9 - ghosts in daylight

For many days and nights Emerald sulked in her chambers, hovering close to her translucent, nursing it and sleeping long into the afternoons. She had violent fits in her dreams but no one was allowed in to offer succor. The flyers buried Fuz above all the others without her grace, but the ceremony was quick, for there were many to bury, and many many more of the slain enemy to drag away and dump into chasms with no fanfare, unless curses count as blessings. As the translucent recovered, it levitated to the eaves, then allowed Emerald to ride it into the main chamber. There they circled together for many hours until finally she descended into the sparse ranks of flyer warriors and the women, who now outnumbered the men by two or better.

“My loving flyers, all,” Emerald began, dismounting her beast, “For many days I have mourned the man we all followed here, to this...this fool's den.” She looked beyond the faces of the men and women. “Still, I find the journey was worthwhile, even though the end is upon us.” Emerald turned and began to walk away. She had said her last, and had no words.

“What will we do?” they pleaded, but there was nothing more.

Beyond the proclivity of the gods

I linger, possessing no knowledge of Their machinations

until a cessation of fireworks gives me time

and inclination

which I take as an invitation to descend.

The atmosphere is heavy and toxic

but within my electric birdcage I am safe

as safe as ever I was in the plodding surplus of a vacuum.

It takes little time to abstract the drab marble

as I battle the urging of gravity

and make concentric orbits, perceiving more a pain

of suffering than a map of the world,

torn asunder and corroding under a velvet fog

of effluvia. Homing in, I fall into a looping pattern

seeking out a whirlwind of unspoilt currents

and tarry over this final island of respite.

Within is agony

without is death spread over a length

and encroaching is an army to end all

forged by the whispers and whip of Factions

beyond the will of the Sullen.

I've come in time, just,

and so light upon the current and traverse the chute.

Into the last refuge I descend

scraping away a millenia of crust

with my fin of diamond constructs

and ill conceived landing apparatus

until my birdcage, in name only,

settles on the cavern floor, its tendrils snaking

antenna wriggling like some alien nightmare

and the lifeforms within cower under the settling dust.

My sensors indicate the demon I appear to be,

a smoking behemoth of crystal confabulation,

but this vehicle is no more a cage

than it is a lifeline.

Tossed and carried beyond the realm of my existence

in galactic whirlwinds, I'm beyond my element

and my eternal home I deign is here

and for my electric birdcage: the bowels of this planet.

So I emerge.

As one they feel the mountain shake and overhead the ceiling rumbles as centuries old stalactites and chunks of granite plummet to the ground. Flyers scramble to the edges, some out into the open beyond the cavern only to cringe behind boulders as loose scree shifts and tumbles. Emerald screams and flees into a low tunnel while over her head the arch quivers and a wide crack opens. A thrum descends in a spiral of dust, and rotating it falls gingerly into the cavern and then sets heavily onto the floor, scattering particulate from its engines and struts. An electric whir resounds and the unearthly obtrusion winds down to the ground.

Slowly the flyers return, feeling the heat as it emanates, and quickly cools. They stand shivering, deprived of the transient conflagration, then gather close. Emerald is beyond fear, her world has been shaken beyond relevance, and she crawls out from the crumbling tunnel and strides forward to the vibrating contraption, drawing a blade as she walks.

“What new horror is this, that comes unannounced into our tomb?” Emerald stopped only the count of three steps from the intruder. The stink of smog burned, and it dropped from scalding angles like a blackened crust. “Speak, devil, cursed angel from the heavens. If you have come to finish our miserable lives then have it done, start with me.” Emerald plunged the knife into her bicep, then pulled it out and whipped the tip over, spraying thick droplets of blood onto the machine. It sizzled and baked.

Nothing happened, there was silence from the thing and the flyers. She sobbed, then turned from the scene and knelt to the bubbling froth where Emerald cupped a handful and rubbed it onto her wound. It stung painfully for a moment, then the hurting passed and became a hearty throb. She held her arm and sat down, staring into the settling dust.

They heard the whoosh of air, and a pop, as something on the machine moved, then cracks of light formed into a rectangle and a door levered out by an inch. It rotated and lowered vertically to the floor, where it clunked solidly. All noises within ceased, but a steady light flowed, then a shadow as the creature within emerged. It wore a helmet, this they knew from ancient texts and the drawings of scholars long dead. The slowly disintegrating tomes were safe, for now, sealed against the degradations of a dying world, in catacombs high in the peaks of northern ranges. The creature learned of this now, stealing thoughts, and longed for an hour of assimilation. Knowledge was unending and all.

“^g-oO hh - ^^, Xxxx.”

“doshu doshu. Cata sasta Q.”

“Hello, I bring you no harm.”

The flyers whispered among themselves, hugging closely, afraid. But Emerald true to her nature felt no fear, her hatred slowly abated, and she reached out to the being. “You come too late. Our world is at the edge of reckoning.” Her knife clattered to the ground and snapped into two pieces. Emerald knelt at the foot of the alien, and she picked up the shards, intent on plunging the sharp fragments into her throat. She longed more than ever now to die, refused to witness the end of the world.

Rise, mother, your world is just beginning

I raised her up and she held forth

suspended above her people

an image of love and her child

who shone out, glowing from her robe

reaching welcoming out of pellucid skin

a new beginning.

From my outstretched arms I formed a bubble

and within we removed safely to a corner

while the electric birdcage hummed

and shat out rotating bits

that displaced the rock with ease

and dug deep into the floor, disappearing from view.

Into the abyss, deep into the cryptic chamber below

where the force of ages lie benign, bubbling in contemplation,

inert but willing.

The vapors sprang forth, released, tensions now insatiable

cascading as a geyser,

towering from the depths into the cavern and to the light of day

a force beyond reckoning into the ether

and shrugging off the mantle of derisive supplication.

Beyond the walls an army halted, its impetus dwarfed,

then turned upon itself in grief.

My electric birdcage lie in ruins, martyred to the cause,

but I smiled anyway, and watched a hole open to the heavens.

Bright sunlight streamed into the cavern, and the bubble that had formed over the flyers quickly fell, leaving nothing behind but a trace of ozone. The translucent dipped low and soared from the cavern, rising assuredly into the air, awash in steaming droplets of cascading dew. They sparkled under the sun light like diamonds falling to the earth. Flyers rushed out into the wind and gathered up the moisture, holding it to their breast and tongue and laughing.

Emerald remained in the cave, with the alien who hid shyly behind a clouded visor. The silvery suit belied any emotion, but she felt the joy, and the anguish. Emerald leaned against the thing, and embraced it, then felt the kick of life from her belly and put her hands down to pat and welcome her baby into a world of peace and plenty.

Your steed awaits, I said to the woman

and I sagged inside my suit

unable to withstand any longer

the caustic environ which my electric birdcage

protected me from,

my long wandering existence.

The lofty creature bowed, she mounted,

taking to the clear sky.

They rode the thermals,

watched as the gloom receded to the edges

and sank into the sea. For one hundred years

the dismal stuffs will swell upon currents

and beat itself into irrelevant fluff.

Much like the heavens and the stars

and the bits that swirl and form into worlds -

and so here I am, wandering still

a ghost among mortals.

The gods have left, flinging motes in another direction

but we remain. What else?

the end

the beginning: part 1