Beyond Oblivion Read online

  “OUTLIER: Beyond Oblivion”

  by

  Daryl Banner

  Outlier : Beyond Oblivion (Book 4)

  Copyright © 2018-2019 by Daryl Banner

  Published by Frozenfyre Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever, including but not limited to being stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, groups, businesses,

  and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  Cover & Interior Design: Daryl Banner

  Cover Model: Joe Delaney

  Hey there, you!

  Want to know when my next book is coming out?

  Want a glimpse into my crazy life and antics?

  Then join my Mailing List today! I also give away an Amazon Gift Card every newsletter!

  Click here to join my special list:

  https://www.darylbanner.com/subscribe.html

  As always, Happy Reading!

  xxoo

  Daryl

  www.darylbanner.com

  THE OUTLIER SERIES

  Chapter Compendium

  R E B E L L I O N

  Act 10001 – 0018

  Act 20019 – 0043

  Act 30044 – 0069

  LEGACY

  Act 10070 – 0091

  Act 20092 – 0117

  Act 30118 – 0137

  REIGN OF MADNESS

  Act 10138 – 0161

  Act 20162 – 0184

  Act 30185 – 0207

  Act 40208 – 0231

  BEYOND OBLIVION

  Act 10232 – 0256

  Act 20257 – 0283

  Act 30284 – 0309

  Act 40310 – 0339

  WEAPONS OF ATLAS

  - - -

  GIFTS OF THE GODDESS

  - - -

  Evil.

  I question the very existence of it.

  Is there really such a thing?

  Good. Evil.

  Or are we just people

  caught on one side or the other?

  ~ Kendil

  The Citizenry of Atlas

  In The Oblivion, Village of Gaea

  Anwick Lesser “Wick”

  18 m – Mimicry

  Dran

  19 m - Bleed black from his eyes

  Rychis Bard

  33 m - Earth manipulation

  Kraag Tourney

  28 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Barley

  48 m - (not yet disclosed)

  In the Lesser’s Neighborhood, Ninth Ward Slums

  Athan Broadmore

  18 m - “Luck” / “Survival” / Unclear

  Arrow Fyrefellow

  20 m - Charm electronics

  Ivy Caldron

  19 f - Cannot be burned

  Pratganth Upgold “Prat”

  22 m - Fall slowly / “Floating”

  Arcana “Reader”

  25 f - Listen to thoughts

  Sedge Arwall

  11 m – Shapeshifting

  Iranda Penling

  40 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Auleen Penling

  32 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Guardian Interim HQ, Eleven Wings Hospital

  Halvesand Lesser “Halves”

  23 m - Stop kinetic force

  Aleksand Lesser “Aleks”

  24 m - Make heavy his feet

  Ennebal Flower

  23 f - Unpierceable / Deafness

  Obert Ranfog

  38 m - Lie detection

  Title: Lead Officer Obert

  Former Head Trainer

  Ellena Lesser

  40 f - Transfer wounds to and fro

  Gabel Wayward

  25 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Beatrice “Bee”

  30 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Cope

  19 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Formerly The Keep, now The Undercity

  Forgemon Lesser “Forge”

  46 m - Calculate possible futures

  Aphne Lodestone

  29 f - Duplication

  Among the Queen of the Abandon, Twelfth Ward

  Ruena Netheris

  18 f - Electricity

  Title: Former heir to the Throne of Atlas

  and granddaughter to the late King Greymyn

  Kael Mirand-Thrin

  50 f - Transform others into marble

  Title: Former heir to the Throne of Atlas, and aunt of Ruena Netheris

  “The Twice King”

  ?? m - Presumed to be immortality

  Title: The First King of Atlas / The Risen Again King / The Twice King

  Between the Abandon & the Hightowers of the Sixth

  Quin

  16 f - Illusion

  On the Streets, Hightowers of the Sixth

  Mercy

  18 f – Poison

  Scot

  18 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Among Slum King Chole’s Coalition, First Ward

  Tide Wellport

  18 m - Wind manipulation

  Dag “Dog”

  19 m - Imbue emotions into food

  Gin

  21 f - Fuse her skin to another’s

  Chole

  20 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Unofficial Title: “The Slum King” / King of the Coalition

  Sanctum

  Erana Sparrow

  20 f - Memorization

  Axel “Writer”

  25 f - Control thoughts

  Impis Lockfyre

  28 m - Mania

  “Metal Hand”

  40 m - Touch of teleportation (presumed to be destruction)

  Among Impis’s Posse, The Lifted City

  Dregor

  31 m - Scale-skin armor

  Chaos

  18 m - Cast red fiery bolts of light

  Umi

  62 f - Summon “will o’ the wisps”

  Yoli

  28 m - Telekinesis

  “Nightly”

  22 f - Luminescent hair and nails

  Splinters

  31 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Kellen

  30 m - Draw blades from his elbows

  “Aegis”

