by Daryl Banner
“What’s that?” asks Ivy.
She is referring to the small, cup-shaped bit of metal Arrow has been idly playing with in his hand. He gives it a shrug, then pockets it away. “A useless charm I haven’t heard a peep from in months.”
“I would like to kiss you.”
Arrow snaps his eyes to her, surprised.
She is looking out at the street below, not at him. “But if I were to kiss you,” she goes on, “then it may lead to other things. And if we do those other things again …” Ivy’s breasts lift and fall with a deep breath. “… I worry it will become a habit of ours.”
“A habit?”
Ivy shrugs. “I don’t suppose it’s a bad habit. I … rather liked our tryst in the Charms Headquarters.” She gives him a sweet, dignified look, as if proud of herself for using his nickname for the room. “You are an excellent kisser.”
“You are … a beautiful face.”
Ivy’s eyebrows pull together, and then the girl laughs. Arrow’s insides break apart at the sight of her joyous laughter. I could listen to it all day. “I am a beautiful face?? What does that even mean? Oh, Arrow, you are so filled with surprises …”
He goes in for a kiss.
She kisses him back.
His head swims from the joy of their soft lips touching. Inside, he is dancing and screaming and laughing and bursting.
Ivy Caldron is the most beautiful girl in the Last City of Atlas.
When the kiss ends, the two look into one another’s eyes. Ivy bites her lip, then says, “Arrow, I—”
“AWAY FROM HER!” cries a voice.
Arrow is on his feet at once.
From the hatch comes Pratganth, scrambling onto the roof to join them, but with the two already upon it, there is little room to move about. The flat part of the roof is not so big.
“What is this about, Pratty?” asks Ivy, alarmed.
“Stay away from that man!” he cries, trembling. “He has a gun! He has a g-g-g-gun!”
Arrow can’t make any sense out of this. Why has Prat come up to the roof to warn her of his gun? How does he even know that he has it on him? He’s gone to my desk and found it missing, of course, Arrow has to assume, and of course the idiot Prat would panic.
“Away from him!!” cries Prat, maneuvering himself on the roof to try and get between them, but one wrong step will send him falling down the sloped side of the roof and into the Lesser backyard.
“What has gotten into you, Pratty??” Ivy is still seated, but her eyes are wide. “Sit down before you fall!”
“He has a gun! And he means to end your life with it!”
It’s that piece of information that turns every inch of Arrow’s skin to ice. Eyes, unblinking. Lips, parted. Throat, dry as sand.
“W-What?” comes Arrow, his chest feeling hollow.
How does he know?
Ivy is the first one to snort with disbelief. “You are drunk, Pratty. You’ve gotten into the Penling’s cabinets again!”
“I am NOT drunk!” he screams. “I am NOT drunk! Arrow has been plotting your death since he found you in the sixth! He was coming to kill you that day! With that very gun!”
“Pratty!” cries Ivy, appalled at his words, seeing them as a lie.
“He has his gun with him now! Fully loaded! Bullets and all!”
“Stop this!” she cries.
“Ask him! Ask him to show you his gun!” Prat’s voice cracks in the cold wind that pushes the grey, heavy clouds in the sky. A boom of distant thunder rumbles by. “He is going to take your life!”
Ivy, her mouth agape at Prat’s exclamation, turns now to face Arrow, her hair thrashing about in the wind, covering half her face. “What is he going on about?” she asks, drawing some of her hair behind an ear unsuccessfully. “What is this about a—?”
Before she finishes the words, Arrow has the gun drawn.
But it is not aimed at Ivy; it is aimed at Prat.
“Arrow!” she cries, hands to her mouth.
“Get down,” he orders her. What am I doing?
The look of horror in Pratganth’s eyes is reflected in Arrow’s. Why did I pull the gun out? Why didn’t I deny it? Why didn’t I just call him a fool and be done with it?
It’s then that Arrow notices the crowd that’s formed down on the streets both in front of and behind them. People are watching.
The breath that goes in and comes out of Arrow’s constricting throat is choked and desperate and audible. What am I doing? The gun trembles as he keeps it aimed at Prat.
