The day dragged on like a slog, thought they only they sat in safety. By evening, Frem, who had gotten up to pace around, punched his right hand, snapped and said, “That’s it. I’m leaving.”

  Nobody said anything. He said it before and he’d say it again.

  Windston had propped himself into a sitting position against the wall facing the front door. His sword lay beside him, a dull black within a glow of faint blue. Rain had remained by that door, flush against the wall, but not leaning. He just stood there, staring ahead, at nothing. Every now and then, his eyes would track to the left, toward Frem as he paced. But he mostly just stared the way only one both dead and alive can – completely still and haunting.

  When the sun set, all hell broke loose outside. The popping they’d heard here and again became constant. It came closer at times. But it always died off. There was no need to wonder why.

  Out of nowhere, Windston flinched awake and saw that the door was open. Rain had pulled it in. Furggen was there, a mess of wet feathers and muddy claws. He slid to a halt and then hobbled to the middle of the floor, where he shook off the rain, wings outstretched.

  Rain Gray was hovering over him. He pulled something from off the bird’s neck. It was a bit of webbing and a hand.

  He tossed it outside.

  The bird turned toward Windston. Frem was to the right of it, flush against the wall, exaggerating a fear of it. “You get up now. We go.”

  “Go where?” Frem asked as Windston shifted slowly with a groan.

  The bird didn’t look at Frem, but Rain did. “To the seventh rise,” it said.

  “Seventh,” Frem said. “Which one is this again?”

  Windston glared at Frem, halfway to his feet. “One, two,” he counted sarcastically, standing. He brushed himself off. “The second.”

  “Seventh rise,” Frem muttered, kicking at nothing. “What’s even up there? Wait – is that where we go to kill all the bugs? That’s why we’re here, after all. Right? You wanted me to blow up all the bugs for you? Do you even remember that, Windston? Or are you too busy listening to a total stranger.”

  “We go now. We hurry,” Furggen said. But he showed no urgency. He was just kicking at his ear, and then he pecked under his wing.

  It was Rain that looked anxious. He was at the window, looking outside and up, at nothing, maybe.

  It was not nothing. There was a sudden blinding light, and a sound like a roar of wind, and then stillness. All the windows shattered. The walls shook. The floor rumbled. A light overhead was so bright they could see every little imperfection everywhere – in the walls, on the floor, on themselves.

  “We go!” Furggen said, hopping onto Rain’s shoulder, the latter shielding his eyes at the door.

  The boys ran beneath his arm. There was something in the sky. It was bright like the sun, though shaped like a diamond on its side. It was over the black ship, and it dwarfed it. It was a ship itself, maybe. Though it wasn’t metal, or anything material; it was radiant energy, and it hung there, miles long, miles wide, and roared.

  The black ship was moving, now, both lower and toward them. The giant diamond moved over it.

  Shadows raced with all the movement. The black ship’s, and those cast all around. As both ships moved, it was like the sun and the moons themselves had come down and crossed paths. Beneath their colossal shadow and light, Windston felt like he was witness, or maybe even victim, to a power so great, he couldn’t even understand it. The sun ship. The white diamond. The animate light. And the black moon.

  Smaller ships it brought were nothing like those that had come with the black. They weren’t wood, nor did they putter. They were like bullets of steel. They plummeted, embedded themselves in the rock or structure where they landed. What beings escaped them were armored in chrome. Their visors glowed blue. They blasted all about, shooting at everything, everywhere. They were even near to where the boys ran after Rain.

  As fast as they could, the trio and Furggen raced. Rain wasn’t heading any one way, but rather adjusting as things crashed all around.

  As bugs swarmed in ways previously unimaginable – from everything, everywhere, and in numbers that speckled the ground in shadows – he finally found what it was he sought. A cellar. A well inside of it. A rope that dropped down. And then, underground, a tunnel.

  It was small. There was no water there, not by the bucket. There was a trickle. Some drips. Nothing more.

  That was all the better. They crawled. They had to. They couldn’t fit otherwise, unless maybe in the lowest crouch.

  Frem was in the back, his bag in front of him. He shoved it onward, behind Windston – sometimes into him when he moved too slowly.

  The ground shook and quaked. Rain carried on, Furggen behind him.

  They went on that way for a while. Too long. What they emerged from was a dark, cavernous expanse of untouched earth and rock. For leagues they traveled here, under stalactites, over and between stalagmites.

