by DJ Molles
Whimsby’s body jerked forward, eyes immediately wide and alert, and Sagum shrank back, fearing another violent response from the mech, as he’d experienced twice before.
But Whimsby didn’t grab him. A frown crossed over his features, eyes scanning the environment, then finding Sagum. “Sagum. Where in the world have you taken me?”
A broad grin slapped itself across Sagum’s face and he lurched over to Whimsby, nearly wrapping the confused mech in a hug, but limiting himself to an excited shake of Whimsby’s shoulders.
“You’re back!” Sagum exclaimed. Then, more cautiously. “You are back, aren’t you? That’s really you?”
Whimsby looked even more confused. “I don’t know who else I could possibly be.”
“But you remember?”
“I remember many things. Except for how I got to be in this particular place, which you still have yet to expound on.”
“You’re in Karapalida…” Sagum trailed off with a furrowed brow. “Wait. Do you remember being in the skiff? With Lux? Outside of Karapalida?”
Whimsby shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“My last recorded memory is in the East Ruins, just prior to…” he recoiled a bit, then looked down at his open chest. “Oh my.” His fingers reached up and touched the hole in his core processor. “Just prior to receiving this bullet hole, I believe.”
Sagum flapped a hand in front of Whimsby’s face. “Nevermind. Don’t worry about it. There was a thing with your memories. The chronology was fucked up. But it’s been fixed—”
Whimsby caught sight of Bren’s inert form. “Ah. I see.” He looked slightly put off. “Bren has…given me his core processor.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a whole big thing. But he did it willingly. At least, I think it was willingly.” Sagum huffed a breath that flapped his lips. “I did the best I could, okay? Trust me. But I need something from you Whimsby. I need you to remember what you learned when you were inside the Guardian.”
Whimsby focused on Sagum’s face, his eyes becoming grave. “I believe I know what you want.” He leaned forward. “And it is very serious. But you need to get Perry.” A look of worry. “Perry is still alive, isn’t he?”
Sagum shot up to his feet, already turning out of the alcove. “I sure as hell hope so! Hold that thought!”
***
Any attempt to explain to Teran how deeply the entire planet had now become mired in an absolute and infinite shitstorm was cut off by a high-pitched shriek from the front of the temple: “Perry! Perry! Whimsby’s back! And he knows shit! He needs to talk to you!”
Perry whirled, the words bouncing around in his skull for a few insensate moments before they found some nooks of recognition to nestle themselves into.
It was Sagum, breathlessly dancing about with uncontrollable excitement, waving one arm madly and jabbing the other back towards the temple.
Confusion turned to urgency in Perry’s mind. He looked back at Teran, but she was already shaking her head. She seized him by the shoulder and started pushing him towards the temple. “It can wait,” she snapped. “I got the gist—we’re fucked.”
“No, not fucked,” Stuber corrected, as he added his bulk to the pressure moving Perry towards the temple, Mala and Lux close behind.
Perry broke into a run, discovering all sorts of aches and pains throughout his body that he hadn’t noticed until just now. Amazing how the threat of dying can blind you to your injuries.
The five of them clambered up the stairs, absorbing Sagum into their rush as they did. Legatus Mordicus stood there, emotionless, watching them as they slammed through the temple doors. Perry spared a quick glance over his shoulder and found that Mordicus was following as well.
Through the sanctum, a blur of lights and godly stone faces. Into the back, where Sagum got a hold of Perry’s arm and started yanking him towards an alcove on the far side.
Seven of them now, including Mordicus, and a smattering of curious legionnaires for good measure, raced to the end of the back hall and crowded the too-small alcove. Perry was shoved and pummeled to the front, squashed between Stuber and Teran, with Mala and Lux and Mordicus hovering so close behind he could smell their breath and feel their body heat. Sagum, sliding down onto his knees at Whimsby’s side, arms up as though presenting the mechanical man to an audience.
“I got Perry!” Sagum gasped. “He’s alive!”
Whimsby looked slightly annoyed. “Clearly.” His eyes ranged across the other faces. “Paladin Mala and Paladin Lux. It’s strange to see you…not trying to kill us.”
Perry pedaled his hands over each other. “A lot has happened since you got shot, Whimsby.”
“Indeed.” Whimsby inclined his head, looking over Perry’s shoulder. “And the dour-faced old man?”
“Legatus Mordicus,” came the gruff response. “And I’d like to know what all this gaggle-fucking is about.”
Whimsby arched his eyebrows. “Exactly how long was I deactivated?”
“A few days,” Sagum said, impatiently.
“Well then. This is highly confusing, even for my excellent processing powers, but I detect from a scan of those present that no one is of a mind to start killing anyone else, so can I presume that we are all friends in this…” A glance around. “Wherever we are?”
“The temple,” Sagum huffed. “In Karapalida? I already told you that.”
“Indeed you did.”
“Whimsby,” Perry cut in, unable to take it anymore. “We need to know what you learned when you were inside the Guardian. You said that you had learned some things, right as we were about to find the Nine, but you never said what.”
Whimsby’s expression clouded. “And did you release them?”
A small silence, wherein a lot of accusatory and guilty glances were made.