“Ivy …” chokes Prat. “G-Go. Behind me. Go down the hatch.”
But she isn’t listening to him. Her beseeching eyes are upon the gun, and then upon Arrow. “What are you doing?” she breathes, at a loss, her words nearly carried away by the wind.
I’ve been asking that same thing.
He hasn’t an answer for himself. Why should he have one for her? All the folk he knows and loves of the ninth, the folk who have come to respect him, who see him as a leader, even the children, even the elderly, they are all paying witness to this.
A deep sense of ruin and dread fills Arrow.
At once, Prat makes a move, rushing around Ivy. In one bold, uncharacteristically brave act, he charges toward Arrow.
Arrow sucks in air.
He squeezes his finger.
One loud crack breaks the world in half, and the crowds in the street scream, and Ivy shrieks, and Pratganth doubles over.
Arrow, horrorstruck, watches his once-friend tumble sideways down the sloped roof, screaming. He rolls and rolls, then disappears as he drops into the backyard soundlessly.
And on this fall, Pratganth does not float.
A boom of thunder chases its way across the sky, and then there is cold and heavy rain upon their heads.
“Arrow!” Ivy screams.
Don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. At once, he rushes to the opened hatch. Nearly tumbling onto the upstairs landing, he then hurries down the narrow staircase and shoves his way into the backyard through the opened sliding glass doors. Through the rain and the distant shouting of alarmed ninth folk, he hears the pained moans of Pratganth lost somewhere in the overgrowth.
Ivy, seconds later, is at his side. “Pratty!” she cries out, her eyes searching for him.
From their back, a storm of people have rushed into the house. Ahead of them is Arcana, who shouts, “Medic! Hurry! To the yard, quick, quick!” When her eyes find Arrow, she hurriedly adds, “I was fooled, I was fooled, he said he knew everything, I misunderstood, I should’ve probed his mind, you were once close friends, I didn’t—”
“It’s over,” says Arrow simply, his body feeling like a shell, his limbs as weak as snapped twigs, the gun weighing so heavily in his hand—heavier and heavier by the second.
Two individuals rush past them, charging into the backyard for Prat. There is shouting at the front door of the Lesser’s house. Glass breaks in the kitchen. His ears are flooded with shouts.
Listen, said his father. Swallow the words you most want to say, and— “Arrow?” whimpers Ivy.
His eyes find hers through all the madness. He is trembling so badly, his teeth literally clatter. There might be a tear in his eye, if it is not a raindrop. He’s ruined everything.
The shouting in the Lesser house grows. They’re calling out for justice. They’re calling out for Guardian.
They’re calling Arrow’s name, and it is with no love for him.
“I have to go,” he says and realizes at once, then pulls away from her.
But she does not let go. “Arrow!” Her small hands cling to his like steel claws, pulling upon him almost painfully, desperately. “No! Arrow! Please!”
“I have to go!” he cries out, his voice breaking.
“Arrow!”
Just as the angry mob of weapon-wielding, justice-seeking ninth folk break through to the backyard, Arrow has leapt onto the giant metal disc thing, Ivy wrapped about his arm and screaming.
Th
en the world bends away.
Arrow loses every bit of the meal he had somewhere, ejected from his suddenly unstable, twisting stomach.
A scream of agony rips through his ears.
Rain and lightning and ice cut through him as if he was made of motes of dust, the elements having their way with every inner part of him—his heart, his stomach, his lungs, his bowels, his cock, his bones, his every nerve ending.
When the world comes back and he is dumped onto the ground of a Lifted City greenhouse, he is still screaming.
“Arrow, Arrow …” softly moans a voice near his ear.
He sucks in the remainder of his screams, hugging himself, as if needing to pull back together all the parts of him that he felt were ripped apart during the travel. Every limb feels broken and made of crippled glass. He sees only stars and spots. From his face to his toes, pain pricks him with a thousand needles.
“Arrow …”
I am dead, Arrow thinks and wishes and begs. I am dead. I have died. I am greeting Three Sister and making way for my father on the other side of the light.
