Atlas

“Boy,” Abbot Alexandros grumbled. It came out weak and dusty between panting breaths, and, outside, the bombs fell. Atlas bent with a grunt, letting the older man slide off of his shoulder and onto a padded bench against the wall.

“Yes,” Atlas responded, taking a respectful step back and breathing hard himself, “sir?”

An exploding shell on the mountain punctuated the response, and dust filtered from a crack in the ceiling.

The Abbot wheezed, hands on his grey-robed knees. Another blast hit the mountainside and lingered, rolling down the mountain like thunder as Abbot Alexandros’ blue eyes lifted to meet Atlas’ with a hard, waterless flatness of the already dead. The strength went out of Atlas’ knees, then, and he put a palm to the worn table-top behind him to keep from collapsing.

“Take–” Alexandros began, then gave in to wheezing gasps and lowered to his elbows, breaking the gaze that had stricken Atlas to the place with its hopelessness and mortality. Atlas rushed to the old man’s side as duty and worry forced a ration of urgency into his cold muscles, and he put an arm around the man, holding him from tumbling from his seat as the coughs subsided and died away, sounding ragged and torn.

“Let me get you some tea, Master.” Atlas stood and hurried to the fire across the room.

“No, Atlas.” The Abbot’s voice was clearer, more commanding. “Listen to me, boy.”

The screams, and the shouts of command, and the ring of steel on steel outside amounted to the distant buzz of insects through the dozens of feet of stone separating the Abbot’s mountain-heart sanctuary from the outside world. The sounds funneled and bounced through the long, musket-barrel windows that normally showed clear blue sky even so deep beneath the earth of the abbey. Now, those windows were clogged with the thick, yellow smog of war-engines, and the light that came through them was not enough by which to read. It reeked of fireworks, but the explosions outside were not the explosions of fireworks, and the shouts were not ones of celebration.

“Yes sir?” Atlas asked, ladling water from the hot kettle into a pot of leaves.

“Listen, to me Atlas.” The Abbot’s voice was calm, stern, earnest.

“Yes, sir,” Atlas repeated, ladling more furiously, spilling drops of water into the sputtering fire.

“Dammit boy, Stop Pouring!” The command was so sudden, so harsh, and so furious that Atlas dropped the steel ladle in utter shock as the panicked frenzy suddenly broke and flooded through his body like a weight that, after a long and exhausting walk, is too heavy to avoid being crushed beneath.

The very air rang with the force of the command, and it tightened around the Abbot as fear and anger contorted his features. It bent the light around him, rendering him briefly watercolored and shimmering, then rushed toward the acolyte like a scythe. It struck the ceramic teapot with a force that spread on impact, flowing through the young man’s fingers and knocking them instantly senseless. The force struck the iron kettle and it rang like a sullen bell. Steam rose in sizzling clouds, and ash flew into the air where water sloshed out of the pot into the hearth. The teapot cracked with a sound like a report and fell from Atlas’ numbed grasp, shattering on the flagstones and splattering the boy’s bare ankles and wrapped feet with soggy tea leaves and scalding water.

Atlas yelped and leapt from the spreading puddle, the shards of pottery, and the gently swaying kettle on its hook. The Abbot’s eyes blazed with a light that was half anger and half mustered power, and Atlas’ heart stopped in his chest. Then, the light faded, the kettle stopped swinging, and the panic settled over Atlas, crushing him to the ground.

It was happening. It was really happening. The Abbey was under attack. Not a paltry test of the defenses, quickly staged and quickly won. This was a full-scale assault. Kenvos was here to take, to kill, and to raze Atlas’ home to the ground.

The baleful light faded from the Abbot’s eyes and he heaved forward into wracking coughs that shook his entire frame. Atlas did not move to him. He was numb. He was utterly empty. The magnitude of what was happening, and his utter helplessness to prevent it, was enough to wipe his mind entirely clean. The thoughts running through his mind were ghosts, devoid of meaning or feeling.

Darron would die. Darron, who had helped Atlas with his extra chores time and time again just to spend time with his friend in his spare moments.

