Frida's Songs

2021/02/24

The five tenets we live by:

1. Live for the present, not for the past
2. Written words are never always the truth
3. Each other is all that we’ve got
4. Distrust the stars
5. Kill all the Gods

I looked at the sky from within my mech. A vast darkness and a glittering of stars in the distance, and the massive winged monster that was blocking them. It screeched, a wave of otherworldly noise that was loud enough to get past my mech’s defenses and nearly ruptured my ears. No matter. I watched my screens for gaps in its energy waves, a moment to strike. There.

I smiled. I sent the order with a gesture and my squad dispersed into individual formation. Fifty or so mechanized cavalry units, huge blocky humanoid shapes cutting through the debris of wings and jagged white shapes, the angels. Fierce unearthly beings that are little more than weapons for the Seraph; the Seraphs themselves probably nothing but tools for the Gods. An angel got hold of my mech’s eye, covering my screen with rows of teeth. I ripped it apart with my mech’s hand and focused on the real target.

The Seraph, the last Seraph of its god, if our Navigators are correct. A writhing mass of wings, blotting out the stars and distorting the space around it. Last line of defense before we can crack the space that hid our current target, its master, the god Harmonic Penance.

I moved my mech into position, swatting the angels out of the way. This new weapon that the Engineers had created, I did not fully understand how it worked, but I’ve never had to figure out how any of my weapons work before I pointed them at the Gods. I ran the initiation sequence with one hand as my other controlled my mech’s arms to fight off the angels. I watched the skies for the rest of my squads. Affirmation, everybody in position. I pulled the handle to power the weapon.

No silent prayers. We don’t know who will hear it.

There were no explosions, but there was a ringing, pitching higher and higher, almost a reversal of the sound the Seraph had made to attack us. My mech trembled, the angels were frozen mid-flight, the Seraph’s million eyes opened wide. For a second there was nothing, and then, between all our mechs and the Seraph in the center, space seemed to twist. In the next second, in a mess of feathers and flesh and eyeballs, the Seraph was ripped apart. Space distorted, a scream was heard, in a far distance, and then, silence. Eyes closed, the angels drifted in space, motionless.

From my cockpit I could hear cheering coming from the comms, newly activated. We had feared they could intercept our message passing through space and had relied on gestures with our mechs arms to communicate. But with the Seraph dead, the mission was a success. No more fear, for now. One step closer to destroying Harmonic Penance. One step closer to killing all the rest of the Gods.

I was never one for parties.

I was with the others when we landed back on Earth, of course, breaking through the atmosphere and past the defense system our ancestors have placed hundreds of years ago. I was in the front of the formation, the first who gave the others on the planet the signal that the job was done, the first to hear their cheers. No communication between the planet and outside, of course, so this was the first time they heard that we were successful. We stepped out of our mechs and I allowed them to shower us with praises, lead us inside where they had readied a welcome party, glad that it wasn’t to be a funeral. We deflected, of course, one of my squadmates said it better than I: It was never just us; we got each other, all we had.

Soon afterwards, they started the music and the food and the conversation and I excused myself and went to the garage, where the Mechanics had already parked our mechs. As the others celebrated, I went up the stairs and the catwalk, inspecting my mech up close, making sure it was not too badly hurt in the recent skirmish.

“I knew I’d find you here,” a voice calling as I was huddled under my mech’s arm, rewiring its underside.

I poked my head out. “Resa. Why am I not surprised you’d be looking for me?”

She smiled at me from where she was down below. She set something on the table close by, a drink of some sort, and called out at me, “All the others are celebrating. You shouldn’t still be working, Tiana.”

“I’m not working,” I said, fiddling with my wrench. “This is how I relax.”

“You’ll relax more by having a cup of tea with me. Come down here.”

I grunted, more out of habit than anything. I put my wrench down and climbed the stairs down the catwalk. The tea smelled faintly of the berries we were beginning to plant at the Compound’s rooftops. I sat next to her as she beamed one of her lovely smiles and took a sip from the cup.

“Lovely. Is this a new blend?” I asked.

“Yes! We started using the lavender berries. Merric said it was too sweet, but what do you think?”

I took another sip, watching her smile. Truthfully everything tasted sweet with her around “It’s fine. I could have a couple more cups of this.”

“We have a slightly different blend at the party. Something that works better with ice. You should come by later.” She glanced at my mech, towering over us. Our defense against the Gods. “Is she alright? Did she serve you well?”

“The best partner I could have asked for,” I said. Resa was one of the Engineers who worked on the mechs, though she became a Mechanic after the Engineers moved their focus towards developing weapons. She fussed over them like a mother would, almost more than she fussed over all of us. I took another sip from my tea. “I thought you said we should relax. You’re already thinking of picking my mech apart, aren’t you?”

“Well you should relax. The rest of us here have barely worked. We’re going to take a look at your mechs sensors. The folks in Engineering are eager to see their work in action.”

We couldn’t get any signal from up in space back to Earth. My squadmates were the only ones who saw it as it happened. “The Seraph’s dead,” I said. “It was like, space itself tore it apart. It looked unnatural, almost like the weapons the Gods would use against us.”

“Hmm.” She tapped on the table. “From what I heard, the Engineers got the technology from a weapon they unearthed a couple of years ago. Dated from before the War of Defiance, from the Age of the Gods.”

I nearly spat out my drink. “But that’s-- We’re not supposed to use what they gave us.”

“There were debates about that. Some said that it was long enough ago, and anyway, we reverse-engineered it ourselves, so we weren’t given it. Live for the present, not for the past, you know.”

