by Daryl Banner
“It is an eerie place to behold, isn’t it?” murmurs Chole softly.
Tide grunts, standing next to Chole and still staring upward. He ignores his racing heart from the intimidating sight of the City over their heads, determined not to show anything on his face—even if a tiny part of him wonders if there might be some loose bit of stone or metal up there that might suddenly, and without any notice, drop to the slums below and crush the life out of him.
Arry, who has come up to Chole’s other side, whispers his awe: “Truly, an eerie place. There is so much death here. So much sadness.”
Tide rolls his eyes. He doesn’t believe for a minute that Arry’s Legacy of “sensing the emotional past of his environment” is truly his gift. How can one ever verify its accuracy? Besides, Arry only ever seems to say the most obvious things, observations even Tide could make with just a shrug and a glance around.
“Is there a passage through one of these buildings?” asks Shley, even her bright tone dampened by their deathly surroundings.
“I thought we were headed to the Pylon,” grunts Ritney, each of her footfalls heavy against the concrete and spots of stamped soil. “It is back that way, where we came. We’ve taken a wrong turn.”
“Nope.” Chole stands forward. “This is the right place, actually. Just the perfect place, in fact. I …” He chuckles suddenly. “I … can’t believe I’m about to try this.”
“Try what?” asks Shley with a hint of worry.
“I’ve procrastinated too long. I’ve …” Chole smiles. “I’ve waited.”
Tide frowns at Chole, not following his weird behavior. The young King separates from them, climbing upon a pile of soil and little curly weeds. It’s there that he stops, right atop the mound, and he bows his head and closes his eyes.
“What’s he doing …?” whispers Arry.
It’s Ritney who sucks in air and takes a step back, startling the others. Tide gives her a queer look, frustrated that he’s not following any of this. Shley seems to be the next one to grasp what’s going on, also backing away. Arry stays right in place, staring curiously at the Slum King, waiting.
A crispy, crinkly sort of noise touches Tide’s ears, like the sound of tiny insects at work in the soil. He looks towards Chole. At first, he sees nothing.
Then he notices tiny green fingers crawling slowly out of the soil beneath Chole’s feet. No, not fingers; plants. Vines. They slowly, ever slowly, twist and twirl their way out of the earth.
Tide’s eyes widen. The fuck …?
As King Chole merely seems to stand there, his head bowed, his eyes closed, his hands dropped to his sides unenthusiastically, a tiny green army of vines and weeds sprout from beneath him, a touch quicker now, and from their long, twirling fingers now come leaves. Some of them, thorns. Some of them, tiny pink and red flowers. The plants are at Chole’s knees now, still reaching, twisting, wrestling their way from the earth. It’s almost calming, in a creepy sort of way.
Then, at once, the earth seems to burst.
Tide gasps involuntarily and steps back too quickly, tripping over his own foot and falling hard onto the ground. Before him, the heap of soil beneath King Chole’s feet has burst to life. A colorful, vivid assortment of plants have sprung up, charging upwards so fast, they’re already taller than the King, then twice as tall, then three times as tall.
Tide blinks and blinks, his mouth agape, staring, dumbstruck.
Other seedlings and half-alive foliage and hidden spores beneath the dirt have joined the others, even from the other side of the square away from the King. The reach of his Legacy is far, and from all around him, the plants—and trees, I see trees, I can see fucking trees growing before me in seconds—seem to communicate with each other, joining branches and twirling about one another’s bodies as they grow and grow, towering over them tenfold, reaching, reaching, and twisting, twirling, sprouting, flourishing. Leaves of every color. Buds turning into flowers turning into multiple blooms, exploding and stretching and multiplying and growing.
The sound they make is deafening, like the tight twist of a rope as it’s drawn taut, like the groan of an old wooden house as it settles, like the flapping of wings of a great big bird, like the rush of water that pours down the dams and the currents of the canals that cut through the tenth, like the crunching of a planet breaking apart.
All of the noise grows distant as the plants’ growth slows, and what now stands tall, tall, tall before them is something of a gnarly, monstrous web of knotted trees, thick vines, and leaves stretching from the square all the way up to the jagged edge of the City, thirty or so stories above them. The foliage seems to twist and bend like a spiral set of steps, a corkscrew of green twirling its way into the sky.
