Confluence (Godbreaker Book 3) Read online

  Then they decided, yes, he needed to be shot.

  A blistering wave of incoming fire slammed into his shield as he descended, and he felt his position in the air shift with a jerk, and felt his shield weaken by a discomforting amount.

  He’d been picturing landing, very dramatically, perhaps a swirl of dust about his feet, a slow rise to standing, where he would glare at the legionnaires and they would shrink back with…

  No.

  He hit the ground, and had absolutely no time to think of anything but getting the gunfire off of him before it punched through and perforated him. He gathered all of his shield to the front of him, stretching it, even as it began to stress to its breaking point, and then he pulsed it at the line of legionnaires.

  The blast of moving air hit them. Shields went clattering, rifles fired wildly at the sky, and hard-faced legionnaires yelped in surprise as the entire line of them went toppling backwards with the force of Perry’s pulse.

  But you know what they say about actions—all that equal and opposite shit.

  Perry went flying backwards, hit the pavement with his back, wheeled head over heel for two revolutions that he somehow barely felt, and came to a rest, just clear of the corner behind which Hauten and his men were hiding.

  A very strange silence hung over them—silent like how a large stone is silent right before it hits the ground.

  Perry swam painfully to his feet.

  “Is that it?” Hauten yelled.

  “Hold on…” Perry hefted his longstaff. His knuckles must’ve taken a drag across the pavement, because they were shredded and bleeding everywhere. Down the street, the legionnaires were scrambling to right themselves, but with a sort of reticence that said they weren’t sure if they should keep fucking with Perry. They did, however, want to get their autoturret back up and running, and three of them were currently hefting it back into a standing position from where Perry’s pulse had knocked it over, the long, smoking barrel already moving around as the computer inside tried to find an appropriate target.

  Perry didn’t take the time to conjure a big blast—he wasn’t sure he had it in him, frankly. He was having trouble just standing erect at that moment. He thrust the longstaff out and let fly a blast of blazing green that smashed into the top of the autoturret, turning it to molten slag.

  His eyes slashed to the buildings on either side of the street, right before the toppled lines of legionnaires. They were tall, rickety things. Perhaps a little top-heavy?

  He jammed the muzzle of the longstaff at the bottom of one building, then the other, sending bolts crashing through the base of each building and sending gouts of dust, smoke, and fiery debris clattering out into the street.

  The legionnaires, half on their feet already, used their shields to block the blasts, but they weren’t going to block the entire damn building, and the sound of crumbling mudbrick and cracking support timbers told them so.

  “Should we go now?” Hauten yelled, apparently not realizing what all the rumbling-cracking-crashing noise was.

  “Not fuggin yet!” Perry slurred, his mouth a little loose. He still wasn’t feeling all there after that tumble across the street.

  “You said to wait until the shooting stopped! It’s stopped!”

  The legionnaires were running now, clearing the street to get out of the way of the two buildings as they teetered steadily inwards.

  “Godsdammit, Hauten!” Perry yelled, turning to him. “Can you at least try to work with me here?”

  Hauten opened his mouth to say something else, but the falling buildings hit the street right about then, and cut him off. He jolted, eyes wide, looked like an animal that’s been spotlighted and doesn’t know whether to run or try to puzzle out what the hell is happening.

  Perry cringed away from an avalanche of dust, breathing steadily out of his nose as though he were diving into water. He’d been in dusty environments before. When cityscapes were getting blown up, you didn’t want to breathe that dust. His lungs still weren’t quite right after the East Ruins.

  He waited, pulling up what little was left of his shield. It was so damaged after even just that brief onslaught, that he was only able to produce a little Perry-sized rectangle to block the worst of the billowing dust.

  He cracked one eye, peering at Hauten, who was fixated on him with a brand of wonderment that…well, if Perry were being honest, it felt really nice. Particularly after all that shit Hauten had talked.

