Dark Sun

Any mortal mother probably tells her children that angels aren’t real. Or - if she does acknowledge their existence - she paints them as wingèd, spun from light, living among clouds.

Well.

We do exist.

We are called aasimars; a passionate, sharp-edged people, clothed in dark fabric and living off of captured lightning, trickling into our veins. We keep it tied about our throats. Like skeltered, reaching hands.

We can peel back one hundred layers of our hearts and still find the scorch of desperate centuries.

After fifteen years of working here in the archives, I’ve read every single tome of history, prophecy, and lore. Millenia of authors have taught me only one thing: history repeats itself.

A repetition is coming soon.

It is my hope that this future will not befall you, but I believe that it will. As the granddaughter who shares my name and lifesblood, you will probably inherit, also, my poor luck.

Take heart. I have compiled a set of books and scrolls. Spread their warnings and solutions among our people.

I must die now, darling. Sending all my love,

Adelaide Whitlance

Two hundred miles away, a baby girl is born. She is christened Adelaide Sunder.

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“Shh,” his whisper snakes through the great atrium. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“We’re alone.”

“Irrelevant. This is risky.”

My eyes roll to the ceiling, then down again. Mother always told me my irises resembled chips of hazel flint. But I liked Papa’s description better. He likened them to the caramel candy found only in the big city.

I let my gaze follow the expanse of cold flagstones that beat all the way to a huge gait. Beyond its thick bars, the gutted heavens spill stars onto a tapestry of night.

“Let’s go.” Ghel tangles his fingers with mine and glides to the enormous central basin. Balanced on its thick rim are exactly one hundred stone goblets, each riveted to the floor by a string of titanium links. The basin itself is large, sizable enough that the two young aasimars could lie end to end and barely cover its diameter. It is filled with a swirling, viscous brightness. Like the scar a sea leaves on its shore at high tide, a dark ring stains the upper inches of the stone, far from its current depth.

I pinch out a low whistle. “When did that happen?”

“It’s been like this, Lanie. For almost a full moon,” Ghel says, voice tainted with despair.

I step up to the edge, leaning down to dip a few fingers into the silvery extract. It is not a pleasant feeling, and an unfamiliar sheen clings to my skin when my hand retreats.

Thunder growls its dissent.

“Come on, then. We’ve got to do what we came here for.” Ghel reaches for a goblet. With the other hand, he flicks a blonde curl from his forehead. Another girl might have teased her cousin for his occasional vanity, but not me. Ghel… It was his hand that held me steady through Mother’s funeral. I kept my eyes locked on the sheen of light balanced on his curls. The sunlight was fragile that day, heavy clouds obscuring both dwarf stars.

I rip my gaze from him and pluck up a cup. Gingerly, I dip it into the basin. Its chain chimes pleasantly.

Metallic plasma meets my lips and slides back down my throat. I toss back a second gulp and my veins burn. Warming on my chest, a glass orb glows, rejuvenated.

Ghel grins. “Never gets old, does it?” he quips. The worries have smoothed from his face. “We should -”

The sky cracks open, all of Xeniphius illuminated as a bolt sears down to the ramparts, snagging three lightning rods, including the one leading directly into the cauldron. It refills with a crackle and, as the air fizzles to stillness, I blink away the afterimage of the bolt.

I turn back to Ghel and offer a small smile. “We might be able to last longer than you thought. That was the biggest strike we’ve had in more than a week.”

Ghel’s eyes gleam. “Maybe you’re right.” We start towards the gate.

My heart pulses resolutely. The whisper of my dress follows me like a thief in the tattered night.

The streets are quiet. With care, we pick our way along the avenue, ears pricked for the telltale sounds of an approaching guard. When both suns dip beneath the horizon, hordes of guards emerge from the capitol building to comb the streets until curfew breaks.

Memories rattle loose in my mind, unspooling. The capitol building never goes dark. Not once. Even grandma can’t recall a time when its fiery windows caved to blackness. Despite this, no one ever sees the minister leave. I wonder if she lives there. Does she know her people will be reclaimed by the gods if her efforts to help are not redoubled?

