The Void Ascendant, page 1
PRAISE FOR BENEATH THE RISING
“A near-flawless debut novel. Multilayered and richly rendered, it’s a darkly humorous romp through unspeakable cosmic horrors that also paints a portrait of two hurt teenagers grappling with their place in the world and their relationship with each other.”
Strange Horizons
“Balances horror with humour, and the banter between the two main characters alternates between making you chuckle and making you wince. A thoughtful, well-paced novel with memorable characters that seamlessly mixes modern day issues with eldritch horror. “
British Fantasy Society
“A wonderful genre-defying adventure, rife with strange heart and weird horror. But most notable is its particular, careful attention to its characters. Premee Mohamed is a bold new voice.”
Chuck Wendig
“A perfect balance of thriller, horror and humour; reminded me of The Gone-Away World.”
Adrian Tchaikovsky
“This is a great story! I loved the globe trotting, ancient history and mysteries at every turn.”
Stewart Hotston
“A galloping global adventure where privilege and the lies we tell others are as great a villainous force as the budding Cthulonic forces the heroes must rush to stop.”
Brooke Bolander
“One of the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“Premee Mohamed writes with a joyous velocity that careens through genre-lines, whipping the reader helplessly after her. One of the most exciting voices I’ve heard in a long time.”
John Hornor Jacobs
“One of those wonderful books that keeps peeling back layers, not of some cosmic mystery, but of its two main characters. Nicky and Johnny end up being much more complex and ambiguous than they appear at the start of this book, and every reveal is gasp-out-loud astonishing.”
Charlie Jane Anders
“I wish I could provide a short and pithy blurb for this novel, but I can’t. It’s too involving a book, too good a book for that. It quietly drills holes in your expectations, sliding demolitions charges into them, running the wires back to a detonator, and quietly says ‘You can’t say you weren’t warned’ (and you were), before quietly leaning on the plunger.”
Jonathan L. Howard
“Gripping from the first, arresting sentence to the last, this is unsettling, mind-devouring cosmic horror at its best, wrapped around one of those captivating noooo-this-is-a-terrible- idea-but-why-what-noooo relationships.”
Jeannette Ng
“This book is the offspring of A Wrinkle in Time and the Cthulhu mythos, raised on epic poetry, the love songs and rock ballads of the ’00s, and the inescapable rhythm of Gitanjali if it were a gory tentacle-sprouting punk anthem.”
Likhain
“There’s such a searing clarity to its understanding of the world. It’s loving, too; it’s affectionate of the people and the neuroses and the gentle way we are all damaged. It relishes the few things still beautiful here. It reminds me that it is hard to not be angry at this world when you love it.”
Cassandra Khaw
“The most interesting thing is the friendship between Nicky and Johnny. During the course of the novel, Mohamed peels off the layers of this relationship with nuance and depth, and takes it to places where few novels I’ve read have gone.”
Sara Norja
“Mohamed will haunt me like no Old God ever could.”
Kari the Talewright
“Beneath the Rising is a fast-paced adventure story. It’s also a story of powerful, complex, often difficult emotions, and the tangle of friendship and devotion and other scary things, and honestly I wasn’t prepared to have so many feelings.”
Karolina Fedyk
“If you haven’t read it you should rush, rush to read Beneath The Rising. Two people who have nothing in the world except one another might be the world’s only hope for survival. It’s about love, belonging, fear and betrayal. Brilliant.”
Leo McBride
“This is not a Call of Cthulhu adventure in novel form, or a teenage romance. It is by turns funny, weird, terrifying and full of tension. Above all it is a story built on a dysfunctional relationship, which must be resolved if the world is to be saved. It is very much its own thing. And that, I think, is a very good thing.”
Salon Futura
“An enthralling Neo-Lovecraftian read with a strong pair of protagonists, a strong narrative character in Nick, and a detailed world and universe that I was very happy to spend some hours in.”
Nerds of a Feather Stick Together
FINALIST IN THE 2021 LOCUS, AURORA, CRAWFORD, AND BRITISH FANTASY AWARDS
PRAISE FOR A BROKEN DARKNESS
“With a strong sense of adventure and an engaging prose style, A Broken Darkness is a worthy, enjoyable entry to the sprawling genre of cosmic fiction.”
Aurealis
“Expertly melding sci-fi, horror, and literary elements, this is an astounding examination of a shattered friendship.”
Publishers Weekly
“Mohamed is great at making scenes feel unusual, alien and creepy. I look forward to reading the conclusion.”
Run Along the Shelves
“This book is fantastic–character growth, character interaction, scary creatures, blood and gore (but not too much), physical mutations (some body horror), and a wild exploration of alternate dimensions!”