  Perry swept a hand down the street. “Now you can go. And I’m coming with you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A LITTLE CONNIVERY

  How long can a person swim?

  Senex hadn’t the faintest idea, having never been in a body of water deep enough to swim in. There were the leisure pools, but they were only for wading. Swimming about was an undignified, human thing to do.

  And yet, so many un-Gifted had been thrown into the ocean below The Clouds. Did any of them even know how to swim? Had any of them even survived the fall?

  Senex stood on the balcony of House Batu—its name now taking on a sour note in Senex’s mind. Batu, his forebear. Batu the Trickster? No. Batu the Butcher. The Murderer. Batu the Mad.

  And how many humans have been butchered and murdered by your own kind?

  It seemed even the wrathful gods had wrathful gods.

  “I have too many thoughts in my head,” Senex groaned softly, touching his temple. “And not a one is firm enough to grasp.”

  “Well, you’re going to need to grip harder,” his companion growled. Indago, Elder of House Rennok. “We’re on the verge of extinction here, whether or not the Guardians come to The Clouds or remain on the ground.”

  Senex gazed out to the edge of The Clouds, where he could just see the tiniest sliver of moon-dappled ocean, far, far away. He longed for that place. Any place. Any place that was not here.

  “They claim they can sustain themselves through Confluence,” Indago rumbled, beginning to pace behind Senex, all hunched and glowering, anxious energy with no outlet. “Well, I have Confluence, and it’s never filled my belly.”

  “They survived for five hundred years without food,” Senex commented, his own voice much quieter than Indago’s. Wistful, almost. Or perhaps resigned, like he could see death’s shadow, even if he hadn’t quite turned the corner to meet him yet. “And they haven’t requested a single crumb.”

  Indago stopped pacing, his face crumpled up into a terrible frown. “You can’t eat the air.”

  “Confluence is energy. Food is energy.” Senex didn’t have much to say beyond that. He was very tired, and yet felt like he could never sleep again. Perhaps would just stand on this balcony until his knees crumbled to dust. “I suppose there’s some connection there.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Indago growled. He thrust a finger at Senex. “You can’t feed from Confluence. And neither can I. Nor any other Gifted in this city. Our forefathers be damned—yes! Damned!—if they let the humans die out completely, they’re resigning us to slow starvation.”

  Senex raised a single eyebrow. “We could grow our own food.”

  Indago looked aghast at even the mention of it. “And who would do the planting, Senex? You? Me? Propagate the grapes? Plant the grain? Husband the animals?” Indago made a disgusted face and shook his head. “There’s not a one of us that would know how to do that. The animals would die. The grain would fail. The vines would not bear fruit. That is generational knowledge, not just something you can pick up on a whim and be successful at. It would take years to learn, and by then we’ll all be dead.”

  Senex smiled with his teeth. “How strange. All this time, and it’s the humans that had the power over us.”

  “Bah.” Indago grumpily waved him away. “Don’t get maudlin. We need a solution.”

  “There is no solution.”

  “You’ve puzzled it out to its full extent, have you?” Indago arched his eyebrows. “No chance you might’ve missed something?”

  S
enex closed his eyes. “Without the humans, we have no food. The humans are being exterminated by the Guardians. Even if we all chose to descend and battle it out with the Guardians, the Nine would not have it. They want to see the humans extinct. This is their revenge.”

  “A lackluster excuse for revenge, if you ask me.” Indago stopped pacing long enough to plant his palms on a stone baluster and gaze balefully in the direction of the auditorium. “They sit in torturous paralysis for five hundred years, and their revenge is to let a pack of machines deliver a quick death to the humans?” Indago grunted to himself, seeming to take a small modicum of pleasure at how the Nine were cheating themselves. “Seems the humans got the better end of that bargain.”

  Senex turned and frowned at Indago. “Indago of House Rennok. As always, your skills of observation surpass my own.” Senex grabbed the other elder by the shoulder of his robe and pulled him away from the balcony. “And, as always, my connivery surpasses yours.”

