The synthecrete was smooth and cool beneath her, pleasantly refreshing against her bare hands and feet.
Jenni sat on the steps beneath the entry doors of the complex, gazing up at them, her mind filled with thoughts of her husband and all he had done. It still amazed her that an ordinary boy from New York had become such an important part of the history of an entire world. When she thought about it, though, it dawned on her that the great figures of Bible history, at least the way she had seen them portrayed in movies, had also been average, everyday people—and sometimes even unlikely candidates—before entering the roles God had set aside for them. Moses, David, the Apostles, all of them.
The spiritual war T. G. had entered into was an old one, and Jenni tried not to fear for him, but with the upheaval sweeping the planet, doubts welled up inside her. As she dwelt upon her fears, tears soon pooled in her eyes and hung wetly on her lashes like morning dew on a spider’s web. Perhaps she had recovered him only to lose him again—
Come back to me!
The ground shook again. Jenni braced herself against the wall, waiting it out.
Please …?
As if in reply, there was another rumble. She braced for an instant, expecting a tremor, but instead saw the doors above her begin to open like a sleepy eye. Orange light slowly poured in, and a small amount of dirt and ash rained onto her. She jumped up and backed away from the slowly sliding door, then ran past the corner of the entryway and down the corridor, where she silently and fearfully peered from the shadows. Too frightened to call out, she held her breath as the doors clanged into their fully open position. A wall of warm air laced with the heavy scent of wood smoke washed over her.
The sound of slow, heavy feet against the hard steps echoed slightly toward her. Each footfall came later than she expected it, as if they came cautiously.
Fearing a Watcher, she instead looked up to see her husband move from the bottom step and into the corridor. His appearance had changed, but she knew him at once. A squeal of delight fled her lips as she ran to him.
T. G. smiled weakly as he took his wife into his arms. She detected an odd weariness, a fatigue like none she had ever known in him. His slowed pace down the steps had come not from reluctance, but from exhaustion. Jenni looked up into his face and realized that her husband’s young features, while still smooth, betrayed an underlying antiquity, sensed more than seen, as if he had reached out and touched an engulfing timelessness—and been changed. In his crystalline eyes, Jenni saw a depth of clarity she had never seen there before, a wisdom, a peace.
They were one, kissing as he held her close for a moment, sharing the stillness as they cherished each other’s embrace. When she rested her head against his chest, listening to his heart, he drank in the scent of her hair, the warmth of her softness against him. Then she looked up at him, her wet eyes glistening in the dim light.
“Look at you,” she said, smiling through happy tears, running her fingers gently and lovingly through the snowy locks above his left ear. “Your hair has turned white.”
“Really?” he asked, reaching up as if to feel the color difference. “I’m not surprised.”
Josan and Hervie rounded the corner, weapons drawn. At the sight of the Voice, both men breathed a great sigh of relief and neutralized their sidearms.
“Well, look who is back,” Josan smiled, as the massive door slid shut above. He rushed forward and hugged T. G., slapping him on the back in joy. “What happened? Where did you go? Your hair—”
“I had some unfinished business to take care of,” T. G. said, “and it’s been dealt with.” He pointed back over his shoulder. “It looks pretty bad out there. No picnics for a while.”
“English, please?” Jenni asked, smiling. Watching him speak Noronian was something she just could not seem to get used to.
“I think I’ve done everything I came to Noron to do,” he summed up for her.
Jenni laid her head against his shoulder. “So do we go home now? Or at the very least, can you stay here with me?”
He kissed her atop her head. It was all the answer she needed.
“Welcome back,” Darafine said, coming up the corridor. “We feared the worst.”
T. G.’s expression became more serious. “Barthos is dead. Paull Shass probably is too … but his body’s still up and around. The Dark possessed him directly in order to take on physical form. As for why …”
“So it was prophesied,” Darafine nodded. “ ‘And the Dark shall walk upon Noron, and the ground will shake with the fury of his footfalls.’ That explains the tremors.”