Errant Dreams
“A brilliant sequel to a brilliant debut. It’s kind and bloody-toothed, frantic and exhausted, hilarious and wracked with the sobs and laughs of survivor’s guilt. It’s a horror novel about teenage friendship and a teenage friendship novel about cosmic horror and you’ll be hard pressed to decide which is more disturbing.”
Alasdair Stuart, The Full Lid
“The character development is mature. The crackling dialogue returns. Basically, all the elements that made Beneath the Rising so good are here again, but with the creep show elements ramped up even further. It’s a very good read.”
Damo Says
“Mohamed has done a great job of creating a magical world with scientific underpinnings that feel authentic. We really believe the pain and difficulty of losing somebody they deeply love not to death but to something much worse: opposition.”
British Fantasy Society
“At the end of Beneath the Rising, narrator Nick Prasad is left heartbroken, betrayed and disillusioned by what he has learned about Johnny. I didn’t think it could get worse for him. I was so wrong.”
Fantasy Literature
“If Mohamed’s debut novel had my curiosity, the follow-up has my attention. A Broken Darkness is a strong follow-up that builds on the foundation of its predecessor and delivers strong writing through great characterization.”
The Quill to Live
THE VOID
ASCENDANT
Premee
Mohamed
Beneath the Rising Trilogy
1. Beneath the Rising
2. A Broken Darkness
3. The Void Ascendant
Solaris Satellites
These Lifeless Things
First published 2022 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-78618-522-8
Copyright © Premee Mohamed 2022
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook production
by Oxford eBooks Ltd.
www.oxford-ebooks.com
For the friends who forgave
and did not forget
I WILL TELL YOU A STORY
Once upon a time, there was a girl who never forgot, and she killed everybody in the entire world.
Everybody except for me.
Now I am the one who remembers.
Because no one else is left.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
I woke up with my heart already bursting, as if I had been awake and running for hours. Echoes of the dream mingled with the sounds from below as I lay stiff and sweating in
Reality slowly reasserted itself. The sounds remained: but why here, why sounds? Nights were always quiet. The Tower of the Prophet was in an out-of-the-way courtyard for a reason: for silence and sleep, so that the future could speak clearly.
I slithered out of bed, absently wrapping the blanket around my bare shoulders, and crept to the window, peering down through the gap between the shutters. I had dreamt of drums, drumming. A warning of something martial approaching. And so it was: marching footsteps, iron-shod boots badly out of time, likely due to the near-spherical cobblestones that had long lost their mortar. You could break your ankle if you took a bad step in the courtyard. The stones would simply crack the bone like an eggshell.
Marching. Why marching? Who would march instead of walk? Soldiers. But our nation had no soldiers. Only the palace guards, who moved like wolves in silent packs on leather soles.
Soldiers marching in the dark. A straggling column, like ants, the shine of their armour dulled in the dust. Hundreds or thousands of helmets, too like ants, like their carapaces, hard and domed.
Make it make sense. We had no soldiers. No one had any, not in the whole planet, because they weren’t needed, because they weren’t allowed. Where had they come from? How had they gotten into the compound?
No flag, no insignia, no banners. The palace was being invaded.
I flattened myself against the wall next to the window. The how and why would not matter once the fighting began, would not affect the fires, the screaming, buildings toppling, blood flooding the ground.
Flee, that was it. Wait, no: they’d kill any civilian they saw. Or do worse yet, much worse (don’t imagine how much worse!) if they realized they had captured the Royal Prophet.
And supposing they were down there right now, a few peeled away from the column, working silently on the locks of the tower’s single door. Supposing they already knew exactly who lived here. They would come up, nothing would stop them, and the door separating my chamber from the stairs had no lock.
I cursed the tower, cursed the ancient architects who had made one way in and one way out. Unless you counted the window, of course... There was a certain temptation to leap to my death, it had to be said. A statement death: There, I steal myself from you. Do what you wish to my corpse, for you cannot have me.
But if I jumped and didn’t die? No, I wasn’t that brave. Not to lie on the ground screaming and shitting myself with broken limbs. Forget it. Have some dignity. For all the times I had wished for death over the last eight years, the wished-for deaths had been quiet, peaceful. Painless. Cowardice and numbness went together like that. I have not had to be brave for a long time.
What else. There were hundreds of guards at the palace. Might I signal for help? But how? No chance anything would be seen from up here anyway.
No, if I stayed here I might be safe for a while, but I would have to come down eventually, and when I did the same fate awaited me as if I had come down fighting. What was owed to the palace was owed; I could at least die in defence of their asset.
