The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  Now he heard the shouting in the distance; the dull roar of a mantra being repeated again and again, carrying over muted explosions, cries, and the snick of flintlock fire. Quill recognized the words of the young man who had sent him here, spoken through the throats of countless castes.

  "The Saint must rise."

  A moment later Quill saw him, risen like a star in the sky above the volcano. He was a giant clad in blazing blue armor, wielding spikes of blue fire against the Rot's black mass. Saint Ignifer. He burned like a Man of Quartz, and with all his half-formed Drazi throats Lord Quill echoed the call.

  "The Saint must rise!"

  Far to the west his cry was answered.

  Beyond HellWest harbor at the end of the Haversham tradeway, myriad lights were blinking into existence on the horizon, like sudden stars at sea. Lonnigan Clay had arrived, and now Lord Quill grinned.

  So many forces of the damned were gathering here, and he basked in it. This was the war he'd been born to fight; a greater last stand than that had come before.

  At a thought, his Drazi swarm spread outward into the city, picking up the fallen bodies of Pinheads and Joists and Adjunc, bullet-riddled Molemen and Caracts and Gulls. They folded this new matter into the swarm and carried it along in a living river of mogrifying flesh, which remade and enlivened them as Drazi. He felt each fresh one register with the tiniest of pops; bringing new light and life and memory throughout the whole.

  From the dead they learned. From their memories Quill saw the pattern of the Rot's tongues falling across the city, and acted.

  The swarm rolled south out of Grammaton Square, gathering pace as it brute-forced a path between cantilevered timber and plaster shop fronts, smashing the corners off old brick apothecaries with spiny shoulders and many-limbed flanks. Tens of thousands of feet rose and fell at once. With the military precision of an elite troop, with the pride of the Decatate and the last Man of Quartz burning within them, the Drazi swarm poured into Carroway, and there they met the Rot's pulsing tongue.

  It undulated like a vast black worm with its head buried in an apple, as big around as the old King's Pale Chamber. The cobbles were sheared clean at its edge, where its tip sank through into the city's founding meat. Wreckage surrounded it. Its long trunk pulsated upward, like a pump line glugging water.

  Lord Quill encircled it with his ever-loving Drazi arms. Always there was room for more matter in the Drazi heart. This was the purpose of his horde now; to act as the blazing needle that drew in the infection, meeting hunger with hunger.

  With a disciplined mob of brown bodies he reached out and sunk the swarm's teeth into the tongue.

  It bit back at once. The blowback was instant and the first rank of Drazi died, while a vision of utter nothingness burned right through Lord Quill's half-Quartz skin and into his heart.

  There was nothing at the end and nothing at the beginning, and throughout there was just an endless hunger. There were no deals to be made, no vision to be offered, no hope to turn it aside.

  He'd expected it, and responded in kind. With a single resounding clap, echoed by every pair of hands in the swarm, he lit their half-Quartz skin on fire. A second rank of flaming Drazi leaped over the fallen bodies of their fellows, swallowing them back in to the pooling vat even as they plunging fists and claws back into the side of the Rot's tongue.

  Now the tongue jerked sideways like a whip, crushing a swathe of them and flicked the rest loose. They died but the horde pressed on; already reforming their dead in the shimmering liquid of a new vat, forming in the well sucked out by the tongue.

  More Drazi flung themselves at the tongue, clambering up like and ants driving hard into the Rot's black mass. They took what it was and used that as fuel, until the tongue suddenly severed above their reach, allowing the trunk to pull away. Its tip was left behind for the Drazi to swarm, but the bulk of the tongue escaped.

  Quill focused on repurposing what the swarm was learning from the Rot. Already this knowledge was quickening through them; their flames were growing darker, their skin harder, their thinking sharper. It offered new ways for the swarm to take shape, affording new, previously impossible mogrifications.

  Up from the vat shot curling tongue-like tendrils of Drazi mass, reaching after the Rot, but they batted off it, unable to grasp hold fast enough.

  Lord Quill watched the tongue recede. All across the city now the tongues were receding, as the Rot learned what they were, and what they meant. Its flight had begun.