  21 m - Become a human shield

  Nermia

  26 f - Blind a target by clapping

  Lyth

  19 f - Her singing causes paralysis

  “Ogre”

  13 m - Incredible strength

  Zyeni

  15 f - “Psychic screaming”

  Elsewhere in the Last City of Atlas

  Kendil “The Weapon”

  18 m - Fire / Cold

  Ames

  24 m - (not yet disclosed)

  Aryl

  11 f - Able to “see” temperatures

  Ernice “Thorn”

  47 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Gandra Gateward “Professor Frey”

  51 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Yellow Everon

  48 m - Erase memories

  Lady Agdanagon, Sister of Sisters

  73 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Edrick

  23 m - Amplified hearing

  Cilla Tiller-Milon, Ellena Lesser’s sister

  42 f - (not yet disclosed)

  Somewhere in Time

  Link Lesser

  22 m - Color manipulation

  Kid / Akidra

  16 f - Invisibility

/>   Baal

  ?? m - Time-walking

  Baron

  60 m - Life suspension

  Unknown

  Faery

  ?? f - “All of them.”

  Rone Tinpassage

  18 m - Phase through objects

  Prologue

  Every man, woman, and child who fell from the sky was given a name.

  Of course, Lora knew it was likely not their real one.

  The very first body she found countless months ago, she called Rosa The White. It was a young woman dressed in the prettiest of Lifted silk, all white, who probably had a lovely child, if Lora was to guess. “No, two children,” Lora decided suddenly. “A nice son named Raemond The Bright. A kind daughter named Rosyella The Brilliant. And … they were both the top of their class. Yes. Very smart. They always had the right answers when the professor called upon them.”

  Lora smiled. Yes, that sounds nice.

  When she brought Rosa The White’s body to the shallow soil of the Greens, she buried her with her hands over her chest. Well, the bit that remained of her hands, rather. Fanged birds or rats clearly had had a helping of her before Lora found the body in the square.

  Lora paid it no mind. Rosa The White lived a wonderful Lifted life, and her two children would grow up to do decent things.

  All made-up fantasies and lies, she knew, but it helps.

  Another person she found soon after, an old man with a tuft of bushy grey hair, had rings on all his fingers, and his robe was made of oiled snakescale. Lora could have made good use of such jewelry, selling it or bartering with the sticky-fingered rogues of the Circle Market. But she was not like some of her slumborn kin. She nurtured a sympathy for those who lived in the sky. They didn’t choose to be Lifted, she told herself. They may know of a privilege I shall never taste of, but surely there are Lifted folk who envy the daily grit of a slum life.

  Surely.

  She named the old man Gregaris The Grand, and she decided that he was a scholar who worked closely with the King. The real King, she amended, thinking of the late, great Greymyn Netheris.

  She buried him still wearing his rings—each and every one. His grave was near a patch of half-withered Jewel Berries, red and purple ones, just south of Rosa The White.

  Then came Dondaro The Daring, a young man with a yellow silk sash and a broad chest, who Lora decided was a member of the proud Sky Guard, because why not? He was survived by two strong boys who each wanted to be as full of valor and honor as their brave, handsome father someday.

  Then came Youlan The Youthful, a boy whose life was cut short when the Mad King’s Posse threw him off the ledge of the Lifted City. This boy was studying to become the next Royal Legacist, Lora was sure. Better than Impis ever was, she added contemptuously.

  The journey from the square to the Greens was never easy. Lora didn’t care. Lora didn’t want it to be easy. She carried some of the bodies. She dragged others. She sometimes broke the trip in half to gain a moment’s rest. Her muscles would tremble. Her arms ached. Her fingernails had unidentified bits of dirt, dried blood, and dead skin underneath them. The more bodies she brought to their final resting place at the peaceful edge of the Greens, the easier it seemed, even if it was never easy at all.

  And it was never easy at all.

  The next day brought her Horas The Happy, a man who made people laugh during the most boring of dinners, Lora imagined with a smile. He had no less than three sisters, who kept his heart gentle. She made up all of these facts as she went along. It made it so much more bearable, to write their stories with her imagination.

  Then came Emporia The Elegant, a fine and studied lady who lived with a rosy-cheeked girlfriend who really, really, really wanted to make decorative teacups for a living. Yes, that sounds quite nice.

  Then Pally The Paladin, who maybe fought a battle or two. He was unmarried and an orphan, preferring his stately solitude.

  Then Vanesta The Valiant, a brave woman, tough, driven.

  And Chloris The Charismatic.

  Quandris The Quick.

  Maura The Magical.

  The square where the bodies landed was stained with the blood of countless Lifted souls. Lora tried her best between each victim to scrub clean the stone of the street, but to no avail. Just as reliably as the seconds on the clock turned, Lora could enter the square an hour after the sun had set and would find another fallen corpse.

