by Daryl Banner
Cintha frowns. “What do you mean?”
Aryl reaches out to touch the frozen woman, confused. “She’s ice cold … and yet she looks red to me. If she’s cold, she should be blue. She was blue a moment ago … but now she’s red. And still cold. And …” Aryl looks at her own hands, alarmed. “Now I’m blue.”
Meta. The doctor told me. “The Meta can affect others’ Legacies,” recalls Cintha.
“Everything warm is blue. Everything cold is red,” complains Aryl. “It’s … It’s all backwards …”
Cintha staggers away from the table, the room spinning quite suddenly as she presses herself into the nearest wall, then slides down to the floor, wheezing. Aryl is at her side in the next instant uttering words of worry and trying to comfort her, but Cintha can barely hear her.
“I’m gonna get you help,” Aryl insists.
“No, no. It’s too d-d-dangerous,” Cintha says, fighting a shiver.
“You’re dying, Cintha.”
“No. I’ll survive this. I have to survive this.”
When Cintha looks up, Aryl is already wearing the mask again. The sight is almost frightening.
“I will be back for you,” Aryl promises, her words muffled. “I’m going to find medicine and blankets and I will make sure to …”
Cintha can’t hear her words anymore. The girl is going in and out of focus and the room won’t stop spinning. Despite the frigid air, Cintha feels like she’s sweating. She hugs the tarp closer to her, not trusting the heat that flushes over her forehead.
In the next instant, she’s alone. The vault door opens at her back with a great swoosh of air, and then it shuts. The only light comes from a buzzing bulb at each of the four corners of the room. Cintha stares at the one nearest to her and she wonders.
She wonders and she imagines and she questions.
Some of us are destined to be small …
Cintha closes her eyes and grips the syringe tighter. Or is it even in her hand anymore? Cintha squeezes her fingers. Is it gone …? She can’t open her eyes, but she squeezes her fingers and feels nothing. I dropped it when the man with the wires in his palms attacked me. I lost the serum … the last gift of the red-eyed doctor. The news sits heavily on her shoulders like a great shower of ice upon them.
Minutes roll by, minutes that stretch the length of lifetimes.
The world’s full of big people and little people … Kirin’s words drift around in her mind, like dead leaves carried by harsh winter winds. You are one of the big, my dear …
Cintha laughs. “I’m quite short,” she murmurs out loud to the memory of the sweet old man Kirin. “There’s nothing b-b-big about me unless I’ve j-j-just put a big bowl of spicy in my b-belly at the N-Noodle Shop.”
The Noodle Shop. Cintha hugs herself, thinking of the boy in the basement, the boy with the coldness inside him.
The coldness.
You will accomplish great things …
Cintha’s eyes flash open. “His mother,” she murmurs, realizing. “The boy with the coldness. His mother. He took his mother’s hand and …” Didn’t he tell her that story once when she was feeding him soup? After he finally came to trust her and no longer resisted her attempts to feed him, he told her his name. Kendil, the cold boy. Kendil, the one with the black eyes and the black hair and the ice in his fingers. Didn’t he tell Cintha a story about the hand he took from his mother the day he froze her solid?
“Didn’t you break off your mother’s hand?” Cintha murmurs to the Kendil in her memories out loud, her breath turning into a storm of mist before her face. “Your m-m-mother’s own hand?”
Is it at all possible that the Meta … is his mother?
Kendil’s life became a series of bad events since that day, and he only sees destruction and fury because Sanctum made a monster of him. But Cintha saw the real him. He is kind. He is full of wishes and wants, just like anyone. Kendil deserves the chance at a normal life.
And if the Meta is his mother, then he is immune to the bad effects of the failed serum. He could be free from his Legacy, from his power …
From the horror that has consumed his life.
Weapon of Sanctum … diffused, at long last.
