Chapter 6

  Buenos dias, mi hijo.

  Whispers of harsh voices beyond the door woke Aquiles with immediate suspicion. Incognito to only the most oblivious of listeners, their timbre was mired with unease and distrust in their conversation. Crusted mucus on his eyelids split and cracked as he looked up at the ceiling and hammers and chisels echoed in his skull. Under the door, shifting and sprawling lines of darkness among the rays of torchlight shot across the floor. He coughed, and the voices and shadows went still.

  “Arm of Us, como estas?” Socorra’s voice scratched through from the hall. It was still dark outside, the same time Aquiles normally awoke. Yet this time, he’d fallen asleep not from tired eyes, but from passing out after Jorge’s onslaught at the end of their sparring match. Opaque images and slurred sounds sputtered through his mind, invigorating the migraine finding a strong perch in his head. His body was consistent if it was anything. Or had the Mother awakened him? Could she even wake her children up like this? Aquiles’ mind drifted into the awkward space his absence of a response to Socorra left.

  He snapped back to the moment and answered, “Bien, bien. I’m fine, but I will need to get some water.”

  Socorra barged into the room, “You’ll need more than water after your little display.” Aquiles realized his robes, and any garment to conceal his more personal aspects, were missing or misplaced. He pulled the blanket up to his chest. How had he gotten back to his room anyway? Grey hair and blue sky were the last his eyes recalled seeing the day before.

  The hag scoffed at him, “I’m the one that had to take your robes off in the first place.” She shuffled forward and threw a wad of monks’ robes and a cord at him, “And! And I raised all of you since you were babies. So skittish.” Socorra bustled around his room opening drawers, leaving them open, and moving his curtains aside.

  “Is there something you need, Child Socorra?” Numb, and becoming number with confusion and the persistent heartbeat in his ears, Aquiles took the situation in stride. He absently scratched his fully healed nose and hardly remarked on its swift recovery.

  “Yeah, some Father-loving peace and quiet for once in my life. You know, watching out for all you nin?os and talking to gods every week can really start to wear on your nerves. You all are lucky I act so jovial!” Socorra ended her tirade with her pointer finger jamming Aquiles’ chest. “You look skinny, you need to eat something.” Socorra sniffed closer to his face and wrinkled her nose, “Maybe something with mint.”

  More shuffling from outside seemed to annoy the Child. Emiliano peaked into the room, “Child Socorra, I brought some-” The vieja had her sandal off her foot and in her hand before he could finish his sentence. The sandal caught the Thunderhead square between the eyes.

  “Your reaction time stinks worse than his breath,” Socorra proclaimed, pointing at Aquiles without looking.

  “Yes, Child! I will practice more!” Emiliano left a vial of some clear liquid in the open door. He turned quickly, and Aquiles heard the poor man’s feet scrambling down the hallway.

  Socorra turned back to Aquiles. Somehow, her other sandal was in her hand already, and she fixed him with a suspicious glare. “What took you so long, huh?”

  “Que??”

  She flung the sandal at him, and without thinking, Aquiles struck the sandal with a lightning bolt. It jumped from his chest, and the sandal burnt then burst to pieces, bright light flashing in an instant then disappearing.

  “Precisely that.”

  Aquiles eyes widened. The previous day clipped through his mind in a rush, and his stomach twisted at the sight of the too-sweet ichor sitting in his doorway. Objections spilled out in a torrent, “Child Socorra, I promise, I knew nothing of this. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have a twin. I never struck Jorge or anybody, I’m just a swordsman,” probably the only time he’d admit to being just a swordsman, “the only thing I know of the Storms is that I wouldn’t want to fight one. Por favor, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  Socorra rolled her eyes, “Si, si. That’s enough. I know you don’t know anything. And that’s what the rest of the Monastery will know. I had my hands on you when that angry mierdito got carried away. Jorge has a temper.” She scuttled over to the vial and picked it up. She pulled the stopper and sniffed it with a smile, “It tastes better with chile? and limo?n.”

  “Why would it matter if you had your hands on me?”

  She gave him the most degrading and stupefied look Aquiles had ever seen a Child of the Parents and the Monastery bestow upon an all-too-inferior being.

  “I’m a Bolt you buffoon. How else did you think I could be out there teaching that group of morons?”

  Aquiles was stunned. Never had he considered the possibility Socorra could be anything more than the abrasive Arm he always experienced. “I- I didn’t know.” In fact, wouldn’t she need a twin to be a Bolt? Where was her brother or sister? By the Parents and all good things… Was there another Socorra parading around somewhere terrifying farmers out in the country? “Where’s your sibling? There always must be two of you, Bolt and Thunderhead.” Truthfully, Aquiles was stumbling here. Education on the secretive society of the Storms was limited and brisk in his schooling. By the Parents’ guidance, their blessed children were mythical amongst the rest of the population.

