Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 35

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Chapter 35

I wasn’t really upset. I was a little hungry, but after thinking about it for a bit, I was fine. I’d had two breakfasts, but yesterday had been rough and I’d skipped meals. I felt fine.

Calmly I paged through the next few parts of my file. Since Intercepting Fist’s use of Terminal Sanction had been deemed unwarranted, Fate had covered everything up. They told everyone my father killed my mother, tried to kill me, and had ultimately killed himself. Nivale had taken me in but put me up for adoption. She’d been seventeen.

I didn’t really remember her. Maybe. Kinda? When I strained, I got a few images, but those might be imagined.

Intercepting Fist’s appeal went nowhere. It didn’t get rejected; it didn’t happen. The paperwork had been put in, but no hearing occurred, no appellate court convened, no judgment was passed down. The statute of limitations had passed.

I flipped to the index. No further mention of Hyrthon or Aethionema appeared. Of course. That was fine.

Life in foster care had been utterly miserable. It had prepared me for crime. I broke into my first house at age seven, was hustling on streets before ten, and bounced in and out of homes that had no place for me. No one loved me, no one missed me, no one cared until age twelve, at which point I’d been placed with my last parents, Hau and Mariam.

They had time. They paid attention. We got into fights about things like table manners, and Hau made me help him in the garden because he liked having me around. I wished things had been different.

But they weren’t, and twelve is old to get real parents. Their home was been small, and they had other kids, fosters and biologics. A few years later I’d left to go to Northshore, but I was always welcome. Mariam was even a little annoyed I didn’t visit more. She fussed. Hau wished I did, but he understood. Not me, not foster kids, not how I felt about him, just that kids grow up, they don’t visit their parents enough, and they go see things.

Hau and Mariam were the only truly good people I’d ever known, and that thought made me tear up.

I’d always tried not to think about any of this stuff much, and I’m usually pretty good at it.

I sat in my old office that smelled of mildew and damp carpet, and stared at a wall. Nothing moved through my head. I heard old creaks in the walls. I think the building had mice. I picked up an ink-stick and twilled it in my fingers. This was a good one. It had some heft to it.

Oh right. I was here about the treason.

I went through my file again. A great deal of it covered the legal precipitate of my parents’ murder, Fate’s cover-up, and so forth. Most of the rest had been excised from about the time I met Seraphine, and that made sense.

I realized I hadn’t thought of Seraphine in quite some time, which was a bit odd considering I’d been madly in love with her. I still was.

I’d been busy, and I was good at not thinking of stuff.

How did I feel about all that?

Still fine.

Seraphine?

Fine.

I had to do something about the treason.

They did kill people over that.

Out of curiosity, I flipped to one of the addenda and skimmed through my future. I had a fate. The office would make sure I was destined for something. It should be in my file, at least a summary. I hoped I warranted a disclosure.

“Kog has not warranted specific fate within Destiny. However, he seems like an idiot, so this omission need not be corrected.”

“Really?” I yelled at my file. I flipped to the author’s notes. “Oum of Typhon, you couldn’t have written that a little more professionally? ‘Kog’s fate isn’t written by Fate because he’s a mortal’ would have been fine! You had to throw I’m an idiot in there too?” I flipped back to the narrative and started muttering about who would rue the day.

Seeking to distract myself, I went to my biographical addenda and looked myself up. Best case, how much time did I have? Realistically, probably less than a week and most of that filled with torment, but from an organ perspective, how many years did I have until….I was scheduled to die when I turned thirty six.

What?

This sheet was double-sided with ink on both sides. Some small hand had written my fate in spidery script, a mere few years left if everything went well. I was scheduled for organ failure at age thirty six. It was my kidneys. They’d go first, my blood would turn toxic, and my end would take less than a week. I’d be unconscious for most of it. A honey-dew addendum had been added and excised from my file.

Individual people don’t have a ‘thread’ in the Loom of Fate; it’s more like a cord. I’ve never seen the Loom itself, but people who work in Fate have. Stories get told. A person’s cord is a whole bunch of threads bound together, and they’re highly, perhaps, infinitely, subdividable, worked by the great Pattern Spiders. Originally made of clockwork, the Spiders have long since become something else, though no one knows quite what. These files are a first approximation of the cords.

The honey-dew addendum had been attached and removed from my internal threads, the fiber of each organ. Those fibers had burned out. Divine fibers got replaced. Mortals don’t.

I wanted to swear again, but this time the irony stopped me.

The ink-stick twirled in my hand.

Very calmly, I was very calm about everything right now, I added a zero to my life expectancy. There was a little space left. I could fit another zero in there. I did.