“H-How …?” breathes little Arry, still standing exactly where he stood before, except now his eyes are wide and misty with shock.
From the settling, staggering growth comes Chole, emerging like a gardener who’d just finished potting a flower. He stands at the base of his creation, now considerably higher than he was before, and peers down at the four others. “Come,” he calls down to them. “It’s the lowest part of the Lifted City, but will still be a tiring ascent, so ready your legs!” When he notes their daunted faces, he scoffs. “Just think of it like a staircase. One step at a time, my friends.”
Tide stares up at their new green giant with sweat still trickling down his back. That’s one tall fucking staircase.
0276 Rone
Rone is tending to Eerie, the waning evening sunlight over their heads, the pair of them sitting in a flowery glade on the outskirts of the village Gaea, when he hears the shouting.
His ears perk up. Eerie’s one ear does not, bored as she likely is with the ever-dramatic humans she finds herself surrounded by.
The yelling persists. “Wait here,” he tells her, then takes off.
He finds several people gathered outside Chief Korah’s cabin. At the foot of the porch stands Dran, his eyes soaked with his black ink, blotches running down his cheeks, and a smear on his left shoulder. The Chief, small and unassuming and strikingly beautiful, stands at the door with her arms folded over her chest, a pinched look of forced composure on her smooth, fair face.
Rone can’t make out the words, but he finds Wick among the back of the crowd that’s formed. “So what’s going on?” he asks as he approaches his buddy.
Wick gives him a look. “Same thing that always goes on.”
Just then, Dran huffs, kicks the base of the railing, then stomps down the stairs and storms off. Some people in his way step aside at once, and then the crowd watches in part murmurs and part silence as the young man with the blackened eyes fades into the east woods.
“Nothing new here,” announces Korah to the crowd, snapping their attention to her. “Just our camp crybaby crying for attention once again. Go on about your day, now. Didn’t you see enough of his long, inky tears?” Then she turns about and disappears back into her cabin, leaving the door wide open. The crowd disperses slowly after, lackluster conversations and shrugs and small talk among them.
Rone and Wick stay right in place, staring off where Dran went. “Did he …?” starts Rone.
“For the fifth time since you arrived.” Wick glances at his friend. “I think you inspired something in him. A spark of hope that maybe not all’s lost with returning to Atlas somehow.”
“And the Chief isn’t so happy about that?”
“She’s only just yesterday decided to stop using me to pull at the other end of Metal Hand’s portal. If it can even be called that.” Wick kicks his bare foot into the dirt, stirring up a little beige cloud. “She is back to believing we’re out here in the wilds for good.”
Rone stares at that wide-open door to the Chief’s cabin. He thinks on the woman inside. She’s a cute one. Curvy and small. Two fierce little eyes that put me right in my place … She’s unlike any kind of woman he’s ever been with before.
Why is he thinking of things that stir his cock r
ight now? “Or maybe she just isn’t being talked to by the right person?” Rone suggests, then bites his lip in thought—dirty thought.
“Don’t try it.”
Rone stares at his friend. “Try what?” he asks innocently.
“Rone. Her heart died years ago. She’s not available for you.”
“Perhaps I’m not interested in her heart.”
“It’s a terrible idea. You’ve only just got here.”
“Exactly. I’m fresh meat. You know, I’m certain that’s why she reacted the way she did when I told her of my heroic feat. The way she cut me down. Berated me. Deflated me.” Rone smirks. “Foreplay.”
“You’re clearly starved for more than just chemical. You haven’t seen a lady for half a year!”
“Any boys out here catch your eye? Don’t tell me your cock doesn’t stiffen at the sight of a few.” Rone nudges him in the ribs. “Or was it me you’ve been waiting for?”
“Wow, when did your Legacy become reading minds?” Wick asks sarcastically.
If only that’s what it was … He glances back at the cabin. “She’s got a real nice, full set of tits for someone so … petite.”
