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  And when his brother licked the blood from his wound, they both let loose a groan. ‘I feel your... exhilaration. Your blood tastes good.’

  ‘I don’t know what I feel,’ Sundamar admitted, overwhelmed. ‘Exhilaration is not what I would call it.’

  ‘You are the Creator’s first. It is known. You’ll feel him before I do, before our other brother does.’

  ‘Yes.’ He would.

  Galan drew back with lips clean as day. Sundamar looked down at his hand and found the blood gone, the cut healed. He flipped his hand over and inspected it while Galan watched him. It was as if the pain, the lifeforce, was an illusion all along. A dirty trick.

  He stiffened and pulled out his broadsword. Galan followed suit and lengthened his wings, hardening his feathers back into daggers.

  ‘What do you sense?’

  Sundamar gritted his teeth. ‘My pain is gone and so is the blood. We’ve been tricked, it’s an illusion.’ He felt it in his bones. Even now, the flood of emotions from minutes ago ebbed.

  ‘Then it is a grand illusion. One we’ve never faced. It could be Psion, but we haven’t seen their kind in ages. Not since Lusheenn. Or the Shadowed, but it is daylight and they have no power here in the sunlight.’ A brilliant ray of light hit the giant spherical orb at the center of their throne room, cascading rainbows all around them. Sundamar feasted on the power flowing through him in beautiful bursts. He and Galan ate the light, absorbing it before his brother continued. ‘I don’t know... this power, this... feels too pure to be a trick.’

  Sundamar turned away. “Then it is a trick of the light,” he said aloud. Galan fluttered his wings and the cool breeze from their flaps hit his back.

  “I’ll find Quist.”

  “Don’t bother. He’ll only join us by choice. He’s evaded us for centuries, finding him is easy, catching him is another matter...”

  “He would have felt the Creator’s presence as well.”

  Sundamar shook his head and looked back out over the lush and wild world that the Divine of Light had given them. It was beautiful but empty, and had been when Lusheenn had vanished, along with the other Creators who’d invaded Sonhadra.

  That final day replayed in his head every hour, those last few moments when his city and that of Noon and Middling lost its laughter. The day when all the joy faded.

  “Joy,” he said aloud.

  “What about it?” Galan stepped up to his side and flanked them with his wings. They surveyed the land and the light companionably.

  “I... feel it.”

  Sun streams blasted through the top of the throne room, through the giant diamond that always caught the light. Galan moaned at his side. “It cannot be a trick,” he said through husky breaths.

  Sundamar eyed his brother in a new way. The ruggedly young look of him, so similar yet so different than his own. Galan was the first aerial warrior created by Lusheenn and the second to Sundamar himself.

  But Sundamar, with all of his perfect imperfections, was the first light valos brought forth by their Creator. He was made in Lusheenn’s image, golden and strong, created from the sun. It was how he got his name.

  He continued to watch his brother and second. The joy, the worry, and all else he felt was pushed aside and replaced by something else... that else had no name. He had felt it once before, he knew, whenever he was within Lusheenn’s presence. But like the long millennia of stasis, his memory of that time had grown dim.

  These feelings... Galan looked back at him, his eyes smoldering and his bronze wings reflective. They perused each other in silence.

  “I don’t feel joy,” Galan spat out. “Looking at you, Sun, is like looking at the Divine. It feels good but it doesn’t feel like joy.”

  Sundamar broke their connection and turned away. “Only because I resemble Lusheenn. I’m not him.”

  “You’re better than him. You’re still here.”

  Heresy. Although Sundamar felt the same way. “If he is truly back, it’s best you keep those thoughts to yourself.”

  Galan nodded at his side, his wings scraping against the floor. “Quist will die.”

  Sundamar had thought the same: their third and rebellious brother had no fealty to Lusheenn. The years had turned Quist hard and now he rarely came back to the city, choosing to find his own path away from the Creator’s appointed one.

