Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  Yoli seems to pay them literally no mind, as if he isn’t even hearing the words. The stony expression on his face unsettles Sedge; the man never laughs or smiles.

  “Need me to fetch you some balls?” suggests Baigan. “Need me to run to the toy store down the road and get ye a toy ter play with?”

  While the big red guy continues to taunt the silent, stoic Yoli, Sedge thinks about Ruena in a cell in the Cloud Tower. Is she in the same cell Impis Lockfyre himself once occupied, or is it merely a cell that one of his Posse was kept in? He tries to picture her right now, then discovers how very difficult that simple task is. I can’t believe she came straight to Cloud Keep after all this time. I can’t believe she just appeared out of nowhere, like a storm, and tried to take down Impis’s army singlehandedly.

  Well, almost singlehandedly, if the gossip he overheard is true. There was another girl with Ruena, a girl with glasses and long dark hair. Did the pair of them really believe they could overpower the Chaots?

  “I can get you some nice pretty balls to juggle!” taunts Baigan, causing Splinters to laugh even harder. Yoli just stares ahead, pensive and wordless.

  Of course they didn’t, Sedge decides. Ruena is smarter than that. She came here for a reason. But what was that reason? Was she here to find Sedge? Is she trying to enact her revenge upon him for so brazenly betraying her? Was her intention to come here and cast her electrical wrath upon his shapely or shapeless form?

  “I’m talking to you, eyeballs,” barks Baigan, who clearly does not enjoy being ignored. “You’re no longer any worth to Impis, don’t you get it? And we all know what he does with toys he gets bored with.”

  Yoli looks up at him. Just the simple shift of his intense eyes is disturbing, even to Sedge who isn’t near them, observing the scene through a reflection in the window one shop away from them.

  Baigan experiences a moment of uncertainty. Then he lurches forward by his hips, confused. Sedge is just as confused at what he sees until he hears a roar of anguish from Baigan as he lifts up off the ground by his hips and fall backward, but not hitting the ground. He rises by only his hips, as if dangled on some string. His roar turns into a gurgled shriek of agony as he reaches and grabs his crotch, but nothing seems to release him from the air or give him reprieve.

  Sedge doesn’t understand exactly what’s happening until Yoli—who never, ever seems to speak—says, “Why yes. I have found some balls to play with.”

  Baigan tries to kick as he slowly rise up, floating horizontally in the air. He pulls his thighs together and does half a sit-up in midair in an attempt to find a position that hurts less, but that does nothing to his position of distress except exasperate it by the sounds of his roaring anguish.

  Yoli keeps his full attention on Baigan as he focuses his Legacy unblinkingly. He still doesn't smile, giving Sedge the impression for a moment that Yoli is a robot of some sort, simply doing what he's programmed.

  That train of thought makes Sedge wonder exactly how many of the Chaots really are robots, programmed by “writer” sister Axel to serve and obey, just like the sweaty naked boy atop Cloud Tower.

  Who’s mind is really their own up here?

  “FUCK,” screams Baigan, “YOU!”

  Splinters is in the street with his eyes wide and his hands hovering in the air—the one burned one and the unburned one—like he doesn’t know what to do with them. And really, what can he do? Unless he wishes to suffer a similar fate, he can’t dream of interfering with Yoli.

  And then he does. Chasing an impulse, Splinters charges at Yoli. The second the bald telekinetic moves his brilliant eyes from Baigan to Splinters, Baigan drops to the ground with a grunt and it is now Splinters who becomes airborne, flying across the street with a nasally shriek and shattering through the window by which Sedge stands. Sedge backs away, startled, then turns around to look at Yoli and Baigan, who appear odd for a second since they are in reverse positions now compared to what they looked like in the reflection. Baigan is curled up with his hands grabbing his inconsolably aching crotch, moaning and half in tears, while Yoli has returned to simply staring straight ahead, as if he’s lost all interest in the two idiots before him, bored and drifting back into whatever thoughts he was having before Baigan decided to taunt him.

  Sedge departs the scene quietly, careful to step over the shards of glass from the shattered window as he goes. He doesn’t much care to learn the fate of those two, who are likely just going to crawl back to wherever they spend the most of their time and never utter a word of what happened between them and Yoli to anyone.

