A chapter from the novel, Fallen Horizon
By David Thompson

1

Cast Down

Hunger howled in the pit of Father Nor’s stomach, an unquenchable appetite food could not satisfy. He stared at the teenage girl clinging to his leg as the emptiness filled his belly, sinking like a stone in a bottomless well The girl’s fingers dug into his calf while her other hand protected the swelling belly beneath her habit. That she had the audacity to gaze into Nor’s eyes infuriated him.

“Please, Father Nor,” cried the girl, “I swear to you on Christ’s name! I’m telling you the truth!”

He pushed her away with his boot and she sprawled backward onto the cobbled floor. A Magistrate stepped from the shadows, grabbed fistfuls of her red hair with dark gloves and tore her from the ground. Tears streamed down her face, smearing the grime on her pale cheeks.

“Whore of Babylon!” hissed the armored Magistrate, the regulator making his voice mechanical. “Adulterous bride of Christ, you dare swear by His name? You who betrayed the Parish in heat and lust, for the pleasures of the flesh?” He plunged the Sister’s face into a marble basin of holy water in the center of the chamber.

Nor tugged at the bleached white collar around his neck, watched as bubbles rippled around her hair. Imagined the water entering her lungs. The other members of the Holy Twelve, their faces made spectral by the torch light filling the room, stared on silently. After a few moments, the gurgling stopped.

The aroma of spiced chicken drifted into the room. Famished, Nor licked his lips and nodded to the Magistrate. The Sister’s face came up. She flailed underneath the surface. Water spilled across the floor, pooled where the Fathers stood. Holy water.

The Magistrate pulled her back by her scalp again, so her ear reflected in his mirrored faceplate. “Listen to Father Nor, wretch.”

A web of blood laced her forehead where hair had been torn from their roots.

“There can still be absolution,” Nor told her. “All the Holy Twelve ask is that you give us the name of the man who fathered the child, so he may repent, too.”

She shook her head.

The Magistrate’s fist crashed into her jaw, splattering blood. “No man will desire you now,” he snarled and snapped back her head so she toppled to the floor. “Repent, whore! Tell them!”

“Already have,” she wept. “There was no father.”

Nor examined his fingernails, noticed an isolated speck of dirt, and picked at it.

With a wail, she was ripped back off the ground and submerged again, pressed down by the holy hands of the Magistrate. Clumps of red hair floated to the ground. Crimson filled the water like an angry cloud, refusing to dissolve.

Nor looked at the others. “Blasphemy,” murmured all but one. “Death!”

He stared at the Father who had not consented. “Well, Father Seir,” Nor said. “What say you? Death?” The girl’s cries fell quiet as she convulsed on the floor, her face hidden by the flame’s shadows.

Seir blinked. For a moment Nor wondered if Seir could be the bastard’s father? Then he remembered Seir’s own sacrifice. The stitch he’d paid for out of his own pocket, the stitch that left him castrated in order to override the lusts of temptation. No, now Seir no longer possessed the capabilities necessary to father children.

The Magistrate forced the girl to her knees. She knelt in a perverse prayer. Her cries echoed off the chambers walls, a lullaby of sobs that lingered in the air.

“Banishment,” replied Father Seir in an even tone. “Cast her into the abyss. Cast her and her unborn spawn into the Depths.”

The recommendation surprised Nor. He’d expected an argument, some weak plea for grace, not a sensible alternative. But the suggestion made him smile. Banished into the abyss. Cast down like Lucifer.

“Yes,” said Nor, nodding. “Banishment, but first, cleansing.” He bent down and gripped the Sister’s chin in his fingers, squeezed until she whimpered. “Take her to the Purification Seat.”

The other Fathers nodded their consent. All but Seir. Nor smiled. An eye for an eye, Seir. You know how I despise leniency.

The Magistrate stripped the habit from the Sister’s body and dragged her across the empty floor toward the seat, her bare feet kicking and sliding against the stone. Nor made a point not to avert his eyes from her shivering, naked form as the Magistrate pressed her down between the thin, curved arms of the chair. The girl’s bloodshot gaze held Nor’s as her wrists and ankles were cuffed down to the seat’s jutting arms and legs, curled and spine-like. The Magistrate pulled the helm’s leather strap taut below her chin and flipped the lever.