Master Ewan would die. Ewan, who gave Atlas scraps from the kitchen if he got peckish between mealtimes.

Even heartless Master Phineus, who kept them from dinner and from bed all through the night, if that was what it took for his students to grasp the Koan or Parable that they were studying.

They would all die, and for what? Because Kenvos was a plague that did not know how to stop devouring. They would all die, and wherefore? Because Atlas was weak. He was weak, and there was nothing he could do to prevent his home from falling to the shells and the gas and the flame.

“Are you listening to me?”

Atlas’ eyes drifted up lazilly, not truly focusing on anything, and his tongue felt thick and foreign in his mouth.

“What?”

“Atlas,” Abbot Alexandros grumbled, his voice low and kind, still wet from the fit.

Atlas’ cheeks were wet with tears, and the old Abbot swam in his vision. He raised an unsteady arm and wiped them away on the inside of his elbow, smearing black soot into the tracks. And still, he felt only ghosts.

“The abbey is going to fall. You know that.”

Atlas thought to nod, but did not.

“We don’t have much time. I am too old to escape, but you aren’t, Atlas. You must get away. You must warn the Emperor.”

“The Emperor,” Atlas echoed, not a question, and not a critique.

“Take my cloak, boy.” The old man shrugged out of his silken, dust-grey robe, letting it fall to the bench behind him. Beneath it, his limbs were startlingly thin, startlingly old, startlingly human, and he snagged the garment with a talon-like hand, holding it out to the acolyte kneeling a handful of paces away from him.

There was another explosion from above, closer, and there was a great splintering of wood and stone as the outer door to the sanctuary was blasted off its hinges.

Still, Atlas didn’t move.

Armored boots descended the stairs in military step, clanging against the stone. The grey cloak hung off of the Abbot’s outstretched arm, and Atlas only stared at it, blankly. As the steps and voices grew nearer. The light blazed up in the Abbot’s eyes again and the air tightened around him.

“Lock.” he commanded, and the heavy wooden door slammed shut with a rattling bang and the iron latch fell shut. “Take, Atlas,” and that force tightened around Atlas’ nerves and mind and heart. He stood rigidly, walking like a marionette–not necessarily against his will, but his will was broken. He grasped the thin cloak with numb fingers, and it nearly slipped through his grip like cool water. It shimmered and flowed, slipping between his fingers, thinner and smoother than any silk, yet he had seen the Abbot wearing the cloak all his life. It had not clung to his body like cobwebs. It had been voluminous and sweeping, or it had been humble and concealing, but never so thin like this watery shroud.

The footsteps reached the door to the sanctuary, and armored shoulders began ramming against the portal with a force that shook the ancient frame.

“I can’t,” Atlas murmured. “I can’t leave all of you here.”

Abbot Alexandros took the young boy’s hands in his own, folding his paper-smooth talons around the cloak and Atlas’s fingers. He smelled of old paper and the rough smoke from the tallow candles in his study. “You must, Atlas.” His eyes still glowed with that inner fire. He was powerful. The frail old bird of a man held more power in a single word than Atlas could dream of attaining in his entire life. Shattering a teapot and shutting a door were to him as taking a breath was to Atlas. “The Emperor needs to know what Kenvos has done, or the entire empire may fall. You care for us, Atlas, I know you do. You are a man of love, and that is something great. But not everybody is. Not even close to everybody. You are in the–” the door shook again and there was a cracking sound of wood that made both men jump. “You must leave, now!”

“How, Abbot? How do I even find the Emperor.”

“You will find him. Come!” The golden light blazed, and Atlas felt himself jerked forward, his muscles straining from the unexpected motion. Abbot Alexandros, the man who had been the closest thing to a father that Atlas had known, plucked the grey cloak from his hands and swept it over his head in a motion, fastening it at the throat with deft fingers.

“Give up, old man!” a voice shouted from behind the door as another impact shook it on its hinges. The voice was thick with the slurred drawl of a Kenvian officer. “Your nest is taken!”

