Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  Forge chuckles. The small, arrogant minds of twenty-somethings. “Don’t be silly, boy. Years and years more you’ll have. More time in this world than you’ll know what to do with. You’ll have ten loves, a wife someday, kids to care for, years to—”

  “You’re wrong,” he interrupts, “and so are all of them. As it turns out, I am not unkillable. I am dying at this very moment. Dying with every passing second …”

  Forge turns his head. “You’re ill? A disease?”

  “You can call it that.” He sighs shortly. “And one day, without any warning, I will die. But so will he. And I suppose that’s the only vengeance a young fool like me can hope for.” He turns his head too, facing Forge. “You’re a good man with good ears. You’ll make a fine leader. But you’ll want to fight for the position.”

  “I’m no leader.”

  “You will be.”

  The young man is on his feet in the next instant. Forge sits up, nearly knocking his head into a hanging set of greaves. “Where are you going? King?” Forge climbs to his feet. “King!”

  He stops at the door, turns his face. “You will be the new King of the Undercity. Trust the madness in your head. It’s the only madness that’s strong enough to combat the one upstairs. And I am no King, not anymore. My name is Ames, and I’ll find my vengeance.”

  The door shuts with a resolute thud. Forge is left alone in the armory with a ringing in his ears.

  0172 Link

  They’ve walked the Waterways for hours now, which look so unchanged that Link forgets they’re ten years in its past. As of yet, no magic passages have opened to beckon Link, nor has anything particularly brilliant occurred to him about his vision, nor has a runaway Goddess leapt out in front of them to introduce herself.

  “I’m tired of walking,” complains Ames.

  Baal stops quite suddenly. They are at a four-way intersection of canals. The water is surprisingly quiet in this part of the Waterways, nearly as still as a mirror pool. “Yes,” mutters Baal thoughtfully. “As am I. Perhaps we need some more of your great vision, Link, lest we walk all six million miles of the canals in search of a certain Sister who may not even be down here. Might another fraction of your great vision make better sense of the … water … within it?”

  Link wonders if Baal means to mock him with the words “great vision”, but figures he isn’t in a position to take things personally. Partly, he doesn’t really even care if he is being mocked. If the vision was so straightforward as to pinpoint exactly where the missing Sister resided, they would be there by now.

  “Another piece, please?” prompts Baal patiently. “Unless you feel it is in our best interest to continue—”

  “If the missing Sister really wanted to be found,” reasons Link, a touch of his temperament lost, “perhaps she would have thought to leave me a more direct vision in that damn water.”

  “Water.”

  Link lifts his annoyed eyes to the time-walker. “Yes? Water. Lots of it in the Waterways. That’s where we are.”

  “And that’s where you had your vision,” Baal adds with a nod at the mirror-still canal. “In there. Submerged. Drowning.” He steps up to the ledge, peering down at his reflection with curiosity. “Maybe she only connects to you in its depths?”

  Link glances at it dubiously. Ever since that day, he hasn’t put his head beneath the surface of the water. The sensation of drowning was too painful, too terrifying … He can’t imagine putting himself through that again. Just the notion of it makes his bowels prickle.

  “Try it,” Ames chimes in. “It’s worth a shot.”

  Link looks back at an invisible girl, a girl he’s sure even Ames has forgotten about. I have not forgotten you, he’d say to her if he could. Feeling her invisible hands let go, he steps up to the edge of the sidewalk. He peers down stonily and his face looks back up at him, curious and fearful and far away.

  “Well, I don’t need breath,” he reasons lightly. “So really, I have nothing to dread. Without breath, I will never drown again.”

  “You will never drown again,” echoes Baal encouragingly.

  Link crouches down, reminded eerily of Baron’s hand upon the back of his head, pushing his face through the water. But Baron is not here and never will be again. This time, Link will put himself in the water. It’s my choice.

  He closes his eyes, then tips forward. The water brushes past him like a cool burst of air, enveloping him on all sides and pulling him into its depths. He keeps his eyes closed as he sinks, deeper and deeper. The canal is usually ten feet deep, sometimes just five; the depths differ. Regardless, it will only take a few kicks for Link to find the surface again, and he lets that knowledge comfort him as his body makes contact with the rough, stone bottom of the canal.

