by Daryl Banner
“Perhaps you don’t recognize Impis as your new King,” suggests the Elbow King. “That is fine. In time, you’ll learn he’s the only King. I am a fan of his and have been since the beginning. The world needs a bit of unraveling, and he’s the one I trust to do it. You’ll see.”
Rone returns a light smile. “I suspected that you’re more a fan of Ruena Netheris, what with that long white hair of yours,” he quips. “Does Aegis here braid it for you after you bathe?”
Aegis scowls, but the tall man merely shrugs, playing along with Rone. “He doesn’t. Perhaps I ought to have him start doing it?”
To that, Aegis huffs, then crosses his arms, his forearms daring to spread themselves open as they flex. “I’d rather braid Ruena’s hair myself. We caught her, you know. The pretty Queenly thing.”
Rone freezes at those words. The whole world becomes a tunnel between him and this Aegis fool, whose face becomes increasingly horrible to look at by the second.
“You … caught the Queen?” murmurs Rone, disquieted.
“That dumb, reckless woman tried to attack us,” mutters Aegis. “Just a road away, right outside the Glassen Garden, at that. Her and a girl with a long dark braid.”
Erana. Rone has straightened up, but tries not to show any of the quick and crippling fear that has arrested his nervous system. Masking it as best as he can with a tightened smile, Rone says, “What a shame. I had certainly thought the Queen had run free after the coronation a few months ago.” He folds his arms. “So what does our lovely King Madness plan to do with her?”
“None of your business,” answers Aegis.
“Cloud Keep is that way?” asks Rone flippantly, pointing toward the Crystal Court. “Is that where I can have dinner with your King and chop off his mad cock with one of your buddy’s elbow swords?”
“You’d never get inside,” the blond retorts, sneering. “The forces there would block your Legacy. You’d get stuck in the walls.”
“Yeah,” agrees sword-elbows. “Perhaps we ought to encourage you to run over to Cloud Keep, if you’re so desperate to meet your end. By all means, foolish slum boy. Run.”
“Slum boy? You knew?” asks Rone with mock hurt. “What gave it away? My dashing good looks?”
“Your lack of respect. Your lack of honor. Your lack of—”
Rone quite suddenly decides he doesn’t care what else he has a lack of, because the only lack he cares for is that of his sister. Phasing out once again, he charges forward, racing toward the Crystal Court and the Cloud Keep with which it keeps such morbid company. He hears an obscene word or two shouted at his back, but he doesn’t mind a single one of them. Both of those fools will meet their own end sometime soon, and Rone decides he doesn’t care if he’s around to witness it. All of these Mad Fools up here will die when King Impis’s Reign Of Madness comes to an end.
And an end, it will certainly come to.
When Rone circles around the Crystal Court, he finds himself in familiar territory. The tall chrome walls of the outside of Cloud Keep still stand, and he makes the same phasing leap through the wall that he made months ago when he was on a mission to unlock some hidden Janlord knowledge. Now he’s returned with the very same purpose.
But once he’s standing in the wasted courtyard before Cloud Tower, he feels an unfortunate surge of regret. Ruena is in that tower. Erana is in that tower. The two other women I love other than my sister. He wonders, if what they said is true about Legacies being blocked within the tower, how he can possibly manage to get his women out of there. Or is it possible that they are being kept elsewhere in some secret prisoner holding unit that only the King would know about?
He is startled by the sound of footsteps coming around the corner of a building within the Cloud Keep’s walls, and starts to run toward Cloud Tower. “Stop!” cries a voice at his back, and when he hears something whir right past his head, Rone phases away, but a misstep over a bit of rubble trips him, and he plunges headlong through the very ground at his feet.
“FUCK ME!” he screams out, terrified for one quick instant as he tumbles through darkness.
Then he solidifies in a room one second later. It is a tunnel. He discovers when he lifts his head that a dim, dancing light comes from somewhere down the way. Figuring himself never to be truly safe from the pursuing Chaots, Rone pulls himself off the ground and hurries down the stone tunnel, which feels oddly slum-like. He can’t say which way he’s running—toward Cloud Tower or away from it.