“That is not all,” Hervie said. “This explains much. Shass … or the thing using him … has been on simulight almost constantly for the past few weeks. There has been something different about him, though … his charisma was high before, but now it has hit the canopy. We have had to forbid everyone, especially the women, from watching any of the broadcasts. It is just too dangerous.”
“Yes,” Darafine nodded. “Sereen almost succumbed to his charisma. She came to me in tears several hours ago … and she is a strong woman.”
“Yes, she is,” T. G. nodded, recalling the woman’s daring rescue of her sister. “I can understand it though … the Dark was once the most glorious of the Creator’s works. His inner and outer beauty were deep and perfect, spoiled only by the fact that he tried to supplant his Maker. At that point, he lost the radiance of fellowship but retained his own inherent magnificence. Nothing since has stripped him of that, nor the seductiveness it carries with it.”
“And he is using it to try to draw the final few to him,” Josan said. “Shass was not quite appealing enough on his own, I suppose.”
“It does sound like a final grab for votes, doesn’t it?” T. G. agreed. “That means Election Day is here. Time is running out.”
“For all of us perhaps,” Hervie said.
Jenni poked T. G. in the ribs. “Either teach me this language or give me subtitles. Or charades. Anything.”
He smiled at her. “You up for it?”
“Hey,” she said, “I was the one who took French in high school, not you.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“This will be tough.”
“I don’t care.”
He held up three fingers, meaning ‘three words,’ beginning a game of charades.
“No!” she laughed, giving him a playful shove. “The language …”
Josan and Hervie looked on in puzzlement. Jenni smiled, pleased with the fact that someone else wore that expression for a change.
The sun rose for the last time.
Daylight was just breaking above the horizon of Keltrian, dimmed by the dark, heavy pall in the air. The surrounding forests continued to burn uncontrolled in a conflagration unlike any before seen. Other fires, within the city walls, had spread from building to building, sector to sector, gutting what would burn and leaving desolate what would not.
A tiny figure stood atop the World Capitol pyramid, arms outspread. The building’s four sides sloped down and away for a mile, and for most the relatively minuscule ten-foot-square summit on which he stood would have inspired immediate and intense vertigo. Yet he was unaffected, and unconcerned.
The world, he gloated, is mine.
The Dark surveyed his kingdom, and the wondrous destruction that was laying it waste. The flames, the smoke, the quakes, and the distant screams of millions were all a symphony of joy to him, proof that he had been right all along. It was unfortunate that the fool Beltesha was unable to join him in his moment of triumph, but the sycophant would have eventually become a hindrance anyway, somewhere along the line.
Better to be done with him now and retain as much of the glory for one’s self as possible.
Half the world’s population had died already, and of those, three-fourths had chosen Darkness. A crushing blow to the Creator, the Dark mused, to lose so many of His precious physical ones, with so many more yet to die unsaved! It was glorious!
There was a brilliant flash. A fierce explosion sounded, and a vicious shock wave slammed into the capitol, shattering much of the glass on its northern side. The Dark turned to look upon the small mushroom cloud rising into the air far in the distance, a glaring fireball that had already obliterated the power-generating facility there along with much of the area surrounding it. He laughed, counting another several hundred thousand souls among his spoils.
It was starting out to be a good day.
T G. sat bolt upright in bed. He and Jenni had gone to sleep only a short time before, and in his lassitude a deep slumber had closed in quickly. But now, like flipping a switch, he was wide awake once more, his heart racing. He had been awakened by a dream—a vivid, waking vision like the one he had experienced in his apartment before his first shift to Noron.
There on the same gray plain he had seen before, Ish appeared, an immense figure towering into the sky, arms outstretched. All around, in a gathering that stretched from horizon to horizon, billions of people walked lovingly toward their Messiah. Then had begun the sound of the rushing waters as before, but this time, there were words within the roar. Three words in Ish’s voice.
It is time.