  He turns onto his back, the water pulling and dragging on his limbs. Then, he lets his eyes open. Just the wavy surface above meets his eyes. No magic vision. No whispers from the dark. No sudden—

  Singing.

  He stirs, turning his head to the left. There is just the darkness of water in the canal. He slowly pulls his head right. Darkness. Did he just imagine that voice? He floats, motionless, and waits.

  Singing again.

  He turns his head toward the intersection where the four canals meet. The world shimmers and twists and dances before him, the water playing with his eyes. He watches and listens, desperate to understand. Is his mind playing tricks on him? The water fills his ears and sloshes around, just as it fills his eyes and nostrils. He must be hearing the pushing and pulling of water, certainly; no more and no less. Still …

  He hears the singing again.

  This time, he knows what he hears. It is a voice, and it hums that very tune he’s heard his mother sing. Of course there is a sliver of doubt that it’s the exact tune, but he knows he recognizes it, and the voice he keeps hearing is his mother’s—soothing, far away, sweet and gentle and lonesome.

  Link can’t stand it anymore. He kicks from his spot, swimming in the direction of the song. His body twists as he swims, and his eyes catch sight of Ames and Baal above the surface. They seem to be following him, alarmed by his movement, if their erratic hands and desperate peeks over the brim are any indication.

  But Link pays them no mind. Quite suddenly, he has an urgent, personal need to find the source of the singing. His feet kick faster and faster, harder and harder, until he’s in the intersection.

  Three paths face him. One to the left, one straight ahead, and one to the right.

  He closes his eyes and listens.

  The singing persists, louder.

  To the right he pushes, kicking his legs hard and desperately seeking the music. With a twist of his head, he realizes there is no stone pathway over the water for Baal and Ames to follow him upon, but he doesn’t care; if he can return to them with any clue or direction as to where the missing Sister might be, he will consider today a happy one.

  The canal grows darker and darker the farther he swims. There is no light this way, he realizes, wondering why. The singing grows deeper, richer, more fluid. He pushes and pushes, kicking his legs as the black waters slowly swallow him.

  He sees nothing, still he kicks and kicks.

  The music, like a great mouth of underwater music, lets him swim down its infinitely large throat. His arms pull water, scooping it behind him in his crazed efforts to reach the source of that voice, that beautiful, haunting voice.

  Then, there is a light. It’s so small that he doubts its existence until it begins to grow. Link keeps swimming, pushing himself toward it, his eyes wide-open. He blinks through the water, finding it turning colder and colder the farther into the darkness he goes. When he glances behind him, he realizes even the intersection is gone and all he knows is darkness in all directions.

  The light is coming from above the water. He stops swimming, stilling his whole body. The singing still reaches his ears, tickling them with their alluring notes, some high and full of vibrato, some lower, filled with pain
and longing.

  Link’s heart breaks, listening to the melody.

  It keeps pulling upon him with every long, hypnotizing note.

  As slowly as he can, Link brings his head above the water. The song is much, much quieter now, which he finds peculiar, as he’d expected the opposite. The light is from a lantern, but not one on the wall. It’s a lantern being held by a hand, swinging as the figure walks down the path. It’s coming toward him, but is still some distance away, and it’s from this figure that the haunting music comes.

  It is a girl. She hums the tune as she walks, the lantern gently swinging side to side. Each time it swings past her face, Link catches a fleeting glimpse of it. She looks young, possibly Link’s age, if he had to guess. Of course, he always thinks pretty young girls are all his age; it took a knocking over the head by Dran to realize that his fiancée Mercy was a good four years older than him.

  Why is she singing that tune? She can’t be the Goddess, can she? No, of course not. The Goddesses don’t exist, and if they did and one of them was missing, she wouldn’t be in the form of a girl walking around the Waterways with no seeming purpose whatsoever.