To his surprise, the tunnel empties into a wide area he can only describe as a sector beneath the Lifted City, yet still above the slums. Is there a city between the cities?? Rone wonders with sick humor, walking across the shadowed square that is lined with short, plain, unmarked buildings. It reminds him of the deep part of the tenth where eerie streets lined with warehouses reside. He wonders if this is where the gathered supplies from the slums for the Lifted folk are stored. He can’t make any other sense of it. This area is clearly not accessible to the public.
“Who are you?”
Rone jumps at the voice, phasing everything but his feet in an instant and facing where it came from—but he sees nothing. Rone lifts his hands, as if ready to put a fist or two through someone. Or something. In a place as creepy as this, he holds no more humor in his bones. Ruena and Erana are in trouble, and his sister is yet to be found. He doesn’t want to play with any more Chaots.
“Who are you?”
Rone jumps again, the voice coming from yet another direction. He spins around, disoriented. “Who are you??” he calls back out. “And where are you??”
“Tell me your name,” says the voice—a woman’s voice.
He stops spinning, figuring himself safe enough while he’s phased. “Rone,” he answers. “My name is Rone.”
He hears no response for a while. He turns one way, then the other. He glances at the flat face of a building, then turns his eyes onto a neatly-piled stack of cube-shaped steel crates.
“Rone …” murmurs the voice thoughtfully. “Is it truly … Rone?”
“Yes.” Rone can’t stand not being able to see who’s talking to him. “If you wouldn’t mind not playing games with me …”
“No games,” the voice says, sounding almost like she’s agreeing with him. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite some time. I have bad news, Rone. I’m so sorry.”
Rone backs up to the wall without falling through it, pushing away from the voice while trying to see its source. “Bad news?” Nothing can hurt me while I’m phased. No blades, no arrows, no fire—nothing. “What bad news? Show yourself. I don’t speak to ghosts.”
“That’s exactly what I am,” she murmurs, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “I’m a ghost now. I can’t show myself.”
“Why can’t you show yourself?”
“It takes too much effort. It’s exhausting.” The voice is moving across the square. “Please, you need to follow me.”
Rone, after yet another reminder to himself that nothing short of a potent, essence-crushing Legacy can touch him, follows the voice. She hums and he follows, despite the eerie sound of her voice not doing much to bring him comfort in this strange, shadowy place.
“This way,” she murmurs as he approaches a building.
Rone stops at its entrance. Unlike all the rest of the plain, short, unmarked buildings in the square, this one looks like a bomb had gone off within its chest, its insides blackened and still reeking of decay. Rone gags before bringing an arm up to his nose. Even phased, he is susceptible to the aroma.
“Come. Please. I’m so sorry.”
Rone sighs. “Before you say sorry one more time, either tell me what it is you’re taking me to, or else just—”
“Just come. Follow my voice.”
After an uncomely grunt of agitation, Rone continues to follow the voice into the mouth of the building. A set of stairs leads down into a corridor, through which countless doors await him. One of the doors slowly creaks open, which gives Rone the
first thought that the person he’s following has a very powerful camouflage Legacy. He moves toward the door, then peers inside.
“This way,” comes a voice from the back of the room where there stands the big metal door to a vault. The side of the room has no wall, completely exposed to the outside, which appears to be a staggering view of the slums below. Rone imagines it to be quite a far drop. A cold, bleak draft pulls across the room, whistling through shards of broken glass and a toppled doctor’s exam table.
The door to the vault opens. A cold mist escapes it, the inside proving to be a freezing locker of sorts. Rone follows toward the door, unafraid if this is some great elaborate ploy to trap him inside, since he can easily slip right back through the wall. His breath comes in tufts of mist before his face as he enters the cold locker, shivering against the air. He can’t figure what it is he’s been brought here to see until he turns his weary head.
