by Daryl Banner
The moment they’re within range, it’s apparent that something is wrong with Chaos. He limps between the two men, and his whole front is covered in thick greyish soot. Rychis also has a mess of dirt and sand all over his face, caught in his beard, and turning his hair the color of dried clay.
It doesn’t take any special Legacy for Wick to realize, upon their reunion, that all their supplies have been swept away by the storm.
“It was some snake-like beast the height of a tower …” breathes Puras when the five of them are gathered by a large boulder that juts right out of the ground like a thick grey tooth, sitting behind it. He’s bandaging Chaos’s leg with long slivers ripped off his own shirt.
“It tunneled in and out of the sands … and it had this flat, wide tail that spun about really fast in the air,” describes Rychis. “I think it was causing all the recent sandstorms. It was pale as death.”
It’s Ferra who speaks next. “It’s pale because it lives under the ground during the day, and only come out in the night to feed.” Her glowing fingertips provide Puras the light he needs. “White wyrms.”
Chief Korah mentioned them once, Wick recalls darkly.
“We killed it,” says Chaos, his voice weak. “I struck it down with my bolt, and Rychis closed the earth upon it, choking it. We killed it.”
“Or only wounded it,” mumbles Rychis. “It burrowed back into the earth, slipping past my trap. I saw it. The fucker didn’t die.”
“Unless it bleeds out underground …?” suggests Chaos in hope.
“A thing as pale as that doesn’t bleed,” Rychis growls. “A thing as pale as that’s dead already. It’s undead.”
It’s Wick, in all his grogginess and frustration, who shouts out, “I don’t care what it is or isn’t!” His own fingertips glow, and he feels what could easily be the heat of Chaos’s fever. “We have lost all our supplies. Food. Water. Our fucking shelter. Our only cooking pot! All I have is my fucking dagger, and—” Wick could cry. “—and a lot of fucking good that’ll do us now.” He lifts his tired, dry, reddened eyes to the others. Chaos, Puras, Ferra, and Rychis look upon him, each of their gazes sobered by his angry outburst.
Or perhaps it’s the hint of a reddish, angry glow about him that is the reason for their concern. Wick closes his stinging eyes, takes a deep breath, and calms down. No use drawing upon all their powers; I might cast another accidental earthquake like the one I did in Gaea and tear out the ground from beneath our asses, or cook us all in a red bolt.
“We … need … to get out … of these fucking sands,” Wick states.
“Agreed,” mumbles Puras miserably.
Ferra moves next to Wick and puts an arm around him, feeling like some sweet, long-lost aunt or cousin of his. “We are going to be fine. We just need to get to the edge of the wilds, then trace it right on up to the Wall of Atlas itself. I know we are not far off. Don’t despair, Wick. It’s just a matter of days.”
Wick’s tired eyes meet the others’. Just a matter of days, he’d agree if he believed it. Yeah, and it’s also just a matter of days before we starve, die of dehydration, or suffer another white wyrm attack.
Or a sand wolf attack.
Or a hundred other things out here that want us dead.
It’s under the shadow of that great toothy rock that the five remain huddled as Puras nurses his Chaos, Ferra draws shapes in the sand with her glowing fingertips, and Rychis provides a shoulder against which Wick leans, closes his eyes, and hugs himself until he drifts away.
As he searches for Athan in his dreams, Wick hears the faint stirring of wind, the sands whispering, and a deep, earthy groan far away, as if something out there is searching for him, too.
0324 Link
No one truly enjoys watching someone grieve.
Not if one has a heart.
And Link Lesser has a heart, beneath all the hurt and the black he used to wear in his hair and the teenage resentment that might still stubbornly dwell somewhere in his twenty-something-year-old suspended body.
When he stands there in the kitchen and watches Emery Wise on her knees in front of her wife’s frozen-to-the-wall body, and the woman is sobbing uncontrollably, loudly, wailing, deep and heavy moans of utter anguish, Link cannot help but hurt along with her.
