Amaya's Armour

He will be the first born during the eclipse on the thousandth anniversary of the Last Battle with Fire and Light. He will breathe in Water. He will bring back the rainclouds and the night. He will defeat the Lord of Fire and Light or doom the world to never sleep again.

Based on that prophecy Tomesha Phaedra had drowned every boy born on the prophesized date and the day before and after just to be sure. The Lord of Bleached Bones had taken no chances.

Despite that Amaya Ara had been found by a group called the Hidden from the Temple of the Lost War. Baptising her for several minutes beneath the surface of a bucket of precious water was enough for them to assume she was their saviour.

Amaya was a typical teenager of the last city. Her skin was charred by the burning light of the Sun Stones in the ceiling of the cavern where the last five thousand humans were the slaves of the Lord of the World Desert. Her wrinkled skin made her look decades older than she might have. Her eyes were almost black like her bedraggled hair.

She looked at the men and women who told her that there was a hidden place with plant foods long thought dead to the rest of their people. The Hidden wore the same rags as the rest of humanity but they were fed. They were clean. They looked their age which meant they looked like children to Amaya despite being older than her. She’d never seen blue eyes before. One of the women had almost yellow hair.

            “You’ve been around with food for a thousand years while the rest of humanity starved,” Amaya growled. “My mother died of malnutrition, like half of the people who die do when they stop eating so that their children have enough.”

            “He will defeat the Lord of Fire and Light or doom the world to never sleep again.”

            “You said. I know the story blue eyes. Like it says though, HE. I’m a girl.”

            “The prophecy comes from a time when the chosen were considered gods and that gods were beyond gender. It helped to mislead the Lord of Blind Eyes. If Phaedra had even believed there was a chance the saviour would be female, he would have killed all of the children.”

            “I’m not a saviour. I’m not the Lord of Dark Skies.”

            “You will be. First you must retrieve the armour of the Fallen Saviour. With it you will be able to focus your power as you learn to master the skills to defeat the Lord of Endless Day. We have knowledge passed down through generations to help you. First you need to retrieve the armour-”

            “Of the Fallen Saviour. Yes you said.”

Amaya began laughing. It was all so ridiculous. She was no hero. She was a gardener. Just another human held in slavery by the man who had killed the world so that he could conquer the remains. The world had not known night in a thousand years. The surface was dead.

Tomesha Phaedra could control fire and light like a god. He never slept. He never aged. If he got a hint of her, he would burn her up in a heartbeat with a click of his fingers. He did that occasionally to demonstrate his power to the people. She had seen him, burning with a blinding light.

The Hidden guided Amaya through a cramped tunnel entrance disguised as a statue of Tomesha Phaedra. The statue stood on the borders of the farmland in the caverns where humanity grew artichokes, chard, okra and peppers. Little else had survived the scorching light Phaedra had forced upon humanity. The statue was a lie in more ways than one. Humanity pretended to worship the Lord of Endless Day but only children were naïve enough not to see that he had conquered them.

The slim tunnel behind the statue was nothing but a tight crawl space for a long while before opening out into a walkway that was wide enough for two to stand side by side. Doors kept any breeze from giving away the presence of the tunnel in the statue. Amaya was astounded that no one had ever found the passage before. When she said so the Hidden told her some had, and that the Hidden had killed them to keep the secret.

If they were so willing to kill to keep the Temple of the Lost War hidden then she didn’t think they were much better than Phaedra, living in his palace on the scorched surface of the world.

They walked for three miles, closing every door behind them and locking the doors with their keys. For once they were in darkness. Amaya bumped into things, unable to function without the blinding light to guide her.

They came upon a grove of plants she’d never seen before. Apple trees they told her, lettuce, potatoes. Everything humanity would need to reset the world when she defeated Phaedra. Once again they’d killed her enthusiasm.

He will defeat the Lord of Fire and Light or doom the world to never sleep again. No pressure then. And was it going to get worse if she failed? No one would sleep? Wasn’t that fatal to anyone but the Lord of Burning Light? If the prophecy meant that all of them would die why didn’t it say that?

They walked on through a small town of sacred looking buildings. They were more beautiful than any of the slums of the last city, known ironically as Tomesha’s Gift. The stone houses in the Temple of the Lost War were covered in a slimy green something she had never seen before. Though there were sun stones in the roof of the caverns they were blessedly fewer than those anywhere she had ever known before. Despite feeling blind Amaya felt as if that was how things were supposed to look, with so much colour not washed out by blinding white light.