Nothing more was needed, no explanation. T. G. simply knew.
He swung his legs over the side of the warm, comfortable bed, waking Jenni with his movement. She looked up at him and discerned his blurry shape in the meager light.
“What … what is it?” she asked, her eyes barely open.
“Get dressed,” he said, grabbing for his robes.
“Why? What’s happening? Feels like we just now—”
“It’s happening!” he almost shouted. “Hurry!”
“I thought you were through,” she said sleepily, sitting up.
“Come on!”
Both were quickly into their robes, and with tousled hair and bare feet they moved along the corridors, banging on every door they passed to alert everyone.
“What is it?” Darafine asked Jenni in English, stepping from her room into the wide hall. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Jenni sleepily replied.
“Follow me!” T. G. shouted, excitement in his voice. “Bring everyone!”
Rounding the final corner, he pressed his palm against the control plate and the overhead door slid open. Before it had reached full retraction, he was up the steps, Jenni in tow, bounding out into the subdued light of dawn.
The beautiful meadows and forests through which T. G. and his bride had wandered after their wedding were gone. The lush grasses and trees all around them had been destroyed, leaving only smoking, charred remains to surround the complex. The air was warm, for the forests in the distance still burned, driving the outside temperature ever upward. If not for the smoke stratifying in layers high in the still air, the sky would have been brighter still. But it was light enough.
Jenni’s eyes went wide as she peered into the sky. For the first time she could see the battle being waged there, the angelic war for Noron. In awe, she watched as the luminous beings continued their struggle, more numerous than the stars and brighter still. Like meteors on a summer night they darted, swooping and maneuvering, changing trajectories in sudden, breathtaking moves that would have defied physical law had the warriors been material.
Suddenly, a third of them fled away, seemingly in fear.
Everyone spilled from the stairway and onto the scorched meadow, gazing into the sky. Josan held Darafine as they, like the others, looked into the heavens, recognizing the beings above for the angels they were, the angels described to them in the pages of the Truth. The spectacle brought tears to some, quiet contemplation to others, and awe to them all.
The remaining angels quickly parted like a curtain, gathering into a sparkling ring that surrounded the skies, leaving an immense, open space directly overhead. A few moments later, something began to fill that space.
Lightning flashed silently from horizon to horizon, arcing white across the sky. A resonant sound like that of a trumpet blast echoed across the forests, coming from everywhere at once. It sounded three times, filling the world with triumphant music, heralding an arrival.
It began as a glow, centered directly above the complex, and rapidly swelled until it stretched from horizon to horizon. New shadows fell beneath T. G. and the gathered spectators as the light became brighter. But even as it surpassed the brilliance of the sun, their eyes knew no pain, no heat, no discomfort at all. The intensity increased moment by moment, until it shifted and gathered itself and began to assume a cohesive shape. It took on color and form. A great wind began to sweep the land.
T. G. held Jenni tightly, watching the light above. She began to cry softly, but was unsure why. T. G. did as well, but he knew why.
Intense awe thickly filled the air, imbuing all who stood there, transcending their every conception of reality. Their minds, as one, sought something from the comfort of past experience—anything—that could help them identify what was now before them.
From any point on the planet’s surface, the same image was visible above. The shape that now filled the sky was a figure—the figure of a man. His eyes were flames of pure, cleansing fire. His hair flowed long and white. His robes were majestic blue.
And all the world looked upon Ish at last.
Those who were His knew Him. Everywhere, all who had chosen the Truth knew that their promised Savior had come and that the Voice in the Dark had spoken truthfully to them. They had heard the trumpets. They huddled together in the open, gazing with love and excitement and awe upon the image of their Messiah, awaiting Him.
Those who had rejected Ish cowered in their homes or hid under anything that would shield them from the agony of those piercing eyes, eyes that saw through their flesh and into the depravity in their souls. They cursed Him, begging Drosha and the Prime Lord to rise up and defeat the hated One Who hung over them.