Nor’s stomach groaned with longing as the girl screamed, her body twitching and spasming, her eyes rolling back into her skull. Spit trickled down her chin like a newborn babe, a sign of the helm purifying her mind. Outside the Citadel, the parishioners called it mind-rape. Nor disliked the slang. Parish Apologists had conducted numerous scientific studies, making their conclusions clear. The purifier would penetrate her mind, yes, but it would add nothing new, only amplify the already existent fallen state, show how far her sins cast her from the holy. Keep them at the surface of her mind, as long as she was condemned to life.

Lines of blood streamed from her nostrils and ears. Blood even spilled from her eyes, not usual, but not unheard of either.

“Our meal grows cold,” Nor told the others. Before they replied, he climbed the few steps to the parlor where the buffet had been prepared as the girl continued to whimper. After filling his plate, he stepped onto the balcony and put the chicken leg to his mouth, savoring the tangy sauce as it dripped from his fingers, and examined the torn skin and meat of the bird. Then Nor gazed over the Citadel’s rail, down past Topside, at the city below.

Parish City. An abyss, bottomless, as far as Nor knew, and he knew more than most. As far as the Parish mapmakers and explorers had trekked, Parish City still continued. There were the Depths, yes. Well beyond his sight now, deeper than the middle tiers of Purgatory. But degenerates, thieves, and murderers controlled the Depths. Before Nor’s reign, the Parish had lost the desire to fight them off and explore further. There was enough strife in the known world, no need to dig deeper and uncover more. The twisted buildings and superstructures stretched below, built upon crooked tier after crooked tier like trunks of trees planted on a sloped hillside and left for millennia. In the Parishioners imagination, it went on forever. The flight routes and passages that wound and curved in every direction of the city were as vast and unpredictable as the arteries and stitches wired through Nor’s own body.

Yes, let the Parishioners believe. Let them believe Parish City is all there is. Nothing more than Topside, Purgatory, and the Depths. As Scripture proclaims, there is nothing new under the sun.

The girl’s wails rose and echoed, leaving as delightful an aftertaste as the chicken’s savory flesh. Nor dropped the gnawed bone over the rail. It fell past the vendors of Topside, selling shrink-wrapped performance Scriptures, and plunged past the Baljaver clinics where Parishioners injekted the vaccine into their spines, continuing its descent, ricocheting off the edges of curved buildings and the twisted hulls of cloudsailors, their paneled masts billowing in rich, vibrant colors. Finally, the bone sank from his vision, beyond the horizon that fell below him, into the perverse clutches of Purgatory where the bright painted hues of green, blue, and yellow peeled and faded into darker shades further below, housing the shells of industry and society deteriorated to jut out like the hollowed carcasses and bones of some forsaken juggernaut, left behind in progress’ wake.

Purgatory, where sex was sold on corners or bottled in programmable dreams, and outlaw degenerates of all species roamed the humid tiers freely through secret passages and canals. There, public screens strung through promenades and pubs showcased a drunken neon haze of sensuality: Magistrates patrolling the city and dispensing justice spliced together with the smooth, fluid movements of belly dancers. Bare, gleaming stomachs swaying in a digitized rhythm filled with heartache, longing, and regret. The screens’ burning overexposure mirrored a society intoxicated with its own sin. Deeper than that place of depravity, where the smell of piss and vomit was never far and the darkness suffocated the day, in the Abyss, hours from now, Nor imagined the bone landing.

The aroma of fresh-baked tortillas, grilled meat, cilantro, and refried beans collided against the perfumed vines of jasmine creeping up the alleys and air canals. Nor inhaled the pristine scents that drowned out the stench of evil rotting beneath him and thought that it was good. His fingernails pried at the chicken skin wedged between his teeth. He stared down at the bone’s invisible trail, charting the path the girl would soon be forced to travel.

* * *

“Father Nor?”

Startled awake, Nor sat up in his chair, his robes soaked through with sweat. He‘d been thinking of her again. Dreaming of her. The one he’d cast down so many years before.

“Your Holiness, are you well?”

“Of course.”

Nor moved to the basin at his chamber, dabbed a cloth with cool water, and wiped away the perspiration from his forehead. Why did she plague his mind, haunting him? Not because he’d desired her. No, she had been far too old for his appetites. And the wrong gender.