Minutes and minutes and minutes have gone by. Cintha, twice, feels herself slip. Is this what it’s like to sleep and dream at last? Is this what Anwick knew every time he rested his head and closed his eyes? The idea of sleeping to an adult is terrifying, because the only time one goes to sleep is when they sleep their last—to meet the angels of death who carry them to the other side.
You’re not meeting the angels of death today, Cintha tells herself. You’re not meeting …
She shivers, then shudders, then feels completely numb. Did she ever even have her leg caught in a coil of razor-sharp wires? Did she suffer any injuries at all, or was that some gruesome dream she had of some past life? Was the doctor with the red eyes really shot in the head? Maybe this is all some elaborate hallucination brought on by the Legacy elimination procedure, which is happening right now. All the others have gone, and they finally called for number seven. That must be it. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe she’s in the comfort of a bed someplace.
Yes, that’s what it is. This is the comfort of a bed. She only needs to keep her eyes closed and drift away.
Drift away.
Drift away.
“Cintha?”
Just keep drifting away. Cintha can smile, feeling the warmth of a person approach from behind. She doesn’t recognize the voice, but that’s okay. Maybe it’s Kendil’s mother on that table over there who is speaking to her from beyond the land of ice. Cintha tries to open her eyes, but all she seems to see is misty foggy nothingness. There is no person there, no source of the voice.
Yet it continues to speak. “I am a friend of Aryl’s. I just brought her to safety. She is safe now.” Cintha’s eyes keep searching. “You will not be able to see me. Cintha, let me try to carry you out. You’re bleeding everywhere and you’re cold.”
Cintha can’t quite make her mouth work, so she starts to open her fingers and close them, open them and close them.
Open.
Close.
Then the woman touches her hand. Cintha turns. The woman appears before her through an ethereal fog.
Cintha blinks. “Three Goddess …” she whispers, astonished.
The woman before her gives a gentle shake of her head. “I’m afraid I’m no Goddess. My name is Kid. You are a friend of Aryl’s,” she says, “and so you are a friend of mine. Please, you must get up.”
Cintha can’t pull her eyes away. This is the end. This is when I die. Three Goddess has come for me and I don’t even believe in them. “Is this how it all ends? Is this how the world ends? … In coldness?”
There is a silence. Then the woman inclines her head. “It ends in fire,” she replies. “I was told that by a man who could walk through time … a man who saw the Last City of Atlas ended by fire.”
The world ends in fire … straight from the mouth of the Sisters. “I have a friend named Kendil,” says Cintha. “I … I just met his m-m-mother. I feel sorry for him. He’s a good, sweet person …”
“Cintha. You have to come with me. You’re freezing to death.”
“He could have frozen me to death,” replies Cintha faintly, “but he didn’t. He wouldn’t.” She can’t even shiver anymore. “Please have mercy on him when you take him to the other side, Three Sister. Please. He needs a normal life. He deserves a normal life.”
“I’m helping you up,” says the Goddess named Kid. Cintha feels warm arms around her, but she can’t move. The arms pull again, and her world falls on its side. Everything spins and seems far away.
“Kendil broke off his mother’s hand,” Cintha moans. “H-Have you met his m-m-mother? She’s missing a … a h-h-hand …”
The Goddess Kid is silent for a moment, then brings her face close. “I knew Kendil, too. He was a friend of mine … long, long ago. And then he tried to ki
ll me. Kendil has killed many innocent souls. He is beyond saving. He is deadly. Cintha, some with great power do not deserve their power. Some even grow … mad by it.”
“Y-You knew him? You knew Kendil?”
“And his mother’s hand, yes. The hand he keeps permanently affixed to his chest,” says the Goddess. “He showed me.”
He showed her. Kendil’s mother’s hand … affixed to his chest.
His mother. The Meta.
Cintha thinks of Aryl and the red and the blue …
Red and blue, then blue and red.