  Plain sadness wrote itself in the delicate, wrinkled skin of Socorra’s face. Her age was apparent, but she never acted it. Now, its weight on her soul sagged her wit and enthusiasm. “That only works one way, nin?o. Lightning before thunder. Always that way. It’s just me now. The lightning.”

  “What happ-”

  “It is personal,” she cut him off, “the Monastery thinks I saved you, and that is that.” Her lips curled into the deceitful grimace the Child might claim for a smile, “But I didn’t.”

  “This doesn’t make sense. How can I use these blessings? Who were the people you were talking to?”

  “In time, Arm of Us. As for the people, I was preparing your escort to the Ministry. Today, your apprenticeship under me continues.”

  He hoped desperately it wouldn’t end with him passing out again.

  Socorra gestured at the vial Emiliano left, “Drink it. You’ll stop feeling and looking like a donkey kicked your face in.”

  Aquiles sighed and extended his hand for the vial.

  “No chile? and limo?n?”

  “Taste doesn’t matter, only the food’s use to me.”

  “I bet you’re fun at fiestas,” Socorra handed him the vial.

  “To the Parents.” He gulped it down. “AHHH! BUENOS DIAS, MADRE!” Aquiles jumped out of bed with a surge of energy. His very blood boiled.

  “Yup, you were running dry,” Socorra chuckled, then cleared her throat. “Still naked.”

  “I thought you said it didn’t matter.”

  “No, but I am still a nun. I’m not sure the Father would appreciate this when you talk to him later today.”

  Aquiles’ entire body froze, his heart stopping mid-beat. “Wha- what do you- I’m talking to him? Today?”

  “Yes, why else would you go to the Ministry?” She sneered, “And he would prefer you fully clothed.”

  “What do you mean I was running dry? That doesn’t make sense,” Aquiles huffed after Socorra as she shambled her frail form through the hallways of dirt and terrified Young Ones.

  “Oh, that, there’s some machines under the Ministry.” Child Socorra seemed to have finished her sentence. Aquiles pushed his head forward and leaned his ear in for the next bit of information. She just stared the passing Young Ones into submission and ignored him entirely. One little boy yelped and stumbled backwards into the wall.

  “Child Socorra, the machines. What are you talking about?” Exasperation veiled by, well, not by anything. Aquiles would learn to be more tactful.

  The hag shuffled along. Somehow, a new pair of dirty sandals likely worn more years than Aquiles could claim to his life scuffed up the ground. She jerked her head at a particularly deep rut she carved into the dirt, and a few Young Ones dove to shore up the blemish of the floor. “Yes, the machines. Well, the machines can run dry.”

  Aquiles stopped walking and watched her continue. “The machines run dry. Yes, of course. I should’ve known.”

  “Vamos, nin?o,” Socorra called back to him, “we need to meet your escort at the mess. She will take you to the Ministry.” A squeak of bone and saliva ground through his head as Aquiles ground his teeth. Nin?o.

  He caught back up after his useless questioning of the vieja when they reached the main square. Sharp spiral stairs carried their holy load of men and women about the vast interior of the pyramid. Aquiles found time to marvel at the construction, terraces on the outside and the living space for near a thousand on the inside, dressed in the drab draping of stone and dirt, yet it was home. Though, Aquiles never quite found the place comforting, just short solace in solstices at the sundial. With a jolt of panic, Aquiles realized he hadn’t finished his paper on the sundial in the garden. Probably wasn’t of much import now. He focused on the forefront matter.

  “Is now really the best time, Child? To be going on a trip to the Ministry and being so.. seen?”

  Socorra stopped and Aquiles bumped into her from the back, sharp shoulder blades poking at his stomach. “Are you questioning if I can tell when the best time is?”

  “No, just with my incident-”

  “It’s the fourth hour.”

  “Que??”

  “The best time is the fourth hour.” Socorra bared her teeth at him. “Come, young Arm. Do as you're told.”

  Grey stone closed around them as they crossed the square and the pyramid wall came down to meet them. Stone gave way to dirt and clay. Dirty Young Ones were sweeping the floor of the hallway.

  “Clean and clear of dirt!” Horacio demanded, a wholly pointless endeavor, at the great amusement of the aged swords master. “They stole some extra bread yesterday at breakfast,” he laughed. Aquiles had only ever seen him laugh at Young Ones doing useless chores.

  Socorra clapped the oldest looking boy on the shoulder, “Te gusta pan, verdad?”