I initialed the modification in my finest handwriting and pressed a ‘SEALED’ sticker over it, holding the sticker firmly to the paper with my sweaty hands for several minutes. The numbers were clearly visible. The authorizing signature was not. Would it work?

Worth a shot.

Back at the File Request room, I clipped my file to the string and sent it out to be lost among the paperwork. It might get filed again. Probably by an intern. I had better than even odds on getting that document back in the system.

But nothing mattered, because the treason addendum of my file was with Judicial Director Priam. That was the interesting bit. That’s the bit I wanted. And I couldn’t go walking up there, because they had guards by the official people.

I leaned against a wall, thinking. The wall was sticky. Moisture had gotten into the paint, and it was vaguely adhesive. I leaned away from the wall, had to pull my skin free, and wiped my arm down. Little bits of gray and white paint stuck to my arm hair. This place was disgusting. No one cleaned it.

The silence got very loud, my thoughts turned slow, and I made words in my head without the casual ease of normal thought but deliberately. It felt like breathing when you’re thinking about breathing.

No one had been down here since the end of summer, when the interns left.

And not ‘no one but really the cleaning staff and security.’ No, no one had been down here since the interns left. And when we’d left, we dropped our IDs in a drop box. The drop box was down here in the basement.

I walked thirty yards, found the drop-box, and went to work on the cheap lock with ingenuity, a paperclip, and a misspent youth. It took me ten minutes to get access to two dozen IDs, more than half of which weren’t expired. Security often puts expiration dates years into the future so they don’t have to keep reissuing them. I took Hroth Urmain’s badge from the stack, clipped it to my shirt, and put the unexpired ones in a brown lunch bag I found under a desk. Judicial Director Priam worked in Amber Melis Tower.

This was actually a dumber plan than I thought it was, and I knew that while I did it.

I didn’t care. I wanted to die.

But I felt fine.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 34

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Chapter 34

By the time I got to the southern edge of the forest by White Hoof, the spirits of fire ring Mt Ararad. It stands the furthest east of the Ribbed Mountains, a slanted horn with three faces gouged out by worms of Meru. All three bowls are white, but the ridges that climb to the peak between them are brown and black. Overhead the sky is dark. Midnight is here or just past, and dawn will not come for hours.

Flames that have escaped their candle wicks circle the summit. They are hounding something, flying quickly through the air in a wide loping circle. At one point they dive as they pass and fall like shooting stars toward a ridge. There are sparks there that die sizzling on the snow. The flames rise again. I am down the mountain but climbing very quickly. I wish I had a sword.

Up close the flames are horsemen with long glaives. They dive at Laeth, who stands over a crack in a ridge, parrying their weapons with a sword in his left hand. Every time their weapons of fire meet his blade of metal, they notch the metal. Yet he strikes back and when the horsemen have passed, plunges the sword into pockets of snow. I can see the cold of it hurts his hand, for he stuffs the sword in, watches for the next rider, and yanks the blade out to fight with it. He cuts them, and their flames turn cold and dead where his blade slashes. But there are many of them.

Merryweather and their little boy are in the crack underneath, and she is heaving stones aside, making it bigger. She throws boulders, but the horsemen are too swift in the open air.

I get closer, moving up the stone arete.

Laeth gets one of the flaming horsemen through the chest, and horse goes dark and black. It’s like a splotch of ink that spreads, ruining the brilliance of fire and light, until the whole horsemen is black as old ashes but smoldering around the edges. It falls, hits the snow, and breaks apart. Laeth yells something to Merryweather, and she stops throwing rocks.

I want to do something, but I have no idea what. Death take me, I’m going to help. Fate, let Intercepting Fist find these notes. I am tucking them among the rocks, and they should stay dry. I know I’m supposed to stay out. I can hide, but I won’t anymore.

Goodbye. I’m going.

#

My name is Intercepting Fist. I am an operator of Fate.

On 3rd Brumaire, the Olnedes were observed at White Hoof Massif. A source operates at White Hoof, one Nivale, Daughter of Aethionema, of the line of Lumina. Our next contact was not scheduled for some months, however the appearance of the Children of Olnedi away from any known volcanic eruption is a Class 5a suspicious event. My primary mission objectives were determine the reasons for and threats presented by the appearance of the Olnedes. In accordance with SOP, I also attempted a health and welfare check for the source. At the time of the incident, I was source’s handler.