  ***

  Granted, for a religious text, the Ortus Deorum was rather small. Four songs. A total of thirty-one stanzas.

  But still, it only took Halan the Eldest approximately thirty seconds to read the whole thing. In fact, Senex wondered if he had actually read it, or simply absorbed the information.

  Halan’s enormous finger flicked almost irritably at the projection that contained the Ortus Deorum, the songs and lines skimming by in radiant flickers. And with that, Halan let out a grunt that sounded like a boulder being moved, and swiped the projection out of the air.

  “Lies,” Halan stated, the single word booming through the auditorium.

  The other eight Sons of Primus turned their heads to look at Senex, their green gazes all seeming to glare at him, to accuse him, though Senex could not for the life of him actually read their expressions.

  “Yes, Halan,” Senex admitted, trying to sound sure of himself and not at all as terrified as he actually was.

  “Why?” Halan’s word shook the room with its mountain-like volume, but even so, his inflection was muted, almost automated.

  Senex blinked a few times, arching his eyebrows. “I cannot say for certain. Your own sons—our first ancestors—wrote it, but they did not choose to record their reasons. We have always been aware that the Ortus Deorum was a fabrication, but only because all the historical records that might contradict it have been permanently sealed. And given the volume of those contradictory records, we’ve concluded that the Ortus Deorum must be false.”

  “And yet you continue to teach it.”

  Senex nodded. “It is apparent, to me at least, that the writers of the Ortus Deorum believed that their version of events would be more palatable to the human populace.”

  “Who cares what is palatable to them?”

  “It was a way to keep them from rising against us.”

  An unkind smile split the side of Halan’s mouth. “And they believed it?”

  Senex shrugged. “Humans are simple creatures. They do not assess their perceptions based upon probabilities, but rather on repetition. They’ll believe anything if it’s told to them often enough.”

  “Yes,” Halan replied, his voice soft, but still filling the chamber like a whirlwind. “This is true.” He raised a finger, and the small projector from which he had read the Ortus Deorum lifted into the air and drifted languidly back to Senex’s waiting hand. “But why have you brought this to us?”

  Senex looked at the projector for a moment, feeling a strange tingle run through his hand, as though the object was still charged with whatever energy Halan had used to push it through the air. He pocketed it with a sigh and raised his gaze to Halan’s.

  “The truth has been buried for so long that no one living knows it,” Senex explained. Then raised his hands, gesturing to the Nine. “Except for you. You all were there. You know what happened. You saw it with your own eyes. You lived it. And we have no need for fabrication any longer. No purpose for obfuscation.”

  “You want to know the truth, then?”

  “Yes,” Senex said, hoping that boldness would be his ally. “I do.”

  Halan considered him for a long, silent moment, and in that silence lived a multitude of possibilities for how things would proceed. Many of which involved Senex being hurled through the gaping hole in the side of the auditorium.

  But then Halan rose up from his throne, the movements of his body carrying a weight to them that seemed to push and pull the very air around Senex. The eldest son of Primus took one enormous step onto the floor of the auditorium and then did something very strange.

  He knelt, right in front of Senex.

  Senex had the urge to draw back, as though from some crackling, destructive force that threatened to consume him. Like a blazing fire born of wicked green light.

  Even on one knee, Halan loomed taller than Senex, to the point that the old demigod’s neck strained as he tried to hold eye contact.

  Halan’s right arm drew up, slowly, the hand hovering to the left of Senex’s head. “I will show you,” Halan rumbled. “Bear a touch of my hand, and you will see.”

  Senex’s mouth had gone completely dry. His throat felt clamped down. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he simply nodded.

  The ugly smirk again. “This will be…uncomfortable. For you.”

  And with that, Halan touched the side of Senex’s head with a finger the size of an arm, and everything in and around Senex went green. And then it went black.

