by Daryl Banner
Wick shakes his head at once. “N-No. I didn’t. Until we got here, I didn’t even know you had the Queen as a prisoner.”
“SHE IS NOT THE QUEEN!!” screams Impis, on his feet at once. “SHE WAS NEVER THE QUEEN! SHE HATES ME! SHE LAUGHED AT ME! SHE WILL HAVE EVERY THOUGHT STOLEN FROM HER BRAIN AND THEN I WILL KILL HER DEAD! I WILL KILL HER DEAD IN FRONT OF ALL OF ATLAS, I WILL, I WILL, I WILL!”
Wick’s knees grow weak and his stomach plummets at the sight of Impis Lockfyre screaming at him, the madness burning in his eyes and flecks of spit rocketing out of his flapping, furious lips. Athan is instinctively putting a shoulder in front of Wick, as if protectively. Lionis doesn’t seem to be breathing, standing on Wick’s other side. None of them know what to do.
Without looking at her, Wick reaches for Axel’s Legacy. If I can convince Impis to trust us using her ability of mind manipulation …
“You’re armed,” Axel says suddenly.
Wick turns his head toward her. “What?”
Then Wick’s whole body relaxes. Axel’s beautiful eyes dive into Wick so deeply, the world becomes a tunnel between him and her. Nothing else exists. He feels completely at ease. Axel’s inviting face observes him as he decides to trust her every word and suggestion. It’s stunning, how he was wrong about Axel. Everything’s alright. Axel is just as likeable, just as thoughtful, just as smart and clever as her twin Arcana. How could Wick have ever thought otherwise?
“Show me your weapon,” Axel suggests.
Wick takes out his hidden dagger. “This one?” he slurs lazily.
“It looks pretty sharp,” she observes. “Give it to your boyfriend.”
Wick puts his dagger into Athan’s hand.
“Great job. You’re a good person.” Her attention turns to Athan. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Athan Broadmore,” he recites.
“Lovely name. Put that dagger to your throat.”
Athan calmly lifts the dagger to his own neck. Wick watches him in wonder, not sure what the purpose of this is, but knowing for certain that it is all for the best.
“Athan Broadmore, if your boyfriend Anny-Anwick here tries to harm me or King Impis,” she goes on, “I think it’d be a great idea for you to pull that sharp, deadly dagger right across your neck and let all your blood spill out onto the floor.”
“Great idea,” agrees Athan lazily.
Her eyes return to Wick, snapping upon him with the force of a whip. “And if you dare to sneak your little mimic hands onto my Legacy again, Anwick, I’ll be sure the last thing you feel is the cold touch of Metal Hand’s finger.”
The moment her influence lets go of Wick, the world seems to surge back towards him, much like waking up from a dream. His heart begins to gallop as the reality sets in of what just happened to him. His eyes flick over to Athan, who also seems to have sobered from the trance, except he still holds the dagger to his neck, apparently unable to pull it away. Athan’s widened eyes reflect the sheer terror that thrums within Wick’s chest.
“Wait,” interjects Lionis at once. “Listen. We’re not trying to do anything devious here. We’re with you,” he assures them. “Whether we’re in the presence of Axel or Arcana, it makes no difference. We didn’t lie to her and we won’t lie to you. We are here to join your regime. We don’t care for Ruena or the old, broken ways of Sanctum. The day you killed the Banshee was a day we celebrated.”
“Yes?” prompts Impis, folding his arms. “Do go on.”
Lionis nods with confidence. “You wanted my brother Anwick because of his power. He’s yours now. And he brought me because, well, because I read a lot. I know a lot. I can be valuable to you, too. And Athan here, he is skyborn. He knows the city intimately and had a brother who worked alongside the … the insufferably irritating likes of Janlord.”
“Very irritating,” purrs Impis in agreement. “Very insufferable.”
Wick stares at the side of his brother’s face, marveling at his brilliance. Lionis adores Janlord. Lionis looked up to him and watched his every speech on the broadcast. He’s playing Impis.
“Though Athan’s brother was killed, Athan himself has intimate knowledge of the workings of Sanctum, too. Janlord was very close to the corrupt, Sanctum-loving likes of Ruena, and so it was only a matter of time before Athan here learned the same dark secrets his brother learned. Secrets of Janlord. Secrets of Ruena.”