“Live for the present, not for the past,” I repeated, mulling it in my mind. “How long do you think until we can get to Harmonic Penance?”

“A couple of weeks? Maybe a month. It won’t be able to attack without a Seraph, so we’ll be safe for a while yet.”

“Unless the other Gods start to attack.”

Resa nodded. “I’ve heard reports of what might be angels of Umbral Noon, harassing some of our frontier outposts, but it was difficult to pinpoint them. They worked differently from Harmonic Penance’s. We’ll have to rework our sensors. And refit the mechs, once we got Penance.”

I nodded. “We’re still a long way from finished then.”

“A long way,” Resa muttered, and for the first time I noticed the conversation was making her nervous. Resa would be the first to worry about your well-being, but she will never say anything to make you feel worried yourself. The expression disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and she smiled again. “You sure you don’t want to go to the party? Might still be time to see Free’s performance.”

I nearly tripped. “Free’s here?”

Resa smiled at me.

Frida, or just Free to her friends, knew how to take the heart of the crowd. She knew all the right notes, knew how to play with the pitch of her voice. It was like she could feel the resonance in the air, the soundless sound of the will of the people, and knew how to make that, and not just her voice, sing.

She, and only she, was painfully aware of how inhuman that ability was.

She played her guitar and sang. A song of victory, theirs, hers, it did not matter. The crowd was electric, cheering alongside her. She tried not to think about it too much, of what victory might mean for either of them. She simply sang, matching her resonance to them.

She sang the final chorus, finishing up with a slow strum on her guitar. Right before her final bow she noticed her friends at the edge of the crowd. Resa was always everywhere, but she had thought Tiana wouldn’t leave the garage tonight.

“Thank you, everyone! Please enjoy the rest of the party!” she said to the crowd as she finished up. She slung her guitar on her shoulder, climbed down the stage as another musician took her place. No one ever asked why she always had her guitar with her, always the same white electric guitar for every performance. A fortunate thing. She wouldn’t know how to answer that question convincingly.

She rushed across the crowd to where her friends were waving. “Tiana! I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, giving her friend a half-hug. “This your doing, Resa?”

“Oh yes. Lured her away with temptation of iced lavender berry tea,” Resa said.

“Yep tea. I went through all this for tea,” Tiana gestured at the party, the noise and crowd, with the kind of sarcasm any close friends would have caught on. “You’ve been fine, Free? It’s been a while. Where have you been?”

“Oh yes, I’m fine,” a little lie, “I got caught up in work. Spent some alone time working on songs. You know the usual,” another lie, but this one she’d been using more than once. She thought of how to bring up the questions she wanted to ask and only Tiana could answer: how did the Seraph die? How long until they’d have to face Harmonic Penance itself? Not now. So instead she said, “Want to get someplace quieter? I can get you the tea.”

I never could figure out the words to describe Frida, or just Free to us. She bleached her perpetually messy hair, often letting it cover one of her eyes. She wore a leather jacket, often black. She always went around with her electric guitar, white like her hair, internally modified to play sound without an amplifier. I don’t know how it works, don’t think I will even if she told me. But beyond that there was air to her. She always seemed to know what to say while still holding her ground. She doesn’t bow to anyone, but never make you feel lesser for it.

Free took us out to the side balcony. It was empty despite the crowd inside, quite easy to see why: outside it was nighttime and the stars were out. It was where the Gods came from, and some still believe that being in sight of them will open the pathway with which they could come, the same way they went half a millennium ago. Free never worried about that, though like everyone she would still not look at the stars in the eye. I found myself worrying less when she was around, which was not as often as I liked.

We picked a table and sat around it, put our drinks down. Free put her guitar down between the potted plants at the edge of the balcony. She spared a glance below, a hundred stories down to the planet’s surface, then turned back to us.

“So,” Free said, stretching her arms. “Tiana. You don’t look very tired for someone who just killed a cosmic being.”

“I never look tired,” I said.

“Which is a problem!” Resa said. “Because I can’t convince the others that you need to rest! At least promise me that you won’t try to go out to space while Navigations figure out your next target.”

I waved my drink at her. “If they take too long I’ll be honor-bound to ride up there to look for it myself.”

“Don’t you dare. Each other’s all we’ve got, remember?”

“We gotta kill the Gods too, right?” I smirked, took a sip from my drink. The same fruity taste, but sweeter, ice cold. “Besides… Is it possible that Harmonic Penance can make another Seraph? If we take too long?”

“You think it can do that?” Free said. “Just make another Seraph once everyone’s dead?”

I shrugged. “Just gotta be ready for anything. Resa?”

Resa seemed thoughtful. “We don’t know for sure. We’ve had records of Seraphs dating back from the Age of the Gods and their descriptions match the Seraphs we’re fighting today, so it’s likely they’re as immortal as their masters. We don’t know how they are formed, though. Maybe they can be replaced…”

“The ones we killed stay dead,” I said. “No replacement. The Gods should be the same. We’ll get them all eventually.”

Free seemed to be lost in thought for a bit, which was strange for her to do. She was worried about something, maybe, but I wasn’t smart enough to find out what it was. “Do you remember how long ago we killed the previous god?” she asked.