He blinks.
Ivy …?
“Arrow …” Her face, pale and tear-ridden, looms over him. She grips his shoulders, and even her touch is painful. “Get up. We’ve gone somewhere. We’ve … Y-You’ve taken us through the teleportal. We’ve gone somewhere, Arrow.”
He rolls onto his side, his teeth clattering. Am I cold, or am I hot, or am I dying? He pushes himself off the ground, his legs trembling, and then his eyes make out the same large Lifted mansion he had seen upon his first visit. They are in the empty glass shed once again, its glass now rippling with cold tears of rain drawn down its sides in ropes and tiny currents.
“Arrow …”
He has experienced the worst of traveling through the charm. Perhaps his body remembers the sickness, and pure adrenaline is pushing him through its effects. “There is a man with a …” Pain cuts through him. Arrow clenches his eyes, wincing. “There is a man … a man with a bright yellow beard. He lives in …” Another nauseating bolt of pain. “… in that mansion. He’ll see us and call for Guardian.”
“We need his help. Arrow, get up. We—”
“I can’t.” Arrow’s face can’t decide whether it wants to grit its teeth to bear the pain or collapse and cry.
Ivy ignores him and pulls him to his feet, inspiring a screaming grunt of pain from Arrow. She guides him out of the glass house.
Cold rain assaults them at once. Stumbling across the perfectly-kept, bright green lawn, she holds him every step of the way with an arm over his back. He trips twice, nearly collapsing to the grass, but her determination becomes his, and he forces himself to carry on.
They stand on the back porch. Ivy bangs her small fist against the big door. No answer. Three more bangs. Still no answer.
“Ivy …” Arrow breathes, sick.
“We’re going to invite ourselves in,” she decides boldly, turning the doorknob. “The owner will understand. Perhaps he’s not home.”
Ivy and her foolish Hightower innocence …
The door swings open. Ivy brings Arrow inside, and when the door shuts at their back, the two are greeted by the first moment of calm since that gun went off. The soft silence surrounds them.
“Here, this way,” guides Ivy as she brings him through a room, under a great white archway, and toward a couch.
Arrow falls onto it with a grunt, his face buried in a pillow. Over him, a large curved window overlooks the enormous, bright green backyard from where they came. Rain trickles down the glass, the sky looking like a swirled wash of grey, half-stirred pudding.
Arrow sighs heavily, closing his eyes.
“I’ve treated you before for this,” she murmurs quietly. “I’ll treat you again.”
Arrow can’t respond. He sees over and over again behind his eyelids that last look of horror in Pratganth’s eyes before the gun went off, and then his body tumbling down the roof, disappearing to the grass below.
I’ve ruined everything.
“Is it true?” she then asks, her voice so soft, it’s like she’s asking herself. “Is what Pratty said true …?”
Arrow doesn’t answer.
“I’ll get you a glass of water.” She rises from the couch, and her footsteps ring across the hard floors of the room as she goes.
0318 Forgemon
It was not an accident.
Someone shoved food down the boy’s throat. Of that, Forgemon is one-hundred-percent certain, even without his Legacy.
It might have been two people—one to pin him down, the other to stuff him with his latest lunch or dinner. Forge is sickened by the irony, shoving the boy full of the food he tried to steal. He is certain that was the message the boy’s murderers meant to make.
Forgemon stops in the hall and chokes on his own breath, more tears dropping from his eyes.
Every bit of math now points directly down a tunnel of doom.
How did I not see this coming?
He wipes clean his eyes, pushes himself off the wall, and moves with a purpose. The boy was wrapped in a thick woolen blanket and the cell door was shut. According to his calculations, exactly forty-eight people had access to the key that opens that door.
Forty-eight possible murderers.
When he makes it to the junction, he is astonished to find every one of the people there he requested. Why am I astonished? This is the math, playing out before your eyes. This is why you called for these specific people. But he finds the extra element of having his nerves shaken by the unexpected event in the Catacombs to be detrimental to seeing clearly through his maths. Focus, Forge.