“Dude.” Wick sighs and rolls his eyes. “Stop rubbing your cock.”
Rone didn’t realize he was doing it. “Had an itch.” He gives a nod at the woods. “So is it safe out there, where Dran stalked off to?”
“There’s hardly anything in those parts but a squirrel family, a load of buzzing insects at night, and birds—lots of birds. Oh, and the place where all of Metal Hand’s victims appear.”
“Sounds great.” Rone claps his hands. “Let’s check it out before I go into that cabin and make a fool of myself. Besides, Dran’s likely in need of a person to yell at.”
“After lunch,” Wick suggests, putting a hand on his shoulder. “He needs time on his own to vent, he’ll be inconsolable for a good hour or so. Plus, I haven’t eaten in over six hours. I slept too long and missed breakfast. I’m about to eat a sock I’m so hungry.”
“After lunch, then,” agrees Rone with a nod.
Wick nods, too. “Decided.”
Only thirty-six minutes later, and before anything can be served from the camp kettles and the fire, Dran returns in a sprint from the east woods, his eyes wide as he shouts out for someone to come help him. Rone and Wick are among a circle of friends, including some other folk from the ninth named Kraag and Rychis and a big-eyed fellow named Puras. At the sound of Dran’s shouting, all the chatter reduces to nothing.
“What is it?” calls out Wick as he rushes forward to meet Dran halfway across the campsite between the rows of cabins.
“Quickly,” breathes Dran, catching his breath and hardly yet able to manage a sentence. “Quick …” Breath. “Quickly …” Breath.
“Quickly?” cuts in Rone, coming to Wick’s side. “Where?”
And from the Chief’s cabin comes the clear and ringing voice of Korah, cutting right in. “What’s this about?” she calls across the way, standing at the top of her porch.
Dran faces her, doubled over with his hands propped up on his knees. He’s been running far and fast and hard, all the breath sucked from his lungs with every word he pants. “We have …” Breath. “… to go …” Breath. “… quickly …”
“Where?” asks the Chief.
“To the portal.” Dran’s eyes are wet with ink and tears. He eyes Wick meaningfully. “There’s a man.”
The words fall on a sea of blank faces. A mixed palette of shock, disbelief, and confusion spreads across that sea, slowly at first. Then the expressions become murmurs, and murmurs become questions, and questions become movement.
“CALM!” shouts Korah at the crowd. They silence at once. She lifts her chin to Dran. “There’s a man at the portal?”
“Naked, as they all are. Metal Hand touched him. But this one is sick. Very sick.”
At once, Korah comes down the steps, crosses the clearing, and makes a snap of her fingers at Puras. “You, come with, and bring your stores. Wick, you too, and bring a fold of cloth.” Then she eyes Dran. “Take us to him.”
Rone, told to stay back, stands at the edge of Gaea and watches as the four of them disappear into the east woods, which is really just a plain with a few trees here and there. They’re visible even five minutes after they’ve rushed in. After living in the Wilderwoods for so long, I wonder if I’ll ever call anything else a “woods” again.
His stomach growls.
Rone picks something out of his teeth, maybe something he ate last night. I fucking hate waiting …
Impatience gnaws at him as he lingers around the closest cabin to the east woods, one in which several of Gaea’s ladies stay, sorting and sharpening stones and sticks, and weaving leaves into rope and string. One of them, an older lady with flushed cheeks, gives him a miniscule, tired little wave, which he politely returns.
Rone walks up to the cusp of the east woods. He’s lost sight of them. His foot taps upon the ground twice a second.
Three times a second.
Five times a second.
He crosses his arms, uncrosses them, sighs, then crosses them again, drumming fingers upon his elbow.
“Fuck it,” he mumbles, then takes off into the east woods.
He only makes it three minutes out of Gaea before he spots them already returning, a fifth body being carried by Wick himself, wrapped in a generous sheet of cloth.
Rone hurries his pace to catch up with them. “Is he—?”
“He has a fever,” explains Puras. “We’ll need lots of water. Need to make a bed, too.” The six of them are now joined and hurrying back to the camp. “I suppose you could help with that, Mister Wilds.”