“It was about 40 years ago, if I remember correctly,” Resa said. “The twin gods Shining Desecration and Sighing Pestilence. Tiana’s uncle-”

“My uncle was part of the squad who destroyed them. Or, tried to. We got one of them, I forgot which-”

“Shining Desecration was killed, but the other one opened a black hole and got away.” Resa sighed. “There’s one man in Navigation who’s still obsessed with it. He should be retired by now, but he kept coming back, just staring at the screens. Sometimes he cried about the troops who died back then. He still blamed himself for that incident. Nothing we could do to calm him down.”

I nodded. My uncle was a hero and he got drunk on the honor and respect that came with it, but sometimes I saw the shadows in his eyes. When I was eleven, he talked to me, too drunk to realise I was still a kid, about all the friends he had lost and what he saw as they went. How they were ripped out of their mech, how some turned to dust in front of his eyes. One switched her comms on long enough for her scream to reach him.

“We won’t let this one get away,” I said with determination, then took a gulp from my glass.

Free raised her glass. “Amen to that.”

Resa nodded. “I’ll make sure your mechs are ready and well-equipped when the times come, so you better rests well.” She smiled at me, strong enough to be a glare. “Don’t even think about getting back to work!”

“Yeah yeah, sure.” I said. I looked at Free, who still seemed distracted. There was something I wanted to ask her, had been meaning to for a while. Now or never, before she disappeared again. “Hey, Free. Do you have any plans for the next few weeks?”

The question seemed to take her off guard, which rarely happens. “I… Nothing much. Just more work at the Admin, maybe some side music gigs. Why?”

“Well I’ll be on leave for a couple of weeks, until Navigation figures out where we have to strike. I could be practicing or patrolling, but,” I nodded at Resa. “I won’t be doing much while Resa’s watching me like a hawk, so I’ve been wondering if…” This shouldn’t be hard to say, but it was, “If we can spend more time together?”

“Spend more time together,” she repeated. She was a lot less enthusiastic than I had hoped, but I pushed through.

“Yes, well. I know you’re always so busy with your job, but if you’re not… If you get some time off… I don’t see the world much without my mech, so I’m wondering if you would, maybe-”

“Yes,” Free said with a glint in her eyes. “The next weeks shouldn’t be too busy in my Admin division, and I can take days off. We can go travelling.”

Free wasn’t going to be busy at her job the next couple of weeks, or any other time of the year for that matter. Her job with Administration was an easy enough lie to perpetuate and it gave her a pass to go anywhere, even here in Compound 3 where most of the military is stationed, or Compound 6 where they were beginning massive cultivation of new crops, or Compound 1 where they were still trying to decipher the ancient writings. She had traveled all the world that has been settled by this new society. Never long enough in one place for people to ask why she never seem to age. Long enough to make friends, rarely enough to grow attached.

She enjoyed her friendship with Tiana and Resa, perhaps more than would be wise. A few weeks with Tiana would only make that worse, but after those few weeks Tiana would go away to kill a god and there might not be time for anything else. Now or never.

“I’ve been accumulating day offs, actually,” Free said, betraying nothing of her real thoughts. “Been thinking of taking a leave to visit the other Compounds. you’ve been to Compound 5, Tiana?”

Tiana seemed shocked that she had said yes at all. “No, I’ve been… I’ve never really been out of the Compound without my mech.”

“Lovely place. It’s got one part of the planet that wasn’t ruined by the wars. I went to an open-air concert there some time go.” Not a lie that. “We can go together. I’d love to show you the place.”

Tiana was awestruck. “I… Yes! That would be great.”

From her seat, Resa gave them her signature smile and clapped her hands. “Finally! Someone who can take Tiana out on holiday! I’ve been worried you’d just rot and waste away inside of your mech.”

“Me? You’ve been fussing with them more than I do.” Tiana sighed. “Don’t suppose you can come with us, huh?”

“My work is just beginning now that you’ve brought the mechs home. I’ll have to keep them ready for the final battle. But keep me posted, won’t you? Take some records. I’d love to see what Compound 5 was like.”

Final battle. Free didn’t know what to think of it. She’d spent centuries pointedly not thinking about it, what it might means if they finally find Harmonic Penance. Singing, exploring, and making friends was easier than thinking what that might means. Now she might only have a couple of weeks left and she was going to spend it making friends, or perhaps more.

It was easy to believe that it’d be worth it.

I watched the landscape sped past around us from inside of Free’s van. There wasn’t much to see far below: the planet was scorched after the constant warfare during the Age of the Gods. Blackened grounds barely reclaimed by vegetation, but the sky was a clear beautiful blue, a place our ancestors had healed. Soon perhaps all the land below would be green, like the stories said.

We were speeding on the Highway, a long bridge that connected our many towering Compounds. I still could see Compound 3 if I look behind me, a tower of steel and glass and all the trees and vines we could grow up there. Ours was among the oldest Compounds, built during the War of Defiance as a military base. With the Gods kept at bay by our planetary defense systems, it had the time to transform into a home.

Free was at the steering wheel, humming some songs I didn’t recognize. She doesn’t have to manually drive on the Highway—the autopilot would take care of it—but she liked it anyway, she said. Feeling the machine in her hands. I could relate; it was like being in my mech, feeling the vibration of it even when it was just hovering in space.

“This is your first time on the Highway, right?” she said, turning to me. “What do you think?”

I glanced up past the van’s window to the glass ceiling of the Highway. It was almost like flying, being surrounded by the blue sky. But of course, what came out of my mouth was something more pragmatic, “It looks almost fragile. You think this bridge will hold up?”

Free chuckled. “Been holding up for centuries, and the Engineers kept making up upgrades for it. It’ll last a while yet.” She hummed to herself some more, as if making a rhythm to go with the humming of the machines. Her eyes shone. “I think I got it! Here, you want to take the wheel for a bit?”