“There was an accident,” Perry said, stiffly.
“Oh dear.” Whimsby’s hand crept up to his temple as though he had a headache. Surely just an affectation of humanness. Or maybe Perry was the first human in the world to successfully give a mechanical man a headache. “Am I to assume by that extremely loaded statement that the Nine Sons of Primus were freed?”
“Freed,” Teran confirmed, a little flustered. “Freed, and very mad at humans. Guardians came down out of the sky. Started to exterminate us. The Nine stopped them, but only so they can keep us as slaves for eternity because they hate us that much.” She glanced at Perry. “Did I miss anything?”
Perry shrugged. “No, that pretty much sums it up.”
Whimsby sat there in silence for a few beats. Then clapped his hands together. “Very well. I believe I specifically advised you not to meddle with the Nine, but…” he waved his hands in the air. “What’s done is done and cannot be undone. Moving on.”
“Moving on would be an excellent idea, mech,” Mordicus growled.
Stuber spun on him, pointing a shockingly disrespectful finger in his face. “His name is Whimsby. He’s a man.”
Mordicus stared fireballs at that finger. Slowly drew himself up. A few murmurs of dissent from the legionnaires behind that loved their Daddy. He raised a hand to silence them. “Very well,” he said, coldly. “Whimsby. Move on.”
Whimsby decided to address Perry specifically, his eyes lingering for a short moment before speaking. “Perry, you recall the things I told you when we were in the Crooked Hills?”
Perry nodded even as he wracked his brains to shake out any fruits of cognition from that conversation. “About how all this started? With Paladin Primus and the Ferox and the All-Kind?” Whimsby nodded to confirm, but Perry shook his head. “But that was all from the Ortus Deorum, wasn’t it? It was lies, designed to subjugate humans.”
“Yes,” Whimsby allowed it. “The Ortus Deorum is…fictionalized, to say the least. But like all good lies, it’s grown from a seed of truth, and then twisted to fit the needs of the liar.”
“We kn
ow the Ortus is lies,” Mordicus grumbled. “We know there’s never been a war between the demigods. All lies to keep us humans fighting in a forever war, depopulated, and under the thumb of the paladins.” He gave Mala and Lux a withering sidelong glance. “What, in all of that, could possibly be of any use to us at this juncture?”
“The Ferox,” Perry guessed, trying to align anything that might make sense. “Lux, you told me that they’d been banished to the Outer Darkness—whatever the hell that means—but is that a lie too?” Looking back at Whimsby, getting more excited as his theorizing started to make more sense. “Is that one of the lies? They were the enemy of the All-Kind. And they gave the Nine Sons of Primus their powers! They could be more powerful! They could beat the Nine!”
Perry’s excitement tapered off as Whimsby shook his head.
“No,” Whimsby said. “The Ferox…they were real. They were indeed a warrior race used by the All-Kind. But they rebelled, and they were sent to the Outer Darkness—that much is true, though I cannot explain to you what the Outer Darkness is. Simply a place from which they can never return. All I know for certain concerning the Ferox is that they no longer exist in this universe.”
“So it’s true then,” Mala remarked in quiet wonder. “The All-Kind really did leave this planet in charge of the paladins.”
“Perhaps,” Whimsby stated. “I cannot speak to that. Unfortunately, what I was able to glean by connecting to that Guardian did not shed much light on the motivations of the All-Kind. But it is concerning the All-Kind that I need to speak to you, Perry.”
Perry’s faced turned to a vicious glower. “The All-Kind,” he spat out. “The supposed gods of the universe? The ones that sent the Guardians to exterminate humans? This can’t possibly be anything good, Whimsby.”
Whimsby was very still as he held eye contact with Perry. “Maybe so. But they did not abandon humanity, as you think.”
“Oh really?” Perry threw his hands out. “Look around you, Whimsby! We’re fucking abandoned! It’s just us out here, trying to survive, caught between the Guardians that want to exterminate our entire species and the Nine that want to enslave us forever! What else would you call that but abandoned?”
“All very true, Perry,” Whimsby said quietly. “But the All-Kind never left.”
Perry blinked a few times. Processing. Trying to drag the connections together, but they didn’t seem to want to fit. “Wait. What do you mean ‘they never left’?”
“I mean that they are here. Right now. Watching. Observing.”
Perry jerked his head skyward—stupid, but reactionary. “Like The Watcher? Up in space?”
“No.” Whimsby pointed a finger at the ground. “Here. On earth. They never left. They’ve been here the whole time. Not all of them, I understand. But some of them.”
Perry shook his head violently. “What—”
“Listen to me!” Whimsby sat forward again, his volume increased so that it boomed through the close confines. “No more of your questions—I don’t have all the answers. I only know certain facts. And I am telling them to you. There are All-Kind here on earth, right now. Why they are here, and what they are watching for, I do not know. But they are here. Among us. Disguised, it would seem, as humans themselves.”
All at once, the connections that Perry was trying to make in the back of his head touched off like live wires, shooting sparks of bright white realization through his head. One of those epiphanies that, the second it hits you, you wonder how you could’ve been so blind to it.
