Chapter 1
There was something disconcerting about standing on a volcano’s flank as it belched plumes of ash that made Fatality silently question her life choices.
“We are never taking another one of Verdue’s requests ever again.” Lucky for him, Eon didn’t have to come. Not like she had a choice.
“You didn’t have to join me, you know. She sent me to resurrect her subs, not you.”
“Three sub-Verdues. You need someone there to protect you afterward.” He got her there. Fatality acquiesced.
“Thank you.”
“Come on. Let’s get moving.”
Eon and Fatality traversed over the cold remnants of pyroclastic flows and lava bombs. The matchstick remnants of fallen trees were the reminder that Mount Gede had been a jungle paradise. Nothing living remained across its slopes.
Her slopes. Guardian had mentioned it before they arrived. Gede was a she sub-Tellus. Some ancient Force firmly rooted into Earth’s crust, where three stubborn sub-Verdues had literally planted themselves to her surface. Nine years ago, such a concept would have been utterly asinine to Fatality. There she was, tailing her father as they walked over the rocky skin of a sub-Force who essentially murdered three other Forces, possibly because they were making the volcano itch. That was how Fatality was going to interpret it anyway.
Forces could be clouds and the wind, trees and animals while also masquerading as people. Her Eon dad was doing the very human thing of non-stop cursing. A muttered tirade about, “—brainless, simple-minded, floral falsities—” before she lost sight of his face. Maybe it was for the best that she couldn’t hear him. Fatality opted to pay attention to her surroundings.
Mount Gede’s summit streamed a continuous column of smoke. Lava fountains crisscrossed the flanking edges, while a’a burbled off in the distance. The scattering of glassy boulders draped in the golden locks of Pele’s hair was noteworthy enough to stop Fatality in her tracks.
“I think I’ve spotted them. There’s a grove over that way.”
“Ah-huh.” Fatality was focused on the mountain and the broader picture. Volcanoes were predictable. High silicate ones produced a’a. Gaseous ones exploded. Gede was performing a myriad of different behaviors a single volcano was not capable of, and then there was the aura. Vanished. Gone. Lights were on, but no Force was home.
How is this possible? Maybe they were walking on the remains of Gede’s zombified corpse instead. Fatality shuddered.
Eon was making a straight line to the strand of trees. He hadn’t said a word about anything other than the Verdues. She was worrying over nothing. Everything was totally fine, absolutely a-okay. Fatality glanced at the hellscape surrounding her and grimaced, incapable of deluding herself.
“Looks like whatever fires were here burnt themselves out. It’s safe to approach.”
Ahead was a small cliff face with a blackened stairwell that led to the looming forms of three massive banyan trees. It was one of the few types of tree Fatality could identify by shape alone. Unlike a normal tree, banyans rooted from their branches. What resulted was an entwining trunk system the width of several meters. The cords wrapped around their boughs were carbonized, though the canopy had some color left. A few leaves flicked in the breeze; the faint glimmer of an aura desperate to cling to existence surrounded their tips.
“That’s them.” Even the recently deceased had an aura. Not that Eon could tell them apart from the real deal. He was looking between the three dead Verdue and a nearby banyan, incapable of seeing what she could. They all looked like trees to him.
“How do you tell?”
“There’s still a touch of an aura that remains until the body starts rotting. You could try focusing harder, but I don’t thi—”
Someone else was there.
“Fatality?”
A gentle wisp across her arm and then it was gone. It wasn’t Eon. It couldn’t be the expired Verdue. She had never encountered this one before. Her gaze fixed to the summit.
But who…
“What’s going on?”
Eon followed her line of sight, their collective amethyst gazes locking onto the caldera’s rim.
“What do you see?”
A hint of red, the embodiment of primeval Earth. Cradled in its invisible grasp was a precarious bundle of nothing.
“I— Uh…” The words weren’t there to explain what she was witnessing.
With a gracious tilt of its spectral hand, it spilled its contents. The fires that were close to the summit began to flicker. One after another they wavered then extinguished. It sped up, going faster.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Go!” Fatality collided into Eon. “Get up the stairs. Go! Now!”