Cold and fire …
The world ends in fire …
“His Legacy …” whispers Cintha, staring through a fog of her own expiring breath before her. “Kendil’s Legacy … It’s not …”
The Goddess draws her face closer. “What?”
“It’s not coldness. It’s …”
Fire.
Kendil’s true Legacy … is fire.
“We could save his life, Sister. We could save all our lives. We all deserve to live.” His mother’s hand upon his chest … The Meta … “I need the syringe. It c-contains a nightmare-inducing serum.” Kendil will be immune to it. He’ll have no nightmares to fear. “A permanent nightmare with no escape. Y-Y-You need to get it. I left it in the room with the masked man who can throw wires from his p-p-palms. But he has no mask anymore. I killed him. I killed him with his own wires, strangled about his neck. There is a syringe I dropped in that room. G-Get it.”
The warm woman grows still at those words. “A masked man with wires …? From his palms …?” There is a heavy silence, and then she says, “He once bound me to an abandoned train track where a ghost train nearly took my life.”
“You need to get that syringe,” Cintha presses on. “We can save a life. We can—”
But the words of the Goddess from earlier stop her short—the words about Kendil. He has killed many innocent souls. He is beyond saving. He is deadly …
The Goddess wishes Kendil to die. Cintha wishes him to live.
“We can save the world from the fire,” whispers Cintha.
“We’ll save it together once I get you off this floor,” says the Goddess. “Please, get up.”
There is only one person in the world she can trust. “My brother Rone. My brother Rone will be looking for me. I know him. Rone. He will look for me and he will find me … and you must give him that syringe. It contains … a medicine.”
“How is a nightmare a medicine?”
“The nightmare is the medicine. Please, you must do this. Rone, my brother, my brother …”
“You’re talking like you’re going to die, Cintha. You are not.”
I must tell him in a way that only he will know. “Give him that syringe and tell him it’s a medicine. Tell him that the medicine must be given … to the treasure beneath the floor.” Beneath the floor of the Noodle Shop, in the basement below. “Tell him it must be given … to the weapon in our arsenal.” The Weapon of Sanctum …
“Cintha …”
“This is a matter of saving the world. Not saving me. Get the syringe before someone destroys it. The world … everything … the fire, the fire …” Cintha shuts her eyes.
“This isn’t how you end,” the Goddess tells her.
“Tell him …”
“The world does not end in coldness.”
Cintha wonders if that’s yet the greatest lie she never let herself believe. Her world was always meant to end in coldness, and she knew it the day she met Kendil and saw herself in him. A power that got a child arrested. A power that stole away a normal upbringing. A power that gave way to a lifetime of misunderstanding and pain. I am so like you, Kendil …
The Goddess may wish him dead, but Cintha will save his life, and thereby save the world. “Tell him …” she whispers.
“Cintha …”
“A treasure under the floor … A weapon in his arsenal …”
Weapon.
“What will you dream?”
Did the Goddess ask her that question, or is she already slipping to the other side? She thinks she sees her brother there. Or is it her father, grinning with his big bright eyes and rushing to hug her?
“I’m getting the syringe and I’m returning with help.”
Was that the Goddess again?
“What will you dream?”
I am going to dream of a world that doesn’t fight the madness, but dances with it. I want the cold boy to feel warmth again. I want my brother to fall in love … maybe many times. I want … I want …
“Are you ready for your final sleep?”
I want …
I want …
0230 Rone
Cloud Tower is tall, but its walls are thin.
And that is much to Rone’s advantage.
He slips up the stairs with two weapons in his grasp. A dagger. A needle full of chemical.
The stairs go on and on. If only I could phase upward without the annoying inconvenience of gravity …
The top of the stairs leads to a long bend of hallway, of which Rone does not need to walk at all. Just a waltz through the wall brings him to the right end of the throne room, just behind the very throne itself.
But no one sits in it.
He flicks his eyes up to find figures standing atop the glass roof, high, high, high above him. How odd.