  At the end of the way, there was an arch of brick and stone. Through it, a sewage system, like before. Only this one was cramped and rough in places; rock and earth shown through here, unlike there in the lower rise.

  Water was plentiful here, in puddles, in pools, in rectangular holds. Plentiful, but rancid. Open pipes over holds were dry. Over the puddles and pooling recesses in the floor, water dripped. A system typically active was shut off. Or derelict in abandonment.

  Frem lit the way now. Before, they’d just followed the glow of the spike Rain bore. But the spike was too dim here, where every passage was an open expanse of air.

  There was the occasional thunderous rumble, when the ground shivered lightly. Whatever warring raged above was muffled by the sheer volume of rock that stood all around as a buffer. Windston feared utter mayhem would meet them. He felt like maybe they’d jumped into a fire they couldn’t withstand and wondered if they’d make it out of there. Or if it’d find them.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Just then, Rain stopped. Furggen growled, but didn’t speak. And then he said, “We climb.”

  An iron ladder climbed up the wall. As Rain gripped it, Furggen looked up. And then they climbed.

  The boys followed. This climb was a very long one, higher even than the building they’d scaled to the second rise. But it ended, and a draft of cleaner air met them. And the shots of guns. The screams of men.

  In the open, on a paved triangle between brick and grass, Rain ushered them out and hurried them along. They followed his lead as Furggen took flight into the darkness. The white ship was dim, a faint outline blotted out in the middle by the smaller black one. But it was active, and it hummed, and men jumped from it, even still, like they had from the black one. And there were smaller ships about, both wooden and metal. And dots in the sky, flames beneath packs on backs. Bugs were there, buzzing about in swarms – ending dreams, devouring insides.

  The group took shelter under an open barn. Hay lay scattered all about over the bones of livestock. They crept through, quietly. In the open again, they found a path behind a row of houses along the wall of the third rise. There, cut into the wall, was a stairway of slab. The middle moon was bright above it, over the shrines and temples of an ancient past; over the ruins and remains of two eras, two peoples, two civilizations. On that rise, they found very little in terms of houses and shops. It was all spectacle, all relics, all a draw for the outsider to come and look around. It was smaller, too – the smallest of the rises. It was a chip whereas the others were blocks. And it was easy to travel. The dead were few here, and so too were the bugs.

  Up the fourth rise, which was another cut in the wall, they stopped. A light was there all the sudden, at the top of the stairs – just beyond it. The littlest moon was above this flight, the other two blocked by a spike of rock. There was another light too, one that showed soft green, and sparkled.

  Rain stopped. He stopped and his posture slumped. He breathed then, in and out, and Windston felt his relief.

  The light dimmed. And then there was a figure, black against the moonlight. Rain resumed his walking – walking, not running. And the figure walked slowly down too.

  “Who goes there?” Frem shouted.

  Windston shushed him, but he was otherwise ignored.

  “I said who-”

  Furggen landed just then. He plunged from above onto Rain’s shoulder with a heavy thud.

  The figure was almost upon them, racing now. Frem lit his hands aglow.

  “I said who goes there?!” he yelled, almost a scream.

  But he didn’t fire. In fact, he didn’t move except to drop his arms. He immediately put them back before him, lit the way again. What he saw in a flash looked better observed than not.

  She was. She was a woman. A beautiful woman. Perhaps the most beautiful. She was pale in the moonlight, her silvery hair all aglow. She wore what looked like light armor over her chest and abdomen, but nothing metallic otherwise. A skirt covered her thighs, and high stockings took over where it ended. Her arms were thin and subtle, her wrists small, like her hands. She was shapely, but thin. All of Windston’s height.

  She winced, held her hand in front of her eyes, and then raced to Rain, who she embraced.

  He did not hug her back.

  “Rain Gray,” she said staring up into his eyes, her voice rich, beautiful. “Here we are, together again, in peril.” She was smiling. “Isn’t that the way of it?”

  He didn’t say anything, nor did Furggen, even when Frem gripped at his shoulder to inquire.

  The woman gave Windston one quick glance, and then Frem, before turning away from them.

  “I said what’s your name,” Frem said. “Hello – can you hear me?”

  “Agnessa,” the woman said softly. “Agnessa Iadora.”