“They’re here,” Perry echoed, his voice harsh in his throat. “Disguised as humans.”
Whimsby nodded.
Mala shifted her feet. “Then why haven’t they done something? If they hated the Nine so much as to exterminate life on the planet if they were released, then why are they just sitting around letting them take power again?”
“I don’t know,” Whimsby said, getting exasperated. “As I’ve already articulated—”
“I know where to find them,” Perry said.
Silence. All eyes turned to him.
“Or, at least…one of them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD
“Perry, think about what you’re saying!” Mala seethed at his back as he slammed his way out of the temple.
“I know what I’m saying,” he said, stalking down the steps. “And I know what I’m going to ask them—the same question you asked: Why the fuck aren’t they doing anything.”
“Even if you know where to find one of them—which you still haven’t explained how you know that—these are supposed to be creatures of immense power! Worse than the Nine! And you’re going to charge up to them and demand answers?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“And what if they kill you?”
Perry shook his head, striding across the square towards his longstaff that still lay there. “They won’t. She won’t. Or he. I’m not really sure. It, I guess.”
Mala caught his arm just as he stooped to pick up longstaff. Whirled him around to face her. “And how could you possibly know that it won’t kill you?”
Perry stamped the butt of his longstaff on the ground. “Because she—it—already had a chance to kill me. And it didn’t.”
Mala looked completely flummoxed. “So you’ve met one?”
“It seems that way.” Perry shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out for sure.”
Mala straightened as Lux and Stuber and Teran joined them. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Possibly.”
“Then why not?”
“Because she wanted to talk to me!” Perry snapped. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know what the hell she wants to talk about, but I’m not showing up with an entourage that’s going to piss her off. We maybe—maybe—have a chance here to drag ourselves out of the pit we’ve dug. I’m not screwing that up, Mala. You’re not coming.”
Mala was about to protest more, but Lux laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let him go. If these beings are as dangerous as you seem to think they are, then you won’t be of any use to Perry anyways. If the All-Kind are powerful enough to kill him, they’ll be powerful enough to kill you.”
Mala’s jaw muscles bunched as though she were literally chewing on the words.
Lux simply nodded at her. “There’s work to be done here.” He nodded out to the city. “Not glamorous work, truth be told. But these people need help. Those of us still alive and whole should give it.”
Perry watched Mala’s hands tighten on her longstaff. Lux seemed to notice too. He removed his hand from her shoulder and took a small step back.
“Am I in danger of fucking you over and dying for it?” Lux said, only half-sarcastic.
Perry stepped between them. “Just stop, you two.” He looked at them earnestly, each in turn. “This may not work out. I know that. But if I can even just learn something that we didn’t know before…maybe it will help us. And when I get back—if I get back—I need to know where to find you guys. Here. So just stay. And don’t murder each other.”
Mala let out a low growl. “No promises.”
Lux managed a smile. “She’s joking. Just bluster.” He swallowed. “I’m almost certain.”
Perry clapped them on the shoulder, and stepped back. He looked to Stuber and Teran. “Do what you can.”
Stuber gave him a blank stare. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Perry smiled gently. “Go help Petra. Go…be with her, Stuber.” The smile faded. “It might be the last chance you get.”
And with that, he activated his shield, forming the bubble around him. “I’m going. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Hopefully.” And then he pulsed into the air, leaving the temple square behind him, and not knowing what lay ahead, but figuring that, at this point, dying was the least of his problems.
***
They al
l stood there, staring into the sky where Perry had disappeared.
Gradually, their eyes and their thoughts sank back to earth.
Stuber shifted his feet, letting his gaze wander out into Karapalida. It was funny how the sounds of human misery could become so constant that you lost track of them. They became white noise that you didn’t notice until you thought about it. Now, spotting a man and a woman huddled at the edges of the square with a small, bloody parcel of limbs that could only have been their child, their wailing brought it all back to him.
In an unpleasant rush, the sounds of those two grievers melded with the sounds of the entire city. Even more unpleasantly, Stuber realized that the noise that enveloped him didn’t shock him. There was nothing new about it. How could he possibly have been shocked? It was the same as it had ever been.
It only made him sad.
“Is Perry always like this?” Mala said, her voice piercing the gloom of Stuber’s thoughts.
He stirred himself. Arched his eyebrows. “Like what? Stubborn? Foolhardy? Always getting himself into trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes,” Stuber said, turning away from the paladin. “But every once in a while he’s right about something. Maybe this is one of those times.”
“So we’re supposed to just sit here on our hands and wait for him?”
Stuber shook his head, now walking towards the two berieved parents. “No. You can use your hands to carry the dead and wounded.”
Teran fell into step with him, and she was eventually joined by her little band of Outsiders, who had huddled on the skiff when they’d run into the temple, unsure if they should follow. But now they saw something they could do. Perhaps they couldn’t fight the Nine, or the Guardians. But they could lend a hand picking up some of the pieces.
No one spoke when Stuber knelt before the two parents. The sounds coming from them seemed to wash the words out of everyone’s mouths. The pile of limbs between them was, at least, still attached to a body. A young girl. Maybe ten. Hard for Stuber to tell. He’d never been good at guessing children’s ages.