Everyone at the complex fell to their knees, overwhelmed with awe, with all but one gazing for the first time upon the face of He Who had created everything and everyone they had ever known. Peering up into the gentle face of their Creator and Savior, they humbled themselves, trembling, knowing firsthand the power that had called the universe into existence with a single thought, a single word, a single love.
One upon the planet did not fall to his knees.
The Dark stood atop the capitol pyramid, his face seething with anger, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails drew new blood from his raw palms.
“NO!” he screamed, livid that his moment of triumph had been overshadowed by such a blatantly egotistical display. He stared defiantly into the eyes above him, cursing them, feeling their scalding heat upon him.
“This world will be mine, as will the other!” the Dark screamed, his words cutting through the roar of the winds. “I will sit upon the throne of Heaven, and my name will be exalted throughout the universe! And these … these of this world … you will not take them unto yourself! They will be mine, or they will not be at all!”
He held his arms out, his head back. As he continued to stare upward in defiance, something like tears of black oil began to well up, covering his eyes completely before spilling over and streaming over his cheeks. Within moments, the same dark matter issued from his nose, ears, and mouth, spilling outward, coating his robes. The rate at which it poured from him multiplied until it gushed forth, flowing down his torso and legs and onto the top of the pyramid, becoming a rapidly spreading ebony puddle around his feet.
From every pore of his body the blackness came, a darkness infinitely beyond the mere absence of light, bursting forth with the force of water through a shattered dam, an impalpable, slippery torrent. It was a pure nothingness that no mind could envision, colder and more empty than the depths of space and just as pervasive. The substance-without-substance moved as quietly as a low fog, dense and swift and unstoppable, cascading over the summit and down the sides of the pyramid until the monolith’s sparkling, mirrorlike faces were lost beneath a glove of gelid black.
With impossible speed the Darkness flowed on, reaching the bottom and spreading outward in all directions, blanketing the streets, buildings, and alleys of the city below as it flowed over and between them. Streaming forth now from the Dark only from his neck down, it increased in size at a rate beyond mere flow, growing exponentially, racing toward each horizon.
It absorbed all light and all heat and all life. Men ran from its black, merciless touch, but fell victim nonetheless as it swept along like a tidal wave, engulfing everyone over whom it passed. It claimed the saved and the lost with equal totality. No closed door, no sealed window, no hidden shelter kept it away. The Dark delighted in the new wave of screams that rose from the city below, knowing that all the world was perishing by his hand. He had sent the Darkness forth not merely to kill, but to annihilate both body and soul, wiping them away as if they had never existed. That which did not live, its black devastation would not harm. That which did would vanish.
It was to be an act of un-creation, an unraveling of the very handiwork of God, sucking the breath of life from the world as if it had never lived. Noron would be left desolate, sterile, and unloving of its Creator.
“Look upon this!” the Dark mocked. “I now leave you what you would leave me … a barren rock unable to praise your name!”
The Dark laughed, watching as the cattle of Noron simply ceased to be, counting their number as they fell. The sickening, booming laugh built in power until it could be heard worldwide, preceding the Darkness so that the people would know just who it was who had defeated their Creator. There would be no great last call on this world, the Dark gloated, no summoning of the saved into the air. If they could not belong to him and would not fall at his feet in ultimate, eternal adoration, then no one would have them—and the jealous Creator will lose the battle he has waged against me since the worlds began!
As it rushed along, the Darkness smothered and extinguished the fires raging throughout the forests of the world and even consumed those fleeing, panicked animals that managed to evade the inferno.
Faster it spread, coating the world like a blanket of black snow, flowing as deeply as was necessary to ensure that no flesh escaped. Tentacles of deep black reached up out of the spreading mass and pulled birds, pterosaurs, and insects from the air. It filled the rivers, seas, and lakes, killing all life there. Those who fell in its path, man and animal, felt a numbing, choking, leaden cold at first, a cold without light or sound or sensation. There was no air for their lungs, no light for their eyes, no sound for their ears. Just a drowning in blackness as the merciless Darkness filled their mouths and ears and lungs.