  “That’s strange,” Frem said. “But okay, I guess. I’m Frem. And this is Windston. We’re the other people with you.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just walked ahead, her heels clopping clip, clop, clip.

  Rain followed directly behind her, Furggen on his shoulder. Windston was just behind him, off to the side, and Frem was on his other side, though he’d hurried up to pester the woman.

  “How did you get here?” he asked her. “Did you come here through my dreams? And what was that light? Was that you? I can do that. See?”

  She ignored him.

  “I’m not a kid, you know. I’m older than I look. I’m…” He paused, made a shushing gesture at Windston. “Sixteen. Almost seventeen. You’re, what – seventeen? Eighteen?”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “That’s not that different from sixteen. If that’s what you are. If you’re older… I mean… I don’t care if you don’t.”

  “Age isn’t the matter,” she said.

  Furggen chuckled.

  “What, is it ‘cause I’m blue?” Frem asked.

  They reached the top of the climb. There, Agnessa rose into the sky and turned, lit aglow in a light of her own, a green star beneath the blackness and the pale whiteness of the ships above. She scanned the area. Or appeared to do so. Frem stood there, craning, mouth gaped, shining his own light at her skirt but revealing nothing.

  Windston rolled his eyes and looked at Rain, who he hadn’t noticed had been staring at him.

  His sword flashed for a moment as Agnessa landed, shocking his hand with a burst of energy. The surge was not unlike when Frem had shot it. Only it was warmer, and more controlled.

  She seemed to notice. Or, she had at least noticed the sword. She was staring at it, and Rain moved between it and her. Furggen said, “Yes. This is it.”

  Agnessa looked around him at it. And then she held her hand out. “May I?” she asked.

  Windston winced but said nothing.

  “I only want to look.”

  There was a brief pause during which Windston looked down at his sword. “Fine,” he sighed. “But it might-”

  She took it. She took it abruptly, almost as a snatch. His first instinct was to snatch it back, but she turned away, and he relaxed.

  Presently, she looked it over.

  Her eyes widened as runes appeared, one by one, from hilt to tip.

  “How did you do that?” Windston asked.

  “Where did you get this?” she snapped back, facing him.

  “I’ve always had it,” he said.

  “Always,” she said. “What is always? For as long as you can remember? From the time you were born?”

  “I was… found with it.”

  “Who found you with it? Where?”

  “My mom and dad. Or… some hunter found me. I was holding the sword. He must have died from touching. He was clutching it too. Was dead when they found me. My father, and others… they found me looking for him.”

  “Where?” she asked again.

  “Near Zephyr.”

  “Zephyr,” she said. She was looking at Rain. He shrugged.

  “It’s just south-” Frem began.

  But she shushed him, said, “Quiet!”

  He made a face of shock at her, but her staring eventually made him turn away.

  She handed the sword back to Windston, looked him over, a look of disgust on her face. “Keep it, I guess,” she said.

  “I will,” he snapped back, not at all happy about the way she’d said that.

  She turned away from him then. She turned away from all of them. She was walking off ahead, briskly, and Rain lumbered after her. She was talking, maybe to Rain, but maybe to no one. She was complaining about something.

  She stopped, turned and pointed a finger at Furggen. “I thought you said you didn’t see anything there!”

  The bird shrugged, his feathers parted and puffed on his neck and head. “Furggen.”

  She carried on again, walking, talking. Out of nowhere, a monstrous bug, all of twenty feet long, flew out from behind a building before them, its wings and legs splayed. It was hissing. And then it charged her.

  She nonchalantly lifted a hand. The bug burst into guts and goo.

  Another one, same thing.

  Another one.

  Another one.

  They blew apart, as if exploded from within. Still, not so much of a drop of goo touched her, or even any of her followers.

  “If you had just done what you said you’d do,” she said, “maybe all of this,” she said, spreading her arms as if displaying, “wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been in the middle of God knows where again, and Rain, you wouldn’t…”

  There was a pause.

  “Where were you again?” she asked.

  Furggen grunted, “In the hills.”

  “The hills,” she said, lowering her head, her ponytail, which was long, silver, and bound in evenly spaced segments throughout, rising so that it was only just above her butt rather than dangling beneath. “The hills!” she scoffed.

  She looked at Furggen and he puffed again. Her stare at him would emblazon stone.

  They had made it to the steps of the fifth rise.