  Crisanda The Courageous.

  Laramia The Lovely.

  Mordocus The Mighty.

  Some days, Lora couldn’t handle another body. She would stand on the stoop outside of her dilapidated dwelling on the edge of the eighth and cry. No one would be near her. Her husband, who always thought her chores to be silly and vain, would be elsewhere bartering for food for the week. Her sister might be deep in the house likely reading her favorite book a twelfth time since the Fall of Sanctum.

  And Lora would offer her tears to the half-covered sky and the smog that floated lazily above.

  “There are too many,” she would speak to the sky, anguished. “The Greens will run out of room to bury them. Stop the Madness. Please. Please. Stop the Madness. No more bodies. Please.”

  All her twenty-one years of life, she never cared to learn what her Legacy was—her unique gift. A Legacy Tour came and went four years ago when she was in school, and for her Exam, she pretended a mole on her left elbow was due to her Legacy, though she couldn’t produce another, and they didn’t care. She was then sent off, a bored smirk on the Legacist Impis’s face. If only I knew that Impis would one day sit upon the throne and throw innocent souls over the Lifted City’s ledge … Well, truth be told, she had no idea what she’d do differently. Perhaps try to find her real Legacy. Perhaps nothing at all.

  “My Legacy is in tears,” she then decided, making up her own fate as flippantly as she made up the backstory to every Lifted man, woman, and child she found and buried. “I can cry so many tears that the whole of Atlas could become a great big boat and float off into the sea beyond the Wall that only the Ancients know of.”

  But no matter how many tears Lora shed, the sun still set, the tears were wiped away with a determined push of the back of her wrist, and off she’d go to find another who’d met their bloody end.

  One day, however, she found the square empty. She waited, glancing up at the sky. Perhaps she was early.

  But the next one never came. Hours she waited. No one.

  The next day, there was no one again. The next day after that, too. The Madness is at an end, she realized with a start. Hope flared in her chest like a lantern as it drank the oil and burned bright. Perhaps this time when she cleaned the square, it would remain clean at last.

  It wasn’t until a while later that she was stopped halfway to the Circle Market by a figure lying upon the ground. She recognized it as certainly as she did all the souls who had dropped in her square. She knew with a sinking of her heart that this was another person who was thrown from the sky—yet landed in a different place somehow.

  She drew close to his body just as she had the countless before. He was young. Brown of hair. Acne dusted his cheeks. Slender. Long limbs. Untouched by the rats or the fanged birds. If it weren’t for the spread of blood, he could just be a big baby asleep upon his back.

  Her eyes shrunk. Her head tilted, curious.

  His clothes … He’s not a Lifted boy, she realized.

  Lora lowered herself to his side. She took his hand. Soft. For the longest while, she completely forgot her usual routine. She couldn’t even think of a name for him, or a story. A story always makes it easier, she reminded herself, yet nothing came. She was much too transfixed by the peculiar look on his face. Every person who fell from the sky wore an expression of terror. Distress. Fright. But the look on this boy’s face was peaceful. He almost looked … Proud, she thought. Proud, like a King.

  He had wished to be King someday, she told herself. A slum boy.

  Breaking from her trance, she brought th
e young slum boy into her arms. It was always an effort, bringing the bodies to the Greens, but this boy seemed no effort at all. She was a tall, strong woman herself, and so she was able to carry this long-limbed, lanky boy with ease. She gazed upon his face as they went, feeling a warm pinch of maternal care as she took him.

  When he rested in the grave she made him at the Greens—the last grave she would ever make—she plucked and placed a flower upon his chest. It was a Lion Lily, a furiously orange flower with speckles of yellow and red upon its tips, like eyes.

  “I name you …” she began.

  Then the sky opened before her, interrupting her words. Lora glanced upward. Moonlight spilled over the young man’s grave. As if coming out to join the two of them, a blanket of stars showed itself with the moon swimming in its vast sea. A full moon.

  It was the first time in weeks that she had seen the night sky through the smog.

  Lora brought her eyes—now misty—back to the grave. She wore a smile when she whispered to him, “I name you … Lionis the Last. You lived … a brave life full of … adventure and wonder.” Yes, that sounds nice. “And you were loved dearly by … by your family of …” She shrugged and picked a number. “Four sweet brothers. Yes. And your parents admired your various devotions so much. Oh, how you adored your books … yes, yes, just like my sister.” She kissed her fingers then and pressed them gently to his soft forehead. “Rest now, sweet boy, Lionis the Last. And may you truly be the very last.”

  ACT 1

  0232 Erana

  Am I forgetting something?

  Erana is in a cell, but it’s not the chrome one with the glass bars of the King’s Keeping where she’d been before. The walls are made of big metal bricks, some smooth as glass, some rusted and bumpy. The room has no window. There isn’t even a bed or a place to sit.