couldn't form the thoughts. Every ounce of me was devoted to holding the connections, to giving all that I could to keep them alive a second longer. It had already drained away a month of my reservoir. Two months, four months, eight months... The toll compounded upon me, stealing my future by the seconds. The months rolled into years, and the years rolled into decades. My youth was fading, the veins in my hands became more pronounced, the bones began to show.

"Such a giving man you are, Life Giver," Diamond whispered. "What charity. What benevolence. Life Giver. Life Taker. You're a fraud. You're a banker. They borrowed from you, and now they have to pay it back with interest. Everyone is expendable, Brandon. Everyone but her."

Run! I screamed in my mind, but the thought died before it even formed, drowning in the sea of my feverish confusion. There were so many connections. So many lives I had to juggle at once. How had I ever done it? What was once as automatic as breathing now sucked me dry. I held onto the fraying ropes for as long as I could. I held on until blood ran from my ears and eyes. I held until my brain felt like it would burst from the top of my skull. Then, I could hold on no longer. I let the Ionans go first. One by one, their connections snapped, and one by one, I heard their telepathic screams of alarm. I heard them die. They were so confused. So terrified. But it didn't stop there. The snapping of my tethers cascaded, gaining momentum like the breaking of a dam, each support failing faster and faster. The Ofanians slipped from my grasp. Their cries filled my consciousness, their desperate messages flooded my thoughts, but even these screams faded from me, dwindling with the failing of my faculties.

What's happening?! Arya cried, then was silenced.

Brandon, where are— Bianca shouted, then was cut off.

Brandon?! Brandon?! Justina screamed, and was gone.

Willowbud and Astrid said nothing to me as their connection snapped. There was only one left, but I'd wasted so much of myself already. I didn't even have the strength to pull myself to my hands and knees, but Diamond did. She balled her fist into my hair and yanked me up. Though she staggered horribly, she still had enough in her to drag me up a dune.

"Come on, lover-boy," she gasped, "you were in such a hurry to see my mom before. It's rude to keep a lady waiting."

ASTRID

I looked dumbly at the blood on my hands. It dripped from my fingers and knuckles, adding to the river that ran down the slope of the basin, and pooled beneath the astral door. I looked at the limp figure before me. Her belly and back were covered with blood-soaked makeshift bandages, but it had been no use. I hadn't even been thinking. The moment I saw her attack coming, I drove my sword through her belly. It was an upward stab, piercing her heart and lungs before exiting her back. A perfect killing strike. I never missed. Now my blood-stained hands were not those of an orc, but of my own pallid flesh. My lips tremored, and I looked over at Willowbud. She was lying against a rock, staring at the corpse in front of her. Angela's stinger was still embedded in her collar, but she'd managed to use the last of her self-healing ability to counteract most of the venom. Most of it. All the color had drained from her flesh, making her nearly as pale as her snow-white hair, and she was so incapacitated that breathing seemed laborious, but she would live.

"What have I done?" I hissed.

"What you were supposed to do," she muttered, looking at Angela's body like she couldn't believe it. "This was my fault. I didn't listen to you."

"What are we going to do?!"

She ran her blood-stained hands through her hair, staining it red. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck..." she whispered, and dropped her head against the boulder, "...oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck..."

"Willowbud!" I snapped.

Her eyes darted up at me, bulging and frantic. "We..." she took a deep breath, and exhaled it with a shudder, "...we have to... we have to..." she balled her fists in her hair, and began weeping.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her upright. "What do we do now?!" I screamed. "Tell me! TELL ME!"

"I don't know!" she blubbered. "There's...there's Julia... there's Diamond... Brandon... the door... Corruption... she was old, I don't know what it means!"

"Hey!" a voice yelled from the top of the rim. My eyes darted up. It was Bianca and Arya, along with thirty other Ofanians. Arya's arm was missing. "Hey!" she screamed and frantically waved. "The Ionans!"

My stomach dropped. I set Willowbud down and raced up the side of the bowl to the rim. Bianca tried to say something, but I just flew past her and stopped when I crested the ridgeline. The battlefield was a maelstrom of millions of orcs. They moved cyclonically about a central point, and at the eye of the storm, the Ionans fought a desperate battle against the Breytans. I didn't understand it. Ionans were at the very least on par with the samurai of Breyta, yet they were being cut down by the dozens against a flighted force nearly ten fractions their inferior. Then I saw the black blades the samurai wielded, and I understood.

I whipped my head to Bianca. "Get Willowbud and get out! Fly to the Gratoran Wall!"

"Astrid, we need to—"

"GO!" I screamed and launched myself from the ridgeline. My great black wings beat against the air, shooting me like an arrow across the sky, but I was still too slow. Even as I flew faster than any other valkyrie could dream of, I watched my brethren fall from the skies, spiraling with broken wings to fall prey to the orcs below. Sia Skyshield was impaled through the back and sent careening to the earth. She didn't die on impact, and her shrieks of torment cut through the air as the orcs took their time with her.

Bite the capsule, Sia! I thought to her and realized that she could not hear me. Her screams harmonized with the screeches of the others as they fell like leaves from the sky, twirling, gliding, then dying beneath the waves of blades. I beat my wings harder, pushing vast volumes of air through my feathers, testing the upper limits of my new body until I was moving so fast that I could not open my wings against the resistance. I folded them around my body, pointed my sword in front of me, and shot into the melee.

I ran cleanly through the back of a Breytan and exited her front in an explosion of red mist. I hardly slowed down. I drove through the next one, erupting through her midsection and sending her entrails ribboning into the air as her two halves peeled away behind me. The last woman stopped my momentum with her chest, the cavity imploding around my sword, her entire top half folding around it like a book. I ripped my sword out, whirled around, and cut the head off the woman beside her. The samurai behind her shot toward me, her black katana leading the way. I clashed my steel against her obsidian, enjoyed the look of shock that crossed her face, then I brought my sword around, and divided her diagonally from hip to collar. Three more Breytans circled me, accelerating as they closed their radius with their blades outward. I intercepted one of their swords with my own, sliced down her crossguard, and cut her gripping fingers off at the second knuckle. The other two came racing in, and I dropped ten feet, and let them crash into each other. Before they could recover, I was upon them, slicing through their bodies like butter, sending their heads and arms plummeting. The disarmed Breytan drew her steel wakizashi and shot after me. I cleaved her blade from its hilt, then her head from her shoulders, and watched her body fall gracefully after its tumbling master.