  Quill fired the half-Quartz skin of his swarm to greater brightness, so they burned like a lighthouse in the ash-choked city warrens. Here, they called out across the Sheckledown waters, here.

  The ballista bolt came as a silvery flash, streaking like a Memory of the Heart across the belly of the Rot, plunging through the thick bole of the retreating tongue and drawing out an inchoate scream.

  More bolts struck the tongue, swooping from Lonnigan Clay's ballistae many fathoms out, and now the tongue jittered in pain as it tried to suck back up into the featureless mass above, but now something new was holding it in position. Each bolt flew with a weighted grapnel chain trailing it, and now those chains were lodged in its bulk, with the bolts fallen into Lord Quill's many hands.

  Like a zeppelin docking at the Firehark station, they hauled the tongue back down to earth. It screamed and writhed but could not escape. They had five bolt lines in it, then eight, then twelve, and each one let them pull it in faster, until its chittering black head splashed down into the largest Drazi vat yet, filling up its old feeding hole and turning it into flesh for the Drazi to remake.

  Another tongue was dragged down in Belial, as the Albatross concentrated fire on the blazing Drazi bodies there, then one landed in the Calk, then another in Grammaton Square.

  In moments there were five, then seven. In the Slumswelters Quill locked a tongue inside an ancient weir. In the Boomfire he held one at the intersection of five Sectile brothels. In the Calk he held one in the bowels of a lime-pounding factory.

  Soon there were ten, and the city rippled all over with the burning lights of his Drazi bodies, tracked by the ballistae of Lonnigan Clay's armada. The full might of the horde ate into the Rot even as its emptiness ate into him. It was the flame burning the candle, steadily erasing his mass from existence, but not fast enough.

  There were so many bodies throughout the city, and he gathered them from wherever they lay; scattered up and down the Haversham, pounded flat across Gilungel Bridge, sunken in the Levi and smashed in the bastion forts and barricades.

  He poured them all into securing the Rot. Fifteen tongues held, then seventeen, and with each one more he yanked the bulk of it closer. It tried ceaselessly to jerk away, but he didn't let it. As Saint Ignifer slashed into it above the mountain, so he reeled it in tighter.

  "The Rot must die," came the call from all his burning throats, as the swarm spread wider, and more rattling bolts shot across the city. Somewhere far above he felt the first of Lonnigan Clay's bombes erupt, blasting a gouge into the body of the Rot itself. He wound it tighter and closer. More gouges blew open, unleashing a slick black rain through the drifting ash.

  "The Rot must die!"

  Then the first of the tongues fell away. He watched as the great mass of it calved off from the Rot at the body and began the slow, almost elegant tumble to the ground. His Drazi horde sucked it in, but even dead it would take days to digest. He'd heard that the most desperate prey, when caught in a trapper's snare, would bite off their own limbs to escape.

  So the Rot bit off its own tongues

  Another tongue cut away somewhere above the Seasham district, and slapped down across the city with an earth-shaking tremor. Now there were only sixteen holding it, and that wasn't enough. He searched the battlefield with his many eyes, but no fresh tongues were falling, and not enough were holding.

  Another slit off at the base, then another. Now the whole sky shook the sky as the Rot yanked; a tongue in Afric pulled free of its vat
, then slapped down to crush the tiny creatures that had been holding it. Quill felt a hundred of his swarm die in a single blow; too much to replace at the present speed.

  More tongues thrashed loose. More pulled free of their vats until there were only seven trapped, then five. It wasn't going to be enough. What was King Seem waiting for? He looked up to the skies, where stars were already appearing around the edge of the Rot.

  It was escaping.

  Quill closed his eyes and dragged his Drazi back to the Grammaton Square, crumbling the city in the terrible flow of their desperate flesh. There he heaped them atop each other in a standing vat half a fathom high, biting into the last remaining tongue tethering the Rot to the Corpse.

  "The Rot must die," his voices cried, until that tongue too calved off at the top, and the Rot accelerated away.

  There was no time for Seem to perfect his work, no time for the Saint or Awa Babo, or the generals; right now there was only Seem. He saw the answer even as the consumed parts of the Rot found deep bedrock within his own self; a morass of emptiness that spread like a cancer, with whip-like tongues lashing out.