  “Not if we find him first.” Sundamar lifted his broadsword before him. It tugged in his hand until it pointed sharply to the right. “He’s that way.”

  Galan stepped up to the reins attached to Lusheenn’s throne and triggered the one command that had never been done. He steered the city off its eternal path and in the direction of their brother.

  Sundamar placed his sword on the mantel and let it spin and shift to help in the navigation. Already it moved back and forth. Quist would know the instant the city moved and came after him. He would make it difficult for them. He was difficult personified.

  The roar and crush of the world below filled his ears as the molo broke new ground. There were only three molos on Sonhadra, brought forth by Lusheenn to build his cities atop of. They were gigantic beasts that traveled the world in well-trodden figure eights, always following the sun. Dawn was the head city and the one on which Sundamar and Galan traveled. The others continued on in their infinite circlets, unmanned, and ghosted.

  The molos were much like Lusheenn’s other creations: they were powered by the sun, feeding on its light, and were eternal, but they had no thoughts, no opinions, or—Sundamar assumed—emotions.

  But the cities of light were younger than he and his brothers. Once, in the beginning, Lusheenn built his kingdom deep in the blighted beige deserts to the South. The ruins of that crypt, destroyed by the valos of Psion and their trickster Creator only remained in desecrated stone structures. The molos were made to avoid that section of Sonhadra, because when one got close to the broken city, they’d see a mirage, an illusion of what the past was like, before thousands of his brothers had died.

  Sundamar forced his hand with the help of Galan and Annahs to leave their home behind. Lusheenn, unhappy with the interruption, raised the molo’s from sunlight and forced his first son, first sun, Sundamar to save the last of his kind, the valos of light.

  The molo’s were Lusheenn’s third to last creation. The reins to the beasts were his second to last. The bells that tolled, his final.

  Sundamar fisted his hand and hit his chest again. It didn’t stop the riotous feelings that danced around the empty place where his heart should be.

  They risked the darkness leaving their path, but they risked their last remaining brother’s life if not.

  Sundamar lifted his face to the ceiling glass and absorbed the rays that hit him.

  Could the Creator be back? Could Lusheenn finally bring their endless torment to a close? Even with the newfound lifeforce brimming through him, he could still discern the stiff joints of his limbs that had already begun to harden. The slow burn of his body becoming the clay from which he had once been brought forth.

  He would be the last valos of light to die and would know what true loneliness was before he was ended altogether. The thought unnerved him before, but now, he suddenly feared it. Fear. I may lose my mind if this curse doesn’t end.

  Galan was farther along in his deterioration than he was, and he could only imagine the atrophied limbs that Quist now had.

  Annahs, their fourth brother, had turned back to clay no more than several rotations past. Sundamar glanced at the stiff figure kneeling, head lowered to the floor at the corner dais. Annahs had gone there to sleep, knowing he would never wake up. The only thing that remained was the statue of his clay corpse. Soon, even that will crumble to dust.

  If only Lusheenn had come sooner... He gritted his teeth. It won’t only be Quist’s head on the line. If he’s back, we all may be tossed into the void.

  Sundamar resolved his storming emotions, scattering them to the corners of his soul. I won’t lose another. I
f the Creator is back, I will fight to keep this life and those of my brothers until the day I disappear.

  QUIST

  He drew his wings inward and shielded his body, dropping to the ground with a groan.

  Shadowed dirt!

  Below the tree line, he was partially blocked from the sun, and only when he was in the air, close to those of the whirlwind valos, did he ever feel more than dead. He struck out his wings to fight off the attack.

  That’s what this is. His entire body hurt but he couldn’t lose a moment. Even now as dusk lengthened into evening, he was playing on the edge of risk. A bright heat infused him and he shot up, brandishing his whip, ready to take down whatever tried to thwart him with this tormenting aura.

  He lashed out and roared, “Show me your face, you fool! I’ll see your irises before you die!”