“Mister Wilds?” Rone puffs up his chest. “I like that name.” He catches eyes with Korah, who only looks ahead as they run, her grey and steely irises shining like silver in the sunlight.
The party arrives at camp to an already-gathered crowd of some interested, some worried, and some already having gathered certain provisions preemptively. A bed is cleared in the nearest cabin, and the young man is placed upon it—a young man Rone hasn’t even had the chance to properly get a look at, what with everyone having surrounded the bed and the cabin, still muttering their curiosities and questions.
“Out, out, out,” commands Korah, clearing the cabin of all but Wick, Puras, Rone, and Dran.
Puras is already hard at work with his hands on the young man. “Interesting,” he murmurs, then moves a hand over the man’s chest. “Hmm.” He places a finger in the young man’s ear and closes his eyes, as if listening for something. Rone assumes it’s to do with this Puras fellow’s Legacy. “Okay, okay …”
“Is he contagious?” asks Wick suddenly.
“Quiet,” demands Korah, watching Puras work with two needle eyes and a tightened jaw.
It’s now that Rone finally gets a decent look at the young man. He’s got a very lean, muscular figure, far more chiseled than bulky, his abdomen nearly sunken in. Every inch of his skin is glossy with sweat, as if it’s pouring from his body. His hair is messy and black, his bangs plastered to his forehead by sweat.
Rone squints, studying him for a long while. The boy is familiar, and yet I can’t quite place where it is I’ve seen him before …
“We’ll need more water than this,” Puras says with a nod at the table next to the bed. “He’s dehydrated. Terribly dehydrated.”
“More water!” calls a man over his shoulder, who stands at the door, too curious and nosy to have obeyed Korah’s order to leave.
The young man stirs for the first time with a moan, cracking an eye open, then shutting it again with another more sickly moan.
“Still, still, rest, rest, you’re safe, you’re safe,” Puras assures him. “You’re safe and very, very adorable.”
“Puras,” chides Korah.
He looks up at the Chief with two big, innocent eyes. “What? It is merely an observation.”
Then Rone notices the red-dyed
tips of the young man’s hair. The top of Cloud Tower, just before I fell … “The Red Bolt of Madness.”
Everyone in the cabin turns to Rone.
“Him.” Rone nods at the bed. “He … He is the Red Bolt. Impis’s Laughing Finger. The Finger Of Madness.”
The young man rasps a single word from the bed.
Everyone turns back to him now and closes in on the bed to hear his one word, even the man at the door.
“Chaos,” the young man repeats. “My name … is …” But his eyes reel back, and the fever takes him once more.
0277 Halvesand
Halvesand stares at the contents of the black bag he just stuffed. He finds himself surprised at how little he owns. Didn’t I have a dark blue hand-woven sweater? he wonders, curious. Aunt Cilla had made it for me. Or else she bought it from the tailorist markets in the seventh or eighth and lied. That’s possible. Or maybe …
Maybe he left it behind at the eleventh headquarters dormitories and had forgotten. Maybe he simply misplaced it, or someone stole it, or Aleks might have …
Halves closes his eyes. He can’t even think his brother’s name without his face burning red as flames.
Now, when he thinks on the loss of Anwick and Lionis—and maybe Link, too, if no one finds him soon—he will forever think of the day his own brother Aleksand almost killed him.
Almost. According to the main doctor who took care of him, the brothers’ scuffle resulted in a near fatal incident, and while Halves’ neck wound did rupture, the scab that very quickly formed did not show any sign of the poison on the outside. Whether it was Aleks’s hands or the armor itself that cut him open, no one could (or would) say. The entire incident led to two very opinionated doctors going back and forth on whether Halvesand’s neck is, in fact, treatable, and why they don’t try another method of removing the poison so that Halves can live a relatively normal life. A bunch of big words were thrown about. One doctor insisted they leave the wound alone, lest Halves be confined to a bed for another five months. The other said this incident was a sign that they ought to treat Halves more aggressively and slice his neck wide open, extracting all the venom. “His wound’s blood is black!” the doctor shouted, startling a nurse at his side. “It is black with death! It should not be in there!”