  He took that lesson and turned it into a mogrification to end all others.

  An immense Drazi tongue as thick and tall as the Grammaton shot up from the standing vat, forming into a hand with seven immense fingers each as thick as a bi-rail train, each ending with a dozen ballistae bolts. This mighty hand surged up from the liquid bodies of all the remnant Drazi, molding into it as it rose, their limbs kicking and tiny heads popping into the new shape.

  It snagged the Rot by the belly and punched deep into its vaporous black, raking the ballista bolts with their trailing chains deep within. Then it yanked, and the Rot ripped open.

  Black ichor fell in a torrent, flattening half of the Dirondack manufactories and knocking down one of the Manticore furnace towers. The Rot's terrible scream wailed out, as the Drazi hand stabber deeper within its savaged underbelly, setting bolts everywhere.

  Tongues scythed out and cut through the giant arm in seconds, starting its inevitable fall, but even as it fell it mogrified. Thick bands of flesh shot across the gaps cut by the Rot and knitted the whole back together, even as the great fist snatched at the tongues and ripped them away, opening more deep black wounds into the Rot's very throat. More ichor churned out and leveled whole fleets in the HellWest Docks.

  Fresh tongues erupted in a maddened flurry, destroying the arm, but each one of them was caught and dragged down into the Drazi slurry vat.

  Lord Quill pulled. The Rot shed all its tongues at once and pulled harder, allowing Quill's bolts to yank out along with its soupy black guts. Its primal fear was everywhere now, streaming in the heavy black rain just like any other caged animal, fighting for its life.

  There was nothing more Quill could do. His Drazi fell back, much depleted, as the Rot drew away. All that remained was for King Seem to pull taut on his yoke.

  KING SEEM/SHARACHUS III

  King Seem/Sharachus beat his horned wings at the head of the airborne army of Aradabar, in the skies over Ignifer's city. At his back Caracts and Wights stocked their mangonels atop harnessed Wyvern and Mandray mounts, Dark Giants and Men of Quartz waved their war hammers atop Fetchling-carried Mesoplodonts, Spiders readied their many arms atop floating Scranth and Antiochs braced their greatbows on war-zeppelins tugged by flame-winged Butterflies.

  It was a dream he'd never imagined possible. He brushed tears from his eyes while looking down on the city he and Avia had shaped from a dream, built around the ruins of his ancient capital; the city of a hero that never existed.

  Only hours had passed since he'd last been here, winging through the eruption to catch his son as he fell. Now it was happening again, but so much had changed. In moments Lonnigan Clay's ships would appear on the Sheckledown Sea and begin firing their ballistae grapnel bolts in to the Rot's tongues. Lord Quill and his Drazi horde would catch them and begin winding the monster in.

  "It will not be enough," Awa Babo had said, in the white of the veil.

  Seem/Sharachus had looked at the Emeritus' new mind, living now in the body of his son. "Machine mind," he answered. "I buried you."

  "Not deep enough, great King."

  "Too deep," answered Seem/Sharachus, feeling those ancient actions as a new, penetrating regret. "Had I known you were truly alive, I never would have done it."

  "Yet you did. We are here now."

  "And you've taken my son."

  Awa Babo gazed at him with Sen's cold, calculating eyes. "Your son set me free of my imprisonment. We stand in equal regard."

  Seem/Sharachus met his gaze, and felt only shame. So the sins of the father were visited upon the son. Sen had paid with his life, for Seem stealing four thousand years from this sentient machine.

  There was no argument to be had. There was only sorrow.

  "Tell me what I must do, great war machine of the Federacy."

  "Yoke the Rot," Awa Babo answered, "as no other can."

  Yoke the Rot.

  He looked down at the city now, watching the flow of Sen's revolution spreading through streets that followed the outline of old Aradabar tradeways. There was such beauty here, in these myriad castes bringing fresh vitality to the past. Like coral on a sunken wreck, they filled in the nooks and crannies his civilization had left behind. Just like Awa Babo, these were his deeds mummified and now returning to life.

  He'd done his share of good and evil, both.