  He shook his head, fervor and fear, a mighty mixture in a young boy. “No! I don’t! At least, not anymore!”

  “Que bien.” She shifted her attention to Horacio, “Let them go about their day. I need you to come with us, Child.”

  Horacio made a shooing motion with his hand, “You all heard her. No more trouble today, or you’re going to be watering the garden in the rain.” The Young Ones bustled away.

  The three approached the mess hall. Aquiles hung his head and exhaled as the rambunctious old hag shuffled into the mess first, drawing the attention she always appeared to crave. Children sat in small groups at the circular tables. The mathematics instructors, trainers, and alchemists had gathered in their own cliques, whispering in each other’s ears and pointing at the other tables hidden with little care of being seen, just as childish as the Young Ones they so often treated as immature. What salacious debauchery could a group of monks have possibly gotten themselves into to warrant such behavior? Aquiles snorted to himself and smirked out the side of his mouth.

  “Not the righteous bunch you knew when you were little,” Child Socorra rasped over her shoulder. A hush fell over the crowd as more of the monks noticed the new arrivals in the mess hall. The trio moved off to the side for more privacy. Child Horacio, mean with a sword and just about every other aspect of his life; current Arm of the Monastery, one of the most influential people in the entirety of La Terra; and her apprentice, a man whom the Children had decided was a brat, the consensus passed by word of mouth from clique to clique, level to level, dedication to dedication.

  Aquiles didn’t fault the gawking. He had been the unsteady child they saw in him these past few days, and today, he was going to right that image. Eyes poked holes in his confidence, and his own glazed over with fear disguised as what Aquiles hoped was nonchalance. But maybe the very mechanism that brought on the hot glares would feed the lie of Socorra defending him in the humiliation training, shrouding his own inexplicable use of a Bolt’s blessing. Not that it could be a Bolts’ blessing. Aquiles had no twin. Some other supernatural force of the Parents’ will, maybe. The young Arm-in-training was swimming in the unknown.

  A woman materialized in the space next to Aquiles. He jolted and looked around. It was as if she formed from the currents of stale air wafting off Socorra; not there one moment, but the next, she was.

  “Love them or hate them, you have to respect them,” the mystery woman spoke with a dry intonation at odds with a clearly forced smile on her face.

  “Where’d you come from,” Aquiles responded, head still spinning to discover her approach vector.

  The question was swatted aside, “Most of them are experts in their fields. Or deadly martial artists,” she leaned her head toward him while still looking forward, “not that you’d have a problem, right?” Her eyes flashed at him as she pulled her head back straight. They erased the unease from the monks’ glares and replaced it with a primal urge to run. A wild animal’s eyes, a predator.

  Socorra stopped and turned, “Ah, Josefa, estas aqui.” The woman next to Aquiles made a little flourish to the Child.

  “Ready to escort our Arm of Us to the Ministry.” She flashed that look at Aquiles again. Instinct drew his sword hand to his waist to protect himself, but there was no leather-strapped handle to grasp, no steel to draw or hide behind.

  Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail with two thin strands hanging around her face, the rest of it pulled taught and slicked down to a midnight sheen. Dazzling white teeth shone behind that fake sweet smile. She was rather short and stocky like the women found in the plains of the country, or so his textbooks read. Ready hands gripped her belt holding up loose wool pants and keeping tight a tucked in brown shirt of similarly spun wool. Her shoulders flexed under a worn leather jacket with sparse metal studs on the lapel. This Josefa looked ready for a fight.

  Aquiles caught himself staring, as if locked in a trance, and turned his eyes to the floor. He shouldn’t be terrified of this woman. She had to be in her middle years, light wrinkles around the spots they always form. He steeled himself and looked her back in the eyes. They burned with a raging fire he felt searing the inside of his skull.

  Socorra cleared her throat. “Aquiles, this is Josefa. Commander of the Monastery guard.”

  Without breaking his stare, he replied, “I didn’t know we had a guard.”

  “That’s because we don’t tell anyone,” she paused then continued in a softer tone, “and we haven’t always had one.”

  “The Child is scared a pair of Greatstorm twins are going to tear the place down,” Child Horacio interjected.

  Josefa’s monotone sliced at Aquiles, “Scared is not the word I would use, Child.” Her raging stare seemed to flare. “Identical twins are dealt with by our great Father as often as the problem arises, but they’re power is legend.” Josefa finally doused the fire to address Child Horacio. “We are here to check the real powers of our country. Namely…” At the last word, Josefa jerked her head in the direction of the city and beyond, to the Ministry. Aquiles screwed up his face in confusion. The Ministry had always been a benevolent, if sometimes aloof, force in La Terra. That little head jerk was almost blasphemous.