“Listen to me, Atlas,” the Abbot growled, taking the younger man’s head in two palms and pulling his forehead to his own so that their eyes met and crossed, inches apart. Atlas could feel the warmth of his fluttering breath on his face, and the smell of it sent another bitter surge of panic through his body. “Listen.”

All at once, there was that tightening of evocation in the air, and the golden light in the Abbot’s eyes swelled to celestial brilliance. Pain speared into Atlas’ temples, both freezing and seering, and shot through his spine and limbs and extremities, filling him up with molten flame. He screamed–piercing, and bloody, and throat tearing.

“Listen.”

Stars danced in his vision, and then they were not only in his vision. Stars danced in the room, swaying and sparkling with dazzling brilliance. Only, they were not in the room, they were in the endless, velvet-black infinity of the heavens, and they were not only stars, but great, raging balls of flame too large to comprehend, soundlessly blazing in the vacuum.

“Listen.”

Atlas felt his mind slipping like a loosely secured load from the back of a mule as the agony and the ecstasy of the pure, unadulterated knowledge flooded his body. He heard sheep cropping grass a hundred miles away. He felt the rushing current of a frigid mountain steam. He felt the thoughts and the fury of a thunderhead on the other side of the continent. He felt it all, raging through him with a terrible exultation that threatened to tear his mind from its moorings. And there were words–so many words–but they all spoke at once, and Atlas could not grasp so much as a single one. Then it was over, and Atlas was laying limply on the ground beside the Abbot who lay sprawled beside him, unmoving.

“Abbot?” Atlas scrambled to his knees, the pain and the pleasure vanished to nothing but dim memories of a dream. “Abbot!” He shook the old man violently. His eyelids flickered, but nothing more.

“Get out of the damn way,” the Kenvian voice behind the door barked, and the pounding stopped.

“Abbot!” Atlas looked back at the silent door, heard footsteps shuffling away, and shook the old man again. His eyes fluttered open, white behind the lids, and then closed again. His lips moved, but no sound came out, then a spear of lightning flashed through Atlas’ head again. His body jerked as the muscles spasmed and his vision flashed black-white, and then a single word blared in his mind.

“Fly!”

The cloak around Atlas’ shoulders went rigid as a sail, flapping open on an intangible wind and spreading around to the sides like the wings of a great moth.

“Fly!”

There was an impact of air that rent the oak door from its hinges and sent it barrelling across the room. The tumbling slab missed Atlas by inches, spraying him with a hail of wind-propelled splinters, and five bears of men swarmed through the open doorway.

“Fly!”

As though gripped by a sudden hurricane gale of wind, the wings of the cloak billowed and filled with air, lifting Atlas off the ground and hurtling him towards one of the rifle-barrel windows that tunneled out to the smog-choked sky.

“The boy!” the lead man roared, and Atlas barely had time to see the giant man stab a stocky and wickedly sharp blade in his direction before he was spun around and hurled toward the window. In the split second that it took for Atlas to reach the narrow tunnel, three musket reports split the air. There were three sharp whistles of air that buzzed past Atlas, meeting the musket balls in their tracks and deflecting them into the walls and the ceiling. A vase of dried flowers shattered as one of the lead shots struck it. One of the threads of compressed air met with its bullet and deflected it into a ceiling timber, but skimmed too close to Atlas’ leg and sliced through the meat of his calf as readily and as hotly as any bullet would have. Then, Atlas was to the window. The expansive wings curled shut at the final moment, hugging Atlas like a swaddle, and he shot through the hole. The rough stone scraped at his bare skin, drawing long scratches and gashes as he rocketed down the passage. Another musket report sounded, accompanied by another whistle of compressed air, and the bullet deflected off of the stone of the tunnel, sending chips of stone flying and ricocheting to embed itself into Atlas’ left foot. He screamed in surprise and hot pain. The ball’s momentum was slowed by the impact with the wall, and had only entered–not exited–and sat there in his flesh burning with a scalding heat that made his eyes cross.