Then came nothingness.
T. G. and the 284 Disciples of Truth knelt before Ish in the charred grass, praying to Him. Their robes, hands, and faces were blackened with the soot of the meadow. They watched and waited, looking upon His wondrous visage above them, holding their arms upstretched.
His voice filled their minds.
It is almost ended. Do not be afraid.
Then they heard something else echoing from beyond the horizon. A laugh—an abysmal, wicked, terrifying laugh T. G. knew all too well. Confusion tore at him. He knew that it was Ish’s time, that the Dark was finished, and yet—
Movement caught his eye. He looked toward the terrifying black tidal wave approaching from the distant southeast, and his sinews tightened. The laugh that filled the world grew louder, more victorious. The dark wall grew rapidly closer. He looked up at Ish.
What is it? he silently asked his Lord. What’s coming at us?
The final Darkness.
What do we do? he asked, tensing for battle.
Lie down, Ish replied.
What? the prophet asked, disbelieving, knowing that a great danger was bearing down on them all.
Lie down. Do nothing.
The two commands tore at every remaining grain of human pride within T. G. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to fight, or to take his wife and his friends and retreat into the deep shelters beneath the complex—to save himself and them. He fought the fierce compulsion even to shift away, forcing himself instead to focus upon the trustworthiness of his Lord. He remembered the words of Ish, spoken during the revelation He had given in the dungeon of the Dark Fortress—
All things and all events, even those of evil, are used by Us for good and for the carrying out of the Father’s will. That is where trust comes in. And trust … simple trust … is faith.
T. G. decided. He was angered at his own hesitation. How could he have doubted even now, after all else? At once, Ish vanished from the skies, as did the angelic host surrounding Him.
There was no time. The Voice turned to the others, who stared in horror at the rushing Darkness. Its roar became intolerable, as did the dark laughter. Their voices rising in fear, the gathering began to lean toward the shelter behind them, wanting to run, as T. G. had wanted to do. He cried out, halting them.
“Everybody down,” he ordered. “Where you are! Leave this to Ish! Get on the ground! Now!”
They all did so, and he was thankful for that. Nearly three hundred souls who had fought the good fight lay in the direct path of the enemy, offering no resistance, trusting the words of their given Voice, trusting in. their Lord to protect them. Ish was their only shield, their only armor, their only hope. They lay there, face down against the scorched soil, their bodies pressed together, praying. The roar, the laughter grew louder.
“Are you … sure?” Jenni fearfully asked T. G., curling into him.
“No,” he answered. “But Ish is.”
He lay next to her, his arm over her, her head tucked under his shoulder. Josan and Darafine lay huddled with Sereen. Hervie held his breath, praying silently. No one spoke. No one uttered a sound. There was no time for questions, no time for doubt.
As one, they waited. The last moment ticked away.
A thunderous reverberation like crashing ocean waves filled their ears, and suddenly it was upon them. They felt a great weight of rushing cold, pressing in, churning around them, engulfing them. The unstoppable Darkness swept past, crossing the world, covering it in its entirety in less than nineteen minutes.
And the Voice was swallowed up.
The Dark stood atop the pyramid at the center of what had once been the city of Keltrian, laughing in triumph, spinning in delight as he surveyed the ruin he had made. He had watched as the beaten Ish had fled away in defeat, leaving the people of Noron in his merciless hands, and now all the world was his to do with as he pleased.
The Dark had been the planet’s rightful owner for thousands of years. Now he alone lived upon its cold, silent face, still embodied within the plundered form of Paull Shass.
“Take it!” he screamed to the heavens with a sweeping motion, arms outstretched, his laughter filling the skies. “It’s yours!”
He was drunk with the madness of self-deification. At one time he had accepted that he was doomed to lose his war, and he strove only to pull as many down with him as possible. But delusion embedded in intense pride had finally so corrupted him that he had actually come to believe he could triumph over his Creator and usurp the throne of Heaven.