  Socorra walked over to him and placed her hand warmly on his shoulder, “You will come to understand our position as you take my place. You can’t always trust the warming gestures of a higher power.” She lifted her hand and slapped the back of his neck, “See!? Ha! Snap out of it Arm of Us, you need to be in fighting shape for today. Speaking to the Father can be… draining.”

  He rubbed more the annoyance than the sting out of his stiff neck. “Are the rest of the Children concerned with the Monastery having an armed guard?”

  “I’m not armed,” Josefa replied in an instant.

  “Indeed,” Aquiles narrowed his eyes.

  Socorra sighed, “Josefa is more my assistant than guard, to be sure. The other Children see it this way.” Odd how they stood apart from the monks now and Socorra still spoke with a hush.

  Child Horacio added, “Really, it is better the monks are comfortable rather than aware of Socorra’s distrust of… well, just about everyone.”

  Socorra grimaced, “Just about.”

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  Awkward silence.

  Josefa cleared her throat and threw some life into her words for the first time since Aquiles had become aware of her existence, “Taking a trip through the Capital is very enjoyable. Would you like to take some friends through the mercados?” Josefa tilted her head in a fake curiosity and turned up the last word too much.

  “I don’t have any friends; I don’t have the time.” Aquiles couldn’t think of anyone in the Monastery close enough to his level to be worth talking to. Other than the Children and Masters of the Sword, of course.

  “Ah, que triste,” Josefa pouted.

  Today would be less than pleasant.

  Josefa guided Aquiles and Child Horacio out of the mess hall and into the large hallway attached to the center square of the pyramid. Out of instinct, Aquiles turned left to walk back through the square and out of the pyramid from the singular entrance and exit located at the Grand Hall, still a blissful place empty of stinking shepherds and farmhands from the plains. Horacio hooked his heel about Aquiles’ ankle and wrenched him to the right. “Child Socorra finds more inconspicuous means of coming and going as more desirable for her meetings with the Father,” the old man nodded his head to the right, “but she usually just speaks to him from here.”

  “How could she talk to him from here? And, how else could we leave?”

  “Same way he shows us the wonderful executions,” Horacio responded cheerily. A knot twisted in Aquiles’ stomach. While the executions were an obvious necessity, he did not enjoy experiencing the affair each year. The knotted old man continued, “As for leaving… This pyramid is old, very old. She has her secrets.”

  Two large forms melted from a shadowed portion of the walls, looming as the mountains over the valley, breath reverberating through the air around them, great beasts of men. All the thick limbs of Jorge and Emiliano combined, yet with twice their height; Aquiles’ neck strained to meet their eyes and examine what must be inhuman faces. If Greatstorm demons grew to adulthood, they would look like these two, for these were most definitely a Storm, yet not one Aquiles had ever seen or dreamed. A pair of toothy smiles, smashed noses, and eyes wrinkled with laugh lines looked back down. “How in the Father’s great, godly name do they hide themselves,” Aquiles gasped. They smiled down at him, immobile statues carved from a cliff face.

  “Hola mis amigos! Thank you for joining us!” Josefa bobbed up and down walking backward now yet continuing on without slowing down.

  Horacio quivered and came to halt, perhaps making the same assertion on the visage of demons. “The rest- the rest of the guard,” he stuttered.

  “Just the three of them?” Aquiles whispered out of the corner of his mouth, not daring to take his eyes off the giants. They just stood there. Unmoving. Smiling still. How terrifying.

  “Do you think they need any more with these two? I swear, any more similar, and they could be a Greatstorm.” Horacio hissed back then hurried around the majority force of the guard and caught up with Josefa.

  She kept on bobbing, walking backward, and hiding an apparent injury to her feet it seemed. Had the guard really been needed to do some guarding recently? Aquiles read the movements of people, picked apart obvious weaknesses, really a necessary skill to be a good swordsman. It was obvious Josefa was trying to hide pain and doing a poor job of it, but she spoke without a hint of it in her voice. “Meet Juan,” she gestured at the giant just behind Aquiles’ and to his left, “and, Juan.”

  “You’re joking.” She shook her head no. Aquiles dipped his head in disbelief. Josefa watched him expectantly. He turned and made an exasperated greeting, “Mucho gusto, Juan.” He looked at the other brother, “Y tu tambien. Other Juan.” They simultaneously cracked crooked smiles with mountains of crooked teeth.

  “They’re a Storm then?”

  Horacio interjected and scoffed, “That goes without saying. Closest thing to a Greatstorm the Monastery has seen, looks and otherwise.” His voice quivered alongside his shoulders.