I’ve lost people, too, but not like this.
At least I know that Faery is alive, somewhere out there.
He doesn’t want to ruin the moment, even if time is running out and not one of them in this room is safe. He feels like he owes her this much, for the hell and the frights and the curiosities he’s made this woman endure on his behalf.
Is this Shye who watches her grieve, or Link?
Did we cause this? The woman drops onto a nearby chair, turns away, unable to see her frozen wife any longer, then cries into her hands. Or was this tragedy somehow inevitable?
Just strokes of pink paint over the canvas of time.
One pink stroke.
Then another.
Another.
“This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t lost Kendil after we freed him,” Kid mutters miserably when they’ve snuck outside.
“It’s not your fault,” Link mutters lamely, glancing back at the window, through which the now-silent shape of Doctor Emery Wise can be seen at the table with two glasses of wine she’d poured: one for her wife, untouched, and the other for herself, which she slowly sips as she stares, silent and numb, at her frozen lover.
“I thought …” Kid starts, then her voice falters. “I … I thought Kendil would help us. I thought freeing him would … w-would make him our ally. I thought he’d somehow lead us to—”
“To Faery, yes, I know.”
“This is wrong. This is all horribly wrong.”
Link puts an arm around Kid, hugging her against his side. “Listen to me. Are you listening? You remember when we first found that house at the edge of tenth? Your childhood home?”
“Yes. We only found it because I remembered it.”
“But do you remember what your mom told me? About all the strokes of pink paint? That was what she called it.”
“Pink paint …” Her eyes wander, remembering.
Link smiles. “There was a time—the very first time I traveled ten years into the past. And in that first time, you were not born yet.”
“I’ve heard all this already.”
“What do you think happened that first time you watched your father be dragged out of the house, presumed dead?”
Kid’s face wrinkles up, frustrated at even having to think of it.
“When he—When I woke up in that white room in Facility and faced off with that red-eyed doctor—that doctor, there in that house, who struck a sickle blade into my neck to take my blood and tissue—who do you think assisted me in pretending to have powers?”
Her gaze drops to the grass. “I … wouldn’t have been there the first time around.”
“Do you see where I’m going with this?”
Kid turns to him. “That it doesn’t matter what we do? That all of our stupid actions are useless, and if I didn’t help you, you would’ve done everything differently, you still would’ve invented Shye, Kendil still would’ve somehow broken free, Doctor Emery’s wife still would be frozen to a wall, and Faery would be lost.” She turns angry in an instant. “What’s the point of being here if we can’t change anything? If we can’t save my mom? Or prevent the coming Madness? I’m just growing older. You’re not aging at all.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not! You don’t see it. We look the same fucking age!”
Link pulls her hands toward him to try and hug her, but she yanks them away with a scowl, letting go.
I hate when she does this. “Kid, I can’t see you …” he hisses out.
“And if we can’t change a thing,” she goes on, her voice coming from somewhere ahead, “then why are we even hiding??”
“Kid, give me your hands. I can’t see you.”
&nb
sp; “Ames isn’t hiding,” she goes on, her voice hovering in front of him. He reaches out for her, but then her voice comes from the side, having parried. “He’s perfectly in plain sight ever since the day I let him go. He works for Sanctum. He’s referred to by first name by the Peacemaker Janlord himself. Ames hasn’t destroyed all of Time for doing so. He isn’t causing all of existence to … to … to collapse.”
“Akidra …” Link is growing more and more annoyed. “You have to give me your hands. Right now. Our first and only rule …”
“Don’t be seen. Tiptoe. Whisper. Blah, blah, blah. I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of being careful. I’ve spent years being careful and it has done nothing! We’re running out of time, Link. I’m …” Her voice quivers. “I’m running out of time …”
Link peers nervously across the yard at the back window, then cowers next to a thin tree, praying it’s enough. “Akidra …!” he hisses.