“What’s wrong with you! What’s going on?”
“Go! It’s gas! There’s gas!”
Whatever it was had tipped carbon dioxide and who knows what else, and it was rushing down the volcano straight through the micro ravine the pair of Forces were standing in.
Two panic-stricken Forces faced with the apocalypse weren’t the best thinkers. It took until the first plank disintegrated under Eon’s foot for both of them to realize how delayed Fatality’s reaction was.
“Sorry!” she belted, then grabbed her father’s arm and teleported them both.
“Could have done that sooner!” Forgoing telepathy and roaring it straight into her face.
Fatality had brought them to the edge of the rickety platform overlooking the natural ravine and the hiking path. Smart decision was to originally appear on a rocky ridge away from any potential fires and assess the situation. The stupid one was to keep thinking that was their only option.
Death coasted down the ravine, snuffing embers as it went. The hazard had passed.
“Is it safe?”
Fatality bobbed her head, too witless to speak. She had barely saved them from an instant death, and had no idea why or how it happened.
“This is too dangerous. We should tell Verdue to shoulder her losses—”
“Forget it. If you want to leave, you can. It’s my duty to save the Forces.” Fatality put her foot down.
The two squared off. Eon versus Aon. Father versus daughter. Sensibility or directive. They were on an active volcano that almost killed them, and Fatality needed hours to perform that many resurrections.
“If it gets worse, I’m taking you home. With or without the Verdues.” Eon offered a compromise.
“Fine.”
Fatality started with the task of healing the trees. Burnt and suffocated hardwood was replaced with healthy fibers. The caramelized sap turned viscous under her guidance. A green canopy flourished above. Her healing touch traced across stem and limb, so intertwined that it was hard for her psychic energy to tell where one Verdue started and another ended. They were close enough to channel her energy through each other. A lightbulb lit up in her mind.
“I can do all three at once,” Fatality announced.
“Absolutely not.”
“It would be faster.”
“You need to recover in-between. How would that even work? How would that hurt you? You bleed so much, maybe your heart would just stop instead. Absolutely not.”
She had never tried it before.
“You don’t have to save everybody.”
“Then what value do I have to the Forces if I can’t save even three basic Verdues?” she murmured. Who was she to the rest of the Forces if she couldn’t heal them? How good was her word if she backed out when things got difficult? Her healing arts were the only worth she had to them. They told her so themselves. “I have to.”
“You’re more valuable than them!” What he wanted to say, she saw it across his lips, was, ‘You’re more valuable to me.’ His only child.
Fatality’s ghostly pale fingers looped around his, trying to soothe the other as their nerves rattled. There was no way to hide it. Both were terrified.
“I trust that you will keep me safe.”
“It is my duty to protect you.” Permission given, albeit, reluctantly. His squeeze was the best reassurance he could offer. The rest was up to her.
The vast, white emptiness of limbo greeted Fatality. A familiar yet unsettling place that she visited infrequently and trusted even less. Only the sight of the vacant horizon line made her at ease. It also came with its own problems. Without a path to guide her, Fatality would be left wandering the place blind for hours. She didn’t have the time.
Trees. A silent command that space obeyed. A white forest of evergreens parted before her, revealing a path at its center. It would tell her where to go, to the Verdues, and then to their exits that would bring them back to the living world and their bodies. Sort of bodies.
“Of course they couldn’t be normal. That would be too easy!” Fatality groused, marching down the pathway. “What’s my luck, that I’m going to walk into the clearing, and I’m going to see three giant trees just sitting there doing that creepy thing Verdues do where they wiggle their branches around like it’s their eyes.” The Aon waggled her fingers, imitating the limp gesture of trying to talk with her pseudo branch hands. “It’s so good to see you!” Totally sane to natter to herself when no one was around. Probably why Eon was doing it in front of her earlier, deaf ears couldn’t hear, and since he was ahead of her most of the time, he had the confidence to give the universe an earful and let it rip.