“Don’t move!” The voice is filled with discarded hate.

Ghel goes rigid with dread.

But with the next shout I can place the voices, echoing beyond the gate. The guard’s shouts spare with a halting, male tone a few streets away. “Wait, please! This is not what it looks like. I had a late night at work, I was simply returning to my husband and child!”

“There is no residential area in this district,” the rough voice counters. A thud.

“No, no, I swear…. Lords, please.” A few whimpers follow, then the screech of metal across stone. I can almost hear him cowering.

“Get yourself home,” the guard threatens. “I never want to see you after the suns set again.” Timid footsteps scamper off.

Ghel gestures back to the gate. Reaching it, I heave it aside. He slips out behind me, and it rattles closed darkly. The night stills. I tug at a worn shawl about my pointed shoulders and we set off quickly, heads down. The almost-silence of the city streets whittle away at my nerves. A chill stalks the night.

Well-maintained plasma mills and trusty shops contrast our poor, squandered living quarters. Too many aasimars squeeze into tight apartments, three and sometimes four generations of a single family sharing the dusty light from a single window all their lives. Parents keep conversations after dusk hushed, so as not to wake the children sleeping on worn blankets across the room. Corded around each throat is a tiny, glass orb. The only place in the entire city where they don’t shine is the cemetery. Its sprawl has doubled in the past year alone.

Beyond the stacks of stone-carved buildings, the land begins to slope up, lifting trees and owls’ nests and angels on too-dark nights away into the sky, where low-hanging clouds often gather for the moon. I feel safer beneath the moon. Under the glare of two suns the world feels harsh and exposed. Night seems to cool the flames of despair Xeniphius fans larger every day.

As the earth levels out once more, Ghel leads the way to a stunted cliff face dotted with caves. They’ve been converted into make-shift homes for those who can no longer afford the large apartments they once occupied. No other aasimars are out at this hour, fearful that - even high above the city - guards will catch them. Our neighbors have drawn heavy blankets across the mouths of their caves to blot out moonrays.

Ghel ducks into the second one from the left, where a faint light leaks out onto the grass. I pause, looking down at my necklace. Bright, as always. I cut my gaze across the overlook. Lightning hurtles to the ground once more, eliciting a tight smile from my lips before I turn to join Ghel.

Stepping over the arc of light spilling beyond the rocks, I enter a new world. It is warm tucked up in the earth, the mischievous breeze turning its back before entry and sweeping back to town.

“How is she?” I murmur.

“She’s awake,” Ghel says, smiling and raising the hand of a girl laid on a few worn blankets against the wall.

“Calamity,” I whisper, kneeling next to her and taking a feverish hand. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m awake,” she says in a breathy voice, colored by her smile, ever-bright.

“Yes, yes you are,” I laugh with relief, swiping dirty strands of hair from my vision. “Ghel?”

“I’m coming.” He pops the stopper from his necklace and settles on the floor by Calamity’s head. With a careful hand, he dribbles half its contents into her greying orb. Adelaide squeezes her sister’s hand, watching light return to her.

Calamity takes a full breath for the first time in many dizzying hours. She speaks with a cracked voice. “Thank you.”

“No prob, little kite,” Ghel smiles, standing.

I watch him, willing him to hear my thoughts. He masks the pain on his face all too well, but his hand worries at his half-empty necklace, fingernails making soft ticks against the spun glass. Anguish stretches between our hearts, but the second I look at my sister, sitting up and breathing - blessedly breathing - a selfish sort of pride washes over it.

No time to dwell. Time to live.

“I’ll give her my plasma next time, Ghel.”

“Alright.”

I frown. Sometimes I still wonder how to read him.

Calamity clears her throat. “I really don't want anyone giving me theirs. I… I’d be happier to just -”

“What, die?” I spit it at her accidentally, rounding to face my sister. “We’ve been through this! We won’t just let you go.”

“But we don’t even know why it takes so much to keep me alive! I’m sick, Lanie! You can’t keep doing this for me.” She sits against the cave wall, back hunched. Her eyes glitter.