“Secrets,” hisses Impis, his eyes greedy and full of glee. He flits them onto Athan, his head flinching as it turns. “Tell me a secret.”
Athan, wide-eyed and still firmly holding a dagger to his own neck, says, “The … The Peacemaker was … was researching the effects of … of auto-borne—”
“BORING!” screams Impis. Then, instantly calm again, he says, “You know, I really don’t think I’m going to be pleased until I know that the girl is found and returned to me.”
“Y-You don’t need her,” Wick tries again feebly.
Impis crosses his legs primly, revealing his long red boots that curl at the toes. “You two,” he announces, drawing a figure-eight in the air toward Lionis and Wick. “Go and fetch me Ru-Ru. Did you know Janny-Janlord used to call her that? WHAT AN IDIOT! If you want to be part of my regime, you need to pay your dues, yes? I’ll name you both my personal Chaots if you bring her to me!”
“K-King …” stammers Wick, hardly able to utter the word.
“BRING HER TO ME!”
“She could be anywhere,” reasons Lionis in an even voice. Then he clears his throat and lifts his chin importantly. “Perhaps a bit of guidance might aid us in fulfilling your wishes, King Impis. Such information such as her last known location, the location of her palace, perhaps all known exits to the slums, the—”
When Impis leans forward in his chair so suddenly that his hair dances and all his feathers jerk, the rest of Lionis’s words swallow away. Impis’s left eye gives a subtle twitch.
“Guidance?” Impis purrs, amused. He does not blink as he stares at the brothers. “Axel. Help me give these boys some … guidance.”
A feeling of deep peace invades Wick again. He realizes at once that they truly are on Impis Lockfyre’s side. He knows how to turn Atlas into a city full of dreams, with citizens who face every day with a positive outlook on life, with happiness in their hearts and love in their eyes. Wick finds himself giggling suddenly, tickled by the light, friendly presence of Impis, his only true friend.
“If you set your mind to it,” Impis begins to sing, his voice rising and falling without melody, light and playful, “you can do anything!”
“Anything?” asks Wick dreamily.
“You can find the girl named Ruena … under a rock!” exclaims Impis. “Or hiding in a tree! Or floating in the air right above you!”
Wick and Lionis both look above them suddenly, then turn to each other and start to laugh hysterically at the joke.
“Boys!”
The brothers snap their eyes back to Impis, silenced, listening intently.
“You’re going to look everywhere for that girl. She is trying to hide from you. It’s like a game of Seek The Hiding One! Is that what the slummers call it? Don’t we all love games? I LOVE GAMES!!”
“I do too,” slurs Wick. “Me too!” Lionis exclaims in realization.
Athan calls out to Wick, but he’s much too invested in Impis’s important words. Good King Impis is trying to help them, after all.
“I bet if you put your mind to it, you could find her in just five minutes!” exclaims Impis with glee. Wick wishes he had Impis with him his whole life. He’s so motivating. He’s so imaginative and kind and smart. “I bet you could dig holes in the streets with your mind and find her! I bet you could even look through walls!”
“We can look through walls??” blurts Lionis, astonished.
“YES!!” screams Impis excitedly. “You can do ANYTHING! You can dance! You can sing! You can fly!”
Lionis gasps. “I can fly??”
“YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!!” Impis appl
auds loudly, drowning out all the annoying, bothersome noise of Athan desperately crying out their names. “Go, go, go, my soon-to-be Chaots! Find her!”
“Thank you!!” shouts Wick, bursting with excitement. “Come on, bro!!” he cries merrily, grabbing hold of Lionis’s hand.
The brothers burst from the throne room. Wick can’t believe how boring and powerless he’s felt his whole life. How can he have known that one simple pep talk with Impis Lockfyre could unlock so much power within him?
“I’m gonna find her first!” shouts Wick through laughter as he races down the stairs.
“Not before I do!!” Lionis yells back, grinning ear to ear.
The boys barge out of Cloud Tower and tumble over the debris that fills the courtyard. “Is she here??” Wick pushes over a heavy stone. “What about here??” He flips over another. The boys stare at the space under the rock, look at each other, then burst into laughter.
“Bro!” shouts Lionis when they’re in the streets, trying to climb up a lamppost. “I think she’s in the light!”
