I smiled. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“See? If a god doesn’t know, doesn’t that tell you something? It all rests on you to figure out the rest of the riddle. Whatever happens, I wouldn’t blame you either way. When you go to the heart of darkness, when you are facing down Askala, it’s just going to be you and her. And you’re not going to know anything more than you know now.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Some answers just don’t come, kid, no matter how much you ask them, no matter how much you think about them. Take it from an old man.” He held up the thermos. “More coffee?”
Ashton refilled my cup, and we stared out into the starry night. After a while, he turned off the lights, so that we could see the stars more fully. The stars were bright before, but now they were magnificent.
“The Wanderer said something,” I said. “He said you were supposed to look to the stars when you were in a hole. That’s all I feel I can do. I have to hope, even if there’s no reason for it. People need hope like the lungs need air.”
Ashton slurped on his coffee. “Aye, you’re right about that. What are you hoping for, Alex?”
I took a sip of coffee, and thought for a moment. “I’m just hoping I don’t mess anything up. I hope, when the end comes, I can figure out how to save my scrawny hide. I hope I can find a way to make Anna happy, and take away all her worry and pain.”
Ashton said nothing — he only listened.
“I know,” I said. “There are some things you can mess up, and some things you just can’t. There are the doors you can’t come back from.”
I looked at the clock on the dash. It was 04:00.
I stood to leave the bridge. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Where you off to?”
“Breakfast.”
I just couldn’t talk about what I had to do anymore. I’d have plenty of time to think about that in the coming days.
Chapter 22
We landed in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Morning had just dawned, casting the eastern clouds a dull red.
We left the ship, stepping out into the cool, dry air, finding the streets a chaotic mess of rubble, ash, and purple blood. Corpses of dead crawlers lined the streets, some still twitching. Severed limbs and spindly legs were scattered among the refuse. Behind our landing site, the once-white U.S. Bank Tower rose into the morning air.
“Augustus is in there with the Reapers now,” Makara said.
“Is that where we’re headed?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Everyone walked toward the tower, picking our way through rubble and monster remains. Radaskim dragons swooped the sky above, from time to time, still placid. It seemed as if the creatures had turned to our side for good from the Wanderer’s sacrifice — it wasn’t just temporary. Or at least, that was what I hoped. They could switch back at any moment. If they did, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
We entered the wide glass doors of the building, finding ourselves in a dim lobby. There, Augustus and Black stood face-to-face, deliberating in the center of the lobby floor. Praetorians lined up behind Augustus, while Black’s elite guards backed him up. The Reapers, however, were without weapons. It looked as if Augustus was having his way with Los Angeles after all.
Char stood next to me and spoke in his low voice.
“Come on, kid. These talks will be long.”
He led me out from the lobby of the building, stepping through the open door and into the red-lit street outside. I wondered what he wanted to talk about.
The formed-up legions parted for us as we headed east down rubble-strewn streets. Parts of the tall buildings of downtown had crumbled, forming piles of debris. Many buildings’ sides were wasted and black, the result of a fire long ago. Even the sides of the white tower had been charred, though it seemed to have mostly escaped the damage. Sand covered much of the street. In places, asphalt and faded yellow paint showed through the dirt.
Random streets and intersections had been blocked off — either in preparation for the Radaskim’s attack, or from some earlier time. Beneath a pile of rubble lay some large bones from a creature I couldn’t identify –they’d been there for a while. Toward the east, brown mountains walled in the Los Angeles Basin. Their tops were lost to thick red clouds.
A few blocks to the east, an enormous dragon wheeled above some buildings, settling on the precipice of a crumbled freeway. Another dragon screeched in the air, settling nearby the first. The large one — almost as big as Chaos had been — was dark gray, almost black. The smaller dragon was crimson in hue. Their long, serpent-like necks turned toward us.
“What are we going to do about these dragons?”
That was something we had to figure out. “We might want to get closer.”
“It’s like they’re waiting for something,” Char said.
“Or someone,” I said. “Maybe they’re looking for the Wanderer.”
“The Wanderer’s gone. They’re looking for you, kid.”
“I know,” I said. “Somehow, this is working differently than we expected. The dragons have stayed on our side.”
“They could turn any second,” Char said. “That’s what the Wanderer said, isn’t it?”
Yeah, that was true.
“Alex!”
The sound of footsteps came from behind. I turned to see Anna sliding to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust.
“Couldn’t wait for me, could you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “You snooze, you lose.”
She forced a frown. “I don’t think that saying really works in this situation.”
“You know what I mean.”
Char just watched both of us, shaking his head.
“Whatever,” Anna said. Her eyes gazed ahead to the dragons. “I want to see one of those things up close. Plus, you need your bodyguard.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” I said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Before I could respond, Char cut in.
“Shall we?”
We turned back to the dragons perched on the edge of the freeway. They continued to watch.
We walked forward once more. The dragons swarmed the sky, circling above the eastern side of the decayed cityscape. They seemed to be gathering above the large, dark dragon.
“I wonder what they’re doing,” Anna asked.
Char watched as well, narrowing his eyes to see into the distance. “It sure is something.”
“It’s like…” Anna paused mid-sentence. “It’s like this world isn’t ours anymore, you know?”
Anna was right. Even if we somehow defeated Askala and the Radaskim were stopped, against all odds, I had no idea what the future would look like. The Elekai would live among us, I supposed. The Old World would crumble completely to dust, leaving humanity to live among an alien race. We’d probably never be able to rebuild — not to the level of the Old World. I imagined that all traces of that world would be buried and gone, in a few centuries. I’d be long dead by then, and so would everyone else. But it was the future we fought for — the only future we knew.
We reached the overpass. The dragons remained still, so still that they could have been confused for statues. Up close, however, there was no way these creatures were anything but real. Sharp talons enclosed the concrete railing on the freeway's side, which was riddled with cracks and caked with dust. The dragons’ scales shimmered in the dull red sunlight, crimson for the smaller one, and dark gray, almost black, for the large one. From those scales rose sharp spikes from the creatures’ backs and tails.