  He makes it to the Glassen Garden, which is the place at which Ruena and her friend were caught. It is a large plaza entirely domed by glass with an exit to the north, south, and east, its west side being a large wall of polished stone down which water runs all day and night long. The plaza is filled with circle-shaped enclosures of waist-high dividing walls made of polished chrome, and within each circle blooms vibrant flowers of every color and shape. Lord’s Garden was much like this one except it was smaller, not domed, and it hung off the edge of the Lifted City so low that one might wonder if the Garden itself wanted to leap into the slums below; no one realized it’d someday get that very wish fulfilled.

  He stops in front of a patch of Ambera Violets, a flower that used to be called something else until someone renamed them so after the previous Marshal of Legacy—likely named for the color of her lavender eyes. He stares down at them and thinks about the fact that Ambera died and Impis became Legacist, and then how Ruena wanted him to be her Legacist. How one King becomes another King becomes the next Queen becomes the next King. How Sanctum shuffles its members and loses its members and alters its members. Changing, changing, changing.

  The world is change.

  “Why so sullen, boy?”

  Sedge knows the voice and so he doesn’t face its source. The large curly-haired woman Umi comes up to his side, observing the flowers herself for a moment. She breathes heavily and slowly, which starts to annoy Sedge, since he was preferring to stew in his own misery alone.

  Sedge fights a very appealing urge to just melt away and lurk somewhere in the flowers, hidden away from all these fools he’s stuck with.

  “Everyone is thinking it, too,” she says.

  Sedge doesn’t follow what she’s saying. His stubbornness gives way to his curiosity as he peers up at her. Her huge half-lidded eyes are already upon him, not looking at the flowers like he thought.

  “Thinking what?” Sedge asks.

  “You and Ruena were dear friends.”

  The words annoy him so much, he snorts with disdain. “Oh? Did one of your little wisps tell you so?” he asks, looking away and folding his arms tight across his belly.

  “My will o’ the wisps tell me little,” she admits, speaking of her Legacy to cast little orbs of ghostly pale light that look like tiny winged people. They do little but act as a distraction or light up a dark place. “But one doesn’t need Arcana’s Legacy to know what’s on your mind, little one.”

  “I’m only little because I want to be,” Sedge retorts acidly.

  “And despite what you did to free us, you have very few trusted friends among Impis’s Twenty-Two.”

  “Far less than twenty-anything now,” Sedge continues to sass.

  “Our King is releasing the Lifted folk he’s captured. Didn’t you hear? Oh, but of course, you weren’t at the latest meeting at Cloud Keep.” She tsk-tsks him. “Arcana and Axel have gone through all our prisoners from the day Ruena ran. They’re being freed back to their lovely homes. Well, whatever remains of them. Much of the city has been untouched, turns out.”

  Sedge had noticed as much himself. Some windows shattered, some buildings fell, a bend of the Sky Rail toppled, and the Crystal Court is a mess of glass and haunting memories. Other than that, the Lifted City remains otherwise pristine and intact—if you ignore the ruin.

  “Why did he free them?” asks Sedge.

  “Need I spell
it out? Arcana … and Axel … have spoken to all the Lifted folk who’ve been kept prisoner in the Keep. Ruena is ours now and so there is no need for them. But to ensure their obedience and loyalty, Axel may have made a bit of work of her own Legacy. Do you follow me now, little one?”

  Of course Axel bent their minds to Impis’s will. If Sedge were the King of Atlas, he’d do much the same. It’s just like the Slum Queen Atricia who could make anyone believe anything she wished. Sedge feels a bit sick making the comparison to such a vile human being, but the parallel is so evident that he can’t stop his mind from making the connection.

  “Arcana is in the slums now,” Umi goes on, “to collect the last on Impis’s lists. Axel has gone down herself not five hours ago. With the sisters going to the slums, we’re certain to gather more power than any King would ever need to secure his throne.” She smiles down at Sedge. “Mind your heart, little one. Whispers carry, and Impis listens to all.”

  “Mind your own heart,” says Sedge, taking a step away from her and scowling.