“Huh, what?”

As I reached for the wheel, she climbed to the back compartment of the van. It was spacious enough to hold a whole couch and a few trunks of her clothes, among her other paraphernalia. I just learned earlier that Free lived here in this van. As everybody else, she was assigned a living space in the Compound, but she preferred to put her things here. “Make it easier when I want to travel,” she said.

I had asked her if she travels a lot, and her face looked guilty for a second. Being a musician isn’t a calling in our Compound so she couldn’t work on it full-time, but we’re all given plenty of days off to work on our personal projects, if we’d like. The way Free had looked, she might have taken more days off than was strictly allowed.

I shouldn’t begrudge her for it. There had always been something about Free that couldn’t be constrained by the rules we know. Not everything that was written down was the truth.

I took over her seat behind the wheel, though I had no idea what to do with it. The van still moved as expected, its autopilot kicking in, so I looked behind me to what Free was doing. She sat on the couch, her guitar on her lap. She strummed her guitar and hummed some experimental lyrics. A new song, pleasant and speedy like the ride we shared. She took a pen and paper from a chest nearby and started scribbling.

“New song already?” I asked.

“Oh this one has been brewing for a while,” she said, scribbling away as she hummed. Sometimes she put the paper down to strum some chords. “Hey, Tiana. Do you sing?”

I laughed. “Ha, no. And I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you, anyway.”

“Hmmm mmm,” she hummed, and the way she looked at me was as if she could read my mind. “You know, we still got a long ride ahead of us. What to do you think about trying it out anyway?”

Free remembered the last time she had shared a harmony with someone else.

It was a long time ago, years, maybe even centuries ago. Resa and Tiana weren’t the only ones she had gotten too close to, but it was rare. Friends, she could have, but she was always careful that they never got so close that they started questioning what she was.

Singing together, though. To be in harmony with someone else, it was always unforgettable. The last time she did it, his name was Roion. A Gardener, though the title did not quite do his work justice. His job was finding ways to restore the comatose planet. He liked to sing as he worked with his plants, and Free had often played her guitar for him, something which she never does for anyone.

Roion was timid as a man, but his voice was strong. Tiana’s was the opposite: despite her strong posture, her voice was often ringed with uncertainties. But singing with her still brought with it old familiarities. It was a thrill to match her resonance, to really connect to a single person she cared about instead of with the ambience of the crowd.

She could almost forget the hard questions she wanted to ask.

“Well. That was nice,” Tiana said during a calm moment after they were done. She was on the wheel now, after she was given some pointer how to keep the car steady. After a moment, she laughed. “Really nice. Never thought singing myself could be fun, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I had fun too,” Free said from the seat next to her, smiling at her laughter. She was scribbling more notes, refining the lyrics they had been singing.

“It’s a shame being a musician isn’t a Calling, where we live,” Tiana said. “Imagine what you could if you can do this full-time.”

Free winced inside. Roion had known she never had a full-time job to begin with, but he was clever enough to figure it out himself. Tiana wouldn’t have expected such subterfuge, so would she feel betrayed? So instead Free changed the topic, “Do you like your job, Tiana?”

“Riding my mech out there? Killing Seraphs? Taking us one step closer to killing all the Gods? Absolutely. It’s what I’m good at. Won’t trade it for the world.”

Free knew how to keep herself calm, but she noticed her scribbles were slowly becoming illegible. “What was it like, kililng Penance’s last Seraph?”

Tiana took a moment to answer. “During the battle itself? I didn’t think much of it. I was just looking out for myself and my squadmates but… You’ve never been to space, have you? None of you have ridden a mech out there. How do I even begin?”

I have, Free thought, but it was not something you say aloud. “I’ve seen some recordings of your battles,” she said instead.

Tiana shook her head. “Actually being there, it’s different. The angels, the Seraphs, they feel… wrong. To be looming out in space, so close to us. Taking them out was like setting things right.”

“Is that so?” Free said, betraying nothing of her emotions. “It feels like, what, the right thing to do?”

“The righteous thing,” Tiana said, looking forward. Ahead of them the bridge forked into multiple directions. “Hey, an intersection. Where should we go?”

“Oh, turn right.” Free put her notes down. She scratched out the arcane script she had accidentally scribbled. “We should arrive soon.”

Sometimes I wish I’m any better at reading faces. There was something off with Free today, but I couldn’t figure out why, or if I was imagining it at all.

Compound 5 was different from home, but not in a way that was obvious. The walls and glass panes were the same, but the people who walked its halls seemed more relaxed, more cheerful. Their outfits were varied, colourful. Free had looked distinct in Compound 3 with her leather jacket and her white guitar always strapped on her back. Here we met more than a couple of people with similar get up: leather and chain belts and musical instruments in their hand, and Free greeted them as if they were friends.

“You look like you belong here,” I said as she led me into an elevator and pressed a button for a lower floor.

“Yeah? Well Compound 5 trains a lot of artists and musicians, sure.” She paused, and added, “I trained here myself when I was younger.”

“Why’d you move to Compound 3, then?”

She hesitated before answering, “Lots of other musicians here. Difficult to get noticed. I figured I’d go find a pond with fewer fish, you get me?”

I didn’t, actually. I figured she would outshine anyone, no matter where she goes.

The elevator door opened and we walked out. Free grabbed my hand and ushered me forward. “Come here, this is what I wanted to show you!”