  A gaze to turn the dirt halls to glass met Horacio, and the man shriveled under it. This display today was a sore blemish on Aquiles’ view of the normally confident and stolid sword master. Josefa seemed to hold back a thought and turned from her odd company. “Well,” she cleared her throat, “we’ll head straight to the Ministry. Aquiles doesn’t seem to be the fun sight-seeing type.” She added with a quick stab of her eyes over her shoulder, “Despite being locked in here his whole life.” The corners of her mouth turned up in disgust as she gestured around her.

  The party came to an abrupt halt. The spot was no different than the rest of the hallway with its compact dirt walls, floor, ceiling, and its many doppelgangers throughout the Monastery. Josefa began knocking and putting her ear to the wall, a presentation of some great detective skill if sarcasm didn’t drip from each movement she made. Horacio sighed, “This is all for show. She knows exactly where we are.”

  “Yes, I can quite see that. Gracias,” Aquiles rolled his eyes. His sword master’s stern, disciplined disapproval of Aquiles attitude came back in full force, straightened back and pursed lips. Aquiles decided to add a nod of his head and some humility to dissuade another impossible sparring match, “Perdon.”

  Passersby here were infrequent, servants and cooks and cobblers and clothes spinners, none of the nosy monks, absent the nervous air of Young Ones. Only kitchens and storage rooms populated this wing of the first level of the pyramid. Still, Josefa glanced around, suspicion cooling the undying fire in her eyes, fingers delicately brushing the wall and wincing as her fingernail knocked on one of the lonely rocks embedded there. The woman barely touched it but looked like she wanted to cry out, jaw clenched. Great lot of good a guard could do with a pain tolerance like that. Typical of Socorra to appoint such an odd group of misfits. The thought of Aquiles’ own place among these people flitted through his mind strong enough to be noticed, but brief enough for his confidence to brush it aside. Josefa giggled and pushed her index finger into a hidden hole in the dirt. A section of the wall gave way to the grind of stone and settling dust.

  Josefa stood back and held her hand towards the hole in the wall. Juan ducked through and Other Juan - who was slightly uglier and, therefore, not identical - waited for them to enter. Aquiles looked at the new hole, dumbstruck and confused as to the mechanics of the doorway. Heavy rocks and pulleys, or some other thing Profesor Guillermo would love to study and teach about in his classes on mechanisms and knick-knacks. “Why is this here?”

  “How else would all the servants come and go without a stream of them through the main square disturbing us all day?” Horacio gave Aquiles a questioning look like he’d just asked what color the sky was.

  “I thought they lived here?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Do the guard live here?”

  Deep rumbles undulated from the dark depths of the tunnel and rock stretching into an unknown abyss. “Si?,” the rumbles said. It was Juan speaking.

  “We have beds that big?”

  “...no,” the darkness of Juan replied, innocent sadness in it.

  They entered the open maw, and began their walk in silence through the long, dark tunnel. Well, it would have been silence if not for Josefa’s incessant whistling and the Juans’ heavy breathing. Horacio was truly silent in contrast to the coming city and the rest of the group, but Aquiles thought it might be his petrification with fear of the twins. Sad and superstitious. Aquiles was becoming adjusted to not knowing what was going on, so he started noticing all the annoying little things people did around him again. Those two were similar but far from identical. That would be ridiculous. Light showed ahead of them finally, and the noise of a bustling crowd echoed off the walls. It seemed the tunnel dumped directly into the city.

  Sights and smells bombarded Aquiles. He was accustomed to bland surroundings, bland people, and bland food. This place was a melting pot of sensation and individuals from across the city, and the rest of the land. He hated it. Meat was not charring, it was burning; fat not sizzling, but screaming; people were not laughing, they were barking. Aquiles screwed up his nose, and his heart began to race. He closed his eyes and focused on the pulse of his blood. Mastering the sword required concentration, he could snap himself out of this unbalancing rush. The party emerged from a scattering of rocks covering the tunnel exit.

  “This is El Mercado Roja.” Josefa smiled and nodded her head. “You’ll always know you’re here because everything is, uh, red.”

