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. If 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.