  ***

  In the blackness, a woman’s voice.

  She was singing. A warm, clear voice. Strong. The melody was lost, somehow unclear, though Senex still perceived the feel of the music, as though the tune existed in deep memories, rather than in his ears.

  The tune was sad, and yet darkly amused with itself. It was the sound of someone old, looking back at the naïveté of their youth. Someone wise with experience, recalling their follies.

  When we were young

  And the gift of life was still new and fun,

  And evil lost, and good always won.

  When we looked to the sky and thought

  The King had come.

  A light bloomed in the darkness, and from it came a shape, and around that light, the darkness became stars, became the heavens, became sky, and the shape took its form, and it looked like a man, and yet it was not. It was large, like the Sons of Primus, but it did not look like them—it looked like many things, all things, all at once.

  Senex felt as though his breath would catch in his chest, but he could not feel his breath or his chest. He could only feel a welling of emotion from some place deep within him, a void suddenly filled, though he knew in an instant that it was not his void, but humanity’s void, and the thing that was filling it was this being.

  It could only be Paladin Primus himself. The welling of emotion became an outburst of joy, and in the face of Primus, Senex saw a god that he had waited for and hoped for his whole life. A god with powers beyond human understanding. A god that loved them.

  But that king, he was neither man nor beast,

  And the sky boiled

  And the sun set in the east,

  And nine times we begged for peace,

  But nine devils were released.

  The sense of having found something you’ve searched for your entire life—some inestimable missing piece to the puzzle of your soul—was burned out of Senex in a blast of fire that smelled of ozone and burned flesh. Terror filled him now. The helplessness of the weak, as they watch the strong coming for them. Everything spun, topsy-turvy, and upside down.

  The Nine Sons of Primus, faces like the honed edges of a longstaff’s blade, and from them poured destruction in rivers of green fire that washed away life in a tidal wave of death. The terror turned to shock inside of him. Turned to disbelief. Then grief.

  And the devils danced and they set the mood,

  With fire and blood as their marching tune

  And we sought to find

  The face of the moonr />
  But he had turned away.

  Why wasn’t their god putting a stop to this? Oh, yes. Because the devils were that god’s sons. And maybe that god loved you, but he loved them more. Because the earth had given itself to Paladin Primus, and now it became a birthright of his sons.

  When God came down he was a regular guy

  And he saw what had happened and began to cry,

  But it wasn’t enough to untangle the lie,

  And we all knew there was nothing

  Left to believe.

  Paladin Primus was no god. He was just another being, made of flesh and blood, rife with his own weaknesses, his own ambitions, his own lusts. He’d seemed so powerful—so perfect—when he’d first come, but he wasn’t powerful enough to stop his sons from destroying the world.

  Then the King lost his crown and then ran away

  And the angels fought and the devils raged

  And we all hit our knees to pray

  But no one could hear what we

  Had to say.

  Fire in the sky. The voice of the song died, abruptly, in a wash of death. The stars fought above the heads of a powerless humanity, and the remnants of that race cowered, not knowing if the death and destruction would ever end, or if the battle in the sky above them would yield a merciful victor, or if their troubles had only just begun.

  Silence and blackness again. No song. No music. No life. Such things were beyond the human race now. Their existence was only terror and death, and pathetic pleading. Tiny animals, caught up in something beyond their comprehension, simply begging for another day of life.

  Disgust. Senex felt it creep in on him, and knew that it was not his own. It was an echo of what the Nine felt about humanity. Humanity was weak. And the Nine were strong. And yet…they were punished.

  Paladin Primus, gone in an instant. Not gone somewhere, with the intention of coming back—gone. He had destroyed himself in shame. And the race of beings from which Paladin Primus had come—the All-Kind—now sat in judgement over the Nine, and they were blinded by their own arrogance, unable to see the perfection of war that the Nine had become—the powers of destruction, embedded into a mind and a body and a soul bred for war.