Chapter Eight

  Ambition throttled the heavens. Latians, in pursuit of ever exaggerated fineries, furnished the great sky-plates with immense towers of glass and bronze. Domed temples and grand amphitheaters punctuated the acres of firmament scraping superstructures facilitating the bulk of galactic trade. It was enough to make one forget that the world below had once been a verdant oasis, peopled by a nomadic race long swallowed by time. Reduced to ash through desolation, their history lingered unremembered; a whisper on the winds.

  More than any other marvel on display, the statues struck Soran with awe. Marbled Demi-Gods draped in the artisanal textiles of old earth towered over a central promenade, adorned with crowns of vibrant flowers. Each Goliath rested atop a golden plinth, surrounded by a swell of eager worshipers. A pantheon more ancient than the Navy herself rose above the streets of the central sky-plate, Lumina. Lumina hummed with the prayers of the devout. Most had made the pilgrimage to welcome the latest offering of chiseled divinity. Soran's mouth curled in revulsion.

  "Talas," he spat, glaring at the towering monolith of a man unworthy of worship. Posed with one arm cradling the foul tome Atlazar, messages of hope carved into her pages. In the other was a spear, a weapon mercifully absent during their encounter. The mindless masses pawed at his marble cloak, laying their lips on his boots as they begged for salvation.

  "He's coming for us, you know. The gate to paradise awaits." Soran overheard the conversation from a flock of passersby. One of them wore long robes and had the letter T tattooed on the skin beneath his chin. Soran began noticing just how much had changed in the last seven cycles. They had all accepted him as their King and savior, unwilling to fight and take back the life he stole. With blind obedience, they had adopted the faith of the Cybel, trusting that their pirate messiah would whisk them away to Elyssia, granting a second chance at the earthly paradise they had squandered.

  After exchanging the bustling concourse for the calmer atmosphere of the garden district, Soran realized he had no idea where he was going. The Latian sky plates were the size of cities, and, in his overeager compulsion to explore, he had strayed far from the docking bay yet was no closer to finding Tugg. Then, something clicked in his mind.

  It couldn't be that easy…

  Soran checked the Holo-con attached to his wrist, and sure enough, the map was studded with the location of his Accran friend, surrounded by several others he hoped were similarly allieged. The coordinates led to a large complex of buildings near the plate's center. All that remained was to traverse the several hundred or so kilometers of thronged streets and winding gardens, avoiding the countless retinues of pirates that were doubtless flaying the galaxy raw to track them down.

  He scanned the map to find a cloud-skiffer station nearby. Another parting gift from the Ven, the cloud-skiffers were more bullets than ships, loaded into cannon-like ejectors and shot through the sky. Once at their destination they would target a landing receptacle, diving to the plate to be caught in a gravity grip before depositing the passengers. The entire plate was alive with the whooshing whistle of ejecting skiffers, sailing through the air like hunting birds on trails of crackling steam.

  Soran activated the frost effect of his helmet, obscuring his features before entering the transport station. His lack of interest in the many alters of Talas had drawn some unwelcome attention. The famous sky-sentinels, the impervious guards of the clouded realm, were replaced by pirates loyal to the King. Choosing to retain the bronze lances their predecessors had so expertly wielded, aesthetic alterations were made, replacing the artisanal blades with the horns of conquered beasts. Upon leaving the concourse Soran noticeded unwanted curiosity had evolved into a six man entourage. Kaligan's crew. It required little deduction to identify them. Overly muscled, augmented bodies clad in the leather, steel, and marrow commonly associated with the barbarians of ancient history. The Horizon's presence had not gone unnoticed.

  Soran kept a consistent pace, the limp of his still numb limbs preventing anything above a spirited walk. Like every other area of Lumina, the transport station bustled with the comings and goings of robed aristocracy. Many accompanied caravans replete with jewels, gold, and credit slates, likely tributes to the King. After all, what was the need for riches when paradise beckoned?

  Soran intermingled with the masses, spotting a cloud-skiffer readying for takeoff with a few empty seats in the back. Reaching out to hoist himself onto the departure podium, he felt a sharp squeeze on his shoulder.

  "Goin' somewhere?" Said a voice of grinding stone. Soran turned to a pair of golden canines he had hoped never to see again. His captor's grip was unrelenting, and surrounding them was a gaggle of heavily armed and ripe-smelling bodies.

  "Special orders from Lord Kaligan, yous' comin' with us." His entourage chuckled, patting each other on the back as the size of their catch promised ample reward.

  "Thirty seconds to launch. Please clear the departure podium." The automated voice chimed from the speakers surrounding them. The pirates watched as the steam-propelled engines ejected plumes of pungent mist.

  Soran's future flashed before him. Despite casting the Sarchogoroth into a molten ocean, putting a permanent end to its hateful reign, he knew that Kaligan would devise a similarly distressing punishment for his attempt at freedom, a torment he would likely inflict before handing over his catch to Talas. In the hands of the divine pretender, he would experience the anguish the Sarchogoroth had failed to deliver.