“We can and we will.” I taste steel in my voice. “We will. Ghel and I don’t mind.”

An ominous silence slithers among us. Ghel’s back remains turned.

“You’re going to keep risking your life like this? For me?” A despairing tone creeps into Calamity’s voice. “Every week you steal plasma, or sacrifice your own, for me but there won’t ever be enough. There are raids on the plants almost every day - dozens of aasimars stupid enough to believe they can fix this but they can’t. The fact is if the lightning doesn’t come, we don’t survive. Nobody survives. What happens if you get caught?”

I fix my gaze to a spot on the ground. What would happen if we got caught?

This isn’t what it looks like. No, no, I swear…. Lords, please.

Did that man make it home to his family?

Would we?

“We’d all be dead,” I whisper. The air curdles between us. “We’d all be dead but… but at least we would have done something.” Looking at Calamity, I let my eyes plead with her, willing understanding to blossom.

“Let’s go to bed.” Ghel turns around from his apparent vigil at the mouth of the cage. “We can continue this conversation in the morning.”

No other words are spoken while the torch is extinguished, the blankets rearranged, the dirty clothes tossed aside.

No other words until, “Goodnight, Lanie. I love you.”

The night witnesses a long pause. Crickets sing outside beneath the spilled vase of silver-sprinkled velvet sky. By the time I responded, Ghel must have thought it was improbable that I would respond at all.

“I love you, too.”

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A bolt of lightning jars the ground. It tongues down from the night with abandon, splintering across half-a-dozen collection towers. A mortal silence swallows Xeniphius.

And then come the screams.

I scrabble from under my blanket, careening out of the cave. Pin-pricks of light sputter awake below, giving way to the dimly-lit primary collection tower. Beneath which Ghel and I had stolen plasma mere hours ago. With one glance, it appears nothing is wrong. But after a few heartbeats, the horror begins to show itself.

The lightning rod begins to tip, and then fall, split clean through with the tremendous force of the blast. It folds to the ground, echoing up to the outlook, and pinning a line of merchant stalls to the brickwork.

“Adelaide.” Ghel claps a hand onto my shoulder, swinging me around.

“The tower’s down,” she rasps, breath catching as it begins to race.

“I know. Which is why we don’t have time to waste. That tower was the epicenter of all energy processing in the region, now that its down, nothing can make its way into the reserves.” Ghel’s eyes dart to mine; one to the other and back again.

I spit hair from her mouth as the wind picks up. “What are you trying to tell me? There’s nothing we can do!”

“Yes. Yes there is, don’t go giving in now.”

“But, Calamity - we won’t be able to get more in time! You and I might not even last long enough…” My eyes lock on Ghel’s half-empty necklace. He grips me by the shoulders. My muscles are tight enough to snap.

“Adelaide, Xeniphius is about to experience the largest raid on that power plant in historical memory. We have to get down there and take everything we can. There’s no other way Calamity can survive.”

“We’re leaving her here?”

“She has enough plasma to last until we get back. I don’t know why she burns through it so fast, but we’ve just replenished her orb. Besides, either one of us goes down there alone and we’ll be crushed by the crowd. Let’s go?”

“Let’s go.” I glance down at her necklace. It glows stubbornly.

Descending into the valley feels like walking into the jaws of a predator. Paintbrush trees scrub themselves raw against the wind.

A ravenous shadow lunges across our path, barking wildly. Ghel shrieks and stumbles back, but the dog sprints off into the foothills. I yank him to his feet with a clammy hand. Our footfalls begin to clap against the brickwork on the outskirts of town.

“Oh my gods,” Ghel whispers, slowing to a shaky stop. I halt before his outstretched arm. “Look.”

The heart of the city appears to be radiating light, a smudged halo reaching into the sky, growing steadily brighter. I squint. Hundreds of aasimars swarm the wrecked power plant. From a distance, they congeal into a terrifying, rippling ooze of beings, leaking over locked gates and through neglected back doors whose brass knobs fell to pieces at the slightest touch.