Wick grabs his head and stares up at his brother. “WHAT??”
“I think she’s in the light!!” he shouts, twice as loud.
“No way!!”
When Lionis loses his footing and tumbles onto his back on the pavement, they laugh until there’s tears in their eyes.
The brothers hardly notice the peculiar looks they get from the occasional person they pass on the road. A big red man with an ugly face and veiny muscles even backs away from them as they charge down the street, streaming with hilarious laughter.
“Bro, I’ve never had this much fun with you before,” Wick says, recovering from a bout of giggles. “Why didn’t we do this sooner??”
“I was thinking the same thing!!” The boys stop in front of a lavish storefront, a dark sky of glittering stars singing above them. “Anwick, I’m such an asshole to you …”
“Lionis, you’re smart. I wish I was as smart as you.”
“I wish I was as good-looking as you! Fuck, you’re handsome! I’d get so many girls if I looked like you!”
“Would you know what to do with them if you had them??”
“YEAH! I KNOW EVERYTHING!”
The boys cackle with laughter, then grab each other as they fall to their knees, buckled over in hysterics.
“I love you, bro,” murmurs Lionis.
“Same. Right back to you and your ugly face,” says Wick.
A sudden look of surprise flashes over Lionis’s face. “Anwick! What if the girl escaped to the slums??”
The brothers rush over to the side of the road and peer over the stone railing. The slums, dark and smoky, loom far below.
“How are we gonna look for her down there?” asks Wick with wonder, his eyes wide.
Lionis grabs Wick by the ears and faces his brother toward him. “Bro. Have you already forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
Lionis pulls him in closer, his eyes wide. “I can fly.”
Wick screams with laughter into his brother’s face. Tiny fingers tickle him all over as the tears spill from his eyes. “No you can’t!”
“I TOTALLY CAN! AND SO CAN YOU!!”
Wick gasps dramatically. “Lionis, I had a dream!” he announces, grabbing his brother’s face. “I had a dream that I could fly!”
“Because you can!”
“BECAUSE WE CAN!!”
Lionis lets go of his brother and climbs onto the stone ledge, staring down at the slums. “Bro. Come up here with me. The view. It’s so fucking beautiful. BEAUTIFUL!”
Wick keeps away from the ledge, eyes large. “I’m too scared,” he realizes. “You’re the smart one, Lionis. You go first!”
Lionis peers down at his brother smugly. “It’s simple, Anwick. Here, I’ll show you. You just open up your arms, like this …”
Wick straightens his posture. He opens his arms to either side, following his brother’s lead.
“You decide where you want to fly …”
“Done!” affirms Wick happily, deciding where he wants to fly.
“Then … JUMP!”
Lionis flies away. Wick gasps, rushing to the ledge and pressing his chest against it to watch his older brother fly. He stares after him in total wonder. I wish I could fly! He watches as Lionis soars into the depths of the slums to find Ruena, farther and farther away.
“YOU’RE FLYING!!” Wick shouts at him encouragingly.
In awe, he watches his brother as he vanishes into the darkness. He continues to watch him even as the soft, unassuming fingers of madness and mind control gently begin to let go. As Anwick Lesser is slowly allowed to have his mind back, the tears of awe turn into something else. His lips part. No. His misty eyes fill with horror as they scan the darkness of the slums before him in disbelief. No, no, no. He looks for Lionis.
He questions what just happened. He denies that it happened at all. He stares and he stares and he stares and he stares and he stares.
And he screams.
0207 Wick
Wick looks at no one and nothing as he marches through the streets.
A bald man rises to confront him. Wick feels a Legacy the way one feels a pen in their hand. He lifts the man off the ground with his mind and casts him to the side like a sheet of paper.
A set of gates move out of his way.
Someone laughs at him in the middle of the street. Someone else calls out tauntingly from behind.
The doors to Cloud Tower are still open from his departure.
The stairs that are countless kiss the heavy bottoms of his feet as he ascends them.
Wick shoves through the doors of the throne room, assaulted by the brightness of mirror and glass tiles, a world of whiteness and light in all directions.
“YOU KILLED HIM!” Wick screams, his voice ricocheting off every surface, flitting above him and cascading back down to his ears in fractured echoes.
