The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) (9 page)

The armored giant stopped its exhausted walk and brought one knee to the ground. Solis looked down at it with his own eyes and it was hard to believe what he was seeing.

Pieces in the giant’s armor began to shift, particularly in the area of the abdomen, until they opened to a hollow space.

Solis held his breath, terrified, when he saw movement, and a man stepped out of the giant, which appeared to be left lifeless.

His extraordinary eyesight had “earned” him his position as watchman, so he could see that the man who had been in control of the giant needed help. Like the huge thing he had brought all the way to Clairvert, he could barely walk, tired from what had to be a very long trip.

Solis stepped away from the window and approached the horns. There were three of them, each shaped to give the air blown a specific pitch and a specific timbre.

The red one—a menacing low note—would warn the people of Clairvert about an impending threat; the blue one—a higher note that sounded like the howling of a dog—would let them know that a survey troop had returned.

The green one he had never sounded. He had never needed it. No foreign human being had come to the citadel in decades.

He blew the green horn, and rushed down to help the man.

When Solis was back in the citadel, he had to fight his way through crowds of concerned, confused citizens begging him to explain what they had heard, why he had sounded the horn, and what that new and exotic sound meant.

“
Who is out there?
”

“
Are my children in danger?
”

“
He’s just having a laugh! He’s probably drunk again!
”

He ignored them as he always did, and was allowed passage into the atrium, the maze of narrow stone passages that separated them from the world outside.

Two armored soldiers were kneeling next to the man, and several others were looking outside, no doubt at the monstrous vehicle that brought him to the citadel. Solis approached him, just as he was asked his name.

“Thank you,” the man—who turned out to be very young, albeit physically large—said, accepting a drink from a soldier’s canteen. He was wearing a black jumpsuit, something military, no doubt. “My name is Akiva Davenport, and I need to talk with whoever’s in charge. We are all in danger.”

Chapter 5

Cage of Lights

Her voice scattered across the forest
, carried by the wind.

Some have been lost

Vanished into broken mists

Some have seen hope

Beyond the cage of lights

It was not easy for Jena to sing, Ezra could tell, and not because of an unprivileged voice. He had heard her sing once before, and he didn’t like to remember the scene—the memory had been tainted in more ways than one, a once beautiful painting ruined by the careless blood-red strokes of death’s brush.

It had been back in Zenith, during a short period of inactivity before a lecture. He had spent the morning training in the equivalency suits with Garros and Akiva, trying to grow stronger and more agile—to become a better pilot, one truly prepared to save the world. After, they walked together towards the lecture hall when the sound of music caught Garros’ ear, and Ezra followed him to its source: Jena, Tessa, and Alice, alone in an otherwise empty classroom.

The girls never knew Garros and Ezra had overheard their musical session, though he was sure it would not have stopped on account of their presence. Tessa had been playing sad harmonies with her violin, and Alice set a soft rhythm through a small set of drums she’d slap with her hands. Meanwhile, Jena would sing the melody softly, drawing the words from memory. It was an old song, one written centuries before their birth, and it was titled “When I Am Home.”

Bring down the sky, and scatter the stars

Don’t let hope die, there’s still a path

She was singing it again, now that they had, in a way, returned home—or some sad analog of home. He did not like the memory the scene was invoking, so Ezra’s eyes tried to remain on the floor, on dancing shadows cast by the blades of grass barely lit by weak embers. He was cross-legged and shivering, goose bumps on his skin.

He looked up. Jena and Garros were closer to the fire, hands raised to catch its warmth. He could see the telling shimmers of tears pooling in Garros’ eyes, swelling with the song.

Of course Garros associated the song with the same memory Ezra did. He had the same thoughts Ezra had. He remembered Alice through this song, but unlike Ezra, who wished not to hear it, Garros was humming a deep bass to give it more power, to accentuate its sorrowful notes.

And I hope god cries, when I am home

There was a roar in the distance that sent a shiver down his spine.

Alice and Susan didn’t make it home.

Barnes and Kat didn’t make it home.

Ezra shook his head and rose to his feet. He wanted to be closer to the fire, but his wish to rid his ears of the tainted music was stronger, so he joined Erin at the edge of the forest.

She had left the fire soon after helping start it using some basic equipment she took from Phoenix Atlas’ Apse. For her, there had been a powerful lure in the warmth of the fire, and the company, but it was not quite as powerful as the one created by the unburied creature.

When Ezra reached the tree line, he immediately saw Erin sitting next to the area that used to be a pool, arms around her bent knees. Her eyes looked up at the giant as though it was the first time she ever saw a Creux.

“It looks so much like it, doesn’t it?”

Ezra sat down next to her; the grass was still wet. “It does,” he said. The massive Creux sat at the other side of the clearing, propped up against the deceptively strong trees. Its head hung back, and an opening in its face plate that looked alarmingly like a mouth, was open, like it was screaming at the skies, howling at the moon.

“I wonder what it is. The helmet, the size, most of the armor—if I didn’t know Milos Ravana as well as I do, I would’ve swore this was it. I’m still not sure it isn’t.”

They had set out of Zenith with the objective of finding Akiva Davenport and his Creux, Milos Ravana—the uniquely powerful machine which could be the key to saving humanity from extinction. And the Creux they had found, freed from its prison under earth and water by the combined efforts of Jade Arjuna and Phoenix Atlas, looked too much like the Armor of God. Of course all Creuxen had similar physical traits—their colossal size, humanoid shapes, armored exterior—but this even shared some of Milos Ravana’s more unique details, with only some significant differences.