  She stops suddenly. Her humming does, too, and the lantern’s light settles. Just her face glows in the light, the rest of her lost in the shadows. Her eyes reflect alarm as she scans the area around her, listening intently.

  Link watches without drawing a single breath or blinking. He moves no muscle, refraining even from a single flinch.

  The girl glances behind her, the lantern jiggling a bit and tossing her shadow everywhere. She brings a hand to her chest, staring across the water, still appearing to be certain she heard something. Maybe she heard Link swimming beneath the surface. Maybe she heard the water lap against the sidewalk.

  Link is drawn in utterly by this girl. She’s beautiful. She’s more than just beautiful; she is alluring. No female has ever had such an instant appeal to Link. Her cheekbones are high and her eyebrows are thin and curved, bent upward in caution. Her lips are perked and her mouth, small. Her eyes are far apart with the bridge of her nose between them being smooth and flat, giving her a unique, exotic sort of beauty. Her skin is warm and reddish in hue, though Link can’t be sure if that’s simply due to the lantern’s light. He can’t see her hair.

  The fact remains that, in this sudden instant, he knows that no girl could ever match her beauty. He has an immediate desire to care for her, to help her if she’s lost, to protect her from the dark. If she told me she was a Goddess, I just might believe her.

  Shut up, fool. She’s just a girl in the Waterways. Just a girl …

  As soon as he has that thought, her face turns and her eyes find him immediately.

  Link blinks.

  The girl turns, running.

  “No, no,” calls out Link, pushing through the water toward the sidewalk. “I’m not here to harm you! Don’t run!”

  She doesn’t listen, running as fast as she can, the lantern light flashing and bouncing off the stones like a million fireballs cast down the throat of the canal.

  Link pulls himself out of the water, clambering to his feet as he chases her down the sidewalk. “Please!” he calls out, his small voice echoing all around him. “I’m lost down here myself!” he tries to assure her. “Please don’t run away!”

  Still running, the girl turns her head to shout something utterly unintelligible at her back. What the hell did she just say?

  “Please!” he begs her.

  She twists her head to scream another strange thing, the word coming out in half a hiss.

  And then the walls shake. Something large falls from the ceiling, crashing into the water and casting a barrage of it at Link, which pushes him against the wall. He shouts out. Something else falls. Is the ceiling falling in? Am I being caved in?

  The girl’s bizarre words echo down the hall as she runs away, and then the ground begins to stir. Link loses his footing, his efforts in running suddenly growing impossible to manage. He trips once, slamming into the ground. When he tries to stand again, something big and blunt crashes into his head.

  He falls sideways into the water just as the ceiling comes down upon him, burying him deep in its haunting darkness.

  0173 Wick

  They take a break on the road through the eleventh, resting in the shadows under a paved overpass sandwiched between two tall factories, their chimneys of which issue no smoke. It’s under that cement bridge that he says, “I don’t want to fight this war anymore.”

  He feels Athan stir at his side. They’re seated on the ground with Juston’s head rested in Athan’s lap. “Anwick …”

  “I just want to go home.”

  Lionis isn’t paying attention, or else he’s deliberately ignoring Wick and his outpouring, standing aloof at the other end of the underpass and staring up at the sky. Wick pays him just as little mind.

  “What war do you mean?” asks Athan quietly.

  “With the King. With the Madness. With …” Wick smacks his lips, bits of blood having dried upon them. Everything tastes like iron and salt. I’m so fucking exhausted. He shakes his head. “I just want to be home in the ninth. Right now. I don’t want to think about making the city right … or chasing the missions of Rain, pretending we have some kind of purpose. It’s all for … for nothing.” Wick feels a stab of sadness suddenly, and his eyes begin to well up. “I want to be home with my mom. I want to be home with all my brothers, safe and … and far away f-from …”

  He can’t complete the sentence, his voice breaking down into a fit of sobs and pathetic sputtering. He buries his face in his hands as the tears start to flow. He can’t stop them no matter what he thinks, no matter what he says. He’s in pain all over. His arm stings. He is so tired that he can hardly move his legs. His mind is a delirious mess.