On they walked, past the carved buildings of the temple and through more caverns that were home to plants she had never seen before. She also noticed insects that were unfamiliar to her. The yellow haired woman told her the yellow and black insects that buzzed as they flew were called bees and would be essential to repopulating the world above when she had defeated the Lord of Bleached Bones. They really knew how to take an explanation of something incredible and turn it into crushing pressure for her.

Eventually they came to a sloping tunnel and a final door. After the door there were steps into more water than Amaya had ever seen in her life. The bucket that the Hidden had tried to drown her in had been the most water she’d ever seen until that point. Water was strictly rationed amongst her people the most precious substance they had. There it was, just lying about, dark and foreboding.

            “You must go,” said the blue-eyed woman. Looking back Amaya could barely see the woman or the other four shadows willing her to drown herself in dark water deep beneath the world.

            “What? Go where? I can’t see anything. It’s completely black in there, blacker than burnt. I’ll drown in the dark, alone.”

            “You must pass the test to take the armour,” said a man’s voice.

            “You must take the armour to learn your power,” said another.

            Amaya shook her head. They were crazy. They’d found water, good for them, but no. Fuck that. It was probably a fluke that she hadn’t drowned before. She wasn’t some chosen one. She couldn’t defeat Tomesha Phaedra. No one could. He was a god. He was a monster, but he was still a god.

            “No,” she said and tied to push her way past them to go back. Strong arms seized hers and pushed her back towards the dark stir of the water. “Let me go. This is mad. You’re all mad.”

            “You will heal in the water. You have many gifts to learn, powers to master.”

            “I don’t have to heal. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

            Silver blades appeared from sleeves as the five Hidden advanced on her. They were insane, murderously insane. She was going to die. Stabbed to death or drowned. Of all the deaths she had to be the first drowning in a thousand years.

            Amaya held up her hands and begged the shadowy figures for mercy.

            “Into the water,” they said together, “go into the water.” Relentless, uncaring, she saw nothing but the glint in their eyes. Her anger rose.

            “Fuck you. Send your other chosen one into the water. That’s right you don’t have one so back off.”

            “Go into the water. Find the armour.” Their voices were one. Had they practiced?

Amaya backed until the water was at her ankles. The Hidden moved forwards, their blades before them. If she stayed there, she would fall on their knives. Was it a joke? Had they meant to kill her all along? She moved back, feet slipping on the smooth steps in the water. She’d never felt anything so slick; it was revolting.

She fell, backwards into cold water, panicking. As she gasped, she sucked in the freezing liquid and choked on it. Thrashing around her arm hit the steps as she sank down into the darkness. Nothing beneath her, she sank down and down.

Amaya hit hard stone and tried to gasp in pain as her back tried to bend itself around the shape of a rounded rock in the black depths. Her heart was beating a gallop in her chest. She should have been dead. She got as far as a hundred and stopped.

Was she dead? Surely, she must have been. She wasn’t breathing. She was deep in the water of a lake or ocean in the depths of the world. Tomesha’s Gift, the last city was five miles below the surface of the world she’d been told. The farms were two miles below the city. She was deeper still. How deep could she go. She could not picture the world from the stories of the outside. Stories said the sky was blue and that the sky was the ceiling over the world. The name her people used for the last city was Abasement. Supposedly a basement was just a room beneath a bigger building. Tomesha had made a palace of the city on the surface where the people had come from. Only he could survive there now.

She didn’t think even the Lord of Fire and Light could survive in the water where she was. She looked around and saw nothing but when she looked down, she thought she could see her hands. She was sitting on the end of something in the darkness having fallen what felt like a long way. She was not sore. She felt incredible. The background dizziness she had assumed was a simple sign of life was gone. She should have been dead. Instead, she felt better than ever before.

Looking out into the darkness she started to see vague shapes. The rock she sat on became clearer to her eyes. Where there had been only blackness, she was seeing green. Ghostly shapes wavered around her. When she moved, they moved in time with her, reacting to her movement like hair in the breeze of the caverns but alive.

Looking up the green darkened into blackness above her. She could not see the bottom of the cavern that held her. She slid from the rock. Down she went until her woven shoes hit shifting gravel and dirt at the bottom, sending up a cloud around her. She closed her eyes and waited for the dust to settle.