Victory!
He roared mightily as the Darkness continued to flow. Then, at the peak of his depraved revelry, his ears detected something. It was a sound, a deep rumble, more felt than heard. His laughter suddenly died away.
For a thousand days it had traveled, undiminished, across interstellar space. It was a word, a single word. A voice.
A judgment.
And the Word fell upon the world unheeded.
It impacted with full force on the other side of the planet and drove deep into Noron’s core. Thousands of vast subterranean reservoirs began to boil as 2.5 billion vibrations per second worked against them. As the underground oceans strained against their rocky boundaries, fissures began to open. Noron fought valiantly to resist the internal torture that unmercifully built within it.
For a few precious moments, the planet held its own. Just a few.
A faraway glare drew the Dark’s attention to the horizon, and as he watched in stunned disbelief, the planet’s crust just beyond his view succumbed.
There, past the edge of the world, dense plumes of white erupted forth and shot miles into the sky with an intensity unimagined. He heard nothing at first.
Then the shock wave hit. Intense, cruel winds immeasurably beyond hurricane strength slammed bluntly into everything in their path, filled with deadly projectiles of stone, wood, glass, and steel. The Dark clung to the twisted metal framework of the pyramid’s summit, crying out in terror and rage.
He tried but could not leave. Something pinned him there.
More fissures tore open planetwide, throwing plumes of steam into the upper atmosphere with an intolerable roar. The ground rolled as if fluid. The once-solid crust of Noron broke up into thousands of tectonic plates, and its single eggshell continent flew apart. Still the pressure increased, and superheated waters exploded through the narrow openings the preliminary fists of steam had forged.
A prolonged, deafening concussion shook the face of the world as immense blades of boiling water screamed white into the turbulent sky. At an altitude of eleven miles, their forceful, upward rush was momentarily interrupted as they slammed into an obstacle.
The canopy shell shattered like fragile crystal as the searing knives of water tore into it. Millions of icy shards fell into the turbulent maelstrom below, melting back into that which they had once been long before.
And Noron knew rain for the second time.
Temperatures dropped instantly at the poles as the atmosphere vainly fought to equalize itself. Powerful winds well below freezing blasted the once tropical polar forests. Hailstones more than a foot in diameter slammed against anything that stood, breaking glass and splintering timber. Mountain peaks ten thousand feet high were thrown up violently and valleys sank down as the crust beneath them shifted along new fault lines. Scalding mud and water exploded out onto the surface, and the merciless slurry scraped the planet’s face, unleashing the power of the planet’s inner forces for the first time. A stinging torrential downpour reduced visibility to the grayness of zero and made it difficult even to breathe.
The Dark clung to the apex of the shattered pyramid, watching as the planet all around him tore itself apart. His Darkness had been swept away, lost within the maelstrom. The colossal building upon which he knelt began to collapse upon itself, yielding to forces it was never designed to withstand. The scream of straining, buckling steel filled the air. He stared in horror as he dropped lower and the turbulence below grew nearer.
The Dark suddenly knew that he had not won—that he merely had been a part of something much greater than himself. Trapped within his self-imposed shell of flesh, again and again he cursed the name of his Creator. He felt pain and terror and fear—and would continue to for all eternity.
For him, as also for Beltesha and all who had followed the Dark, it would end in a lake of fire, created at the beginning of all things. There was life only in the Creator of all life, and those who would not fellowship with Him could not live.
A new roar from his left caught the Dark’s attention. Though he could not see beyond the heavy curtains of pounding rain, he turned his head for the last time and listened. He then screamed and wept bitterly in utter defeat.
A wall of boiling mud and water a mile high was moments away.
The planet’s rebirth had begun, a rebirth that would result in a single world in which the Dark and his kind could find no place. Noron and Earth were both gone.
But something new would arise from their weary remains.