  He feels Athan’s arm slip around his back. “I understand.”

  “I just want to be home,” moans Wick, feeling like a child. He cries and he cries, leaning into Athan and burying his face in his boy’s muscular chest. He disappears from the world for as long as he possibly can, sobbing. His hands are sweating horribly, pulling upon Lionis’s power.

  “I know that things are tough,” Athan says into his ear. “Things will always be tough … but why should we give up now?”

  “All we wanted to do was overthrow a King,” whispers Wick, his sobbing having quieted. He speaks with a strangled voice, his nose plugged up. “Then he goes and gets thrown by someone else, and an even worse evil has taken his place. Look around you, Athan. Look around.” Wick lifts his head off of his boy’s chest, giving a nod to the left, to the right. “There’s no fucking city left to save. The slums? We can’t even manage to support ourselves. Look at us. The second Sanctum falls, we degenerate into thieves and killers and …” Wick laughs suddenly, struck by the irony of it all. “We are slum rats. Each and every fucking one of us. Take away the King that we hate so much, take away the oppressiveness, and what happens? We all turn into thieves and killers!” Wick suddenly can’t stop laughing, falling over onto his side in the effort. Soon, the laughs die out, and a ringing silence fills his ears. “We deserve what we got.”

  “No, Anwick …”

  “We deserve this.” Wick sniffles loudly, still resting on his side, not bothering to sit back up. “We’re the very rats that Sanctum accuses us of being.”

  “See?” calls out Lionis, suddenly deciding to join in. “This is the Wick I’ve always known. My brave brother. When something isn’t fun anymore, he gives up.”

  Wick pushes himself off the ground, lifting his gaze up to Lionis with eyes wetted by tears and widened with anger. “The fuck you just say?”

  “I know you. How you are.” Lionis huffs and turns away.

  Wick climbs awkwardly to his feet, a hand holding his ribs where a bruise is smarting. “Why is it always more important to you to correct me or cut me down instead of seeing that your brother is fucking hurting? Damn it, Lionis, LOOK AT ME.”

  L
ionis shakes his head, refusing to give Wick the attention he’s itching for. “We’re all in this same situation together. I’m calm. I have my wits about me. Athan there, he’s calm too. You’re the one who, like always, has to make a show of your emotions. And now you’re talking—”

  “A SHOW??” shrieks Wick, instantly irate. “You think this is some fucking performance?”

  “And now you’re talking about quitting the very thing you just unrested my life and yours to join. Now, suddenly, you don’t give two shits about ‘dreaming big’ … you just want to go home to your pretty pillows and dream on your own.”

  “Holding that against me, are you? It’s always about the sleep,” Wick spits back, closing the distance between him and his brother. “Sleep, sleep, sleep. Calling me a BABY. You’re such a fucker, Lionis, and you know it. You do it to ANGER me. Condescending me with your knowledge, knowing that I have needs. I don’t blame you for having hot hands! It’s not my fucking fault that I have this Legacy!”

  “Sleep isn’t your Legacy,” mutters Lionis smartly. “We all came to that discovery the day I learned that we had a sister you killed.”

  The scream that comes out of Wick is nothing he knew he was capable of, and when he topples his brother, he sees nothing but the hazy veil of tears. His fists beat into flesh five times. He feels bone crack. A hand grips his arm, but he thrusts it away, still screaming in the blind, wetted rage of his eyes. He beats flesh again—once, twice, three times—and then arms wrap around him, pulling him away. He fights, kicking everywhere, forgetting his own wounds as they cramp and protest against his erratic movements and fury.

  He collapses on the pavement breathing heavily.

  “Lionis!” he hears Athan call.

  Wick brings his hands to his face, blocking out the world as he tries to catch his breath. His knuckles sting. He hurts everywhere.

  Only a short amount of time passes before he finds his breath again. Wick slowly rolls onto his side, then sits up, blinking away the tears and the rage. Athan is crouched over Lionis, who stirs on the ground. He’s moaning, bewilderedly kicking at something that isn’t there while Athan appears to be trying to comfort him, saying soothing things.