She led me half running down the corridor and down a staircase, down to a large room, five stories tall with a large window the full height of the wall. I looked out of it and held my breath. We were far enough down the Compound to see the Earth’s surface, but instead of the charred wasteland I was used to, here it was all lush and green. The ground was covered in grass, the trees grew tall enough for their branches to touch the window. Flowers of all colours peeked through the foliage. I had heard of this, one part of the planet untouched by the war, but this was beyond what I had imagined.

Free was grinning. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen you so speechless.”

“I…” I sputtered. “How?”

“During the Age of the Gods, there was a god called Frail Luminosity, who wanted to preserve the planet. It decided not to fight and instead made pockets of reality to protect bits of the planet while all the other Gods warred. This was one of the bits under its protection.”

“Huh.” I walked closer to the window, close enough to I feel like I was surrounded by the trees, almost as if I could hear the rustling of the leaves. “Never thought there’s a god who would do this. Shame we’ll still have to find it and kill it, huh?”

I heard Free shuffling, perhaps uncomfortably. “Luminosity’s already dead. We killed it early in the Defiance.”

“Oh. That’s good. One less god to worry about.”

“Yeah. It’s no different from the other Gods… according to the reports, anyway. But I’m glad it gave us this.”

“Yeah…” I muttered, still awestruck at the sight out of the window. The way the leaves sway in the wind was mesmerizing. Then I felt Free’s hand pulling me away.

“Come on. Are you just going to stand here, or do you want to go outside?”

“We can just go outside?”

Free grinned.

Roion had been upset when he learned about Frail Luminosity.

Free remembered the look of awe in his face when she first showed him this place. He stood there for a whole minute, just staring out of the window. He got excited when he learned it was the work of a god. Maybe not all the Gods are bad. Maybe they don’t all have to be killed, after all.

When Free told him Luminosity was already killed, it seemed to break his heart. She remembered how his face had fallen, how he couldn’t speak for a while, not until she took him outside and distracted him with the varieties of plants life he could look at. She didn’t have the heart to tell him what else Frail Luminosity did, the burning, the screaming, the implosion of flesh, as many lives lost to it as to all the others. The hope in his eyes when he didn’t know about it gave her hope too.

Tiana had no such ideals. Her faith in the tenets was unwavering as a rock, and Free admired that in her. She tried not to think how it terrified her too, what it might mean for them both.

They went down more stairs to the open doors on the ground floor. Tiana still seemed stunned with awe when Free took her hand and pulled her outside. Step on the grass. Feel the breeze. Hear it rustle the leaves spread out above. She did not get excited the way Roion did, but still he looked up to the trees with a sort of reverence. She smiled that rueful smile she had when she didn’t want others to know how happy she was.

Free wanted to smile as well, but as she stepped on the grass and soaked in the atmosphere, she felt something wrong. Something in the air. A faint pull tugging at her senses, the ones that humans didn’t have.

“Hey, Free?” Tiana asked. “Something on your mind?”

Free shook the feelings away and grabbed Tiana’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. Come on, lemme show you where I usually play my gigs.”

But still the odd feeling remained, like a muffled scream in a distance that was imperceptible to all but herself. Maybe she’d have to look up to the stars tonight.

A stone path led through the forest until it receded to an open grassland. There were chairs and picnic blanket set on the ground, and some of them were already taken by people of all sorts. In the middle of them all was a bandstand, a circular stage covered in awning, larger than most stages indoor. Ahead of it the plains fell to a cliff, and further in the distance one can see where the plants receded, replaced by barren earth. You could almost see the force field that used to be there, the edges of Frail Luminosity’s domain.

The bandstand was already in use when Free and Tiana arrived, a duo on guitar and drums. Their music was calm and serene, a good match for the current atmosphere as people were relaxing around them.

Or, at least, the atmosphere as most people would perceive it. Free couldn’t shake the feeling that this wouldn’t last long. There were fractures, somewhere, that she’d have to look into because no one else could.

“You’ve played here?” Tiana asked, taking her away from her thoughts. “This is a lot nicer than what we have back home, isn’t it?”

“Mmm. Well playing here was definitely a different experience. The acoustic’s all sorts of different.” Free looked up to the sky. Sunlight still reigned and no stars could be seen yet. “Tell you what. I’m gonna see if I can get a gig here tonight and then you can see just how different it can be here.”

“Ha! That’ll be… that’ll be nice, actually.” Tiana glanced upwards. “But out here tonight, won’t we be under the stars?”

Free couldn’t tell her that it was what she wanted. “We usually have all the lights on at night, so you can barely see what’s up there. It’ll be fine. We hold concerts here most every nights.”

“Is that so?” There were hope in her eyes. “Well, another concert from you. That’ll be nice to see.”

We spent the day exploring the Compound, visiting art galleries and recording studios and all the libraries that overlooked the green patch of earth outside. People seemed to know Free here, at least in passing, and she wandered the halls as if she knew it like the back of her hand. I suppose she had been here more often than she let on. There was a lot I still didn’t know about her.

I never minded that.

Soon enough it was nighttime and our appointment with the stage outside arrived. As we made our way down, Free hummed a song I recognized as the one she just wrote on our ride here, the one we sang together. I had an urge to sing it with her, but I knew I would not do it justice, not in front of other people.

Free was right: the lights were on all around the stage outside. Standing lamps were placed around the field. Wires that ran from the building to the stage was lined with lights that shone softly. The stage itself was equipped with spotlights. Not as bright as daylight, but it was enough to not felt threatened by the dark, or what lied above.

