He leapt, vanishing into nothingness.
As he did so, the rainbow seemed to vibrate, and the air around it shimmered with countless tiny prisms that faded as quickly as they'd formed. Yet in that brief flash, Jandra was certain that she'd once more heard her name spoken by Zeeky. Bracing herself, Jandra stepped into the rainbow…
… and now the void was endless. Rather than emerging from the other side, Jandra was adrift in darkness and silence. She couldn't breathe; she couldn't feel her heart beating within her. The disembodied sensation felt the way she imagined death must feel. And yet… she wasn't dead. She was thinking. What was happening to her?
She tried to summon fire around her hands to break the darkness, but she couldn't feel her hands. She wasn't certain she even had hands any more. It was as if all that was physical about her had been stripped away and she was left as only a mind.
'Jandra,' a voice whispered.
'Zeeky?' she asked, despite lacking a throat or mouth to form the words.
'Follow my voice,' said Zeeky. As she spoke, the darkness split and a sliver of light formed. Jandra wanted to move toward the light, but didn't know how. She had no limbs to push herself with. Panic seized her. The presence of a way out of this void and her inability to reach it left her feeling trapped.
Then, hands that were not hands pressed against her, or the idea of her, and pushed.
Jandra landed hard on a concrete floor in a gray, windowless, room. The presence of gravity felt both reassuring and confining. She was pinned to the cold, hard surface by the weight of her body. The light here was dim, but after her encounter with the void even this faint illumination felt like daggers stabbing her eyes. She threw her arm across her face to block the light. She took long, slow breaths, welcoming the air across her lips after her brief encounter with airless, lipless nothingness.
Something wet, cold, and circular pressed against her forehead. Jandra moved her hand to see what it was and found her fingers touching the snout of some kind of animal. She opened her eyes and looked up into the face of a pig, its hide mottled black and white. The pig looked down at her with an expression that resembled concern.
She'd never actually met Zeeky's pig, but her porcine examiner seemed to fit the bill.
'Poocher?' she asked.
'Yes.'
It took her half a second to realize it hadn't been the pig who answered. She sat up and discovered a girl standing in the center of the room. She was dressed in a white robe; her golden hair was washed and braided. She stood before a glass orb the size of a man's fist, which floated in the air seemingly without support. The girl's eyes were fixed upon the orb in an almost hypnotic gaze.
'Zeeky!' Jandra cried. 'Are you okay?'
'Yes,' said Zeeky, not taking her eyes off the orb. Her tone made it sound as if Jandra's voice was an unwelcome distraction.
She rose, looking once more around the room. Jandra somehow recognized it though she'd never been here before. It was a cell built by Jazz, accessible only via an underspace gate. She had a faint memory of building it.
'How did I get here?' Jandra asked. 'Did you guide me here somehow?'
'Yes,' Zeeky said again, tersely.
Jandra walked over to her and placed her hand on Zeeky's shoulder.
'Is something wrong?'
Zeeky turned away from the orb. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, with a trembling voice, 'Everything is wrong! I don't know what to do!'
'What's happening,' Jandra said, squatting down to Zeeky's level. 'What's the problem?'
'My family and my neighbors are still inside,' Zeeky said, wiping her cheeks. 'I can hear them; we've been talking. But they've been in there too long. It's changing them. They've forgotten what their bodies looked like. They say they don't want to come out. They say it's like heaven in there.'
'Heaven isn't what I experienced,' said Jandra.
'It wasn't what they first experienced either,' said Zeeky, running her fingers along the glass orb. 'They said it was more like being dead. They're spirits without bodies. It terrified them at first. But, slowly, they found out that the place responded to their thoughts. It became what they wanted it to become. They imagined heaven, and it became heaven. Now they want me to go inside with them.'
'Could you?' Jandra asked. 'Does this crystal ball have that power?' She looked into the transparent sphere, but saw nothing but the distorted image of Poocher on the other side.
'Jazz left it here for me. She says there's a tiny slice of underspace forever opened at its heart, but I can't reach it while it's sealed in the globe. The globe isn't really glass… it's some sort of energy that that looks like glass. Nothing in this world can ever break it.'
'How do you know that?'
'The villagers told me. They're telling me so many things. I don't understand half of what they're saying. Freed of their bodies, existing as pure thought, they're beginning to know everything… but they're forgetting what it was to be human.'
'Jazz told me she wanted to stay inside underspace because it would make her omniscient,' said Jandra. 'Perhaps she was right.'
'Jazz can't be allowed inside,' said Zeeky. 'They don't want her there. Jazz is a bad person.'
'I know.'
'They say I should go with them to escape her,' said Zeeky. 'But, I don't want to. I don't want to live without a body. I want to stay in this world with Poocher. I want to see Jeremiah again. I just want things back like they were.' A tear traced down her cheek as she spoke. Her lower lip trembled.
Jandra wrapped her arms around Zeeky and pressed her wet cheek against her own. 'It's okay,' she whispered. 'I won't let anything happen to you.'
'How touching,' said a woman's voice behind her.
Suddenly, the room smelled of cigarettes.
Bitterwood had come once more to the shores of the island. He walked its perimeter, trying to find something he could use as a boat. He came at last to a broad beach of black sand. In the distance, he could see a second island. Perhaps Zeeky was there. His search of the temple island had certainly proven unproductive.
Bitterwood looked up as he heard the rustling of leaves in the forest behind him. The greenery parted as the copper-colored heads of three long-wyrms pushed through onto the beach. Adam rode the wyrm that led the way. Behind him were two riders Bitterwood had never seen.
Adam's voice shook with outrage as he spoke. 'The temple is destroyed! Gabriel is dead! One of your arrows was discovered near his remains. What have you done, father?'
'You know what I have done,' said Bitterwood.
'The goddess possesses infinite grace,' Adam said. 'She may forgive any insult if you approach her with a repentant heart. Throw down your bow, father. Surrender yourself. She may yet show you mercy.'
'I do not desire mercy,' said Bitterwood. 'I have slain her angel. Is this the act of a repentant heart? Let Ashera show herself if my actions anger her. I want very much to see her; I still have arrows in my quiver. Let her test her power against me.'
'Blasphemer!' shouted the rider to Adam's left.
'Calm yourself, Palt,' said Adam.
'No!' he cried. 'He speaks of arrows. We are the arrows in the quiver of the goddess! We are the missiles of her wrath! Let us fly, Adam. We shall strike this heretic down!'
Adam looked toward Bitterwood once more. 'Father, if you've any love of life, you will drop your bow. Do not make us kill you.'
Bitterwood lifted his bow and calmly drew an arrow. He took aim, dead center of Adam's chest.
'I have no love of anything,' he said. 'Kill me if you can.'
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Bad Woman
Jandra spun around.
'You've locked the helmet,' Jazz said, taking a drag on her cigarette. 'Interesting.'