  Aquiles knew where they were. He’d gone into the city before, however infrequently. Red tarps and tapestries, red carts and clothes, red food surrounded them, a mural in the air praising the color, a misguided dedication by Aquiles’ reckoning. El Mercado Rojo was a place of bright, scarlet red, scathing and jarring, not muted or dull. A particular vendedor hung pig heads with hooks from a bar and was frying a suspicious pile of meat on a plancha. He poured a red sauce over the meat, and steam consumed his face. Tortillas sputtered and spit in the fat of the cecina, and the man swung down a hand as packed with meat as his dangling mutilations, disregarding the heat of the fire on the clay, to scoop a tortilla and snag a fistful from his mound of meat. Josefa sighed, “Best tacos in town right there. Too bad we don’t have the time.” Aquiles stomach twisted, imagining the taste. Too many flavors. The tortillas with some simple grilled steak would do just fine. People in the city obsessed over their food, fighting over the best taqueria. It was silly.

  Great green ridges, gargantuan in their cutting of the sky, engulfed the Capital in a ring of terraced agriculture and foliage and barren brown, gray rock and stone. Mountains cradled the city in a protective hold, in an imprisoning snare. A single pass through these peaks could be found on the west side of the city, to Aquiles’ back, the only place a person could walk up and down the slopes of El Valle de Las Tormentas. Exits from the Capital at any other point were mired by steep and treacherous footing, legging it up the walls of the valley and praying the Parents watched over your ascent. Of course, a person could walk the narrow valleys between the mountains dotted by remote pueblos - providing goat meat and high-altitude crops for dyeing wool and packing ice - for a day or two until getting lost in the unending sea of jagged and jutting verdant stone. The view from the tallest peak, just one day’s hike to the east but one day’s plunge into wilderness, presented the descending slopes to the lowlands and grasslands beyond to the west. But, according to the more adventurous monks, a look towards the rising sun was like gazing into the sky at night. Aquiles knew what they meant. He would look up and feel like he would fall into the stars forever, past the bats swooping for their buzzing dinner, past the clouds, past the roaming stars in their constant orbit in the darkness. The mountains stretched far beyond any man would be capable of travelling, to the ends of the world. Walk east and starve.

  The road ran perpendicular to the tunnel exit. The group meandered to the left along the road and soaked in the stimulations of El Mercado Rojo. Aquiles found the barrios and mercados of the Capital to be aptly named. They were a descriptive people here in the city. The slopes of the mountains on his right were dotted by pastel casas and steep, cobbled roads. Residents of Las Afueras Escalaras were all fit and able-bodied, even the viejos were more capable than most of the soft merchants in the bowl of the valley.

  El Derecho took them through the city, red turning to more boring colors, grey and beige, stacked stone or plastered mud holding up thin reed roofs, and in some places, even thin metal. People walked along the street, staring past each other, going where they needed to with all of their own purposes. Aquiles appreciated that. Too often the Children would digress from their conversations, and country folk were always slow. Old men sat on overturned buckets, eating together, playing games, drinking, and smoking. Mostly all at the same time. Young men worked on the roads and built houses. Vendedores sold out of store fronts, a boisterous young man calling out prices and waving at passersby all while repairing a wagon axle with aloof yet deft hands.

  The Ministry took up more and more of their view as they walked. From end to end, the Capital was perhaps five miles, cut through by El Derecho, barrios branching off the main road. After more than an hour, they arrived at the courtyard before the twin pyramid to the Monastery. The Ministry stood. A huge pyramid of terraced stone built into a mountain face. Up close, the Ministry felt somehow grander than his lifelong home. The structures were all but identical. Demons of the capital perhaps. Both had ten major terraces on the outside. No stairs marked the incline like smaller pyramids strewn throughout La Terra. Precise and rough, gray stone held the load of the next indistinguishable stone above it. The pyramids fit into the valley of the Capital, built into the mountains. They stood in the sun’s path, and the Ministry tickled the fiery circle every morning.

  Where most differences between the pyramids were miniscule, the entrance to the Ministry was a grand affair escorted by a court of Storms. The same gray stone that made up the Ministry was laid into the ground about its entrance in a radius of five hundred paces, dirt streets suddenly impinging upon carefully planned craftsmanship. The Monastery had a large Welcome Hall separated from the main square. Pilgrims came into the Capital at the end of each summer and sat for mass in the Monastery’s Great Hall. Young Ones were not permitted there with the pilgrims. Neither were they permitted here. Armored Storms stood in two, parallel lines of ten before a small stone archway. It was rare to see armored guards anywhere but here, let alone the blessed of the land in full plate. It wasn’t necessary, but it was a blessing, nonetheless.