  Without thinking, his palms drew together on instinct. He was familiar with it now, the spark of energy that ignited in his belly, growing to consume his entire being before pouring into the material realm to wreak its havoc. This time was different. Cognizant that he and his pursuers were surrounded by civilians — as brainwashed as they may have been — he couldn't risk the expanding energy rampaging in such close confines. The escalating waves channeled into his palms, building into the mirage of heat he had witnessed on Golgotha.

  "Ten seconds to launch. Departure podium free of obstruction." The pirate yanked at Soran's jacket. His palms slipped apart, releasing the pent-up energy in a shock wave of gravitational pressure. The pirates took the brunt of the release. Thrown from their feet, each tank of a man sailed through the air, bowling over whichever unlucky civilian happened to be observing their arrest. The gold-toothed leader suffered a misfortune of a much greater magnitude, the arm with which he had grabbed the young man crumpling into a flesh-sack of shattered bone. The primal scream that fled his lungs pulled Soran into reality.

  "Five, four, three, two, one…" Soran dove at the hull of the cloud-skiffer, engaging the mag-locks on both his boots and fingers. In an instant, he was free of the station, gliding through the clouds and staring down at the splendor of the sky continent. It appeared endless from this vantage. On and on it went, laid out in the complex, interlinking geometry conceived by stonemasons of old. Mass migration was happening in constant streams of bodies, and leaping cloud-skiffers swooped above and below, narrowly avoid collisions. They relied on the perfect coordination of the transport control towers that webbed the city, informed by immense networks of data-fat cabling. Soran couldn't believe that a place like this still existed, that life could continue so peacefully in a galaxy so broken. Due to their capitulation to the new galactic order — and the old one before that — the Latian people retained some semblance of normality, exchanging all their worldly possessions for a ticket to the afterlife. After witnessing Talas's power and the miracles he performed in the bowels of Golgotha, were his claims of the hereafter so unbelievable? Soran knew this was the path of rationalization most Latians had undergone before him. Unfortunately, many concluded that despite his claims' outlandish and fantastical nature, eternity was worth any price. Alerted by a banging on the skiffers glass casing, two children were waving up at him from inside the pod. Whether they were impressed by his daring escape or laughing at how foolish anyone riding on the outside of a skiffer must be, the smiles on their faces reflected his own.

  Adopting a slight angle of descent, the cloud-skiffer fell toward the awaiting station, and Soran spyed the yawning gravity grip awaiting their arrival. The pirates patrolling that region had doubtless anticipated his trajectory and were awaiting his arrival with bolstered numbers. Hell, even the staff would be waiting to apprehend him for breaking an untold number of Latian laws and generally causing a public nuisance. With his stunted mobility hindering any kind of escape, an early departure was his only option. The skiffer sailed over the lush parkland that encircled the station like an emerald halo. He had to act now.

  Soran counted down the seconds, though he only managed to reach two before deciding his perception was lethally inadequate. Disengaging his mag locks, he fell free of the skiffer and hurtled down toward the vast expanse of a shimmering lake.

  This is going to hurt. A realization that would have served Soran better while still attached to the skiffer. He fumbled with his Holo-con, inputting a rapid sequence of commands to which his suit responded. With a swift whoosh of swallowed sky, the suit inflated with a layer of air between his fragile body and the Nanofibre skin. He collided with the unforgiving surface of the water, skipping like a stone and rolling over the lush lawn of freshly trimmed grass into an awaiting hedge. Onlookers were stunned by the intrusive entrance of the flying man, a more uncouth manner of entering the gardens their noble minds could not conceive.

  "Ughah," Soran managed a vague exhalation, followed by a series of grunts and wheezes insufficient to express the extent of his regret. He wished to go back a few hours to when he could barely feel his body at all, never mind every nerve screaming at him for his ill-thought escape. His suit deflated, once again hugging his frail and aching bones, of which, fortunately, none were broken.

  With no time to lick his wounds, he pulled himself to his feet and made off into a dense gathering of maple trees that wrapped the station in a leafy cloak. His Holo-con bleeped with a notification. The daring stunt landed him less than a kilometer from Tugg's location. All that was left was to avoid the pirate patrols, which, due to his theatrics, would be redoubled and redoubled again.

  Balancing on a nearby trunk, Soran keeled over, heaving a generous helping of oily liquid into the dirt. The Sarchogoroth's vile sustenance still slithered within him, unwilling to vacate its host of its own accord. A venomous geography of bruising pulsed beneath the Nanofibre, betraying considerable damage. He hoped that Tugg's company hosted a doctor among its ranks or that his Accran accomplice had grown friendly with another Vrell during his travels. El's face appeared as Soran had last seen her: Achromatic and frail, a terror in her eyes he wanted to wrench from her heart, stealing it away, freeing her of burden.

  Just a little longer. I promise.

  As long as they still lived, he would never stop trying.