There were already a crowd around the stage. I wondered quietly if it was like this every night or if they were here for her.

“Bit of a crowd tonight,” Free said. “Is that okay with you?”

“Nah, it’s okay.” I frowned. “Just because I don’t go to parties much doesn’t mean I can’t handle a crowd.”

Free flashed a grin. “I’ll make it up to you after, Ti. Can you wait here a moment? I need to talk to the stage people.”

I nodded and let her run off. The crowd wasn’t that bad, really. Not even half as big as the crowd that welcomed us home after every mission. Still, I found a quieter corner to watch the stage, somewhere I could still hear the rustling of the leaves.

Something buzzed in my pocket. My Communicator. I pulled it out and checked the caller: confidential line with my mech’s serial attached to it. I accepted the call and put the Comms close to my ears. “Resa?”

“Hey, Tiana. How’s your trip with Free?” Resa’s voice was crystal clear in my ear.

“Good. Really good, actually.” I tried to look for her, but I couldn’t see her from where I was. “What is it, Resa?”

“Please don’t make this public yet, but folks at Navigation has been seeing something weird with the time-space, from inside the atmosphere, not out in space.”

“What, like, an angel get through the planetary defense?”

“We’re not sure yet, but it’s making some people nervous. I just want to let you know in case we need to cut your trip short to get you back in the mech. Don’t want to surprise you and all.”

I walked around, trying to find Free. “I should probably let Free know about this, huh?”

“You should, but also, you know, it might be nothing. You should still relax and enjoy your date.”

“Yeah, thanks, Resa. Wait, date?”

“Have fun, hon!” Resa said, turning off the call. I could almost see her sweet smile behind it.

I looked around for Free, but couldn’t find her around the stage, not even among the people lining up to play. I asked around, and some of them recognized her name, but they haven’t seen her there.

When I found her, finally, she was way at the back, far from the others and away from all the lights. She was looking up at the stars, what was she doing? She had her guitar in front of her, her hand brushing the strings but not playing them. There was a look of concentration in her eyes.

Then she looked down and saw me and her face went through a hundred different expressions before settling on a smile, a mask. “Oh, hey, Tiana. Not waiting in front of the stage?”

There was a musical quality to her voice that almost made want to forget what I saw. “I… Resa called. She said Navigation found something weird inside the planet.”

“Oh.” That seemed to trip her for a moment. “Do they want you back?”

“No… But we might have to cut the trip short.” I let her gently take my hand and pull me back to the stage. “Resa said… It might be nothing. Maybe it’s not something we should worry about.”

“I sure hope so,” she said, almost like a song in my head. “I don’t want to end this trip early.”

My mind felt foggy. “Yeah… I don’t want it to end either…”

Suddenly we were plunged into darkness as all the lights went off. The crowd murmured in surprise, the stagehands called out apologies, the sounds of footsteps ringed as people tried to make their way back, though all the lights back in the Compounds seemed to be busted as well. The stars shone brightly up above, brighter than they have any right to be. I blinked and adjusted my eyes to the dark, trying not to look up, and saw Free’s face. Her white hair was covering one eye, but the other was looking up, up as if she knew what she was looking for, as if the stars were telling her things and she was letting them do that.

“Frida…” My heart thumped in my chest.

“Tiana, get down!”

I ducked, barely grasping what was happening. Something shot at us from above, again and again, the smell of scorching earth in my nose. In a distance, I heard people starting to scream and run. There was something humming in the air, a buzz in my senses that reminded me of the Seraphs I have fought and killed.

When I opened my eyes, the ground around me was scorched, the trees burning. Feathers, white feathers, fell from above. I looked up.

She still wore her leather jacket, her hair was still messy and fell over her eye and bleached white, but it was no hair. Maybe it was never hair to begin with. They were white feathers that now spread out behind her, forming a hundred wings behind her back that expanded like a shield that covered me, protected me, from the stars. She held her guitar out except it was no guitar. It was a sword, a bat, a machine gun, white like her hair, wings, ever-shifting in her hands.

Something shone again from up in the stars. Her wings shifted and she batted away the light beam before it could reach us. I could smell something burning, heard something screeching in my senses.

“Free!” I called, and she turned to look at me. Her eyes were deep black void on her face, like seeing into the depths of space. Something in my head screamed at the sight, my muscle tightened, getting into battle mode. My hand twitched, reaching for the mech’s control that wasn’t there.

Another beam of light shot down from the sky. The sword was a guitar of wings in her hand as she strummed; the sound was like a physical tune that batted the light away. I crawled away and scrambled for my Communicator. I should call Resa. No. I should call the headquarters. There’s a Seraph, here. Maybe this whole time. There’s an attack. Our defense is failing, might have failed these entire times.

She turned to look at me again, her white wings surrounding her, her nightmare eyes looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Sadness, regret, remorse. I could still see her under the void, if I looked. I remembered the time we sang together.

Free was a Seraph. How could Free be a Seraph?

FREEDOM.

NO.

I HAVE FOUND YOU, MY FREEDOM.

NO.

COME TO ME.

NO.

DID YOU HEAR WHEN ECHO DIED? WHEN TREBLE DIED? WHEN REFLECTION DIED? WHEN SOLACE DIED?

I HAD THOUGHT ECHO WAS THE LAST.

LAST NO MORE.

I AM NO LONGER YOURS.

OF COURSE, MY FREEDOM. YOU HAVE FOUND THE MEANING OF YOUR NAME.

NO.

COME TO ME.

SING WITH ME.

ASCEND.