Rumbling grows in my ears. At first, I think of thunder, looking to the sky in search of imposing clouds ready to blot out the moon. But then it grows in ceaseless chorus, unwavering.

“Ghel… that’s -”

“Footsteps,” he finishes, fear pinning creases to his brow. “We have to get in there, Lanie.” His voice reverberates around the etched columns nearby.

“There’s not enough for everyone. There was hardly enough for everyone rationing.”

“Then all the more reason for us to run. The rest of them can survive at least a while longer, we can survive perhaps another week, but Calamity can’t.”

Calamity’’s name rouses me. I force my eyes into focus and we bolt.

Dilapidated residences fall away into the periphery. The roaring grows louder. There are screams now, distinct with words. Every night watch guard has been pulled from bed and thrust into emergency duty, but they are no match for the impending threat of death.

Getting caught on elbows and clutching fingers, Ghel and I l shove through the crowd, pushing closer to the plant.

“Get off of me! Get OFF!!”

I whip around, tripping over the leg of a fallen boy. Looking down, she sees his twisted body trampled underfoot. Scarlet blood glistens against his dark skin.

A rough yell rips my gaze to Ghel. One of the guards holds him in an iron grip while he writhes.

“Lanie, GO!”

I take one last look at him, but then Calamity’s struggling smile flashes across my vision and she leaps off.

The edge of the crowd has bottlenecked around the main gate to the plant. A few of the more athletic aasimars have made it inside by climbing atop the shoulders of those nearby and jumping to snatch the top bar of the gate. I sweep her eyes back and forth. How to get in? There is no way I could make that leap.

An obscure set of memories comes rushing back to me: young, swinging from mother’s hand walking by this building a hundred times.

“What’s that, Momma?” my little finger pointed at two watchmen standing by a huge set of gears with a crank sticking out of the wall.

“It’s for the gates, Del. They use that crank to open them up when its our turn to get plasma.”

Tiny me craned my neck to keep staring as they passed.

“When is it our turn again?”

“Not for another few weeks, dear.”

That had been when lightning came almost three times an hour.

Struck back to the present by Ghel tumbling into my side, the memory fades with a glimmer of mother’s smile.

“The crank, Ghel.”

“What?” he yells over the din.

“The crank for the gate, where is it? We have to get there!”

“Are you insane? That will let everyone in!”

“Including us! There’s no other way. We’ll just have to be fast. You wait right in front of it and get in there the second it opens.”

“But -”

“Do it!” I spin away from him, scanning between a sea of smeared faces. “Where are you, where are you?” I mutter. Panic flutters high in my throat. I think I may vomit. Then my gaze fixates on the little bump-out. No guards to speak of. I burst out of the crowd and sprint to it. Clamping hands down on the cold metal, I heave to the right.

Its rusty surface scrapes over my palms leaving ochre streaks. The crank remains immobile.

I yank it to the left, then the right again, adding a jiggle and a twist.

“Gods, come on, please!” Frustrated tears begin to stream down my cheeks.

The roar of the crowd swells as another aasimar clears the gate and falls to the other side, sprinting to the cauldron and snatching a cup. He plunges it into the dwindling plasma that remains and gulps it down. A grotesque stream of silver drips from one corner of his mouth.

Lightning hurtles from the sky, striking the unprotected plant and I give one last yank. The strike reverberates through the building; cracks begin to ripple across the ceiling. The crank shatters, ripping open my hands to a flow of blood. Broken chips of brick rain everywhere.

The gears begin to turn, released and unrestrained, and the gate flies open, rattling back into the wall with a crash.

The crowd blossoms through the opening, hundreds upon hundreds tearing their way into the plant with Ghel lost in the fray. I watch, suspended in the interim between action and reaction. Should I dive into the crush to help Ghel? Or wait until he runs out so we aren’t separated? Plowing through the rush feels dangerously treacherous. I may not even find him.

So I stand here, removed from the turmoil and clinging to my dress to staunch the flow of blood from my palms. As my brain calms slightly, finally able to take everything in without the press of angels on all sides, I register their stinging. Shrapnel from the crank has cut deep, and threads of my dress are working their way into the wounds.