  No one, no divinity, answered him, not even a whisper. Quist lowered his weapon and waited for another attack that never came. He looked up at the sky that streamed burgeoning orange and cool blue. The City of Noon was leagues behind him while the City of Dawn was one long night away. He had several choices, and he liked none.

  He pulled the whip back into his hand, his movements jerky as he fought off the mind attack that had brought him low, and hung it on his hip.

  He hadn’t felt... felt this way since his creation.

  Quist narrowed his eyes and scanned the horizon. Lusheenn. Muscles bulged under his plated body as the Divine’s name sounded like a gong in his head.

  The dirt sculptor has finally returned. He had made it his quest to find the Creator and destroy him. In the hundreds of years since he left the City of Dawn behind, he had scoured the world of Sonhadra, looking for any hint, anything whatsoever that would lead him in the right direction. But now, his time was growing short, the need to avenge his brothers deafened because Annahs had fallen asleep.

  Quist sneered at the growing shadows around him. Annahs symbolized another failure, one more loss, and he taunted the oncoming slumber with threats. Try and clay me out, Lusheenn, my vengeance won’t end even in dirt.

  His blood raced as his adrenaline pumped. He shook his head, fighting the strange sensations filling him. He knew what they were, he never dwelled behind tinseled veils. What he felt could only mean he was close.

  I found him. The thought made him giddy and he shot back into the sky above the trees.

  He knew he wasn’t the strongest valos. In his heart, he knew he wouldn’t beat out his brothers, Sundamar and Galan, and he was also the most impulsive. It was a fault he contended with, given to him by Lusheenn, the faults of the Divine’s own. But his willpower was the strongest, his dedication. Why? He had to know. It was the question he longed to ask his Creator. Why the dirt and shadows did you create me?

  Quist seized his own fate and focused. His wings flapped in the lingering, last few rays of the setting sun.

  Lusheenn, you are mine.

  Mine to kill.

  Mine to bring to your knees, you will die like the rest, like Annahs, like me, bowed under the weight of the life-giving light.

  There.

  His sharp eyes zeroed in on the southern swamps far, far in the distance, closer to the City of Noon, and still cast in the dim aura of middling dusk.

  You created me to kill you. And so I will.

  Chapter Three

  YAHIRO

  It was the dead of night and yet the nightmares of her past stayed at bay. She clutched the stone to her chest and soaked in its warmth.

  I love the warmth. I would live in it if I could. She hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, her mind alert for any sound, any noise of an encroaching predator. Yahiro had made another oath to herself as she lay waiting: she would last through the night so she could try and find the shipwreck in the morning. She would rather spend her remaining nights behind metal walls and metal bars than alone, in the dark, on an alien planet. It scared her... the wildness.

  She hadn’t counted on the night to last an eternity. Her mind grew fuzzy and the haze of sleep tried to battle her to the death. She refused to let it win. There had been days in her past life where she had foregone sleep. If she tried hard enough, she could forego it now.

  Her senses were in overdrive. Every subtle smell, every small sound, even the shifts of her heartbeat were cataloged in her head. Yahiro became used to them all, training herself for this alien world. If something changed, she’d know. She’d know and it would have to be enough to decide whether it was a change to hide, fight, or run from.

  She never knew how well she could adapt to a new environment until she was continuously thrown into them. She’d treat this alien world like any other undercover mission.

  Yahiro rubbed her face quietly into her shoulder. I was a chameleon. Not only was she adept at changing environments, she could also change her features as well. There were only so many times a cop could go undercover, but for her, with a little bit of make-up, a slight change in hairstyle, she could be taken as an Asian, or a plain American girl. Her blend was ambiguous and that had made her the perfect person in her profession.

  The perfect choice for undercover work. Her adaptability was enough to keep her going. The thought of a job well done. Where the end meant she could go home—

  Back to Earth.

  She sighed quietly and gripped her stone. Maybe if she pretended hard enough, she would make it back home. Even harder, and she could be set free, reinstated into a job, and back into a bed she could call her own. One could dream.