  "The Saint will rise!"

  The cries from below stirred his heart. This was one of the best things he'd done, though it was also the worst lie of all; the tale of Saint Ignifer. His work with Avia still burned brightly in his mind, despite three millennia of wear. At last he understood parts of that work which he'd never understood before.

  How else would he yoke the Rot?

  The first of the Albatross' ships winked into existence on the dark ocean, and Seem/Sharachus surged into flight.

  His army followed. Wings beat, harpoons strained backward and mangonels were loaded as the great war host of Aradabar lost flew for a final time, streaming across the sky like a silver comet.

  "The Saint must rise," he shouted, and his army took up the cry, joining into harmony with the Balast and Induran charge below, with Lord Quill's Drazi in Grammaton Square and the ships of the Albatross' armada on the Sheckledown Sea.

  The Rot saw their airborne charge and met them with tongues; smashing a Cyclops' Pegasi out of the sky, splitting a brigade of horned Butterfly in two. King Seem/Sharachus plunged onward, slashing a path through the Rot's black matter, and his army raced in a cloud around him, protecting their King with their bodies until they reached the edge of the city, where Seem/Sharachus blacked his revelatory light and hurled his weapons away to the Gutrock below.

  Behind him every member of the Empire followed suit, blinking out their lanterns and veiling their gleaming skin, ceasing their calls for the Saint and hurling their siege weapons down to smash on the volcanic rock below.

  They flew fast in the darkness, and the Rot's assaults dwindled as the Drazi assault began in the city. The host soared in silence above the featureless wastes, until they came to Craley Shark's tabernacle, standing above the site of Aradabar's Great Library.

  With one mighty sweep of a Ptarmigan's tail fin the small wooden structure was batted away, and Seem/Sharachus dived into the dark book well his son had carved out. At the base of that long chute he shot through the airtight red metal doors Avia had insisted he install on every entrance to the library, wheeled through the lobby past the swaying pendulum his genius grandson had built, and raced along a radial arc through many library stacks toward the halls of storage.

  He'd never understood the purpose of these halls. Each one had taken years to fill, drawing on resources that helped usher his Empire into disunion. One was filled with lengths of rare and expensive metals, cast and folded into shapes that made no sense. One was arrayed floor to ceiling with the stuffed bodies of all t
he animals he'd ever yoked, from the tiniest Hoplite ants to the largest landsharks, padded with wax by an army of expert taxidermists. Last was the hall of Spider silk, and that one he finally understood.

  Hundreds of bales of spun silk filled the space; the finest, strongest material in the Corpse World. It had taken Seem generations to breed spiders capable of producing it, and it had come to undergird many of his greatest innovations; the glass towers of learning were built from it, landsharks were bridled with it, war Ptarmigans were carried by it, and the single-rail train that encircled Aradabar had been pulled by it.

  That breeding had raised the tiny spiders of the Absalom Dusts into a sentient caste of giant Spiders who joined his Empire as equal members, communicating via vibrations twanged in their spinning manufactory webs. Upon their first repeated communication, Seem had thrown off their yokes and welcomed them in as equal citizens.

  Now he gathered four bales with his eight Spider legs, each as large as an Ogric cart but no heavier than a pumpkin, and flew back along his path. His army streamed past him, flooding into the storage hall and each collecting as many bales as they could carry. He rocketed up the book well with the trail of them looping behind, burst into the air and flew to the west.

  No tongues fell here, as he hurtled past the edge of Aradabar's buried ruin and out over the Absalom Dusts. The edge of the Rot's lip hung far ahead, hovering over the distant Hasp mountains, and Seem knew he would never reach it in time. The Dusts were vast and the Rot simply too large.

  Then that lip leaped, sucking inward by a thousand fathoms in a second, like an aulk shrinking as it sensed a predator in the water. The effect of the sudden shift was dizzying; stars suddenly appeared in the sky where the outer rim of the Rot had just been, and irregular winds buffeted Seem side to side.

  It was too soon. He'd expected Quill and the Albatross would hold it for longer, but it was already trying to flee. Now it fell to him and his aerial host to complete the work they'd begun so long ago.