  People loved the Parents and their government, by the Parent’s guidance. Yet, ten armored Storms just to guard the entrance. The Monastery received only that many Storms to train in as many years. The Parents knew when and where Storms would be born. Sometimes they were born too remotely to easily be brought to the Ministry for training and assignments. The Monastery took those poor bastards. Enamored for a moment, now Aquiles’ discomfort and insecurity at what would be taking place here today reigned supreme. Footsteps of Ministry officiants echoed off the stone and the front-facing slop of the pyramid. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

  Child Horacio waved his hands to the foremost guard in the right line, “Disculpe?, we have brought the young Arm for his meeting with the Father.” The man turned his head alone. The guard saluted Aquiles, balling his fist and dragging his metal gauntlet from right shoulder to left just under his collarbone. The gauntlet, and the whole of the armor, was adorned with colors like a rainbow splintered into chaotic lines. The lines jutted and crossed and looked like thorny vines… lightning bolts. Each lightning pattern seemed to be unique, placed there as the Storm earned their armor, the Bolts sending a shock through the metal from top to bottom, burning it into the patterns they wore. The guards opposite the Bolts had round patterns pressed into slightly misshapen vambraces and breastplates. Thunderhead guards would punch shockwaves into the heated metal soon to become their armor.

  The Bolt responded, “Of course, Child. Through the Welcome Hall and into the Atrium. You will be escorted from there.”

  Footsteps echoed in the archway of the Hall now, and then into a strangely lit and enormous room. Pure white lines of light ringed the floor of a hemispherical dome of a room. It was an unnatural light, unwavering and lifeless. Actually… calming… to Aquiles, without all the chaos and dance of fire. But the walls; they were most unique. The Pure black of a thunderstorm at midnight, no stars nor moon nor light of any kind. The stone drank the luminescence from the floor and spit it back up in random directions. Glossy and smooth, it was unlike any stone or gem Aquiles had seen or imagined. More Storms stood guard at the entrances to hallways leading from this, what must be the Atrium. Aquiles got the sense the interior of the Ministry was larger somehow than his home, much larger. The passages leading out of the Atrium dwarfed the main hallways of the Monastery. Perhaps this place was built further into the surrounding mountain than it appeared. Groups of five marched in leather jerkins with swords and spears. Normal men. Men that fought with sweat and steel. Men like him.

  Well, he hoped he was still like them.

  “Esta?s inferma, Josefa,” Other Juan’s voice boomed in Aquiles’ chest from their proximity. Josefa was indeed bent at her waist with her hands on her knees, seeming to gasp for air. She shook her head and waved him off, but said nothing.

  “Keep your voice down,” snapped Horacio. He noticed Aquiles’ confusion and leaned in, “She suffered a terrible accident working here. It killed her sister.”

  Josefa stiffened and she grunted through clenched teeth, “That is long in the past. The escort is here.”

  A spindly wire of a man skidded to a stop in front of them and squeaked, “This way!” The group stumbled after him towards the hallway at the opposite side of the Atrium. The dome had to be at least five hundred paces across. Aquiles glanced up as he jogged, and the Father knew how high. His gut wrenched at the thought of the god literally telling him moments from now, in person.

  Aquiles appreciated the escort’s rather urgent nature running them across the Atrium like this. The Juans lumbered more than ran. No one seemed to care about them bustling through the room. The Storms looked forward and the normal men kept on marching. “I’m supposed to explain about the Storm-powered lighting… ahh… and the uh… ahh… the Parents’ stone in… But… ahh… very little time. You monks… aren’t punctual.” The escort was breathing heavily and was half-limping at a breakneck pace, “Please keep up!” Josefa had a slight limp to her as well, and Aquiles watched her run from his vantage behind. That pain must still be with her.

  The scrambling party of monks and oafs slowed as they entered the hallway out of breath. “Parents’ stone,” the escort huffed and gestured around himself, “I hope… you can take… in all the details… the Father seeks to… ahh… impress new Arms... many hours scrubbing.” The gangly man turned as he spoke, then picked up his pace again. Juan grunted as he began his stumbling run again. Glistening stone shot through with white veins of reflected floor light like shooting stars at midnight guided him towards his future.

  A Storm of two women, similar in build to Josefa, came into view around the hallway’s slight curve. As they passed, the Bolt, helmet a discolored jumble of rainbow lightning, jerked her head at Josefa. The Thunderhead slowly nodded her head. Josefa stiffened in her ungainly gait and nodded back. The escort skidded to a stop and turned towards them, “Arm Aquiles, please.” He waved his hand towards a black opening in the stone.

  “Here? Not some central amphitheater, or court room, or something… deeper in?” Aquiles questioned, a little out of breath now with their brisk pace.

  “No. Aqui?,” the escort impatiently waved him on. The man never even told the monks his name.

  Aquiles obliged him. Then forgot himself and his peers and all the little details he’d been enamored by moments ago. He forgot thought or to think at all. Blackness.

