29. Fate’s Cunning
29
Fate’s Cunning
Ki’REMI
T he Sableman woke to the flickering glow of celestial torches and the shadow of a silhouette standing at the foot of their vast, gilded bed.
He pushed himself up, the sheets pooling at his waist, his muscles tensing.
Something, nada , someone, had roused him.
Readying to send an attack command to his metanoids, he paused as the features of his unexpected visitor showed up in sculpted relief.
Zavei.
The Saatifa commander’s tall, imposing form appeared wreathed in the dim gold of dawn. His expression was unreadable, and his otherworldly eyes closed off.
‘Tis time.’
Beside Ki’Remi, Issa stirred, blinking grogginess from her eyes before sitting upright.
‘Sulfiqar calls for you. Ready yourselves.’
Zavei did not wait for further response.
He turned and strode away, his parting words ringing ominous as the door to their luxurious prison slid close behind him.
Ki’Remi raked a hand over his jaw, his metanoid tattoos flaring in restless patterns. ‘The freakin’ godacity,’ he growled, ‘to invade our privacy while we sleep.’
‘He has no reason, in his mind, to give us any,’ Issa murmured, slipping from bed.
Ki’Remi sucked his teeth, still not au fait with the lackadaisical care factor of the gods.
He addressed another prominent aspect. ‘Appears the Sullied attack shook the throne room,’ he told Issa.
She nodded. ‘Indeed. If the Sullied penetrated Sivania, it means someone let them in.’
‘Zenas?’ The Rider chanced.
Issa grinned. ‘Sounds like he used the gambit I gave him, and it’s shattered Sulfiqar’s unassailable concept. Which means he is running scared enough to act in desperation.’
They dressed fast, exchanging glances to reassure each other.
Before they approached the door, Ki’Remi pulled his woman close.
He ran a hand over her spine and up to her neck, resting a thumb on her nape for a pulse check.
‘It shall be well,’ he intoned, placing a kiss on her temple. ‘We’ve discussed every possible outcome and have a plan for each. Now we wait to see where the chips land.’
She shuddered, inhaled, squared her shoulders, and turned to face the door and what lay beyond it.
They stepped out hand in hand, pausing at the entryway as Zavei’s Saatifa escorts patted them down for weapons.
Finding none, they nodded to their impatient
‘Took you long enough,’ Zavei groused, stalking away in the lead.
The couple followed and, behind them, filed the Saatifa guards.
As they marched through the twisting halls of the palace, Ki’Remi stalked forward to match the Saatifa Commander’s stride.
‘What can we expect?’ he demanded.
‘You have no right even to ask, lesser being,’ came the lazy drawl.
Ki’Remi sucked his teeth, his voice a quiet, lethal rasp. ‘I know you’re playing two hands in the same game, my friend.’
Zavei kept his pace even, but amusement curled at the corner of his mouth.
‘You wound me, Sableman.’
Ki’Remi’s gaze hardened. ‘I don’t trust you.’
Zavei’s smirk widened. ‘Good. You shouldn’t.’
Ki’Remi exhaled through his nose, fists clenching. ‘You and the War Goddess are up to some shit you intend to throw in Sulfiqar’s face. So, tell me, commander, how do you justify your duplicity? Do you take pride in gaming both sides? I ask because I suspect we’re being pulled into your chaos when we’d prefer not to be.’
Zavei finally halted, turning to face him. The torches overhead cast shadows across his sculpted, regal, terrifying, inhuman face, lashed with disdain.
‘You mistake gods for moral creatures, Sableman.’
Ki’Remi narrowed his eyes and raised his chin in a challenge even as Issa appeared beside him, her eyes flicking from one to the other.
Zavei’s gaze gleamed. ‘Your mortal concepts of righteousness do not bind us. We are not good. We are not evil. We simply are.’
His voice lowered, taking on a purring, menacing edge.
‘Mortals must shit and breathe to survive. We immortals have to consume and betray. It is our nature.’
Issa scoffed, adjusting her shrouded robe. ‘So what you’re saying is, you’re just full of more pure balderdash than mortals?’
Zavei’s smirk curved like a blade.
‘A precise outtake. On that note, keep walking. We’ve much nonsense to wade through.’
Ki’Remi’s jaw ticked, but he said nothing.
The exchanged glances with Issa, then shrugged, took her hand, and prowled after the fast-disappearing Saatifa commander.
All the while stewing on how monstrous this particular pantheon of gods was, a fact that chilled him.