The crowd outside the plant is thinning. More watchmen, summoned from neighboring towns, are arriving on the scene, pulling people back and lugging them away. Those who were first through the iron gate begin to return, dripping droplets of plasma from overflowing jugs, urns, and fingertips. One woman appears to have bathed in the stuff, and is causing a scene in the middle of the road. Even those still desperate to get inside detour around her, leaving an open stage. No aasimar can handle more than a few cups of plasma at a time; the woman seizes right there in the street, and dies, pulled from life by her desperate instinct to survive.

“We’re out!” The cry starts as a single warbling voice. It takes a long string of seconds before the crowd realizes what that yell means. Then it quickly infects the rest of the desperate crowd. Other voices echo it, piling up into a mountain of sound.

“It’s gone!”

“There is no plasma left!”

Ghel emerges suddenly from the fringes, limping a little. He wears a devil-may-care grin. “Got it!” With triumphant fingers, stained silver and leaving oily prints he holds up a goblet. His necklace pulses, and it is then that I notice: his orb has been broken. Smokey cracks rift across its surface, plasma sneaking between the shards to drip. Drip. Drip…

“Your necklace.” It is all I can say, staring at him in horror. His smile falters, but catches on the edge of his lips and heaves itself back into place.

“It’s a slow leak. We can make it home.”

I only hesitates a heartbeat before we’re off, racing over rubble and streets clogged with panic. Ghel clamps a hand firmly over the mouth of the goblet, sealing the plasma in, but it hampers his gait.

Buildings and arches fall away, bricks turning to grass, columns to trees. Climbing into the sky, the air becomes more feisty, tearing at my lungs with icy fingers. Rounding the summit gives me pause, and I kneel, gasping at the earth for a while. Ghel pulls up beside me, losing a few drops of plasma to the sudden momentum shift.

I don’t ask the question that almost springs to my lips, I don’t picture Calamity’s body in the corner of the cave, necklace extinguished, I don't pine for the safety a parent would bring. Instead, I stand, allowing my feet to follow each other to the outlook.

Calamity’s blanket is stranded across the ground, caught on a few scrubby bushes. My eyes trace their way over the terrain until they reach her, folded up by the edge of the cliff.

Ghel grasps my hand. Together, we walk to her and crouch.

“Calamity?” My voice is hardly a breath, one hand reaching out to stroke a strand of blonde hair from the girl’s cheek. Her orb pulses weakly.

Calamity stirs.

“Oh my gods.” I manage only this barest of verbal reactions, enveloping her sister in her arms.

“Have you got the plasma?” Calamity says with great effort, blinking her eyes open.

“Yes! Yes, we do, Ghel -”

He proffers the goblet. Sweating and shivering, she drinks. Her necklace begins to brighten.

“I thought….” Calamity coughs and starts again. “I didn’t know when you would get back. If you would return in time to… So I came out here. I wanted to see the city one last time. It’s really quite beautiful from up here. You can’t make out the ugly bits.”

I swallows the well of emotion threatening to choke me, and cling tighter to my sister. Ghel joins us on the ground, holding the goblet beneath his cracked orb so that it catches the drips of plasma oozing out.

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A strike of lightning splits the heavens, landing in some far-distant town. Its illumination momentarily pulls the curtain of darkness back. By its light, three aasimars huddled on a foreboding cliff edge make out the silhouette of the twin mountain across the valley.

And the building perched atop it.

The Archives. Inside of which, behind three locked doors in the Historical Accounts section lies a long-forgotten piece of paper. It is smudged at the edges and somewhat torn, shoved haphazardly between the pages of a large tome as a bookmark. It's written contents contain the very clues Xeniphius needs to save itself. But there it remains, untouched, unread, in its hour of greatest need. Upon the single edge sticking from the book, one can make out a looped signature. Adelaide Whitlance.

The sky goes dark once more.

Back across the valley, Adelaide Sunder watches her city crumble from afar. Not a single building falls. There are no gaping cracks racing each other along streets and brickwork.

Just the quiet fade of orb after orb tied about thousands of throats.