The high-probability cause for an unexpected appearance of volcano spirits is unexpected volcanic activity. My initial premise was an unscheduled eruption, from which the Olnedes had escaped their bonds early. I took a complete vulcanology kit and notified the Bureau of Natural Disasters and Cataclysms via forms 10-992e and 10-992j. Forms had been accepted and signed. BNDC POC is Asst. Sec. Rock Thunder, see Receipt of Notice, 3-14.

A low-probability cause for the unexpected appearance of the Olnedes is madness. I sought and received Authorization for Terminal Sanction in defense of the source. BS POC is Divine Saturn.

Upon arriving on scene, I performed an initial recon. Time was between midnight and dawn. Weather was overcast. Terrain was mountainous/rocky with glaciers. Footing would be deeply suboptimal. I rode my personal transport, a lightning-dragon Lucky 8 who is certified for combat operations. The airborne Olnedes had formed a ‘doom loop,’ a harassing tactic used by cavalry against dismounted infantry. No signs of volcanic activity were identified.

I DID perform a ET 411 test for volcanic activity and confirmed no warning signs. It’s in the appendix. Allegations I failed to perform the test and violated EOF/ROE are a damned lie.

Negatively confirming the high-probability case, I closed on the engagement.

Cinders lay distributed across snow and ice. Not less than eight Olnedes had been slain. As I watched, one of the lava children dove on their adversaries. A primary aggressor executed a forward mounted attack with a mounted weapon and was parried by a swordsman. A female defender attacked with a chunk of ice of medium-log size. The ice spar struck the rider in the mount, and since the Olnedes are one entity, the cold attack on the apparent ‘horse’ caused damage to the rider. The aggressor went down and spread his ashes across the mountainside.

However both defenders went down as well. Upon closing, I observed innumerable burns to both combatants. The nature of the injuries prevented significant blood loss, but their skins had begun to turn. Black wounds like charred wood marred their flesh.

Further, the female combatant expressed the features of the line of Aethionema. Wielding several thousand pounds of ice as a melee weapon was in agreement with a dryad of Lumina’s line in their place of power, as was hair color and build. The Luminesque dryads tend toward tall but resilient entities.

Seeing both defenders fall but keep struggling, the Olnedes abandoned their harassing tactics and gathered for a cavalry charge.

Within the limits of battlefield intelligence, I used training and best judgment in accordance with Battles Guidance 0-1. I declared positive ID that the female combatant was the source, and therefore Terminal Sanction was authorized. The Olnedes numbered less than two dozen. I attacked.

The Olnedes formation had achieved maximum velocity, following an attack vector along the arete when I came up the same arete with Lucky 8 skimming the rocks. The Olnedes did not see me until I engaged. I executed a frontal assault almost on top of the defenders. Two volcano spirits I slew with my fists, off balanced another, and dragged him along the saw-tooth edge of the arete until rock tore him apart. The other riders diverged into two formations. Before they could rally, I assaulted the eastern formation from behind and got among them. They lost situational awareness, failed to evade in time, and I engaged and destroyed the enemy formation.

Emerging, I discovered the opposing enemy formation had rallied and assaulted their targets on the rocks. Such bloody-mindedness is atypical in capricious volcano spirits. Upon assaulting the enemy, I discovered another Lumanesque dryad operating in defense. She had taken the sword from the fallen male defender, but approximately ten Olnedes attacked her. I engaged them from the side, dismounted into their formation, and released Lucky 8 to operate as close air support. Landing on a fire-rider, I tore him limb from limb and beat his comrades with his remains.

The engagement ended shortly.

Having terminated their attack, I observed the defending combatants.

The remaining female defender was the source. I initiated passcode confirmation and received the correct challenge response. The initial female defender was the source’s sister, and the swordsman the source’s sister’s spouse. I performed triage. The source had not suffered life threatening wounds. The spouse was beyond care. The sister might survive. In accordance with Serenity Final Principles 0-8, I gathered sister and spouse together to ease his final passing. He died in her arms.

The sister asked for one ‘Kog,’ and the source retrieved a child from a hidden spot among the rocks. The child had succumbed to exposure and ceased responding to stimuli.

The dryad, while powerful in her home, was still limited by the nature of her home. To wit, the line of Aethionema is powerful among the Simhalls, yet the Simhalls are perilous to their kind. The end effect is one of heightened mutual lethality not mutual survivability. I judged the child beyond care, but considered some possibility of getting the source and source’s immediately family off the mountain before death. When I summoned Lucky 8 for exfiltration, the source’s sister blessed the child, cried for her husband, and died as well.

I exfiltrated source and child, retrieving the source’s reports, which are filed as an addendum.