  “I told you I know what’s on that mind of yours. I told you that everyone is thinking it.” Umi tsk-tsks again, annoyingly. “You once betrayed Ruena to set us free. Your loyalty is in question. What’s to stop you from betraying us this time and freeing Ruena? Many of us are thinking you’ll do it. Some were laying bets in the Court just an hour ago. I haven’t the faintest what they were betting with, but they did it just the same.”

  “Did you lay a bet?” spits Sedge, not liking anything that he’s hearing. His heart drums more heavily with every beat and his skin prickles with discomfort. Do they all mistrust me? Do they all mislike me so much that they’d cast aside the one person who freed them? “You laid a bet against me, didn’t you!”

  “Oh, I never gamble. I only put my gold on what’s certain.”

  “I don’t care!”

  “And you are not certain, little one. I see you sulking here in the flowers. What curious flowers you’ve chosen, too. Ambera Violets, named after the Royal Legacist who Impis is rumored to have killed.”

  “He’d never do that,” Sedge insists at once. “Ambera got sick. Everyone knows she got sick. I was a baby when she died and even I know that!”

  “Oh? Your mommy and daddy told you that, did they?” Umi’s cheek dimples in three places as she smirks, lifting her chin. “If I was a smart woman, I’d say you came to these flowers to ponder what your idol Impis Lockfyre is capable of … to ponder what your dear friend Ruena promised her city—and you … and to ponder what you’re going to do about it.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you or any of this,” Sedge decides with a lift of his own chin, turning and strutting away.

  “Everyone is disposable,” Umi calls out at his back. “Even you.”

  Sedge brushes the cold warning off of his shoulders, ignoring it outright. He struts out of the Glassen Garden and marches down the street, his every footfall casting his anger into the chrome road. So many voices swim about in his head—words of Umi, words of Impis, words Ruena told him long ago, words from Arcana—and he finds he’s rather sick of having a head at all. The moment Cloud Keep is within sight, Sedge drops to the ground and assumes his slithering, snakelike form, wriggling out of his clothes and worming down the street with speed.

  It isn’t long before he’s shaped back into a boy and standing at the door of the King’s Keeping. He stands there for the longest time, naked as his birthday, with a hand over his chest as he feels his heart beating, beating, beating.

  She’s in there.

  The next moment, he’s a puddle again, slipping beneath the razor-thin crack at the bottom of the door and ending up on the other side. Only bars and walls of glass separate the aisle from the individual cells, the backs of which have high-up windows that pour in sunlight. The puddle of Sedge that only has eyes and two tiny earholes moves down the aisle, peering from cell to cell. Even in this form, the anxiety thunders through him like a poison.

  He stops quite suddenly, balling himself up against the wall. His two eyes slowly twist around the corner of a wall, peering between two glass bars.

  And there she is.

  Ruena Netheris sits in the corner of the cell, naked, her long white hair flat against her head and cascading down her front. Her knees are pulled into her stomach and she hugs herself, her eyes staring forlornly ahead.

  Why does she just sit there? But of course he can answer his own question, knowing that someone among Impis’s Chaots can directly neutralize any attempt Ruena makes at forming a charge. It clearly doesn’t affect all Legacies—like his own—which makes him grateful, since he otherwise couldn’t be here. He doesn’t know who it is or where they are or why this tower blocks only certain Legacies, but he sees no spark in Ruena’s hair, nor any light in her eyes. She is just a pale, silent girl in a cell who, if it weren’t for her breathing, might even look dead.

  Then her eyes move. She lifts her head from off the chrome wall upon which it rested. Her eyes search around for a second, curious.

  Sedge pulls his eyes back around the wall, hiding from her at once. He waits in the cold, empty silence. He doesn’t hear her move. He doesn’t even hear her breathe.

  And then: “Sedge?”

  He still doesn’t move, even at the sound of her voice, which he has longed to hear. He misses her soft words. He misses her tinny laughter. He misses the fun they used to have together.

  “Sedge? Are … Are you there?”

  He makes no effort to respond. As a shapeless blob of flesh and psychology, Sedge could remain here for decades without making a single sound or indication of his existence.