They moved through the palace, their footsteps swallowed by opulent corridors draped in divine energy.
At every turn, shadowed figures lurked in the periphery, servants and warriors alike, their eyes flickering with curiosity, suspicion, and reverence.
Finally, they were led to a set of towering gates.
Their fabrication was not of this world. It was a swirling, living mass of astral metal, shifting between obsidian, sapphire, and liquid stardust.
As the guards advanced and pressed their palms against its surface, it parted soundlessly, opening into the chamber of Sulfiqar.
They stepped inside.
Ki’Remi perceived it at once.
The air was dense and diseased.
It carried the scent of incense, decay, celestial ozone, and rot.
The room was vast, stretching into eternity, yet its ambiance was suffocating.
The walls, carved from cosmic glass, shimmered with reflections of entire galaxies swirling in slow, silent spirals.
A dozen noiseless, faceless forms floated within the room, just about discernible in the haze of deific energy surrounding them.
They were more of the Sazarhi Celestial Keepers, the attendants of the Divine Immortal.
The Rider’s eyes narrowed on the creatures as they hovered around a glowing raised thronal dais.
Twas engraved from obsidian stardust and rimmed in floating rings of light, and sat slumped on it was Sulfiqar, or instead, what remained of him.
He was a figure of unimaginable majesty, a being who’d withstood the dawn of time and sang suns into ignition.
He radiated with the occasional shimmer of living starlight. His skin dulled to a bruised, burnished gold like a fading supernova.
The surface of his flesh bore the traces of constellations etched in shifting scars as if his very body was a celestial map readable only by gods.
Across his broad brow, pulses of nebula light throbbed behind the bone, flickering and dimming in intervals like dying beacons.
His hair, a mane that had in the past flowed like liquid comet fire down his back, was now streaked with ashen gray.
Twas also frayed and thin, yet still haloed with glints of plasma as if the stars refused to let go of him.
His cheekbones, carved and angular like mighty lunar slopes, were simultaneously sallow, the flesh sunken, like moon craters collapsing into themselves.
His pale, cracked-at-the-edges lips were rimmed with the silver glow.
Between them, motes of cosmic dust shimmered with each shallow breath as if his body leaked the detritus of galaxies with every exhale.
Robes of woven stardust and dark matter surrounded his colossal frame, the fabric shifting in slow celestial swirls.
Yet still, despite the toll the ancient disease took on him, siphoning his energy and hollowing his immortality, Sulfiqar radiated menace and majesty.
A god undone, yes, but a deity still.
Nevertheless, Ki’Remi bit back the urge to step forward and diagnose the shit out of him, his professional curiosity roused to new heights.
However, he held back, sensing that if he attempted anything, he’d be turned to mere dust in seconds.
Sulfiqar’s eyes were riveted in a far-off gaze.
The Rider imagined they’d once swirled with infinite knowing but were now dimmed, their cores flickering like red dwarfs near collapse.
Nonetheless, even in weakness, the orbs that had witnessed the disintegration of worlds and the birth of divine betrayals pierced through soul and shadow alike.
Those twin-burning suns locked onto Issa when she entered, pinning her in place.
Ki’Remi eyed his woman as she knelt, lowering her head.
He did not genuflect nor bow; he stood stalwart, arms crossed, muscles coiled, and his gaze unwavering as he assessed the highest of the high.
Sulfiqar’s influence was still cosmic and unfathomable.
However, he reeked of a fractured essence that unnerved Ki’Remi to his very core.
It was the sense that an immense, eternal power was breathing its last.
The being before him was not long before this universe or the next.
‘You have brought it?’
Sulfiqar’s voice was not mere sound at all.
It was the shudder of the cosmos, the vibration of planets shifting out of orbit, and though weakened, still carried the resonance of thousands of forgotten transcendent tongues.
Issa, still bowed, did not falter.
‘I have. I swore to give it only to you.’
Sulfiqar’s hollow laughter rippled through the chamber.
‘Then come closer, child of defiance.’
Issa rose, stepping forward.
The Rider stiffened, on guard.
If the alleged Divine Immortal breathed wrong, the Sableman would burn this entire heaven and flame out the skies.
ISSA
Sulfiqar was crumbling before her eyes.
The great storm god, ruler of the Divine Immortal, the celestial being who commanded the heavens and dictated the tides of war and peace across Sacra, was a ruin masquerading as a deity.