Terminal Sanction was clearly used as authorized. While initial positive ID may have been flawed, the source was present for the engagement. Therefore executing Terminal Sanction was in accordance with terms authorized by Divine Saturn herself. Legalese nonsense to the contrary is blister popping. The Prosecuting Officer’s remarks are comprehensively garbage, lacking legal standing, understanding of the limitations of real-time conflict, and ignorant of SOP. The PO is obviously operating under a delusion of omniscience given by reading too many reports and not being in enough fights. He is an idiot, a fool, and a disgrace to the service.

With a peculiarly blank mind I flipped the page. The following few pages were collected forms. Operator Intercepting Fist had been charged with failure to follow procedure while executing Terminal Sanction and found guilty. He had been demoted from operator status and assigned to border control operations in the Ticonae North.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 25

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Part 3: Fate
Chapter 25

Those were bad hours, alone under the building, filled with with pain.

I had never done anything like that before. Not fighting the dragon, though I never had. I’d never had to endure when there was no technique to execute, no condition to find victory, no skill to use. I couldn’t beat anything, I couldn’t win, I couldn’t even try. I lay under broken walls and breathed.

And it was miserable. Once everything began to hurt, it was like my whole body was screaming for help, and there was nothing I could do.

And it went on, and on, and on until I realized I could die down here.

The dragon didn’t come for me, so I assumed it was dead. I had won. And I might bleed to death under a building anyway. Winning hadn’t saved me.

A pain in my hips grew, and I shimmied to satiate it. The rubble overhead shifted. I shimmied again. A beam lay across my chest, and it constricted me on the left. I wiggled right, but the whole beam settled. Now I still couldn’t breathe well, and there was a rock digging into my right. I wiggled again. Something began to slide. I pressed it away and down. I wiggled my head.

I began to crawl like a worm, the least of things. Even insects have legs. The worm is deprived of everything, yet it moves underground. So moved I, heading up.
Hours passed. I felt every one of them. Never did time speed up or pass in absence. They went on as I grew weaker. I began to rest between shakes. I thought constantly, ‘Self, we can’t do this.’ I fought the thought, slithered away from it, shouted at it, but it remained in the dark with me.

And yet the hours still passed. Sleep was down there with me. She caressed me in the dark. She loved me, and I refused her. I rested and shimmied, slithering upward.

I was just another figure in someone else’s rumor. ‘I hear the building fell on someone, and he was trapped down there for days before he died. Glad it wasn’t anyone we know.’

And a child would ask, ‘Could it happen to me?’

‘No, loved one. It happened to someone else.’

With those clouds over the sky, there was no dawn. I slithered and crawled around huge building stones up into bricks.

Bricks were easier than great stones. I could crawl through bricks. I did, to lay gasping in dirty, dusty air.

I lay in broken plates, sheets of parchment paper, and a roll of towels, impregnated with soup and then flash-dried when the building caught fire. The smell defied comprehension. The perfumed aromas of Hyperion were gone. The gardens of sycamore and roses, the smell of lavender and sage didn’t make it down here. The air smelled of forge smoke, glazed with dragonfire. I smelled sweat and mud, my blood, the lumber of Hasso’s yards, his building supplies, and his parking lots.

But underneath all those smells, the free air that carried them smelled beautiful. It wasn’t a smell itself, just air. Thick, free, moving air blew around rocks, between the rubble piles, and over the wreckage. I looked out and saw one chimney still venting smoke. I could smell the smoke where I’d cremated Hasso and his kin, his works, and nearly been cremated myself. The smoke turned in circles as the winds changed.

The lights found me there.

Four glowing men and three fluorescent women walked through the center of Hasso’s courtyard.

All of them were tall and luminal, glowing in a mix of lights that seemed to emerge from hands, hair, eyes, and feet. Each had a general aura, a complex but distinct mix of colors that tended toward one shade, but that seemed to be controlled by the individual intensities of their individual glowing parts. Eyes glowed blue, hands green, hair white, and feet yellow for all, but the mix varied.

A woman stepped forward wrapped in vermilion and ruby. Her hands were brighter than any of the others, too bright to make out fingers clearly, and she seemed to have balls of steam on the end of her wrists. The red seemed to come from everywhere at first, but as she talked, I realized that all of them had a redness about the body and brownness about the legs and arms.

“Who are you?” asked the red and green woman.

“Help me,” I begged.

“What happened here?” asked a man wrapped in light-trails of brown and blue. When he moved, he left after-images behind him like the kind you get if you glance at the Sun.

“Bad things. I’m terribly hurt. Can you help me?” I said.