In the corner, wrapped in a huge white tarp, is the shape of a frozen girl. Only her frosty hair shows, iced and bluish and rigid, her face hidden.
Rone stares. His eyes gloss over. He doesn’t blink. He watches the frozen girl, as if genuinely expecting her to stir from her position. She will get up. She will turn my way.
She is not dead.
“I’m so sorry,” whispers the voice.
Tell me she’s alive. Unblinking, Rone’s eyes begin to grow wet, stinging from the cold of the room. Tell me she’s alive and that I’m not seeing … and that I didn’t come all this way, fight all this way, just to … just to have her be …
“Tell me,” Rone says out loud, shutting up his thoughts and clenching his teeth. “Tell me that’s not her.”
The voice gives no answer.
Rone can’t pull his eyes from the wrapped-up girl in the corner. “Please.” Tears are in Rone’s eyes. She died alone. You weren’t here. Your sister froze. You let this happen to her. His nose plugs up at once and his throat constricts. “P-Please tell me it’s not her.”
The invisible voice is at his side now. “I was with her until the very last moment. She was brave. She spoke of you. She—”
Rone coughs, a sob trying to break out of his chest. “Who.” The word isn’t a question; it’s a demand. Everything in Rone’s face is tightening. His fingers clench, unclench, clench, unclench.
“She said your name. Rone. The last word she said. She—”
“WHO,” he repeats, needing to know, needing it to be said out loud. “WHO IS SHE?”
“Cintha,” answers the voice.
Rone, solidified in one instant, drops to his knees. He makes no sound when he sobs, his face wrinkling as his lips part, the steam of his breath bellowing out from his mouth. Though his eyes fill with tears, none of them fall. He presses his hands to the ice cold floor and doubles over as his mind races through a million thoughts. The last thing he said to her. The last thing she said to him. A moment at home right after their mother died and he promised his sister he’d protect her. A laugh they both shared at the lunch table one day at school. The look on her face when she tasted her first plate of dumplings at the Noodle Shop. Did she die here while I was fucking Ruena and Erana, safe in a big comfy mansion not ten minutes from this very spot? Was she under my nose this whole time?
“Rone. She had an item in her clutch …”
“How did she die?” Rone chokes out through a strangled throat that nearly refuses him breath, let alone voice.
“She was wounded. And … she froze. She could have run free from this place, but she came back for a friend … as did I … but also something else. She came for an item that will save the world.”
“She died for … for what? An item? W-What fucking item?”
“Put out your hand.”
Rone, on his knees and with his whole world blurred by a wall of shimmering tears, lifts a palm up. Something cold and fragile is set onto it. He lowers his palm and finds a syringe.
“This?” chokes Rone, staring at it incredulously. “This fucking thing? My sister died for this stupid fucking thing?”
“It will save Atlas,” says the voice. “It’s no stupid thing.”
He lifts the syringe and stares at the clear fluid within its body, the fluid that might as well be water for all it fucking matters, the fluid that is somehow not frozen. “How’s this shit gonna save Atlas?”
“She said …” Rone hears the invisible woman sigh. “She said to tell you it’s medicine for … a treasure beneath the floor. A weapon in your arsenal. It made no sense to me, but … she said you’d know.”
Rone shuts his eyes, willing the cold to freeze him too. He holds the syringe against his chest, feeling a world of doubt and disbelief and humor race past his eyes. What a joke my life has been. For my father to die because of a lie and a selfish man, for my mother to take her own life because she couldn’t live without dad, and for my sister to die in the name of saving the city … with a syringe full of water.
“It is a medicine that … is nightmare-inducing. A permanent nightmare. Please, it’s your sister’s last wish, and it will save Atlas. Now come,” says the voice. “I will lead you out.”
Rone doesn’t listen to her. He reaches into his pocket and, from its tight embrace, pulls out a small and unassuming vial of his own clear liquid. The chemical in this vial may not save the world, but it is the only thing that can save him right now.