Impis is still seated on his throne with his legs crossed. “Killed?” He looks perplexed. “Who?”
“MY BROTHER!!”
“Now, now, now,” warns the Mad King. “You heard Axel. If you try to do a thing to harm me …”
Wick stops at the foot of the steps leading to the throne. Tears dress his whole reddened face and his teeth clench so hard, he feels a piercing ache in his temples. When he turns his head, he finds Athan still there pressing the dagger to his own neck, terror in his eyes.
“Yes, yes, yes, my little Anny-Anwick,” purrs Impis soothingly. “Think, yes, yes, yes. Think. How did I kill your brother? I was here.”
Wick feels his head spinning. Is the madness still in me? “You infected us with your … your m-m-madness.” The anger is quickly shattering into sobs of anguish. Oh, Lionis. I fucking failed you. I let you die. “Y-Y-You and Axel did this to us!!” I fucking let you die.
He’s on his knees, face buried in his hands as the throne room fills to the very top with his wailing. His ears clog up with the noise of his own quivering sobs and his howls of despair. “LIONIS!” he screams into his hands. “MY FUCKING BROTHER! I’M SUCH AN IDIOT! I DID THIS! I FUCKING DID THIS!”
He can’t hear anything. He can’t stop screaming. The emotion erupts from him in endless waves, its source seeming to be infinite. There is no end to the pain inside him. No end at all. No means of comfort. Nothing can touch him.
“You have a choice here, my little Anwick.”
His sobs turn into chokes of air, his face wrinkled tightly. He shuts out the world and can’t see a thing.
“Join me. Axel here can give you as much guidance as you need to be convinced. Yes, yes, yes.” Impis giggles after that. “Or …”
The last sob leaves Wick’s chest, and then he falls silent, deflated and sunken and destroyed. Wick lifts his mess of a face to Athan’s, watching as his boy remains affixed to the spot with Wick’s dagger pressed to his own neck. ‘You hold your life in your own hands now,’ he hears Rone’s voice. ‘There, doesn’t that feel nice? No one can
take it unless you hand it to them.’
“Or you meet your end,” finishes Impis.
Wick has no feeling left in him. He’s numb. He’s a shell. He’s too broken for breath. I just wanted peace. I just wanted a world where I could sleep in peace.
“Anwick …”
The appeal comes from Athan. Wick turns his face again.
Athan’s face is full of fear, but through it all, he speaks evenly and calmly. “Anwick. Just tell him you’ll join him. It’s what we came here to do. We came here to join his regime. We … Anwick, look at me. Please, Anwick. Just join him. Just tell him you’ll join him.”
If I try to kill Impis, my lover is dead. If I try to use Axel’s power again, my lover is dead. If I don’t join Impis, I’m dead.
He studies Athan with a sudden focus, curiosity replacing the despair in his eyes. “Are you truly a survivor?” he asks him.
Athan lifts an eyebrow, the dagger held so steady at his neck, it could be glued there. “What do you mean, baby?”
“Legacy.” Wick sniffs loudly, opening his eyes wider to combat the wall of tears that still swim in them. “Are you truly a survivor? Are we going to survive this, A-Athan, if I cling to your Legacy?”
Athan’s eyes gloss over. He’s losing his composure. “Anwick …”
Wick reaches for Athan’s Legacy, whatever it is. He prays to the three glorious Sisters that his Legacy truly is survival. Please, Sisters, help us survive this Madness. Protect him, forever. Protect me, for now. Wick reaches blindly into his boyfriend with his Legacy.
“You have a choice to make,” announces Impis.
Wick turns his face back to the Mad King, resolve in his eyes. “I will join the Madness,” he declares, his voice shaking. “I will join the Madness. I will be your Chaot. I will do anything you ask of me.”
“Anything?” Impis purrs, his eyes glowing hungrily.
Wick is swallowing his sobs. “Anything at all. Anything. I will do any—” Wick chokes on that last word, blinks away another bout of crying that he doesn’t want to let out, then resumes. “—thing.”
Impis stares at Wick so fiercely, it nearly looks like he’s staring through him. Impis crosses his legs the other way, then pinches his fingers, his left hand lazily flicking at some imaginary bug as his eyes remain glued to Wick’s, unblinking.