No, not the girl, but her unborn child. The unholy babe he’d condemned, trapped inside the mother’s womb. Even though Nor had never seen the child, the whelp’s burning cries rang in his ears. After all this time, he’d never been able to break free of the wails, never been able to shed the belief that the child’s screams would follow him until the end.

Nor took a deep breath and tried to focus. He wrung out the cloth, dripping water into the basin. The Magistrate who’d woken him knelt. “Why have you disturbed me?” asked Nor, keeping his voice just above a whisper.

“Holy Father, The Parish Citadel was breached.”

Nor did not tell the prostrate figure to rise. “Who?” he asked and moved across the room where a golden platter piled with grapes rested.

“Synyss Serkillian.”

Nor plucked several grapes from their stem. “No matter how hard she tries to fill the void Krylyr Fawkes left vacant, she will never become the thorn in our flesh he was.” He dried his face with a linen towel. “Nevertheless, such a bold attack must not go unpunished. Increase the reward on her head, score Purgatory, round up the degenerates, condemn whom you must. If it is beneficial to kill, then do so.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

“Very well. That is all.”

“My apologies, your Worship, but it is not. She broke into the Vault.”

“The Vault?” whispered Nor, hanging his towel. “What was taken? Marks?”

“Yes, Holiness, all the coin. And something else.”

Nor could no longer keep the dread out of his voice, so he channeled it with rage. “Commander or not, remember your place, Magistrate! You still bow to me. What did she take?”

“The arquifaux. She stole the arquifaux.”

“How?” demanded Nor. “How could she have even known?”

“Your Holiness, how could she not?” The Magistrate bowed his head again. “We’ve all heard it paves the way to Eden, fueled by the fruit from the tree of everlasting life.”

“There is no Eden anymore, Magistrate,” snapped Nor, “other than the one we’ve built. And no one lives forever. But that is not what I meant. Tell me, what do you know of the arquifaux?”

“When God rained down the Sickness as judgment on mankind’s wickedness, he searched the world for righteous men. He found only twelve, the Parish forefathers, and delivered the arquifaux to them.”

“But do you know what the arquifaux does?”

“Of course, your Holiness. The encryptions on it taught us how to make the Baljaver Injektions. It was like manna fallen from heaven. We were able to overcome the Sickness and distribute the injektions to mankind.”

“Why has no one ever been able to duplicate the injektions?”

“How can mankind, in its fallen state of sinfulness, duplicate the holiness of God?”

“Indeed,” said Nor. “How?” He looked away from the Magistrate, tried to hide the sorrow in his voice. The doubt. He hadn’t expected an answer.

“To duplicate the injektions, they would need the encryptions…” The Magistrate’s voice trailed off.

“The arquifaux contains a power, an essence that, like the arquifaux itself, cannot be destroyed. A spirit, if you will. It was this spirit that guided our Parish forefathers into creating the Baljaver injektions. Not encryptions as most believe.”

The Magistrate knelt lower, his hands trembling. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Imagine if such a spirit of power fell from the hands of the holy into the clutches of the unrighteous. Try to predict how a pagan terrorist like Fawkes or Serkillian could contaminate the very source of our salvation with the slightest of alterations to what the spirit commanded.”

“You mean break into the White Tower? That’s not possible.”

“Would you really place such faith in the Parish?” asked Nor. The Magistrate didn’t respond. Bouncing the grapes in his closed fist, Nor continued, “You know what we will become if the Sickness is not properly vaccinated: depraved beings. Less than human. No different than the demons that fill the Depths.”

The Magistrate repeated his question. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I do not believe Synyss merely stumbled upon the information. Doubtless she even knows what it is she’s stolen.” Nor looked down through the glass windows at the city. “But her employer most certainly does.”

“She’s been hired by someone?” asked the Magistrate. “Who?”

“There is only one possibility,” said Nor. “The Ghost. He’s haunted us far too long.”

The Magistrate straightened. “The Ghost?”

“Don’t be frightened,” Nor laughed. “This apparition has a body.”

“It isn’t fear, Holiness,” replied the Magistrate. “It’s just that we’re already tracking him.”

“Then at last you understand why I have told you, Magistrate Templar.” Nor popped the handful of grapes into his mouth, biting through the skin of the small fruits so the sweet taste of their juice swam over his tongue. “Find the Ghost, drain the blood from his veins, and retrieve the arquifaux.”