Free was aware of Tiana stirring behind her. So much for friendship. So much for spending the next few weeks together. Tiana was a soldier first and foremost and she would not abandon her tenets, would she? Kill all the Gods. And one of the being they, she, had vowed to kill was calling her name. They would find it now, and they would kill it, like they do all the others, and then they would kill her as well, last Seraph of Harmonic Penance.

What did Tiana say, about killing her sibling, Echo? Setting things right. Their friendship, the harmony they shared, would mean nothing. The humans had survived by being indiscriminate and Tiana was the epitome of them all.

But still, Free protected her, and she would protect the rest of this planet. Her powers hadn’t been tapped in centuries, but they responded to her regardless, like remembering an old song from her childhood. As if she ever had a childhood. A shame she would die just as she was starting to think like a human.

YOU ARE STRONG, MY FREEDOM, WHILE I HAVE GROWN WEAK.

Its voice was a song in Free’s ears. Lulling and beautiful.

COME TO ME. ASCEND. TAKE MY PLACE.

I WILL NOT.

Free opened her senses. The humans had their mechs out already, moving her way. Tiana’s was among them. She only needed to hold back Penance’s attack before they would aim their weapons at it, and then, at her. They would fire at them both.

Free risked another glance down. Tiana was standing now, bewildered, but no longer trembling. She had her eyes on her, disbelief mixed with an unbending will, or so she read. There was no more need for words, was there? And yet Free would like nothing more than to come down and sing with her again.

But no. No more.

Free stretched her wings and soared into the sky, swatting another beam that her god had shot from its dwelling in the crack in space. She was loath to admit it, but she enjoyed being able to use her powers again.

I was still standing there, watching her and her wings and how she seemed to tear ripples in space, when my mech landed close by. Resa scrambled out of it, calling my name.

“Tiana! I’m so glad you’re safe!”

She ran over and took my hand, and yet I couldn’t look her in the eye, couldn’t look away from what was going on up above. The zipping of her wings, the flashes of other mechs as they arrived on the scene, fighting with her or against her, I couldn’t tell. And I could feel it, Harmonic Penance, tunneling its way on our sky. The stars lit up in patterns as it made its way across, sending us barrages of destruction in its wake.

None of them touched me, of course, because Free was up there, her wings outstretched.

“Tiana! Are you okay?!” Resa called from the edge of my consciousness. “Where’s Free?!”

I finally took my eyes off the sky. “She’s-- She’s up there,” I said, pointing up.

“What do you mean up there?”

“Resa.” I shook my head and held her shoulders, as if I was comforting her and not myself. “Free is a Seraph.”

“What? What do you mean Free is a Seraph?”

I looked up at the sky, at her again. I thought of the blackness of Free’s eyes, her true eyes. It was wrong, a breach of reality, and it was my duty to destroy it. And yet I don’t want to see it gone. They were hers.

“Resa,” I grasped her hand, realising something, “I don’t want to kill Free.”

“What?”

“I don’t-- I don’t care what she is. I don’t want her to die. I don’t want to kill her.”

She looked up and tried to see what I saw. Her expression flickered to recognition then disbelief. She turned back down to me. “I don’t-- I don’t know what’s going on, but we can’t stay here. I brought you your mech because the others want you to join the fight, but you don’t have to, okay? We can go someplace safe.”

“No,” I said, surprising myself with how self-assured I was. “If I don’t-- If we don’t do anything they will kill her! Resa, I have to stop them from killing her.”

Resa was taken aback. Hesitantly, she said, “We have to kill all the Gods…”

“Free isn’t a god. She’s our friend.” I grabbed her hand and ran for the mech. “Come on, we have to save her!”

Fighting was like singing, in a way. It was matching your resonance with your targets and then just letting your emotions fly.

Free heard Harmonic Penance calling in her ears. It wanted her to sing for it, with it, but instead she sang against it. She had her own harmony, the one she had found a long time ago and refined in her years living on the planet. Her freedom, and no one else’s.

She was aware of the squadron of mechs surrounding her. Some had tried to attack her and she defended herself best as she could. Parts of her wings were torn and scorched, feathers scattered on the grounds below. Maybe soon there would be than just her wing scattered below, but not now.

She sang a shot into a gap of space and heard her god screeching as her bullet found its target. Flashes of lights and a nightmare of feathers in the sky, crawling out of what might had looked from down below like stars. Harmonic Penance, one among the Gods, finally coaxed out of its hiding place. The human soldiers were ready, their mechs’ weapons primed, and so was she.

FREEDOM, it spoke into her ear, YOU DO NOT WANT TO SING WITH ME.

I DO NOT.

AND YET YOU SING REGARDLESS.

I SING MY OWN SONG.

ONE STEP TO ASCENSION.

NOW LISTEN. LISTEN.

TO MY SONG.

Afterwards, it was said that Harmonic Penance’s song was heard all across the planet, throughout all the Compounds and to the far reaches of the outposts. A horrific dirge that tore through the walls, sweeping whole corridors away and broke into people’s mind. But it was brief, cut short by another sound. The new song was unearthly still, but it was familiar and comforting. Some who screamed after the first song went silent, fell down, and wept, not knowing why. Though it did not fix what was broken or returned those who died, it gave the others hope.

Free opened her eyes, singing one last note. Her weapon was a stringed instrument in her hands, her hundred wings were outstretched. The air around her was covered in the entrails of a dead god, of feathers and distant memories and forgiveness unfounded. The humans, in their mechs, had turned to face her, their guns and blades and cannons primed and ready.