After a simple greeting and a calling to order, Forge clears his mind at once, stands atop his stack of crates, and gets to the point. “There is a mutiny brewing among seventeen and a half percent of our Undercity, and that number is growing by the hour.”
The crowd of men and women glance among one another, a whisper here, a murmur there, scandalized eyes searching about as if to find a rogue or two among them.
“Aye, but that is precisely why the ninety-three of you are here right now,” explains Forge. “Handpicked by those I know I can trust. Each and every one of you is loyal to the Undercity, and to me. I also know—as my Legacy tells me with absolute certainty—that not one of you will balk if I ask too much. Not one of you will disobey if I make a request that, to you, might seem wrong. Not one of you will question me, because all ninety-three of you have felt the full power of my knowledge. Aye, I know things. But it runs deeper, and forever into our future, and without me, this Undercity is lost.”
All of their eyes are upon him.
All of their hearts beat as one.
It is the only solace Forge can find in the impending mayhem that is to befall the whole lot of them.
Wyass speaks first from the crowd, just as Forge thought he would. “Tell us what to do. Tell us what the plan is. Tell us what we need to know.”
Forge keeps his face absolutely plain as he says this next part. “We need to turn this Undercity back into the Keep.”
Not a breath is drawn.
Perhaps someone is waiting for Forge to announce that it is all a joke, that everyone was called forth to celebrate someone’s birthday, that he wanted to give each of them a promotion.
But no joke comes.
And no birthday songs are sung.
“What?” comes Benton’s voice, his face wrinkled in confusion.
Forge is glad it is Benton who speaks first. He faces him. “I have asked you, Benton, to round up all of the former guards of the Keep, and this is the precise reason. In fact,” he says, facing the rest of the crowd, “it is the reason for all of your attendance. You are now the new body of guards for the Undercity. You will all be manning and supervising the strict and timely operations of every aspect of this facility. The deepest sect of the Catacombs will be cleared and used for offenders who do not comply.”
“The people won’t stand for t
his,” protests Gaelia, though her words are more in wonder than they are in protest. Her goggles make her eyes look twice their size, magnifying her blinks. “They’ll rebel. They’ll hate you.”
“The seventeen and a half percent will try,” Forge agrees with a solemn nod, “which is approximately one hundred and seventy of our people, if I am to calculate correctly that there is no more than a thousand among us. But the rest, they will understand that they need governing. We can no longer pretend to be a city of freedom down here. We cannot be truly free, not when each and every gear in the machine of this place must run in order for it all to run. When one gear sticks, the whole machine stops, and I promise you this, it will mean doom for us all. This is a matter of survival. Not tyranny.”
The word might’ve been a mistake to utter. Through the crowd of newly-appointed guards, a chill falls. Tyranny …
Despite what I claim, isn’t that exactly what I’m declaring myself? A King of the Keep? … A tyrant?
“So you want us to … be the enforcement of the Undercity,” Wyass then says in summary, his voice a little lighter.
“Like Guardian,” Benton finishes, crossing his arms.
Forge folds his arms. “If you do your part in keeping the people in line, if I am the one and only that you report all your findings to, and if we continue to show that bad actions do result in punishment, then we will survive the worst of this.”
“That, we can do,” promises Benton with a glint of purpose in his dark eyes.
“What of this redstone mail?” asks Gaelia. “You wished us to come gathered in redstone mail, armed with—”
“Yes, for each of you,” Forge states. “The finest redstone mail, at all times. Plus, you’ll be armed with a pistol and sword, so as—”
“Exactly like the prison guards of before,” murmurs a man in the crowd near Wyass, fear in his words. “I … I was hit over the head with the blunt of one of those swords. I don’t much like that.”
“Well, now you’ll have your own—and you must to keep all in your agency in line.” Forge eyes the others. “Every agency.”
“Aye, we will. I’m sure of it,” says a tall woman by the edge of the crowd with dark hair cropped at her chin. “No one in the armory holds any ill will towards you, King. You’re respected among us.”