“Rone … Rone, please. Your sister died protecting that syringe and the serum within it. It is the city’s only hope. Rone, you have to figure out what her words meant. Rone …”
But all the words are now just wind in Rone’s ears. He brings the vial of chemical to his lips—his last swallow—then kicks it back, letting the sour, sweet taste coat his tongue. It isn’t as much of a swallow as he imagined he had left. More like a splash, really, but he downs it just the same. This one’s for you, Cintha.
0204 Tide
Tide watches from the crowd, his eyes on the two guards in the front. Everything is going exactly as planned.
Gin huffs. “How much longer until—?”
“Just wait.” Tide squints through the crowd, his eyes on them. He needs to see it in their eyes, the effect of Dog’s emotion-infected food. He needs to be sure before he acts.
“If we wait too long, Tide, the King’s address will begin and my opportunity is fucking dashed.”
Tide nudges Dog at his side. “You think they’re taken by now?”
“I’d say so,” murmurs Dog. “I saw that one eat. The one on the left.”
“What’s his name?” Tide prods him, figuring Dog to know. “He or she will be better inclined to accept our dumb idea if they think Gin knows them.”
“His guards are different every time,” Gin chimes in, annoyed that Tide doesn’t somehow already know that. “Why else would I be trying to replace one of them? No one will be the wiser, but it must happen now. People are already getting a look at them.”
“It won’t matter much if our plan works. Stay,” he orders Dog, then faces the girl. “Alright, Gin. Come and let’s make quick work of one of these idiots.”
The two cut through the crowd at once. As they go, Tide spots a few others who have been hit by neon in their pasts, though none of them seem to have been shot as many times as Tide. He has neon all over his front and his back. He even has a shot of neon on his ass. What the hell was he doing to earn so many shots on his body? Was he responsible for what happened at the Weapon Show so long ago? Or was he mistaken for the person responsible? So many questions still flood his thoughts whenever he gives himself a minute to think on his unnatural pink luminescence.
“That one,” Tide directs Gin when the guard is within view. “He should be under Dog’s emotional influence. He ate from the table.”
“And if the guard’s a she?”
“Shouldn’t matter. His feelings affect anyone. Work a flirt on her if it doesn’t. I don’t care. Just do it now or do it never.”
Gin visibly steels herself. Tide nearly forgets
for a moment that Gin thinks she’s facing the last moment of her life. She still might be, Tide reasons. I haven’t yet decided whether to bring her back to the Queen alive and fulfill my mission, or live the rest of my life as a man who abandoned the Abandon, death always upon my heel.
Tide stands back, disappearing into the crowd as he keeps his eyes on the girl.
He made the decision the moment they happened on this plaza at which the King’s address would be happening. He decided that he would help her kill the Slum King. If anything went wrong, he could easily pull the wind and no one would know it was him, not in a crowd this large. When the King is slain, Tide might even be able to aid Gin in her escape by pushing away anyone who dares to try and harm her. We both can get what we want, Tide had assured himself. She can get the blood on her hands, and I can keep the blood in her, and the Queen of the Abandon will be sated.
Tide asked Gin why she couldn’t just kill the Slum King in a more private setting, but apparently he always travels alone through secret passages that no one else is able to follow him through, and when he’s not traveling, he’s at his headquarters, the whereabouts of which no one knows. It could be anywhere in the first, second, or third wards. “Hell, it could be underground or in the Lifted City or up my great uncle’s ass for all I know,” Gin had blurted. The Slum King only hires guards for his public events like this—different ones each time—and even then the guards are positioned at either end of the stage, too far away to make a stab at the King without a hundred people rushing to protect their savior from harm. The only ones regularly around him are his three appointed Marshals, who the people never see. “There’s just no other option,” Gin insisted, her already off-putting nose made more so as she scrunched it up with dark determination. “I have to do this. I have to end him and I have to do it today.”
He watches from afar as Gin squares her shoulders and slowly approaches the guard. A conversation commences. He watches and he waits, concentrating. Gin seems to speak brusquely to the man, serious of face and rigid of body. The guard appears to be confused, taking a glance or two up at the stage.