The thought made her smile. As much as they both denied they had much in common, there were those moments. Like their united dislike of Verdues. Mostly the lead Verdue. Every Force and sub-Force was unique, and the subordinates weren’t clones of their leaders. She was being unfair.
Fatality’s adherence to her newfound mantra faltered the second she entered the clearing. What welcomed her upon arrival were three massive banyan trees, girdled with blessed ropes, their branches flicking in greeting.
They’re still trees… Of course they are.
“Hello!” The projection came from the left-most one.
“Hi.” Fatality hoped it sounded neutral to them. She was livid. The requirement to get them out of there included walking them to their gates and shoving them back into the living world. Instead of getting something with legs, or a conveniently small, fuzzy package that the Eves often presented as, she had three ginormous trees to contend with. Three stupidly huge and absolutely dumb, stubborn-ass trees who refused to move even when lava was barreling down on them.
“Can you move in those forms?” Fatality didn’t know why she bothered asking.
“We are sacred trees and are expected not to move,” answered the center tree with a rustling huff of their leaves.
Fatality clawed her fingers down her cheeks.
“I can’t help you unless you move.”
“Our lead never mentioned this. She said you’d resurrect us if she asked.”
Great. Now they were arguing with her. Fatality was losing an argument to a talking tree!
“Your lead doesn’t know how this process works. I need you to move.”
The far-right tree sniped back, “That’s not what she said.”
Screw Fatality’s altruism that each sub-Force was as diverse as grains of sand on a beach—the Verdues were identical to each other. A bunch of defiant half-wits with wood for brains.
“I am in control here and this is my domain. If you want to go home, alive, you will do as I say and… Change. Your! Forms! Now!!” Fatality thrust her finger to the ground, making her demands as clear as she could to three trees who had no actual eyeballs nor ears.
“Hmph! We bend for no one.”
That was it! Why did she even bother?! Fatality stormed circuits, signing ASL curses to herself and the fake, white sky. She had been outwitted by three of the most unmovable creature-plant things in existence. Worse, if she came back to Verdue with nothing, the demented little plant goddess would be convinced that Fatality abandoned her subs. Fatality tried to care, tried to do right by the other Forces. She was there out of a sense of duty and moral obligation. How could she make them understand that she was trying to help them? The whole space obeyed her, so as long as her light shone brightly. Everything there bent to her whim. For some reason, it didn’t work on Forces. They didn’t conform.
Fatality stopped churning. That wasn’t true. Anyone with a mouth communicated in her mind with her when they were there. It was an adaptation to help her and no one else. Her eyes lit up, a grin peeling across her face. Time to test a theory.
“But you do have those pixie forms and human ones, right?”
“Every Verdue does. We choose not to because we are bound to our soil.”
Their principles could go and stuff it.
Human. I need them to be human. The space helped her hear, it helped guide her, and if her hunch was correct, it would let her move with her charges.
Light descended, melting away leaves and branches, revealing three very startled people. The two women and younger man were clothed in Fatality’s favorite athletica wear, ready as she needed them to be.
Her smug-satisfied expression would suffice to get the point across that she had the three sub-Verdues beat. It was her domain, and no one was going to say how it worked otherwise. Suck it, Verdue!
After spending a good minute gawking at their light-brown skin and strange outfits, the first remark from one of the women was indignation. “This isn’t fair. How come you don’t have to be human?”
“Because unlike you, I don’t have alternate forms.” Fatality swished her tail, letting her alien features show. Her ghostly pale skin. The head-to-tail mane of long, feather-like titanium blades. The slivered crescents and caps over what would be her ears, the anatomical feature of an Aon that denied her sound. A lack of mortal needs, and wants, and even a gender. Her body plan was Aon, and the three sub-Forces were stalling. What wasn’t fair to her was that she couldn’t be anything other than what she was, and that the Verdues before her were so ignorant that they’d choose to die rather than utilize the two mobile forms they had at their disposal.
“We need to get moving,” she ordered. She’d gleefully kick them all the way to their exits if she could. They didn’t deserve an ounce of her respect.