Decision made, I shed the blanket (at least let me die in clothes, for God’s sake), cleaned my teeth over the basin, threw on robes, finger-combed oil through my hair and beard. Pocketed a handful of protective amulets, which were as far as I could tell bullshit, but might be useful in the event of a half-hearted stab in my chest region. Even in the darkness I knew where everything was, I had spent so much time in here, there was nothing to do but memorize the place and size and weight of the things around me—not what I would call ‘mine,’ but at least ‘the Prophet’s.’
Movement in the cage next to my bed, a soft, worried shuffling, and I hesitated at that; but no. I would go down alone and so die alone.
I silently apologized to the cage’s inhabitant, and removed my single weapon from its cabinet, the ceremonial crystal dagger used only for sacrifice. It had a fine edge, which might be good for (who knew?) one stab in the face before the glassy stuff broke on the soldiers’ armour. Gingerly, I sheathed it and attached the sheath to my belt.
If invaders were ascending the stairs, they were doing it in miraculous silence. I moved softly down the steps in my own non-iron boots, one hand brushing along the smooth strip on the stone wall where generations of prophets had passed before me, the other methodically fishing amulets from my pocket and passing them over my head, one after another, forming a sort of jingling shield.
The stairs were deserted, just me for three hundred steps in unbroken darkness, and at the base, the barest gleam of a pinkish dawn, lying like a bar of iron on the stone floor, interrupted by the long shadows of those outside. Stamp, stamp, stamp. Armoured ants.
I unsheathed and got a good grip on the dagger, then worked the lock with trembling fingers. It seemed to take far longer than it should, but when the final lever clicked into place, I took a deep breath, flung the door open, and emerged into damp spring air and thousands of marching soldiers.
The soldiers didn’t even turn to look.
I stared at them, mouth open. Their armour was black, rusty, raining orange flecks as they walked. Every few steps someone stumbled on a cobblestone, hissed under their breath, kept going. Their spears, swords, and other sundry weaponry were carried at a listless angle. They looked generally as if they had already fought the war and lost.
And a dozen paces away, smack in the middle of the marching column, on the official plaque, sat my Advisor, rising far above the heads of the soldiers flowing around him and mostly obscuring the Mouth of the Prophet huddled behind him. In the dawn light he seemed flat and dark, a low-relief statue of a sphinx on its haunches, his humanish face carved of glitter-flecked black granite, then no light at all along the long, powerful neck, the neatly-folded black wings, the glossy fur of his leonine body. He spotted me cowering in the doorway, and raised one paw.
I waved back instinctively even as my mind kept screaming. What was happening? Did he know what was happening? Was the invasion over then, had it happened while I had slept? How had they done it so quietly? And who would have dared to invade us of all people, knowing who our protectors were?
He beckoned me, patient and stolid, and the noise in my head died down a little. If they spared him, the soldiers might do the same for me, and it was worth swimming across to him for answers.
The soldiers were spaced widely in their column, so I stepped cautiously into the stream and muttered “Excuse me, sorry, excuse me,” in Low Dath as I dodged and skittered between them; the few who looked up enough to see me generally tried to get out of my way, and I crossed with no more than a few bumps and stepped-on toes, both mine and theirs, to the safety of the metal plaque which, not being set above the ground surface in any way, gave only an illusory safety.
“Good morning, Prophet,” said the Advisor pleasantly, as if we were not surrounded by inexplicable soldiers. “I hope you slept well. Are you prepared to begin?”
“Am I... What is going on here?” I swung an arm widely, meaning not just the army but the neverendingness of it. “No, I am not prepared to begin! Explain this!”
“Understandable.” He had stood to greet me, but now settled back onto his haunches, folding his wings serenely over his back, a gesture he used, more or less, as punctuation. “We will wait.”
“Advisor, there cannot be a prophecy this morning. Look at this! What’s happening? Who are these people? What nation do they come from? Why are they here, what do they intend with us? Do the King and Queen know they are here? Do the guards? Were they summoned? What’s going on?”
“Are you prepared to begin?”
“No!” I turned to appeal to the Mouth of the Prophet, as they were, in aggregate, showing a far more reasonable amount of fear and uncertainty. Five of them I knew; the sixth was a trainee, I thought, from her robes. Her antennae trembled constantly as the soldiers continued to pass us, quivering as if in a sharp breeze. I didn’t speak Aeliphos pheromones but I recognized in broad strokes the smell of her terror. I was impressed that she didn’t bolt. If she did, I would be tempted to follow.
I pictured them clustered behind the Advisor, tiptoeing in his wake as he simply forged his way across the column to this island of metal; I imagined them stumbling to take their accustomed places on the six worn-smooth spots in the carved pattern, trying to find comfort in routine on a morning when the routine had been decidedly disrupted and we were all, as far as I knew, still going to die. “I order one of you to tell me what is happening!”