Rone races to hide behind the tall, ugly throne at the sound of shuffling feet. When he peeks around its edge, he finds a woman coming down the long hall toward the throne, except she takes a sharp turn before the steps. Her skin is a rich, dark color and her hair is long and silky, pulled into one tight ponytail in the back. Her body is sucked into a full-length skintight suit which fits her every contour perfectly. The woman moves with confidence as she saunters toward the glass wall and seems to vanish into thin air.
Rone glances up at the ceiling again and sees that another set of feet now reside up there. A portal, he realizes. What curious Legacies a Mad King keeps in his arsenal.
It doesn’t matter their Legacies, however. Rone will phase out and be unaffected by all of them. Even Ruena’s lightning couldn’t touch him when he had phased away before. You make it so easy for me, Impis. I hope you’ve enjoyed your reign.
Rone keeps all but the flats of his shoes phased as he scurries from the throne and plunges into the portal.
The very next instant, he’s standing at the highest point in the whole world: the summit of Cloud Tower. There is no railing or walls up here, and the ground is somewhat slanted in all directions. One wrong step or slip of the foot on the glass surface, and one will fall hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet to their death.
Standing at the edge of these unsettling grounds is a thinly muscled naked boy who is glossy with sweat. Near him, the woman he saw approaching with the long ponytail. And across from them at the other end of the roof, with all his colors and flair blowing in the wind, Impis Lockfyre, the Mad King, former Marshal of Madness, stands in all of his beautiful mania.
Rone wastes no time. With a smirk and three quick hops of his feet, Rone rushes up to the backside of Impis and plunges the syringe deep into the Mad King’s neck.
Impis howls out as Rone empties all the contents of the syringe into the King. His shriek draws the attention of the other two, who whip around to pay witness to their King’s certain end.
“This is for my sister Cintha,” breathes Rone, feeling the fire of retribution in his chest.
Then he brings forth the dagger, whips it around Impis’s body, and plunges it deeply into his bowels.
“And this is for my brother Anwick.”
The syringe, having served its purpose, is flung aside. Then he pulls Wick’s dagger clean from the Mad King’s belly, letting the man drop to his knees as he clutches his wound, his eyes reeling. Even now after his fatal wounds, half a smile is painted over Impis’s face as giggles work their way up his throat.
When the two others charge forward, Rone raises the dagger.
“No, no,” calls Impis to them, stopping their advance. “I’m quite fine. Ticklish, in fact. Oh, what an …” Impis coughs. “What an … an exciting way to end the day!”
Impis rises slowly from the ground, staggers to the left, then to the right, and then turns to face his assailant. Rone brandishes only the dagger, every part of him phased but his shoes and his weapon. Impis holds his belly where the dagger entered him.
“N-Nothing …” murmurs Impis, the blood spilling through his fingers as he holds his wound. “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing …”
As he continues to repeat the word, Rone takes a step back, ready to slip through the portal and make his grand escape—only to discover no more portal behind him.
“… nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing …”
The woman is at Impis’s right side. The sweaty boy is at his left.
“… nothing, nothing, nothing …”
Rone is trapped. He can’t phase through the floor or else he’ll fall a long way to the glass tile of the throne room below. He doesn’t have the portal at his back, which he didn’t—until now—realize was unreliable. I suppose I could just stand here and mock them until they open the portal back up. After all, they have to get down too at some point, don’t they?
“Nothing?” interrupts Rone, feeling smart. “Looks more like something. And it’s your blood. And it’s spilling out of you. A lot.”
Impis keeps reciting the word over and over, uninterrupted. He doesn’t even sound like he’s drawing breath between each one.
Rone tries to find his wit, but instead finds himself unsettled by Impis’s behavior. His stomach begins to turn as he clings to the dagger, which suddenly starts to feel extremely inadequate in his circumstances.
The woman speaks over Impis’s continuous words. “Which one was Anwick?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “The one who … cried?”