Her voice is farther away now. “We need to do something, dad! Something about Kendil! Something about Faery! If you won’t …”
“Akidra! Don’t do something stupid! Come over here and give me your hand!”
“That’s not my name.”
After a worried glance at the back window, he dares to slip out from behind the tree, hurrying toward where her voice last was. His hands find nothing as he reaches blindly through the air. Then the flowers shift without wind, and he pursues her. “Kid …”
“That’s not my name, either.” Her voice comes from behind.
Link spins, blinking through the darkness. “Come on, Kid!”
“I’m going to find Kendil and Ames. I’m going to confront them both. I’m going to make this right, dad.”
“NO!” Link can’t even control his own volume now, shouting at her. He dives forward, his backpack jostling on his shoulders, but she parries, the whispers of the grass and flowers beneath their feet the only sign of her existence. In his frenzy, the squashed flowers under his feet start to glow from his altered Legacy. “Kid, don’t do this!”
It doesn’t even occur to him until now that she called him “dad”. Twice. He wonders if even she noticed.
The flowers stir and dance, then the gate of the backyard opens.
Link pursues her at once, full sprint. He watches desperately the faint stirring of grass and listens to the soft scraping of shoes, but the sound is confusing to track with his own footfalls in the mix. When there is no more grass left to stir by Kid’s running, he stops at once and listens anxiously, eyes wide open, breath held.
He hears nothing.
Not even wind.
Not even breath.
He takes two steps forward, then turns. He looks to the left and to the right, still holding his breath. She stopped running, he decides, knowing her. She is hiding nearby, hiding and staring at me, waiting for me to go. She could even be standing in the middle of the street.
This is my time for a final appeal. “Akidra …” he starts, softly and sensitively, “I know you are frustrated, and I know you are hurt. So am I, and so am I. But … we have always done everything together. We are the only people we can trust in this world. In this … fell city. Father and daughter. We were once just friends. A slum girl, and a Wrath rogue. Don’t punish me or blame me for our lack of progress, please. Don’t … Don’t hurt the only person you have. Akidra.”
He looks around soundlessly, listening for any sign of her.
Doubt begins to fill him. Is she even here? Am I speaking to the walls and the stone? Real, true terror arrests his heart as he takes a few more steps into the street. None of the lights here in the Lifted City buzz and flicker and sputter like they do in the slums, so it is in the perfectly-lit stillness and silence that Link searches, his eyes wide and hungry for any sign—any at all—of his daughter.
Absolutely no sound comes to him.
Absolutely no movement pulls upon his eyes.
“Kid?” He turns around and looks behind him at a waist-high wall of polished stone. He leans over it, searching the other side. “Kid?” He turns back and looks toward the bushes near the front of the Wises’ house, hunting for sound. Too many seconds have gone by without a trace of anything. He is truly scared now. “… Akidra?”
He leans back against that wall, despairing. He doesn’t make a sound, just in case the girl decides to show herself, or come up to touch his hand as she always does after they fight, or even to make her move from wherever she hides, racing off down the street. Link listens and waits, deadly silent, drawing no breath, not even moving a single fingertip as he watches.
She will make herself known, he tells himself, over and over. She will come out. She will say she’s sorry. I will say I’m sorry. Neither of us can do this alone, she knows that.
Five minutes turn into ten. And then ten into sixty. And as the distant horizon starts to crack open like an egg, he hardly notices the deep blue shell of night giving way to the rich, golden sunrise.
And it’s the loneliest sunrise Link has ever, ever known.
0325 Athan
Observing the work of Slum King Chole is as much a reward for the long journey as anything. Before his eyes, a spread of dead crops turn into swirling, writhing masses of fully-grown, healthy plants.
Section by section, the young, unassumingly attired man with the freckled boyish face raises the floral dead, reviving everything to a state that, arguably, is healthier and stronger than it was before. Even plants out of season bloom with fervor, their fruits and flowers flourishing in front of them. His every effort is met with the gasps and applause of countless Greensfolk.
