Page 67 of Ascendent
Panting, he collapsed onto the bear pelt, spent, sweaty, covered in his own come. There was a vibration under his skin, a hum.Sergey.
Kilaqqi appeared overhead, looking down at him. “Sex in these lands is sacred. Do you know what you have done?”
He couldn’t summon the worry, not now. He could barely breathe. He waved Kilaqqi away.
“Only souls made of the same star, lit from the same beam of light, can connect as deeply as you have. Sacred conjoining, as you have done. This is of the gods.”
“What does that mean?”
“What the gods conjoin, only they can unjoin. Mountains and rivers. Sky and earth.” He pointed to Sasha’s chest, his heart. “You have conjoined.”
His belly button clenched.Permanence, Kilaqqi implied. Mountains never shed their rivers, and the sky never left Earth. Unless a madman burned it off the planet. But they’d stopped that. The world was going back to rights.
And Sergey’s soul hummed beneath his skin. Permanence.
He could live with that.
The absence of panic stilled him. He had to check himself, make sure he was all there. Normally, he’d have bolted up, spun himself into a frantic knot. Anxiety would have ground each of his worries down to their component parts, scattered his fears like sand to trip over, to get stuck in. But something else was filling him now. An absence of panic. A certainty.I can love Sergey forever.
“We have to go now. Bear is calling us.”
“Aren’t we back?”
Kilaqqi held out his hand—
They were in the cave again, in the darkness, standing before Bear. Bear seemed wary, upset. She huffed and growled at Sasha. Kilaqqi clacked at her, a whistle and a tongue click. He held out his hand. Waited for Sasha to do the same.
Together, they walked forward.
This time, he was ready for the swipe, for the sudden dismemberment. There was no pain as the world tumbled, as his head rolled across the rocky cavern ground. He watched Bear slice his leg again, dig out his long bone. Sniff it. She gazed at him. He almost saw her smile.
There was a rush, a smear of light and sound, like he was freefalling from the top of the atmosphere without a parachute. He reached out, grasping, trying to grab something, anything. Where was Kilaqqi—
He landed hard on a frozen lake, the ice beneath him pitch black. Overhead, the universe spread throughout every ripple in time, from the dawn of creation to the end, a spiraling loop that pulsed like the beat of a heart. Stars winked in and out. Galaxies danced beneath his feet, swirling on the ice.
“Bear has found you worthy.” Kilaqqi appeared, walking across the frozen lake. He spread his hands. “We are in the highest heaven. On top of the stars. Beneath time.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Look closer.”
Sasha turned, gazing at the universe overhead. The lake below. He squinted, trying to see through the ice. He kneeled, and brushed away a spinning galaxy.
The Earth spread below him, spinning in space, the moon hanging lazily off to her right. He saw satellites rising in arching orbits, rockets blasting from the surface. The International Space Station zipping by, circling over Moscow.
“Look closer.”
Lights danced and arched over the North Pole, over the Arctic ice cap. Down into Russia, over Norway. They were not the gentle greens and blues of theaurora borealis, the northern lights he’d watched over Murmansk and Andreapol. These lights were blood red.
“It is a blood aurora,” Kilaqqi said. He kneeled beside Sasha and touched the ice, traced the aurora through the frozen lake. He pointed up.
The blood aurora appeared over their heads, pulsing in the unfurled universe, the unspooling of time. It was alive, like a beating heart, like a virus. It writhed against the stars.
A chill trickled down Sasha’s spine, bone by bone.
“When the blood aurora appears, the demons have returned. We saw their work in the underworld. Evil is growing in the land of the dead. Something is rising there. Something is coming up for this world.”
“What do we do?”