His former radiant golden skin, the color of molten suns, was a sickly pallor as though unseen parasites had leeched away his immortality.
His once-powerful hands, capable of raising mountains and splitting seas, trembled where they gripped the armrests of his throne.
The taloned curve of his claws dug into the divan he sat on as if to stop himself from slumping over.
Yet his eyes still burned.
Twin pits of celestial fire, smoldering with fury, pain, and desperation.
They fixed on Issa with a hatred so profound it might have scorched lesser beings into dust.
‘Where is it?’
She smiled. ‘First, we discuss terms. Like how you’ll release my father from his curse before I hand the far to you.’
‘You think you can bargain with the Most High?’
Sulfiqar’s voice cracked and jagged like lightning splintering the sky before a great storm.
Issa faced him and met that godly wrath with a defiance that did not waver.
‘I do not haggle,’ she said, her utterance sharp as flint. ‘I demand.’
A hush fell over the vast chamber, so absolute it seemed as though even the walls of the divine palace leaned in to listen.
Ki’Remi tensed beside her, his body coiled, a live wire on the verge of snapping.
‘Capture her,’ Sulfiqar whispered to his Arch Sentinel.
Her soul lurched, and she froze, eyes wild, unsure of what choice to make. Fight or flee?
Ki’REMI
Zavei made a move, but before his blade left its sheath, Ki’Remi turned, his silver meta eyes locking onto the celestial commander.
He called his ancestors forth.
Not just from the void nor the netherworld but from the very bones of time itself.
The Witchmen arrived.
They did not walk nor stalk into the throne room.
They unfolded from himself.
He raised both hands as he shuddered.
An otherworldly storm rose from within and without him, and with a rush of air and clap of thunder, the Soothsayer, the Seer, and the Sorcerer arrived, their massive, rippling forms wreathed in writhing, liquid darkness.
In an instant, Ki’Remi’s Witchmen spoke through him.
Twas a roar that sounded like wild, roaring sea storms, with thunderous breakers mingled with the terror of a whispered breath. ‘You will not raise a hand against her.’
Their voices wove through the air, an incantation of ancestral tongues, deep and resonant, vibrating through the stone, the stars, the very fabric of being.
Then the Witchmen’s power inside him unleashed, arcing toward the celestial Sentinel.
Zavei erupted into a maelstrom, its force splintering the air.
He was met with a storm released from the the triad of witchmen, a tempest of fire, frost, and warlock rage.
The throne room became a battleground of the elements.
Ice spears hurtled through the atmosphere, jagged shards forming mid-flight and embedding themselves into the obsidian walls with an eerie shriek.
Waves of molten gold bled from the cracks in the marble, bubbling and rising like a cursed tide, seeking flesh to devour.
The atmosphere fractured, becoming a deadly cascade of gales and razor-sharp sleet.
Until the Witchmen persevered and, with a gust of freezing wind, Zavei’s body froze, his arms arrested in place, unable to shift even a muscle.
Terror overtook him as the immobilization gripped him like a curse woven from the marrow of the universe itself.
The Saatifa commander’s eyes burned with rage, his lips twitching, straining to speak, but the hold was unbreakable.
Ki’Remi’s mouth quirked, arms still raised, his glowing silver aureate eyes on the enraged god. ‘You move when we allow it, Saatifa.’
On the throne, Sulfiqar hissed, witnessing the power of the mighty Seer, Soothsayer, and Sorcerer.
The mighty monarch of the heavens, once untouchable, now weak and fading, regarded Ki’Remi in shock.
But Sulfiqar was not a god noted for submission.
He rasped out a laugh and canted his eyes towards Issa, the energy within crackling like the dying embers of a cosmic storm.
‘I will summon the Sullied.’ His growl, though weakened, still carried the weight of a divine decree. ‘They will tear that jar from your unworthy hands.’
Issa shrugged. ‘Have at it, but you might want to know that they now serve Zenas, who is kin.’
Sulfiqar jolted. ‘Traitors.’
‘Also, the betrayers you seek are not daemons but the deities that whisper fallacies in your ear,’ she gritted.
Sulfiqar’s fingers curled into claws, the air distorting around him with his fury.
Watching the stalemate unfold, Ki’Remi perceived a stirring deep within him.
The impasse was unbreakable.
Neither side was able to move forward.
The balance was tipping toward bloodshed with no victor.
So he made a choice.
One that went against every rational fiber of his being.