  She heard the wind pick up; the tips of her ears twitched, which drew her out of her thoughts. Her concentration spiked at the change beyond her sight. It was more than the distant howls of alien creatures, or the infrequent bug that scurried over her skin. The wind changed slowly but this wind... this was sudden.

  Her fingers closed over the stone pressed against her chest until the light it emitted was weak at best, and waited.

  A whoosh sounded, followed by the wind. It brushed over her and rustled the strange foliage around her body in the dark. Please be a bird. But her body itched to leave her chosen hideout and run far into the dark.

  Another blast of chilly air hit her, fluttering wisps of hair about her head.

  “Ereen!”

  Her eyes snapped open.

  RUN! Holding the stone before her, she shot to her feet and sprinted from the growling sound. The light from her talisman burst forth and cleared her path. She forgot all else and followed the tendrils of daylight into night, spurred on by the scream of “LUCHEN!” behind her. The translator embedded behind her right ear didn’t translate that.

  The wound at the bottom of her foot shocked her back to her oath to live through the night. Her body pushed through the sharp twigs and branches over a landscape so similar to and yet so different from the wildernesses of Earth.

  “Eun mar LUCHEN!” The bestial roar was right behind her, heating the stone in her hand to burst like wildfire over her skin.

  Yahiro panted, ignoring the pain, ignoring the feel of the stone and blindly followed the path it laid out for her.

  Until she ran right over a cliff.

  She shrieked, dropping the stone as she plummeted through the air. The warmth left her right as a band of arms wrapped around her flailing frame. She fell right into the roaring voice, her breath lost in the night, unable to stop screaming.

  The louder she screamed, the louder the being that caught her did. Words she didn’t understand filled her ears. The moment they landed and her feet touched the ground, Yahiro stabbed her elbow back and into the creature’s belly.

  A human? Her eyes widened and a vague hope bloomed, but not before she twisted and slammed her palm where a human nose would be. When it hit like it was supposed to, she simultaneously cheered herself on and wanted to apologize. Yahiro fell back as she was abruptly let go with a roar akin to a curse filling her ears.

  She shook her head, her still damp hair tangling around her shoulders. It can’t be someone from the crash.
r />   Humans can’t fly!

  “Maro!” The strange language filled the dark again and she turned on her heel to run. But stopped.

  Her fingers twitched with cold. Without her stone, she couldn’t see a damn thing, her eyes having never adjusted to the dark.

  The being knocked her in the side and she went sprawling to the ground but didn’t stay there long, using the added boost to crawl away from her attacker on all fours. After she gained several yards of distance, she slowed her pace and pivoted, quieting her movements over the alien terrain.

  I’ll survive the night. I will survive the night. She chanted survive over and over again in her head. The crush of bark and trees snapping behind her fueled her on. Every knee forward, every hand swiping the ground, felt like a success.

  Survive this. Don’t think, Hiro. Survive!

  Her pounding heart and panting breaths were too loud in her ears but she succeeded in getting further away. New cuts opened on her palms and on the backs of her feet as she dragged them over the ground, feeling her way through splintered wood and thorns deeper into the forest. The noise of frenetic rage suddenly died far behind her and she bit her lip.

  If the creature stopped, he’ll hear my traitorous heart.

  Makeshift wind suddenly fluttered over the bushes within her vicinity, lifting her hair. The back of her neck grew cold and she heard something crash down beside her. She jumped but it was too late. The sudden silence that came next chilled her to the bone. Whatever was after her was listening for her now. It was about to find her.

  It was next to her. She knew it deep down inside, feeling connected to it. It was there.

  Yahiro held in a whimper as her fear from earlier came flooding back. The darkness danced and her mind went blank. Monsters from her past and now her present stalked about and beyond her sight. Waiting for the blow was the worst.

  “Yahirooo. Oh Yahiro, you’ve been a bad, bad girl.”

  She curled up into herself in the corner of her dank cell. The Snake, William’s right-hand man, his number one, had come down to the pits to torment her.