I suspect that Chole has made many new friends today, observes Athan, smiling.
Chole admits to the Greens Warden that, due to the staggering size of the Greens that stretch along the Wall across the back end of five wards, it would likely take many days until the work is finished. The Greens Warden invites Chole and his crew—a triplet of armored guards from the Coalition—to his main office to share a meal and discuss things further. Athan figures their time together to be spent, and so to allow them privacy, Athan gives Chole a firm handshake and a few final words of appreciation before they part ways.
“He’s so … nice,” says Edrick as the four of them stroll along the dirt path. It cuts through the Greens toward the ninth.
“Quite,” agrees Athan. “He’s doing Atlas an enormous service. I can’t believe a man like that exists. So selfless. Astonishingly so.”
“Almost makes you want to find his flaw,” mumbles Edrick.
Athan laughs. “We’re always looking for the darkness in people. Why can’t we stop for once and merely appreciate the light?”
Edrick blows air out of his lips at that. “Honey, when you make a fuck out of as many people as I have, you know the real nature of humanity, and it’s not all songs and sugar cakes.”
Locke and Nickel follow some paces behind them. Athan peers over his shoulder to find Nickel staring at his backside with a hard, frustrated expression. When he’s caught, Nickel looks away at once, pretending to be staring at all the crops they’re passing.
Athan sighs privately. Something’s wrong with that boy. I think I may have been too cold to him in the Core.
But shouldn’t he understand? Shouldn’t Nickel realize all the pain Athan’s been through, and that perhaps he is not in a proper emotional state to be pulling Nickel through his own grief?
When they are mere minutes from reaching the neighborhoods of the ninth, Athan pulls back and decides to confront Nickel. “You haven’t said a word since we left the first.”
Nickel only shrugs, his hands buried halfway down his pockets.
Athan nods. “I was a bit short with you. In the Core. I’m sorry.”
After some time, Nickel finally relents. “It was only a game.”
“Yes,” agrees Athan, glad the boy finally spoke. “Just a dumb … dumb game.”
“You’ve lost your brother, too. Your whole family.” Nickel looks at Athan thoughtfully. �
�You’ve lost so many. How do you heal from all of that? How do you possibly heal?”
“You don’t,” answers Athan. “You become someone else.”
Nickel gazes downward with that, absorbing.
When they turn the all-familiar corner leading into the concrete streets of the outer ninth neighborhoods, a disconcerting air befalls the party of four. Something isn’t right. The dirt field on which people train is empty. When they turn down their street, they find little to no activity, all the lights of the houses on with only a few souls left outside here and there.
“Where’s everyone?” asks Locke, holding his scarf, frowning.
“Good question,” mutters Athan, glancing between the houses. “Was there a recent storm, perhaps?”
“I would’ve heard it,” notes Edrick with a flick of his own ear.
They reach the Lesser house, and Athan lets himself inside. He stands in the kitchen and peers around, but there isn’t a sound. The others wait in the kitchen as he hops up the narrow stairs to check the rooms, but he doesn’t find Arrow, nor Ivy, nor Pratganth. Even in Arrow’s room, he only sees all his charms laid out and a computer that seems lifeless, shut off or run out of power.
Athan comes down the stairs to rejoin the others. “Nothing.”
“Oh, fuck,” spits out Edrick suddenly.
Athan, Locke, and Nickel turn to him expectantly.
Edrick gasps and slaps a hand to his cheek. “Oh, fuck. That is not good. Wait, what??” He grabs his own hair. “Arrow? Really??”
Athan comes up to him. “What are you talking—?”
“Hush, hush, I’m trying to listen.” Edrick closes his eyes.
It’s then that Athan realizes the pleasure boy is using his Legacy to overhear a conversation that could be taking place in any number of houses nearby. Athan has no idea whether Edrick can focus that Legacy, or if he’s hearing everyone’s words that surround him. He must be able to focus it, Athan decides, otherwise everything would be deafeningly, confusingly loud all the day long.