One that only an idiot or a man in love would make.
One he’d discussed with his woman, and she’d dismissed him for the risk it took.
Twas the only solution, he deduced.
Ki’Remi sliced his eyes to the reigning monarch. ‘There is another way to traverse this impasse.’
Sulfiqar’s eyes snapped in his direction, as did Issa’s, but the Sableman kept his attention on the god, his voice blade-edged with a darkness beyond defiance.
‘Your body is rotting, your divinity is failing. Your soul is consuming itself like a dying star. You seek stolen souls to heal you, but you forget—’ he lifted his chin, the ghost of a smirk tracing his lips.
‘Mortals transcended into spirits have been curing the perishing before you existed.’
Sulfiqar’s eyes narrowed, his fury twisting and churning.
‘ Nada ,’ Issa breathed.
He turned to his woman. ‘Tis the only way, kidaya . We spoke about it, and you know what to do.’
He canted his eyes away not to see her stricken face, focusing on Sulfiqar instead.
Ki’Remi’s Witchmen loomed behind him, their voices whispering in the fabric of time, and then, together, they spoke.
‘We will forge the ancient cure of the Ameru.’
Sulfiqar stilled.
Even Zavei, still frozen in the Witchmen’s grasp, ceased his struggling.
The Celestial Keepers also paused, staring at the Rider in shock.
Ki’Remi wrestled inside him, his methodical, calculated approach to science wrestling with the archaic, mystical force he had so long denied.
A surgeon. A healer. A man of logic.
Now, also a wizard, a shaman, a mortal conjurer standing before an ailing god.
Fokk.
It was freakin’ ludicrous.
Yet, when he turned his head, his gaze fell on Issa.
Though her expression begged him not to advance, the fire within her was unyielding.
He was doing this for her.
And that made every ounce of madness worth it.
Sulfiqar hesitated, but he acquiesced with a wave of his weakening hand.
His Witchmen whispered the ritual, their voices threading into his skull and his metanoids, which conjured a slew of ancient herbs, roots, and celestial seeds.
A mortar of polished night stone appeared before Ki’Remi, filled with the components his ancestors had once used to heal kings and warriors before the age of gods.
K’Shivi whispered into his psyche. The antidote’s potency must be fused with your noids, son. It has to meld with your blood and infuse itself before you place his hands on Sulfiqar’s decaying form.
Ki’Remi sucked his teeth and then got to work.
He went on one knee and crushed the ingredients within the mortar into a thick, glimmering paste.
Then, gathering the resulting mash into a ball, he pressed it onto his chest.
A wave of burning energy seared through him as the antitoxin worked its way under the surface of his skin.
His metanoids reacted.
The cure ignited inside his bloodstream, traveling through him like wildfire.
His spine arched, convulsing, as if every nerve, molecule, and fiber of his existence was being rewritten.
His breath turned to fire.
His veins burned with liquid lightning.
With a growl, he stood and prowled toward the Divine Deity, his Rider form at the head of the quartet of Witchmen.
The four silhouettes wrapped themselves around the Most High Deity and then, with a flash of light, melded with the divine entity.
An immense energy exchange lit up the chamber so bright that Issa fell to her knees, covering her eyes with a forearm, her eyes tight shut as the radiance bloomed with intense brilliance.
Pure, heightened force flooded the god, Ki’Remi’s metanoids coating his withering body, fusing with his essence, knitting back the decaying threads of his immortality.
Sulfiqar gasped.
His limbs stopped quivering. His eyes lost their glassy, fevered edge.
The rot eating away at his celestial core slowed, then reversed.
The god’s breath steadied, and each celestial cell was reborn.
Ki’Remi detected a final power surge exiting his frame as he collapsed. The seer, Soothsayer, and Sorcerer forms of himself imploded and disappeared.
He hit the ground with a brutal thud, his appendages convulsing, his entire being wracked with searing agony as he absorbed Sulfiqar’s sickness, detritus, and death-carrying motes.
A ragged cry ripped from his throat, his chest arching upward as if his very soul was trying to escape his body.
His metanoids ignited and overloaded, the ratcheting scorching heat from their attempts to repair and heal him coursing through him too fast with raw torridness.
The Witchmen who’d retreated into his mind burned with righteous fury, flaming hard to safeguard their scion’s essence of life.
The pain was excruciating.
From somewhere, far away, Issa screamed his name.
He was unable to move or save himself except fall.
Into an endless, neverending, dark abyss.