And ten feet from freedom, Atlas lost his momentum and came to a skidding halt in a tunnel that would not have been large enough for him to fit inside even if he had been three years older.

“Foolish old man!” the leader roared, and Atlas struggled violently to free himself from the cloak that had wrapped itself around him, fighting to free his arms enough to move. He craned his head around as far as he could in the tight quarters in time to see the armored man grip the Abbot’s hair and yank his head up, sword in hand. The Abbot’s eyes were wide with terror when they met Atlas’, but the mantle of power still distorted the air around him. He could do it. He could blast them all to cinders. Why wasn’t he doing it? Atlas drew breath to scream–to order the old man to defend himself. His eyes glowed golden, as he drew upon his power, and the sword blade swung downwards in a glittering arc.

Kill them.

Kill them.

KILL THEM! Atlas screamed in his mind, but all that came from his throat was a choked squeak of horror as the infantrymen leveled their pistols at him and sighted down the line of the window at Atlas. Stuck there. He had no time to crawl the rest of the way down the chute. He had no time to duck his head below his shoulder. He had no time to blink. He could only watch as the sword blade swept downwards and the gunmen sighted on him like a hog in a trap.

There was a thunderous impact to the air and the rippling wave of power that had been gathered around the Abbot fled in a rush too quick to see. It rushed down the tunnel even as the gunmen fired, passing through the bullets and halting them as if they had passed through water. The hurtling wave struck Atlas and blasted him forward with enough speed to knock the boy nearly unconscious on the side of the passage. He shot from the opening like a bullet himself and out of the smoke trailing line of haze behind him. He fell. He fell and fell, head swimming, unable to right himself or determine which direction was up. The world was a spinning kaleidoscope of green and blue and brown as he plummeted, the final image in his mind that of a man he loved and revered slumping to the ground, senseless and defenseless even as sword blade plunged toward his throat.

Then the wings of the cloak unfurled for a second time, sweeping Atlas up on that unseen wind and turning his dive into a swooping glide as its passenger hung limply beneath it, barely conscious.

The pain in his head muffled his thoughts–that searing and arctic agony all intertwined into a single raging lightning bolt. It burned away thought and emotion, turning it into a dull, throbbing, ache that pulsed through his body like a burn. All around him, the abbey burned. All around him, people lay dead and wounded. All around him, Kenvian war balloons turned in their lazy arcs, still dropping shells upon the helpless people that Atlas knew and had grown to love. All of it: gone. All of it: blasted away to ruin. All of it: for greed.

The rage built inside of Atlas as he rocketed through the air away from the setting sun, past lazily drifting balloons and formations of infantry that cut down his people like they were scything wheat. The people of the abbey hurled evocations at the invaders, but they did nothing. The paltry forces that they could muster only washed around the armored Kenvians like a stream around a stone, and then came the cutting. Hatred swelled inside Atlas like nothing he had ever felt before. It was an incandescent fury that washed away all other pains, inside and out. He burned with it like a magnesium flare and the air shimmered around him like air over a furnace. It burned out of his eyes and leaked out of the tips of his fingers and toes.

Below, a Kenvian soldier had a girl–one of the traders visiting the abbey–cornered in an alley and had her by the neck, forcing her to bend in front of him as he yanked up the back of her skirt. Children lay dead in the streets, their skulls hewn and their limbs blasted off. And the Abbot could have defended himself, but he didn’t. He had defended a puny whelp of a boy who wouldn’t live up to his level of mastery if he lived for a thousand years. And Atlas burned.

“Burn.” He commanded, and the power around him speared into the air, flying straight for the heart of the nearest war balloon with a force that blasted Atlas backwards in his path, sending him tumbling head over toes. The balloon exploded into flame. The inferno rained molten fuel down upon the heads of the soldiers and civilians alike, roasting them like spitted pigs, before the flaming wreckage of the airship crashed to the ground, spreading in a blazing flood of death and destruction.

Atlas’ vision went black as he plummeted towards the treetops and the unforgiving side of the mountain beneath them.