They obviously didn’t want to, but they did. Two, a man mostly blue, and a woman grayish and yellow, came over and went to work, obviously medics of some kind. The rest dispersed, picking through the building and searching.

I got a look at my two carers up close, and while they looked vaguely androgynous and naked, they were actually wearing white and prismatic clothing. It seemed to be of two layers, a heavier skin-tight one, and a looser outer layer. The base-layer muted the red and brown light, leaving only exposed areas to brightly glitter.
But those bright areas did shine. The man’s eyes were blue as the sea, not just his irises. From the top of his cheekbones to the hairs of his eyebrows, his eyes radiated.

I’d seen something like this before. The lady with the dragon-sword had had red eyes that dribbled fire, but nothing on her had been this polychroma.
The others found the dead dragon under the rubble. It had burned and boiled, reduced itself to a foul-smelling heap of slag. It looked like rusty iron or old submerged wood, recognizable in shape but utterly transformed. One man in gold and green climbed onto the dead snout, wrapped his hands around something, and yanked a heap of misshapen, ruined iron free.

If you knew exactly what you were looking at, it looked like a broken sword.

The man tossed it aside.

The woman was checking my hip area and announced, “You have metal splinters through your pelvis. It is a miracle you aren’t dead.”

“Oh.” What do you say to that?

The man, who was also examining me, asked, “No, you should be dead. Who protects you?”

“Nice gods?”

“I don’t think anyone likes mortals that much,” said the woman. She peeled the wrappings off my feet and whispered, “Dear Maya.”

“Ho! Stranger! Come forward into the light!” yelled someone else, and for a moment I thought they meant me.

But I was already in the light. The two glowing figures tending me made sure of that.

And shortly thereafter another figure did come into the light. It was Hoarfast.

He looked exactly the same. He wore another bluish-gray suit with a subdued tie. The jacket wrapped his shoulders and chest like a bit of towel thrown over a statue. He was immense, quiet, and when he walked into the main area from a side pathway among Hasso’s buildings, he still seemed to be the center of all attention.

The moment I saw him, he saw me, and we both stared at each other with such surprise no one missed it.

My two medics looked at me. They looked at Hoarfast. The various illuminated figures looking at Hoarfast looked at me. Hoarfast tore his eyes away and looked at the glowing people, and I made myself look down.

Every single thing I’d done to make Koru’s group think I was dead was now ruined.

The glowing figures considered the two of us. They looked over the ruins of Hasso’s compound. The fires had died down, and where the radiance of the seven touched the sick burning, the dragon fire burned itself out. But the buildings stayed collapsed, and the charred earth remained violated.

“You are both invited to the Halls of Fate for discussion, medical assistance, and a friendly talk,” said the first glowing figure, smiling at me and Hoarfast in turn.

That’s a tricky matter for a Celestial. Hoarfast might decline. But Fate had a way of getting what it wanted.

None of that mattered for me.

“Please help me,” I whispered.

The two working on me bent their heads down, and lights began to arc between them. Long streamers of fire climbed their hands and heads, reaching from one to the other like the flares that dance on Horochron’s head.

The other five figures of light turned to Hoarfast, and the gears inside his head turned furiously. He smiled faintly.

He said, “I accept.”

The agents of Fate nodded and called down the lightning. It came in the form of quicksilver dragons, too bright to look at, saddled with leather and silk. They didn’t tie my hands or feet, but assisted me with mounting. A large, competent looking woman sat behind me, and I lay against her. An equally large, equally competent looked man sat in front. Had I an interest in throwing myself off, I doubted I would succeed.

Yet I might. There is usually only one way to escape Fate.

But from the beginning, I’d only known one thing, and that one thing kept me in the saddle. The quicksilver dragon flew upwards, through the clouds of Attarckus’s veil, and to the stars beyond the sky. It took a zigzag path faster than a hawk can dive, and soon we had slipped the bounds of Pallas and approached the dome of the sky. The glittering constellations rose from darkness, huge lanterns on the mountains of the Firmament. The flow of galaxies that are the sky’s rivers flowed between hills and and forests on the dark country.

I looked back. The lady behind me smiled firmly, but I wasn’t looking at her. In the center of the sphere, Pallas, Horochron the Sun, and Tiptites the Moon circled each other. They had been joined by a vast white disk that must be Tollos and another, silver and blue, that I guessed was her sister Lumina. The green and blue orb of Pallas drew my attention, though, as it dwindled and shrank.

I turned back around and faced the growing blackness of the onrushing sky.

We approached the massive, bulbous office-building of Fate’s headquarters in the Mask. It was such an ugly, useless building, and the basement leaked.

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