  Still, Ruena seems to know him better, as she is very used to his slipping into her palace at any hour of the day, no matter the guards that stood at her door.

  “Sedge. I wish … I wish I could see you. I need a friend right now.”

  Sedge melts away his eyes. He’s so tempted to take away his ears too, but the sound of her voice is so comforting. You have few trusted friends here, he reminds himself, echoing Umi’s words. They all think you’ll turn on the Mad Regime. They all think you’ll betray them just as you betrayed her. They’re placing bets ...

  “I don’t know if you’re proud of what you did,” she goes on, her voice calm and quiet, “or if any part of you regrets it … but I want you to know that I don’t mind either way. I forgive you.”

  There is a long silence that passes where the angle of the sun might even have changed, slicing through the cell windows and turning the polished, chrome-and-glass hallway from silver to gold.

  “I won’t bring harm to … Impis,” she says, the name seeming to be difficult for her to utter at all. “Truly, I only fought back to defend myself, Sedge. I … I don’t even want the throne anymore, do you understand? I’m not here to take back Cloud Keep. He can have it. All of you can have it. I only came here to retrieve a lost friend I had made. You would like him, Sedge. He is kind and he is … hurting.”

  Sedge listens. He listens and he feels himself sinking at her words. Does he think she’s lying? Or is it her telling the truth that frightens him worse? Perhaps on some level, Sedge was hoping that the fire still existed in Ruena’s heart. Maybe he was waiting for his friend to come back and save him from the madness he set free.

  Maybe Sedge regrets everything.

  “I forgive you,” she repeats. “Please. I just need a way out. I just need out of this cell and … and I’ll be gone.”

  Sedge needs the old Ruena. He doesn’t like this new one. This isn’t his friend. This isn’t the girl who played with him and shared her jewelry and rebuilt that music machine and shared with him the musical gift of the Ancients.

  “Or you could just … you could just squeeze between the bars and sit in here with me for a while,” she offers, her voice so quiet and meek, it hardly sounds like her. “We could just sit in here and just … keep each other company. Please, please, just come in here. I’m so lonely. Please, Sedge. I … I …” She qu
ickly sucks in air. Was that a sob? “I miss you,” she finishes quietly.

  Is this really the To-Be-Queen Ruena? Is it truly her and Sedge is merely seeking an excuse to ignore the burden of responsibility for his actions … and what he must do to rectify them?

  “Sedge?” she tries again, her voice echoing along the chrome tiles. “Please. Sedge … Please …?”

  Through a tiny hole that might be a mouth in the amorphous thing that is him, he whispers four small words, “I miss you too,” before he slithers out of the King’s Keeping. The echoes of her longing cries haunt and chase him down the halls until he melts away his own ears to spare himself the anguish of hearing them.

  0200 Mercy

  Every night since they left the temple, the Mother pulls Mercy aside with knowing eyes, and the old woman whispers, “Name the thief,” to which Mercy’s answer is always a simple lift of her bare hand, naming none.

  They visit many sites of destruction, of aftermath, of loss and pain and devastation. Like a cloud of Death’s grey-robed angels, the Sisters grace a scene of horror and tend to the wounded and the weak. The Sisters are armed with bandages and healing oils and burn tonics and rations of food. Some of the Sisters are experienced in the bandaging of wounds. Some of them are not, opting to help feed the hungry who have recently lost everything and guide the lost to a shelter or a nearby sanctuary, to the best of their joint knowledge; between the Sisters, they have someone from every ward save the first and second, and so they always know their way about.

  Mercy, apart from all the Sisters, is sent to handle those who are on the brink of death. There are many faces that Mercy finds herself looming over, faces that beg for the end. She reluctantly holds a bearded man in her arms who whispers of the last words he heard his daughter say before the Red Light took their home and a splinter of glass skewered his abdomen. “And my wife,” he adds wearily, his eyes fading. “She would be proud of how I’ve raised our little girl to be strong, and now … oh, I’ve failed and I miss them both so terribly. It’s been nearly a decade without them. I’ll … I’ll join them soon on the other side.” And to that waning light in his eyes, Mercy grants him mercy in the form of a sweetly poisoned kiss to his lips. He feels nothing at all as he drifts into his final sleep.