The male was the first to relent, bowing his head in submission. “Yes. Sorry.”
Bayu was the younger man, and the two females were Eden and Kebon. Fatality knew little about them other than what Guardian covered in the briefing. Eden was the eldest, with a human-looking age of fifty, and also the one trying to melt Fatality’s face with her stare. The piffling whiner was Kebon. Neither was going to apologize for their behavior, which was fine by Fatality.
“Follow me. I will take you back home.”
What Fatality got as a result was something she figured in hindsight she should have seen coming. The three had the collective motor control of toddlers and couldn’t walk in a straight line without flailing their arms for balance.
It kept going. And going. And going. With Fatality wishing she refused Verdue’s request and risked getting stabbed up the rear with elephant bamboo. If it couldn’t get any worse, it just did. She faced the end of the clearing to witness the most horrifying sight of all. Her head went from the left, to right, and back.
It splits? It was normal to have a path entering the clearing and another one leaving it; however, she had never seen four at once. Her stupefied silence had concerned the lesser Forces.
“Is there something wrong?” the man asked.
Fatality didn’t want to admit that she had never seen such an occurrence before. Her mind was trying to calculate the distance between each of the gates, the solitary exit points for the souls there with her. Maybe it was possible that everyone could leave through one gate. Then why are there three pathways?
“Are we lost already?” For a Force unused to human shape, Kebon’s snide scowl was the perfect expression to show how little faith she had in the Aon. Eden was undermining Fatality a step further, trying to ask the forest for guidance.
“These aren’t living trees.”
“Is this normal?”
The trees being figments was normal for the space. The diverging pathways were not. Fatality was going to have to confess her lack of insight.
“I’ve never seen this before. The path never splits like this.”
“What happens if we follow the wrong one?” Eden murmured.
“There is no wrong one. The problem is that the drop-off points are very far away.”
“Far away? Is it too far to walk?” Eden continued to pry. She received a shake of the head from Fatality. “Then it shouldn’t be a problem. We will get there eventually.” Her gay laughter cut in her throat. This was serious. Fatality was dealing with three Forces who could hobble at best.
“How well can any of you run?”
“Uh…” None of them were sure how to respond to the question. Fatality’s blunt phrasing had come across as dark as she had intended. The distance between the gates was too much. The first and second gate were not what was bothering her, it was the third. The Forces surrounding her were mute.
“I repeat myself, ‘How well can you run?’” Fatality snarled. This was bad. Really bad. She didn’t know why she was asking for hypotheticals. These three had no idea. “Run in a circle. Do it. Now.”
The fear was getting through to them.
Fatality watched as the three made a few herky-jerky laps around the clearing. At least they didn’t fall over. A small blessing, but it wasn’t saying much.
“You’re last.” She signaled out the man.
“Last?”
She didn’t owe him an answer, nor did she want to explain herself. The Aon crossed her fingers and prayed she wouldn’t have to. “Follow me.”
The group of four had dwindled to three. The forest banked at a 90° angle towards the second gate, it never once showed the vast emptiness that was beyond it. A small clearing opened up ahead, the second gate nestled within the trees. Bayu and Kebon kept trying to peer through the forest to see if anything was out there. Fatality had caught him looking over his shoulder more than once.
“What are we running from?” It had been about an hour and a half since they started their journey.
“If we spend too much time here, the lights go out.” Walking in the dark didn’t warrant the intensity from Fatality.
“I think there is something out there,” Kebon whispered into Bayu’s ear, not that Fatality was incapable of perceiving it.
“I heard that,” came the agitated growl. Like small children called out for misbehaving, the pair stiffened. At least they were learning to show some respect. Would have been nice if they had done it from the start. “Kebon, this is your gate. Stand here,” she directed the Verdue’s attention to a spot beside the gate.
It wasn’t really a gate, more like a portal. A flawless 2D oval with a rippling sheen across it represented the exit for whomever Fatality had come to retrieve. The part where she was needed came next.