  Blaring trumpets and a roar like a thousand thunderclaps smote every muscle fiber and joint in his feeble body and tore the stolen air from his lungs to be returned to its rightful owner in the clouds. The earth cracked under him, swallowed him whole, and slammed together, dashing a faint remnant of his being among the rocks. Aquiles’ stomach lurched into his throat, bile spilling between his teeth and leaking from his nose, and his heartbeat sounded war drums in his ears. Rolling clouds split and washed and illuminated by lightning of a godly sort, flashes so bright they threatened the mortality of eyes bearing their magnitude, and resonating thunder shot wind and reverberated the stone and earth in a barren country. Skull and bone and meat and skin ground under uncaring boots, pale hands razing the dead land. Mind and matter stretched and broke and snapped back together.

  Aquiles dropped to his knees and heaved spit and racking coughs from deep in his chest. The sickly-sweet ichor from this morning held no real substance to throw up. Throat-tearing coughs brought tears to his eyes. A voice spoke from the darkness, the thunderstorm he’d seen and the caress of worn, worked hands on the young boy they raised. “Socorra didn’t fare much better when first we spoke. She prefers to speak over the distance now. Would you visit me in person more, Aquiles?”

  Joints and ligaments shifted under his too delicate skin, and he shook the feeling of being chained to a cold stone floor for a week without food or water or sunlight. “Father, whatever you wish.” His voice was foreign to him. He bowed his head and worried talking to the Father might feel like this every time.

  “I wish for what makes you happiest, mi hijo. Entering here can be an… uncomfortable experience for some.” The voice seemed to pause, cool and calm and filled with a soothing depth, “I was unaware you had a sibling, Aquiles.”

  “No! No, Father. I have no siblings,” Aquiles responded frantically, then more carefully, “Just this morning, I spoke with Socorra about it. A fluke, by your guidance. Has she spoken to you about the incident?”

  “No, mi hijo. No, she has not.”

  Glaring lights flashed to life, searing Aquiles eyes, veins showing through his eyelids. He squeezed them tighter and raised his hand to cover his face.

  The Father, his voice ascended to the thunderstorm now, questioned his petulant child, “Do you lie, Aquiles? Do you believe me a fool? I am the Father! I am the wind and the rain and…” The torrent slowly dwindled with the passing of the storm. The Father, now a voice of a young man, “For millennia, we have watched over you. Raised you. Guided you. For us, you make yourselves seen. Learn to be men and women. Follow our guidance. We do not ask for worship, mi hijo. We do not need it.”

  Aquiles eyes were torn open. A lean, dark man enfouldered and cloaked in storm clouds stood before him. His hair was long, black, and tied with colorful cloth against his winds. A mask of green like the forest at twilight hid his features, its half closed eyes and frowning mouth, its eyebrows protruding with a caricature of worry, the lips too thick and cheeks too round. Bewildered, Aquiles noted the Father was shorter than he was. As the thought crossed his mind, the Father grew half his height again, and then more, and more. He towered over Aquiles, twenty paces tall now, the mask against a lit backdrop of nothing. Lightning from the Father’s cloak of storms pierced Aquiles’ heart, coursed through his body, threatened to shatter his bones and boil his blood. It held him rigid. His mouth opened to cry out in pain yet was silent. The Father drew in a mighty breath, the air in the room rushing to his whims, and his voice was La Terra itself, it was a thunderclap to topple pyramids.

  “EVERY THUNDERSTORM IS OUR CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS! THEIR LIGHTNING SINGS OUR PRAISE! MOUNTAINS STUMBLE AT OUR CALL! AND THE VERY GROUND QUIVERS AT OUR RAGE!”

  “Father! I do not lie!”

  Into the eye of the storm, all was still. The lightning was free of him. Father stood at his original height. His mask had tears on the cheeks now, eyes wide open. “You don’t have any siblings you say?” The storm around the Father seemed to dissipate, the mask fell away. Tears filled the eyes of a normal man, if not with a slight fullness to his cheeks and more angle to his eyes than normal, and he surged forward placing his hands on Aquiles shoulders. “Maybe, there is still time to help us then. You could, both of you…” The Father’s voice shook. Was it the Father’s still?

  The Father’s hands slipped from Aquiles’ shoulders becoming harder, sharper, like claws, and storms brewed behind the god’s head. His head hung for a second before he looked back into Aquiles’ eyes. The mask had returned, this time with a toothy grin. “Nice to meet you, Arm,” the god hummed. The grin flashed in an instant to a smile. “Finally.” Every syllable sounded a mouthful. The all-illuminating light snapped back to darkness, and Aquiles stomach lurched. He passed out, not for the first time this week.

  Buenas noches, mi hijo.