by Eva Brandt
“Good morning, people of Gaia and Tartarus. I am General Harold Rhodes. We are honored to be here, in your wonderful town.”
I doubted that very much. As cities went, New Washington wasn’t very big. The old capital of the United States of America had been heavily damaged by the Sun-Dwellers, and it had yet to fully recover. The presentation was only held here because of the historical value of the place. I’d heard the mecha had been displayed in other countries as well, under similar circumstances. It had been particularly popular in Nouveau Paris.
But most of the Chimera nobility—the general included—looked down on Gaia’s children. They lived up in the skies, risking their lives to protect us from potential invaders. For that, we were all grateful. I would’ve been happier about it if, half the time, I hadn’t felt inferior because I’d been born breathing the natural air of earth, not the filtered oxygen of Tartarus Base.
On the stage, General Rhodes extended his arms, as if he was trying to embrace us all. “We’ve always wanted to share the blessings of Tartarus with Gaia’s children, the way they so generously share Gaia’s Gift with us. To this end, we have brought you one of the most magnificent chimeras to ever be created, the Sphinx.”
As General Rhodes finished his little speech, the tarp on the chimera disappeared. It must’ve been a holographic projection. We didn’t use that kind of technology a lot on Earth, but for Chimera Warriors, it was probably normal. In any case, now that the hologram was gone, I finally got a look at what I’d come here to see. I wasn’t close enough to distinguish the details with my own eyes, but the image on the screen filled me with awe.
As its name pointed out, this particular mecha looked like the legendary Sphinx. With a humanoid head, but a leonine body and the wings of an eagle, it would undoubtedly do massive damage to the forces of the Sun-Dwellers. “It’s beautiful,” I heard myself say.
Fortunately, the men around me were too distracted by the sight to hear me speak. Otherwise, I would’ve blown my cover and ended up in a lot of trouble.
“The Sphinx is one of our deadliest chimeras, a new model designed to have the strength of the Typhon and the maneuverability of a Harpy. With mechas like the Sphinx, we are sure we will be able to keep Terra safe for many years..”
His words sliced through my haze of admiration like a knife. If this mecha was so important, why was he parading it around like this? Shouldn’t it be up in space, in Tartarus Base, in the hands of a well-trained noble who could do more than gawk at it? Why was it dormant?
I wanted to ask, but even if I’d been able to get close, I would’ve never received an answer. And in the end, my confusion and doubts mattered very little, as did General Rhodes’s intentions.
All of a sudden, an explosion shook the stage, setting half of it ablaze. General Rhodes was too close to duck and he was thrown back, straight into the chimera.
The screen that had been displaying the beautiful machine cracked, so I couldn’t see what had happened to him, but I wasn’t optimistic about his chances.
The sound of gunshots and magical blasts filled the air, followed by chanting that was much too familiar for my comfort. “May Gaia’s Gift flow over us and grant us the power to win this battle.”
I felt the earth vibrate beneath my feet and tasted dread in my mouth. A chimera’s core couldn’t be destroyed, no, and the special alloy used for the creation of its body was supposed to be resilient to both heat and other type of physical damage. But I wasn’t sure if that was true for dormant chimeras. Besides, magic had always been a wild card, and some people didn’t approve of the way The Grand Judiciary dealt with things.
“Get it!” I heard someone shout over the screaming of the crowd. “Get the machine!”
Were they crazy? A chimera wasn’t meant to be wielded for any other reason except to protect our planet. To claim it for one’s own benefit and selfishness was an abomination. The gods themselves would punish anyone who dared.
But in the past century, people had begun to forget about all the sacrifices our ancestors had made and everything we’d lost because of our arrogance. My mother, who was one of the Gifted, had always taken the time to remind me, because even if I didn’t have her power, I was still one of Gaia’s children. “We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, Selene,” she’d often say. “We need to protect this world we were given, at all costs.”
People still believed in the power of the gods, but they also took it for granted. Our attackers were a clear example.
In an ideal world, I could’ve done something about their madness and made them see the error of their ways. But this was not an ideal world, and I was just one young woman in a crowd of men, all of whom were angry, terrified, and wanted to get out of there.
They started shoving each other in an attempt to escape, and within seconds, I became too busy trying to survive the chaos to worry about what the gods thought about this unfortunate development.
I held onto Louise as tightly as I could, intent on keeping my friend safe. In the dim morning light, she looked so pale she was almost translucent and I cursed myself for having dragged her here with me. “Come on,” I said, trying to pull her away from the crowd. “We need to take refuge somewhere.”
There were too many people here, but if we went underground, we’d be safe. We could just toss our disguises aside and nobody would hurt us. Gaia’s followers—even the extremists—very rarely hurt women, so all we had to do was separate ourselves from the mass of men.
It was easier said than done. The number of men was overwhelming, and compared to their general bulk, we were fairly small. I was stronger than Louise and I managed to force my way through, but it was a struggle. The fire was spreading, threatening to cut off our avenues of escape.
That was when another disaster struck. In the agitation, my hood fell off and my hair clips snapped.
Despite all the explosions going off around us, it only took a couple of seconds for our presence to be noticed. With my hair loose, I stood out like a beacon. I wished I hadn’t let my mother convince me to not cut it off.
A wild-eyed man got in my way, snarling at me in a mix of anger and terror. He produced a knife from his jacket and pointed it at me, his hand shaking. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of those terrorists!”
Normally, I would have denied it, but at that moment, the words didn’t come to my lips. My mind went blank and I couldn’t find anything to say.
Truth be told, if I had belonged to the group of attackers, the man wouldn’t have stood a chance. One of the Ungifted could never go against someone with the power of the gods flowing through their veins. No matter who guided them—Gaia or Tartarus—such people could only be stopped by others just like them. A plain knife would’ve likely not even scratched me.
But fear wasn’t rational, and the man wasn’t thinking straight. To make matters worse, he had plenty of friends and allies. Someone came up from behind us and pushed Louise into me. She tripped, almost sending me sprawling to the ground. I didn’t fall, but it was a close call.
The shove snapped me out of my shock and I forced an answer past my numb lips. “I’m not a terrorist. I just came here to see the chimera, just like—”
“Bitch!” one of the men cut me off. “She came to spy on us. She came to spy on us for the Sun-Dwellers!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. This was the worst possible time to run into someone who believed in that fairytale. Descriptions of Sun-Dwellers had always been unclear, but some sources had claimed they were always redheads. The rumor had spread, and in the years after the war, humans with hair of that color had been looked down upon, persecuted, and even killed. But the information had been identified as false, and the campaign against us had stopped. High Priestesses of Gaia had deliberately had sex with redheaded men in the hope of birthing children who would prove that we were all just human.
It had mostly worked, and now, things were pretty much okay. But there was still the occasional wacko who came up with
a conspiracy theory. And now, I’d stumbled into one of them.
Under different circumstances, I would’ve found it ridiculous. Ironically, some of the other people here would’ve felt the same. But terror did strange things to people, and right now, they needed someone to blame.
“Get her!” the crazy stranger bellowed. “Catch her before she uses her magic on us!”
The man closest to me complied. I elbowed him in the gut, mentally thanking my father for having given me lessons of self-defense. Then, I aimed for his groin, the area where I knew I could cause the most pain in the shortest amount of time. He let out a sharp cry and went down like a rock.
I’d have been happier about it had three other men not taken the first one’s place. Behind me, I could now see the fire growing brighter and fiercer.
“Are you all crazy?” I asked them. “We need to get out of here. This place is going to burn to the ground.”
“Not if you stop it!” one of the men said. “The spies of the Sun-Dwellers have power over flame. You can put out that fire. Do it and we’ll let you go.”
He was completely insane. A Sun-Dweller spy wouldn’t have bothered to have a conversation with a human at all. Then again, Sun-Dwellers had been pretty straightforward people and hadn’t really sent spies behind the front lines at all, since three-quarters of the time, they hadn’t been very good at staying under the radar.
I might’ve taken an approach similar to that of a Sun-Dweller had it been in my ability. Not that I had any desire to carbonize people, but I didn’t want to die either.
Gaia help me, if I escaped this place with my life, I’d… I didn’t know what I’d do, but I’d make sure it left an impression.
Why, oh why, had I been born one of the Ungifted? If I’d been able to wield Gaia’s magic, I would’ve never ended up in this situation, to begin with. I would’ve been too busy terra-forming the still devastated areas of Earth to worry about how beautiful chimeras were.
“Look,” I tried again, “we can’t do anything like that. We’re just regular, Ungifted humans like you. Be reasonable.”
“Oh, we’re perfectly reasonable,” another man said. He was older, and in his cold eyes, I saw death and war. “If you really are Ungifted humans, then we might not be so unlucky after all. The terrorists won’t harm us as long as we have you with us.”
At least he wasn’t a complete idiot and he realized that too. But that didn’t help me much, considering what it meant for me and Louise.
Somewhere in front of us, an explosion of bright green illuminated the horizon, making the sky glow with an almost sickly, poisonous light. I shouldn’t have seen it that way, because the source of the magic was Gaia herself. But there were some things that could corrupt even the powers of the gods, and the will and mistakes of mankind had always been among them.
“P-Please,” Louise stammered. “This is pointless. Let us go. We should all be trying to make our escape together instead of fighting.”
“There’s no escape now, girl,” the older man said. “I’ve seen those terrorists fight before. They call themselves Gaia’s children, but they don’t care who they kill as long as it’s one of the Ungifted—and a man. You’re our ticket out of here. We’ll use that.”
Unfortunately for us, the man underestimated the extent of the violence the attackers were willing to inflict in order to claim the chimera for themselves. I had no idea how it happened or what could’ve led them to use such powerful magic, but the ground beneath us began to change color and the trimmed grass started to grow. That wouldn’t have been much of a threat, but it was just an omen for what was really coming.
The earth pulsed with the anger of the people who’d attacked us. The path beneath my booted feet cracked, revealing the bright green light that emanated from underneath us.
The men immediately shielded their eyes. Rumor had it that whoever looked straight at the magic of a primordial deity was blinded, maddened, or even instantaneously killed. I would’ve turned away as well, but I had Louise to worry about, and she seemed frozen, unable to move a muscle.
I grabbed her and pulled her away from the cracks, hoping against all hope that I’d still be able to salvage something from this madness. “Louise, stay with me! Don’t lose yourself. Stay with me.”
“But… The light,” Louise whispered. “The light, Selene…”
The light could go fuck itself for now. I didn’t intend to lose my friend anytime soon, not even to Gaia. I sent a mental apology to Mother Earth and clutched Louise’s arm even more tightly. “The light will still be there later, once you’re older and ready to move on to Gaia’s embrace. We can’t touch it now, remember? We’re one of the Ungifted.”
I should’ve known better than to think my words would help me. Louise did seem to hear me and her vision grew a little more focused. But her potential light-induced insanity wasn’t the only problem here.
Still holding onto my friend, I turned on my heel and ran. Impossibly, there were still men blocking my path. I had no idea why they hadn’t all fled when they’d realized how dangerous the area was. We ended up climbing over each other in a last ditch attempt to escape.
They say that during the worst moments of your life, time seems to slow. I knew that such a thing was an illusion, since nothing could control or contain the power of time. But as I breathlessly and desperately fought to live another day, to not be swallowed into the depths of the earth I worshipped, I felt as if I’d been wrong about that and about many other things.
My mother had once told me that Gaia always listened to her children when they called out to her. I called, but her magic didn’t hear me. Her magic responded to another, to the song of the people who’d come here to stir conflict and do damage.
Then again, it was a little hypocritical of me to ask for that aid, when I’d always felt drawn to a different power. I thought about the chimera on the stage, about the gifts it had and the god it obeyed.
Tartarus and Gaia were not at odds. They were two primordial deities that worked in sync to protect Earth, and for that reason, they were equally respected by all. But I’d always been inclined to listen to Tartarus’s voice more than Gaia’s. My mother had said I could have a great life even as one of the Ungifted, but in my heart, I knew I’d been meant for something different.
An instinct I didn’t understand made me turn toward the chimera. I could barely see it now, through all the smoke and flashing lights, but it still drew my eye. The metal glinted like a star as the glow of Gaia’s magic lingered over it.
Several thoughts swept through my mind.
I wonder what it would’ve been like to touch it. I wish I could’ve done more. Please, Tartarus, help me.
I had no idea if the primordial deity of the underworld heard me but something—or someone—else did. All of a sudden, the Sphinx moved, its gigantic metallic wings propelling it into the air with ease.
It should’ve been impossible. Chimeras didn’t work without pilots. Their strength relied on the union between man and machine. Tartarus’s energies were incompatible with reality as we knew it, so they needed a conduit to be brought forth, to be channeled. Without the human being, the machine was just an inert tool.
Or so I’d thought, until now. Maybe I’d missed something all along, or maybe a pilot had simply slid into the cockpit of the Sphinx while I hadn’t been paying attention. In any case, the flying chimera was obviously making its way toward me.
I was so distracted by the sight that I stopped focusing on my main problems—the crumbling ground beneath my feet and the crowd around me. In the increasing chaos, nobody really cared anymore that I was a woman. Someone behind me grabbed my hair and pulled me back, simply trying to get ahead and save himself. I lost track of Louise, stumbled and narrowly avoided hitting my head against a rocky outcropping. It didn’t help since another person pushed me down again. I curled into a ball and covered my head with my arms, trying to avoid being crushed under the combined strength of the terrified cr
owd.
The irony was that this time, they didn’t even intend to hurt me. There just wasn’t enough room for everyone who was trying to make their way out. Most of the exits were blocked by crumbling stone, the magic of Gaia or the fire that had erupted because of it. The light underneath our feet made us all even more terrified. We feared that we would be swallowed up by the earth and never be heard from again, like so many Sun-Dwellers who’d dared to taunt and disrespect Gaia in her own territory.
For a few seconds, I thought I’d die like this, so stupidly, without accomplishing anything. And then, the crowd that had been threatening to crush me simply vanished, and a massive, metallic paw appeared in my line of sight.
The Sphinx loomed above me, beautiful and deadly. The lines of its body glowed with clashing crimson and green, the unanchored power of Tartarus threatening to crack the delicate circuits of the machine. And yet, it had come to my aid. It had reached out to me in my moment of need. I had to reach back.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do this, but I ended up extending my hand. My mother had always said that sometimes, the simple solutions worked best.
The chimera couldn’t exactly respond in turn, but it—she?—still mimicked me, in her own way. She grabbed me in her massive, metallic paw and lifted me up, rescuing me from the cracking ground. The cockpit opened and before I knew it, I was inside one of the most mysterious, sophisticated machines on Earth.
I very carefully did not panic. There were all sorts of rumors about what chimera pilots needed to do to start their machinery, but on Earth, we hadn’t been able to verify any of it. Tartarus Base was scarce with the information it provided about our protectors. Still, if the Sphinx had come to me, it had to be for a reason. Surely, I’d be able to figure out how to work this thing.
Just as I thought this, the seat moved without me doing anything to guide it. Three bands slid around me, comfortable despite being metallic. Two others slid around my throat and forehead respectively.
Right. I’d already noticed the Sphinx was at least somewhat sentient, so she would probably show me how to pilot her.