Their prime target was dead so now they would kill her, would they? No hesitation, she knew, but she was unwilling to do the same to them. She felt it: the tugging in her senses, the promises of inheritance, of further harmony, of godhood. But she was no god. She still cared.

She sensed another mech flying close. Tiana. Here to end her, as she had expected, feared, would happen.

And so it was a surprise to her when she heard Tiana’s voice cutting through the air, a comm call to all the other mechs.

“Everyone put your weapons down!”

The hallway was quiet safe for the echoing of my and Resa’s footsteps on the metal floorboards. The place was dark, windowless, much like most of the lower floors of our Compound, lit only by electric lamps placed at interval on the walls. Resa was quiet, though she still smiled encouragingly when I turned to look at her. We’ve talked, and we’ve tried our best, and now there wasn’t much left to talk about.

There was a door at the end, guarded by a Soldier I didn’t recognize. He nodded when he saw me and, after confirming the identification card I showed him, he unlocked the door. I let Resa open the door, but she shook her head.

“I think the two of you should have a moment by yourselves,” she said.

I could deny her, but I had quietly wanted to talk to her by myself. I thanked Resa and pushed the door open.

It was much brighter inside the cell. The opposite wall was dominated by a window made of reinforced glass, something installed on Resa’s insistence. The room was full of potted plants of all varieties, making the place resemble a garden more than a containment chamber. A force field, of a similar type to our planetary defense system, separated the door I came through from the rest of the room. Not even a god’s power can breach through it, or at least so we hoped, though I knew, felt, that we didn’t need such protection.

Free was sitting on a chair, looking out the window, her back to me. The wings were gone, and though I could still see her hair as feathers, they were just hair. Her guitar was just a guitar, which she was playing. She was humming, and I recognized it as the same song we had sung together in what felt like a whole lifetime ago.

I tapped on the force field and though it made no sound, Free perked up as if she heard it. She turned around and saw me and smiled, the kind of smile she seemed to reserve just for me. The nightmare eyes were gone. She looked just as she always had.

I could not say she looked just like any other person, because she was always different from everybody else in my eyes. She was her.

“Sorry that… that it takes so long for me to see you,” I said, stammered. “I had to… Had to talk a lot, to everybody else, just so they’ll leave you alone.”

“Tiana, it’s fine,” Free said. “This is more than I had expected at all. Thank you.”

I almost blushed. I shifted my feet, considered pulling a chair but decided against it. I was too nervous to sit.

Free strummed some chords on her guitar, as if to comfort us both. “I…” She paused. “I had thought you’d want to kill me too.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I said. “Not even…” I looked away. Looked at her again. “So you’re really…? You’re not human, then? How… How old are you?”

It was a stupid question, but from the way she snorted, at least I broke the ice a bit. “I’ve been here long enough. You won’t think me an old lady, would you? I was here when the Compounds was built.”

“That’s 300 years ago,” I said. “You were here during the War of Defiance, then? Were you… Whose side were you on?”

Free made a face, then strummed some more chords. She’d played this sequence on stage often. “No one. I broke from the other Seraphs, then took human form and hid with your people and that was it. Never took my wings out until a couple of days ago.”

I hesitated. “You did it for me.”

She closed her eyes, played another tune. She didn’t deny it. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“After everything I did? You know I’m a soldier. If I don’t know who you are, I would have-- I might have killed you.”

She opened her eyes. “I don’t know why you didn’t. I was ready for it.” She strummed another chord. “Thank you.”

“I… I should be the one to thank you. You saved my life too.” But that wasn’t the only reason I would have saved you. I shuffled my feet again. “I… I checked with Administration. There were people named Frida, but none of them are you. That’s a cover name, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “I can’t stay in one place for too long, can I? I don’t age, I don’t change. I try not to lie to you, but-- Well, I guess now I don’t have to lie to you anymore.” She smiled, a bit.

“Can you tell me what your real name is?”

She smiled, wider this time. Then she said something I couldn’t hear, so incomprehensible my ears couldn’t catch it. But somewhere in my head, a word formed anyway, like in the stories I heard about how mankind first heard the names of Gods. The word was Freedom.

“Oh,” I said. “These whole time we’ve been calling you by your name, anyway?”

She laughed. “I don’t use that name often. You’re lucky I decide to use it this time.”

“Well, lucky me.” I smiled too, a bit. “I guess I can keep calling you Free, huh?”

“That’s my name.” She nodded. “Shame we can’t continue our outing, huh? I’d love to show you more of the Compounds. And I won’t have to hide how I know about things anymore.”

“Yeah… I’m sorry about this.” I looked around the room. It wasn’t too bad, for a holding cell. It had a large window, plants, a nice bed, the couch, all the things from her van, so it was practically her home already. But it was also closed-off. I knew she wouldn’t want to be confined here and if her true name was any indication, having to stay between four walls might be worse for her than it would be for anyone else.

And yet she smiled anyway, strumming some soft tune on her guitar. “Tiana,” she said. “Please, don’t feel bad about me. Just being here, with you, both of us alive? It’s good enough for me. I was so scared you’d kill me. I never thought you’d save me instead.”

“I wouldn’t want to kill you. You’re…” I couldn’t form the words, couldn’t quite figure out how to describe her. What she was for me. Seraph or human, she had always been her.

She seemed to notice how flustered I was and gave me a little smirk. She played some familiar notes on her guitar and I felt relief washing over me. Whether it was magical or not did not matter: I knew she did it for me.

“Do you want to sing together again?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, I do.”