She walked on loose rocks, feeling the odd resistance of the water. Where was she supposed to go? Even if the hidden had given her a direction the disorientation of the fall would have rendered foreknowledge useless. She could see no further than a few feet in front of her to the next rock but as she looked the details of the rock became clearer. By what light did she see? There were no sun stones in this deepest cavern that she knew of.

She weaved a path through pillars of worn rock covered with plants she’d never imagined before. The dancing fingers that grew between the rocks seemed to grab at her as she climbed through them, but she fought her way through them with her teeth and fingernails. As she bit the strands of seaweed left a beautiful flavour in her mouth. She ate as she walked, marvelling that any of it was possible.

Eventually the towers of rock fell away. She trudged clumsily over sand and gravel, stirring small clouds with ever slow step. Small things moved in the water as if they were flying. As her eyes adjusted, she saw hideous creatures with razor sharp looking teeth, clear bodies that showed their insides and tiny little lights which hurt her eyes to look at. Small swimming things would flee her, bigger ones circled her, watching.

The vague shapes of a building like the Temple of the Lost War became clearer and clearer. Huge figures three times as tall as Amaya, carved from black stone, stood watch over the entrance. Two women, two men. As she drew closer, she knew that one of the men was Phaedra. None of the others were familiar. The statue of the Lord of Fire and Light held a sword. The other man held a spear. One woman held a shield and short sword. The other woman, the odd one out, held a rake.

Feeling the eyes of the statues on her Amaya walked through the grand door of the temple. Markings scratched into the walls told her nothing. The Lord of Blind Eyes didn’t like his pet humans being able to read. Anyone caught with writing of any sort was executed by the living flame himself.

A long corridor became steps down, down, into the unknown. It was so cold. A fish brushing against her leg made her jump. She had never been in a space with so much life. Barnacles grew on the walls. A carpet of seaweed grew beneath her feet.

The steps ended in a room coated with pretty stones. A sunstone hung from the ceiling. Her eyes stung from the bright light after the darkness. She wished for a shadow to shield her from the burning light. It seemed to dim for her.

Lying on the ground was a skeleton in a suit of armour. The armour looked as though it was made of the same stone as the temple. It was etched with blue writing like the walls. Her heart slowed. Snakes of smoke shadow circled the bones, filling out into the shape of a man.

The armour leapt from the ground to wrap a hand around Amaya’s throat. She stared into the blue eyes of the dead hero whose statue stood by Tomesha’s side. His eyes widened as he looked into hers.

            “Amaya.” His arm let go of her throat. Images flashed through her mind. The Last Battle with Fire and Light from the eyes of the loser. Bright sunlight cut through rainclouds. A black disc eclipsed the sun. Steam filled a battlefield lit by the orange glow of flames that licked the sky. The screams of burning men and women filled the air.

The armour was still on the sand at her feet. It hadn’t moved. She pulled the bones of the dead hero from the cuirass and the pauldrons and all the other pieces she didn’t know the names of. She strapped the armour to herself. Though it was dirty and coated with algae and barnacles the armour beneath was as good as new. While the rest of the world had crumbled the armour remained.

She walked on through the temple and found a crowned helmet where it had rolled off the hero’s head. Placing the helm on her head she found it too big, just a little. The flash of Tomesha, glowing white hot, flashed in her mind.

“Die brother,” said the Lord of Scorched Lands before sinking a flaming sword into his chest.

Amaya felt for the place where the sword had ended the battle. A tiny slice told her the sword had to be impossibly sharp.

On the end she found an alter lit by another sunstone. On the alter was the rake she’d seen outside. It had to be. It was wood and metal but survived. What god had held a rake as their weapon of choice?

Closing her eyes, Amaya took the rake from the alter. A shadowy spirit glowing in its own green light stared her in the eyes. The spirit had green eyes, brown hair, Tattooed flowers on her arms and shoulders which danced in a breeze long gone. The goddess from the statue yelled with a strength that shook Amaya’s soul.

            “Thief! Murderer!” Cold hands held her cheeks. “No. You’re the girl. You must defeat the Lord of Fire and Light or doom the world to never sleep again.”

There were mirrors on the walls of the room. Amaya looked at herself holding the rake in the armour. There were sapphires in the crown. Her black hair fluttered on the tiny currents. Her black eyes glowed with purpose. Her burnt flesh was healed beneath the armour. She didn’t feel like a god, but one thing was for sure. She was going to kick the backside of every one of the Hidden before they taught her what she needed to know.