Fatality shoved her hands through its surface, mixing her energy with it until the gate began to fizzle. An energy load that accounted for nearly a third of her total reserves was required. As she broke down the exit hole, the space surrounding them began to gray. The light of her purple aura was waning, and things were going to get bad.
“Kebon, go through the gate and follow the light at the end. Eon will be with you when you wake up.”
Fatality could follow after, but it was Bayu who couldn’t. She glanced at the man standing at the edge of the clearing, anxiety plastered along his hairline. The attempt to shove both him and Kebon through Eden’s gate had failed. Limbo wouldn’t let them through, and they bounced off of the surface. They had to stick to plan B, and Bayu was in a sweat already.
“It’s not the light, is it?” It was just the two of them. Fatality could be honest.
“No.” She gestured to the forest and its narrowing width. Through it there was a distinct horizon line, wavering mirage-like in the distance. “It’s that that’s the problem. Get moving. If it catches you, I might not be able to help.”
Fatality took position behind the sub-Verdue, partially as a means to flog him onward, but also because if something did grab him, she’d be able to see it and intervene.
“Follow the trail and keep running. Don’t worry about outpacing me. I can keep up.”
Bayu kept a good pace in spite of his inexperience. Fatality swapped from observing his stride to the things that were out there.
“Keep running. Eyes straight ahead and nowhere else.” Two benefits of that instruction. One, it meant he was less likely to trip. Two, she swore she saw something with a face to her right and if he noticed it, he’d be bolting in the opposite direction. Focus on the white forested path ahead of them and not whatever stuff that was clambering its way through the rest of it.
“Almost there.” Fatality could see a break in the trees, an opening in the vast emptiness and the final gate. She nearly collided into Bayu as he made a sudden, full stop. “Go!” she hissed, her orders were incapable of pushing the Verdue.
Bayu was not blind, and if he could see what was going on out there, then surely so did the Aon. The only communication she could get from him was a stiff shake of his head. The sub-Force was too petrified to do anything but shiver.
“Don’t make me haul your ass.” Instead, Fatality opted to grab his hand, dragging him along. As much as Bayu could squirm and protest, Fatality’s dogged determination overrode his steadfast petrification. She needed to get him out of there.
“Stand there and hold my tail.” The Aon offered the appendage to her charge as a means to anchor him. “Hold on to it no matter what.” Bayu nodded glumly, understanding what was at stake.
Around them was a blackening sky with portals to things neither of them could comprehend. Bayu was terrified beyond the scope of words and feeling, death-gripping into whatever inch of Fatality’s flesh he could find. At least she knew where he was. Fatality had experienced it before, doing her very best to ignore it while she worked.
“There is something on my leg!” Bayu yelped. Too bad for him. Whatever was playing with the Aon was trying to claw her thighs open for attention.
“Almost done,” Fatality reassured. Focus. Focus.
The gate dropped to reveal a tunnel with its welcoming light at the end. Fear improved the sub-Verdue’s mortar skills stupendously. He bolted at a speed Fatality wouldn’t have credited him for.
Fatality took a last look at the space they were leaving. The other Forces wouldn’t understand, and she would never speak of it. Volcano gods and twister deities were less unnerving than the crawling blackness that hated being robbed of the dead, yet yearned desperately for her light.
The shadows waved, giving their languishing goodbyes as they faded into the bleak beyond.
Fatality lurched upright, choked and strangled by her own blood. Eon was behind her, supporting her shoulders. Bayu was there as well.
“What’s wrong?” Turns out, forcing the Verdues into their human forms was mimicked in the real world. The sub-Force was fretting with manic energy, worrying about the Aon instead of the active volcano that had killed him.
Fatality’s mindset was a crushing headache and sickness. ‘Deal with that,’ she pointed at Bayu. No way was she going to repeat resurrecting him.
“I’ll take care of her. You’re going to Verdue.”
A blue aura encapsulated the sub-Verdue, and he was teleported to his lead. Eon focused on Fatality.
“Your turn."
**This ends the free sample. Please find the published novel at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLRSSCLC
