by DJ Molles
As though seeing it made it real, her arm suddenly exploded in pain that nearly knocked her knees out from under her. She wobbled on the steps, nearly overwhelmed by a sudden rushing desire to just sit down.
“Mala!” Perry shouted at her. They were running over.
Well. Last thing in the world she wanted was to look weak in front of the Halfbreed. Especially after all that shit she’d talked. She grit her teeth hard enough to make her jaw ache, but it was good to send some signal to her brain that cut through the agony consuming her arm.
“What the hell happened?” Perry demanded breathlessly as he stamped to a halt, his eyes fixed wide on her arm.
“Caustic fucking happened,” she seethed.
She remembered it, actually, now that she was thinking about it. When she’d lowered her shield to race the five civilians to the temple, some of that glowing green muck that had been on her shield had splashed onto her. She’d kind of hoped her armor would have stopped it. Clearly that was wishful thinking.
“Can you still fight?” Perry asked.
Mala sneered at him. “I’ve still got one arm and a longstaff. Of course I can still fight.”
“You look woozy.”
“Me woozy is still better than both of you,” she remarked, though the shake in her voice kind of ruined the impact.
“Right,” Perry pointed urgently out to the city. “We got two of them. If we gang up, we might be able to take the other two one at a time without getting our shit pushed in.”
Lux raised a hand, finger pointing. At first, Mala thought he was pointing into the city, which would have been a stupid thing to do—Perry had already pointed in the right direction, they didn’t need Lux to confirm it.
Then she realized he was pointing a bit higher than that. Into the sky to the east.
Mala and Perry both froze, staring into that bright blue distance.
Contrails. Streaking out of the east. Streaking towards them.
“Is that…?” Lux murmured.
“Oh fuck,” was all Mala could reply.
***
“Sagum, you little ratfuck bastard!” Stuber thundered as he erupted into the alcove. The insults weren’t really necessary, he realized—Sagum hadn’t done anything wrong.
Sagum spun, hands wrestling with each other. “What? What did I do?”
“Nothing!” Stuber yelled. “I’m just really amped up right now!”
“Well what do you want?” Sagum yelled back.
“I wanna get you out of here!”
Sagum thrust his hands at the two mechs leaning against the back wall of the alcove—Whimsby still unconscious, Bren seeming to be…sleeping? His eyes were closed, but weirdly, like a human in REM sleep, they seemed to be twitching around behind his artificial eyelids.
“I’m waiting for something!”
“You can’t wait! There’s no waiting! We gotta go!” Stuber barged past Sagum and stooped to grab Whimsby, but then rapidly found Sagum clammering at his back like a small, angered monkey.
“No-no-no!” Sagum screamed, his voice pitching up into a childish octave. “Don’t touch anything!”
Stuber thrashed about like the lumbering beast he was, beset by Sagum’s surprisingly strong fingers scrabbling at him. “What the fuck? Get off me!”
Sagum had somehow managed to climb Stuber like a tree. His midsection was draped over Stuber’s shoulders, his legs wrapped around Stuber’s chest, his hands batting at Stuber’s. “Don’t you fucking touch anything! I’ll rip your godsdamned eyes out if you touch anything!”
Stuber growled against the onslaught, took a deep breath, stood up, then slammed his back against the nearest wall, causing a great whoosh of Sagum’s sour breath to be expelled into the side of his face. When Stuber retracted himself from the wall, Sagum toppled, gasping.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Sagum kept waving his arms in a no-go gestured, shaking his head adamantly as he fought to get some air into his lungs. He gulped down a breath that apparently went down the wrong tube, because he immediately belched. When he did find a word to say, it was just a croak: “Don’t!”
The ferocity of Sagum’s convictions kept Stuber from pulling the plug that bound Whimsby to Bren. He raised his hands in surrender. “Alright. Okay. Calm yourself, peon.”
Another gasp. More words: “He’s getting…Whimsby’s memories…in order!”
Stuber blinked a few times. “Well, how long is that gonna take?”
“Another minute…or so.”
Stuber didn’t care for the “or so” part. He managed to keep his voice level, pointing at the ceiling. “I have concerns.”
“I know. Temple’s coming down.” Sagum looked terrified. “You should get out.”
“You should come with me.”
Sagum shook his head. “I gotta know, Stuber. I gotta know what Whimsby knows. About the Guardians. About everything.”
“Not gonna do you much good if you die in a cave in.”
“Just another minute,” Sagum begged.
And Stuber was about to argue again, but then a horrendous impact shook the temple, and seemed to do all the arguing for him.
“What was—”
Another BOOM from outside.
And another. And another.
Stuber tilted his head, realizing that those impacts were not explosions—not blows to the temple. They sounded like something hitting the earth. Something big.
Bigger than the Guardians.
Another impact.
“That’s five,” Stuber whispered, unsure why he had lowered his voice, only a strange sense that all of the sudden, he needed to be quiet and hide.
More impacts, in rapid succession now.
“Six,” Stuber breathed. “Seven. Eight. Nine.”
He held his breath for another, but it didn’t come.
Nine.
His eyes widened. He looked to Sagum. But it was Bren that spoke.
He’d come awake again, his eyes looking concerned, brows furrowed. “They’re here.”
***
Perry, Mala, and Lux, back to back to back in a pall of dust, longstaff’s pointed out like a tri-spoked wheel as they slowly turned, their eyes taking in the massive, dark shapes that loomed over them as the dust began to settle.
None of them spoke. What could possibly be said? There wasn’t an expletive strong enough to encompass the abject shittiness of their current position.
In all the fighting, Perry hadn’t noticed the hum in his ears. Godsdammit, why hadn’t he paid better attention? He felt it now, more than heard it. Less of a noise and more of a constant, aching press against his eardrums.
Shields shimmered, while huge hides of reticulated armor stretched to their full heights, the slash of green glowing from between the plates, searing out from narrowed eyes, as the Nine Sons of Primus languidly took in the scenery they’d just landed in the middle of.
One of them—Perry couldn’t tell who it was, they all looked the same to him—stood near the temple, it’s shoulders nearly as high as the columns that held up the structure. It gazed down at the ground, as though curious about something.
It stooped down. Took something in its huge hands, and hefted it up.
It was the head of the the Giver of Death. The one Mala had knocked from the timewheel. The Son of Primus stared at its visage for a long moment. Then a tiny smirk crackled one brittle corner of its mouth. Its arms flexed, and the stone crumpled like a fragile clay sculpture between its hands.
“Humans and their myths,” the voice rumbled, for a moment louder than the screams of the dying and the constant sound of extermination from the city.
Perry felt like his entire being was pulled in multiple directions. His sudden and consuming fear of being trapped in the middle of nine beings with apparently limitless power. His desire to protect himself from them. His desire to fight them. His desire to try to stop the massacre happening in the city.
And yet all he could do was
stand there. Because no other option was realistic.
He could not fight them. He could not run from them. He could not reason with them. They were a force of nature, a cataclysm, a volcano, an earthquake. You cannot fight these things. You can only cringe against their power and hope that you are not crushed by it.
After all that Perry had learned about his Confluence, and the things that he could do with it, this was a sudden turn, a plummeting of his morale, to see how powerless he truly was in the face of real Confluence. His abilities were no more dangerous to them than a child hacking about with a wooden sword, or pew-pewing imaginary bullets from a vaguely gun-shaped piece of rubbish.
It was Mala’s voice that broke the thick stillness. She was brave for speaking, but her voice was shrill and quaking. “Batu, Son of Primus!”
Adrenaline kicked through Perry’s system like an arc of electricity—damn, but he’d thought he’d tapped himself out on the ability to feel adrenaline by this point. What the hell was Mala thinking, shouting out like that?
One of the massive creatures turned with great ease and looked down at her. Something about its countenance was vaguely familiar to Perry, and he realized that it must have been Batu himself.
One after the other, all nine faces turned towards them, as though their little huddle of longstaffs and energy shields had only just been noticed. Everything they did was so steady. So calm. The infinite surety of beings who see nothing as a threat.
The eyes of the one that must have been Batu narrowed. “And who are you,” his voice grated like mountains moving. “To shriek at me, little puppet?”
Perry saw a tremor work all the way through Mala’s body—from knees to shoulders and all the way down her arms. And yet, she stepped forward, her shoulders disconnecting from Perry and Lux’s and making him feel empty and exposed.
“I am your progeny,” she said, only slightly more in control of her voice. “Mala of House Batu.”
Batu did not respond, simply gazed down at her imperiously, as though wondering if he should listen to this insect or crush it under his heel. Gradually—and terrifyingly—Batu’s eyes shifted from Mala to Perry, and then to Lux.
“Ah, of course,” Batu whispered like a distant storm. “I recognize the three of you. The first faces I was to behold when I awakened from my prison. And you…” he looked at Lux specifically. “You were the one who used your weapon against me.”
Lux’s mouth gaped wordlessly.
“He was also the one who freed you,” Mala declared, catching her stride again, not sounding quite so fearful, though she had every right to be. And should have been.
“Was he now?” Batu looked contemplative. “And do you suppose I am to be thankful for this?”
A series of booms echoed through the city. Perry glanced back in the direction that the Guardians had gone. How many people were they killing? Would there be any left?
And what the hell were the Sons of Primus doing here? Had they come because the two Guardians had been destroyed? Had they come to finish the job the Guardians started? That didn’t make much sense to Perry—the Guardians were not the friends of the Sons of Primus.
“No,” Mala answered. “I only wish—”
“You wish what, Mala of House Batu?” the voice struck them like a furnace blast. The craggy, armored face became somehow more severe, more wrathful. The green light seemed to blaze hotter and brighter. “To impress upon me your right to live? None of you deserve to live.” A finger swept across them. “Least of all, you three. Your past deeds are inconsequential. Your entire lives are inconsequential. You have no right to anything. If you live at all it is because of our mercy. Or…” The lips peels back, showing teeth that looked like polished granite. “Our vengeance.”
Another one of the Nine spoke up, gazing deeper into Karapalida. “The machines are killing.” It said so with no particular spark of emotion. As though the killing mattered nothing to it.
But why were they here?
“Oh, but there are so many more humans,” Batu said with a sigh. “So, so many of them. Shall we shed a tear for such a small section of the disease having been excised?”
Another spoke with lumbering authority. “We shall do what we came to do.”
“Yes,” Batu said, his lips curling. “My time has already been wasted for so long.” He held out a hand towards the three of them, still standing tensely together, none of them sure of what was happening, or what might come next, only feeling the great weight of their doom teetering over top of them like a boulder about to topple. “Plead, then, Mala of House Batu. Plead like your father pled. Beg me for the lives of the humans that you love so much. Perhaps we will listen.”
Perry stared at Mala, horrified by the emptiness of her mouth as it opened and closed, as though the blow to her pride were too much a price to pay for so many lives. His pulse slammed out each second, waiting in agony for her to speak, and with each throb, knowing she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Perry, not even sure what the hell he was doing, took a half step forward and raised his voice. “Batu, you can help us—”
The wind came out of his lungs as though sucked out by an unseen force. His chest felt like it was on the verge of collapse, ribs straining to the breaking point. His vision split, darkened, fizzled at the edges. He realized peripherally that Batu was glaring down at him, his outstretched hand now a claw that seemed to project some power over Perry that he did not understand.
“You do not speak,” Batu snapped, hatred pouring from him in waves that Perry felt almost like a tangible thing, making every synapse in his brain light off with pure animal fear, drowning out the call of his own weak sense of Confluence.
Perry’s feet left the ground. He could not breathe in. He had no air, and no way to get it. He tried to thrash, but his body didn’t move, despite the twitching of his desperate muscles. The longstaff fell from his hands. He could not summon his shield, and somehow knew that it would do nothing, even if he could.
“You are not one of us,” Batu continued, his fist slowly closing, slowly crushing Perry, though they were nowhere near touching. “You are an abomination. You are a mistake. You will not speak to me, and I will not listen. Our ears are closed to your pleas. You are a godless creature.”
Batu’s hand suddenly raised up, then flattened itself, and Perry heard the words only seconds before he slammed into the ground: “Prostrate yourself.”
His face crushed against the stones. Blood and dust and spent shell casings all around. His bones ached, and he could swear he heard them creaking like rotten wooden planks about to give way.
He struggled mightily, but only managed to turn his head, his chin scraping across the ground, leaving skin behind, but he needed to see, needed to look at Mala and Lux.
Mala and Lux stared back at him, their faces numb with shock.
“Do not look at the abomination!” Batu roared at them. “Look at your god, and beg for the lives of the humans that you love so much!”
Lux trembled. Then bowed his head. From Perry’s vantage point, smashed into the ground, he couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that Lux’s eyes were fixed upon a dismembered arm, simply lying there on the stones before them.
“I beg of you,” Lux said.
“LOOK AT ME!”
Lux’s eyes shot up. “I beg!”
“KNEEL!” And the same force that still kept Perry pressed to the ground somehow swept Lux off of his feet and crashed him to his knees. “And you, Mala?” Batu screamed, a sound so terrible, that Perry closed his eyes against it, and welcomed the blackness.
In that blackness, he saw, or perhaps felt, the waning glimmer of his Confluence. That flow of red. So dim. So forlorn. Barely there anymore.
In that blackness, there was only the sound of Perry’s blood, struggling through his veins, as though the downward pressure made it hard for his heart to keep pumping. And he wondered if he was going to die.
Death waits in the wings, Stuber had told him. You
have to let the fear bore holes in you.
But had Stuber ever been to this place of wrath and death?
The sound came to him, dim and distant. Mala’s voice, now bereft of pride. “I plead for their lives.”
And then everything lifted.
Air whooshed into Perry’s lungs. Too much. He choked on it. Tongue coating with dust. Hacked and coughed. Opened his eyes only to find his vision blurry with tears. Muddy shapes across from him. The shapes of two paladins kneeling.
He blinked. Wondered if he should dare to stand.
Batu had not moved, but one of the others rose up into the sky—no pulse, no shield to carry it aloft. Perry did not know which Son of Primus this was, but he seemed in no hurry. Higher and higher he went, until he must have been twice the height of the temple spire before it had been destroyed.
The being hung there in the air, its body in an odd pose—one hand held behind its back, the other held out, almost casual.
Perry didn’t rise, but he did dare to turn his head so that he could see the bounds of the city around the temple square, see the ribbons of black smoke pouring into the sky. Hear the screams—not as loud now, not as many voices to fill the air. Hear the drumbeat of explosions, the snare-tap of munitions going off. The crumble of buildings.
Green light shot from the hand of the Son of Primus that hovered aloft. It speared into the city in one great, turbulent gout that shook the earth against Perry’s flesh.
Unhurried and unworried, the hand that spat that energy simply shifted, and the beam of green light went with it, carving a swath of destruction through the city, while Perry’s bones seemed to rattle against themselves at the earthquake it caused.
And then it was done.
The energy dissipated, and the Son of Primus began to sink back to the ground. Unhurried and unworried. In the city, the screams could still be heard, but there was no longer the crackle of gunfire, nor the thump of micromissiles exploding, or the harsh blat of energy weapons deployed.
Just like that. Just that simple. Just that easy.