“Some of its armor is missing,” said Ezra, noticing how many segments in the Creux’s body, particularly on the sides of its torso, and its shoulders, did not reflect the moonlight. “It looks like dead skin underneath—like in Nandi’s joints, under his armor.”

“Yes, it’s not wearing full armor. Tessa’s—”

Ezra cringed at the mere mention of the traitor’s name.

“—and Jed’s—do you remember Jed? The bald pilot who got burnt in an accident before you arrived at Zenith? His Creux, Nebula, was light as well,” she said. Throughout the conversation, Erin had not yet peeled her eyes from the Creux. “Some are like Nandi, Omega, or Ares—heavily armored.”

“I remember Jed,” said Ezra, the name invoking another unwelcome memory. He had met him under terrible circumstances, having accidentally walked into his hospital room in Zenith, only to find the pilot recovering from horrible burns sustained during a mission when his Creux overheated.

“It looks older to me,” she said. “Unfinished. Like an early model. Maybe it’s been here a while.”

“Do you think—I mean, the reason behind these islands in the desert.”

“It’s because of a Creux?” she said. “Yes, I think so too. You know, the Creuxen’s core is filled with the self-renovating energy that fuels them, that gives them their abilities. There was that gas down there. That stuff repels the Laani. But, you know what that means? People could actually
live
here, Ezra. Maybe we didn’t need to dome as much as we thought.”

“So in every oasis—?”

“There’s a Creux, yeah,” she said, and got up, looking at Ezra for the first time and offering her hand to help him up. She shrugged. “That’s what I think, at least.”

“Should we name this one?” Ezra asked, half joking.

“It already has a name—
Lazarus
,” she said. When he was about to ask if she had christened the Creux herself, she went on: “It’s written on its foot. Come on. See for yourself.”

Erin was like a child with a new toy when she led Ezra across the wet canal where the river used to be. The suction of the mud almost cost him his boots, but Erin appeared weightless as she walked through, and climbed out to the other side, closer to the enormous battle machine.

“Look,” she said, approaching the thing’s left foot. Unlike Nandi or Ares, whose feet were thick boot-like pieces that rose all the way to its knees, made to hold the machine’s enormous weight, this one had much thinner feet, tipped with sharp-looking talons similar to those at the ends of Phoenix’s boot pieces.

On the side of its foot, at the level of the circular parts of the ankle, the name LAZARUS had been branded onto the armor in large, sloppy letters.

“
Lazarus
,” Ezra said. He liked the name, even if he had never heard it before, and didn’t know what it meant. “I thought the people who discovered the Creux gave it a name. How come this guy already has one?”

“Who knows,” she said, smiling. “I had never seen a Creux being excavated; it’s very secretive stuff, when one is found. They never involved the pilots in any way; they only brought them to Zenith and began studying them and waited for a match. We didn’t even see them in the flesh until they were ready to be used—we only saw them in the sims. It had been a while since any others had been found—we actually thought there weren’t any left.”

“We
really
should let Zenith know about this,” Ezra said, walking around Lazarus’ foot to the wide space between its long, armored legs, which were bent to minimize the space it occupied. He looked up at the giant creature, wondering whom it would be that could commune with it, and give it life.

Do not trust him
, the Minotaur whispered. Ezra shook his head.

He turned around and saw the light of the fire through the trees at the other side of the gully. No sign of Garros or Jena.

From the other side of the giant’s leg came the sounds of clanking metal, and grunts. When he walked back around, he saw Erin climbing up Lazarus’ upper leg. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just investigating,” she said, pulling herself up to its leg with impressive agility and strength. She turned around and offered him a hand. “Come on up.”

Ezra was reluctant to join her, but he did share her curiosity, and also wished to inspect Lazarus more closely. He followed her path up the colossus’ leg, finding his footing in small grooves in the armor. It was a more difficult ascent than Nandi, whose lower abdomen had a climbing route that seemed deliberately built for that purpose. The wet, muddy surface of Lazarus’ armor was not helping.

Erin helped him up and they found themselves standing together on Lazarus’ hip—or rather, his lower abdomen.

The wind was blowing, and the thick mantle of clouds that covered most of the sky was much thinner to allow greater visibility, thanks to light shed by moon and stars.

“I’m glad we’re here,” she said, taking in the cold air. “I know you’re scared, Ezra, and I’m scared too, but . . . I’m glad we got the chance to be here, and see this, before everything else ends. If it does.”

She put her arm around him in a hug, and he smiled, immediately recognizing her love as friendly, and wishing for nothing else. Erin had become the sister he always wished his actual sisters had been—a friend, and a teacher.

“What are you doing?” asked Jena from twenty feet below. Ezra walked to the edge of Lazarus’ hip and saw her and Garros standing next to the Creux’s leg, looking up at them.

“Nothing,” Ezra yelled. “Just looking.”

Even from this distance, he could tell Garros was worried; he could see it in his eyes. Maybe Jena’s song had brought back some feelings he had buried—like Ezra, he had never truly understood the mystery of their survival in an accident that had killed four people, including two friends, just a few months earlier.

Maybe it made him second-guess his luck and wonder if he was overdue for another tragedy.

The hiss of machinery behind him made Ezra turn around. He almost slipped on the muddy steel when he saw Erin standing before the opening doors that could only lead to the Creux’s Apse.

Light that matched the mist they had found underwater spilled into the darkness, turning Erin into a black silhouette, barely a shadow before a radiant sun.

“What’s that sound?” Garros yelled. “Erin?”

“Garros, come on up!” said Erin, excited. “This thing is
working
.”

“Don’t touch anything! I’m coming up!” Garros said and started to climb up Lazarus’ leg.