The Immortal of Degoskirke

by Michael Green

  “What of the mer?” the sergeant asked. “Where should we focus our forces?”

  “And the guards!” the lieutenant added.

  Andy thought for a moment.

  “You can never chase the ravagers down, but maybe you can be in the right places to attack them. Keep to the roofs around the widest streets. Stay out of the open, or you’ll suffer a repeat of what happened in the plaza.”

  The guard lieutenant nodded bitterly.

  “Be aware of any captured ravagers with queens, they are friendly,” Andy said decisively, before turning to the sound of an approaching ravager. “Thrag! Could you capture some transportation for us?”

  Thrag let out a loud laugh and slapped Andy on the back, nearly sending him flying, before racing towards the beast.

  The ravager lowered on its own. A familiar goblin had the pilot by the throat.

  “Clang!” Blue yelled.

  “We’re going to hunt down the leaders. If you need more direction, find Ventalus; he’s an actual commander,” Andy said to the various representatives before climbing up the ravager with Letty, Thrag, and the Caspians.

  “Hey! Wait for us!” Dean’s voice called out.

  “Hide somewhere!” Andy yelled.

  “Let them come along,” Letty said, “they’ve been fighting already. Look, they even have their armor on.”

  Andy shook his head no.

  “Dean and Emma have saved all of us, whether you know it or not!” Letty insisted. “They even fought ryle.”

  Andy considered his fellow surfacers and then sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—and why not join us? Giant insect is the safest way to travel, right? Come on guys!”

  Surprised and smiling, Dean and Emma scrambled aboard with several goblins.

  Letty rolled her eyes at Andy, and he stopped, to look at her for the first time.

  What happened?

  It looked like she had been through hell.

  “Letty, what—” Andy cut off, realizing that her armor had been destroyed. He tried not to stare at her bloody face. “Has this been healed?”

  “Yes. The goblins took care of it, and I still look better than you,” she said with a pained laugh, “Don’t worry about me; focus on Ziesqe.”

  “Right,” Andy slowly replied, as Thrag took charge of the ravager.

  “Who let the insane man pilot?” Quill asked. “Do any of you have the first clue of who that is?”

  Andy chuckled. “Thrag and I go way back now.”

  “Really?” Staza scoffed.

  “Yeah, and don’t anger him. He’ll kill everything; I’ve seen him do it.” Andy said, half-joking, and holding on to a cloth tether as the ravager picked up speed through the streets.

  “From whence calls the slaughter?” Thrag yelled, the wind in his hair.

  “Of course, we have no idea where we’re going,” Andy muttered.

  He pulled himself to his feet and looked out onto the city. He pushed the Argument into his Sight and nearly fell over at the noise and torrent of information.

  Letty grabbed him by the shoulder to keep him upright.

  “Is that the Sight?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s bad,” he said, trying to focus. “I’m trying to spot Ziesqe. He’s with another ryle: Kal. She doesn’t look like much, but she’s powerful,” Andy said, nearly stumbling again. “I can’t look for long—” he added, before coming out of the sight. “It’s too much.”

  Thrag growled and they saw an enemy ravager pulling alongside.

  “Down!” Andy yelled as a hail of bolts flew their way. He heard Thrag take a few heavy steps.

  Andy looked up and saw Thrag leap off their ravager and attack the enemy’s.

  “Thrag! Get back here and pilot!” Andy yelled, but Thrag was entrenched in the fighting.

  “Is that them?” Emma asked, pointing up at a pillar.

  “Who!” Andy snapped, still staring exasperatedly at Thrag.

  “The ryle,” she replied sharply.

  Almost everyone in earshot gave her a slanted glance.

  Andy raised his eyes to where she gestured.

  He saw a ravager climbing up the base of the Guilt.

  “They can do that?” Dean sputtered.

  “Does anybody else know how to pilot this thing?” Andy yelled.

  Clang and a few goblins came forward with their captured brutox. “This the pilot, Andy, sir,” Clang said.

  Andy considered the brutox for a moment.

  He’s still loyal to Ziesqe. Don’t let him pilot or he’ll crash the ravager and kill you all.

  You’re right.

  Andy shook his head at Clang, who understood, before staring at the antennae.

  Damn it.

  “Everybody, find something to hold on to!” Andy called out, before sitting in the pilot’s place and grabbing the antennae.

  “Andy, what are you doing?” Letty yelled.

  “We can’t let that brutox drive; he’ll kill us,” Andy said, tugging on the antennae.

  The ravager picked up speed and Letty stumbled as she rushed to his side. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t, but Caspian does,” Andy replied, softly.

  “What?” Letty asked, confused.

  “He speaks to me—”

  “You’re hearing voices!” Letty said, pointedly.

  “He’s already saved my life. I know I can’t trust him, but—”

  Letty was silent and stayed by his side.

  “Look, there they go!” Dean called out, pointing to a few cyclostones parked over a motionless ravager. Andy craned his head for a quick look.

  I hope that’s happening all over the city and in the sewers.

  Distracted, Andy didn’t notice his ravager veering to the right.

  “Pay attention!” Letty said, grabbing Andy’s arm.

  Andy realigned the beast.

  “Pay attention,” Andy repeated, before turning to Letty. “Please look out over the city and tell me what you see.”

  Letty grasped a nearby tether, bolted into the ravager’s thick shell. She stood and looked across the city.

  “Those flying stones are all over the place. Most of the ravagers are stopped, but some are still running around—there’s fire.”

  “It looks like we’re winning,” Dean said.

  “But what about Ziesqe?” Quill asked. “What is he trying to do?”

  “He’s going to do something to the Cogito. He knows the pillar will come down if it’s removed,” Andy replied.

  The Guilt loomed over them as they approached.

  “How are we going to get up there?” Letty asked nervously.

  “We’re going up!” Andy yelled.

  “Wait!” Titus barked. “He wants you to follow him! Don’t you see?”

  Andy pulled back on the antennae and stopped the ravager.

  “You don’t think I know that?” Andy asked. “I have to kill Ziesqe or this never ends! We can never go home again. The city will never be safe, if he’s still alive.”

  “He’s trapped up there!” Blue snapped. “If that’s what he wants, don’t give it to him!”

  Andy pulled back on the antennae three times and the ravager lowered to the ground.

  “What should I do? Let the guards go up there to be slaughtered. Maybe the mer? No. There is no one else! Everyone who is afraid to climb the tower, get off now! I’m taking this ravager up there!”

  Andy stood and looked back at his friends. None made a move to leave, though their faces betrayed reasonable fear. Dean especially looked on the verge of a stroke.

  “Well then, everybody hold on to something!” Andy said, commanding the ravager to stand and then move towards the Guilt.

  For a moment, the creature didn’t know what to do when confronted with the pillar, but then it bent back its forward quarters and latched on with its limbs.

  “It’s like a roller-coaster, only without the safety measures,” Letty said.

 
Emma had the same idea and yelled, “I’ve never been on this ride!”

  Dean laughed manically. “I don’t really want to live, you know, so this only makes sense! I mean, my parents are going to kill me anyway—if I ever get back home! So this is only getting ahead of things!”

  “Shut up and hold on!” Blue said, all four of his limbs clamped onto Letty’s shoulder.

  The ravager sped as its body finished the transition to the pillar. Andy’s knuckles went white from grasping the tether with one hand.

  They ran spirals around the Guilt, kicking up masonry as they went. Andy spotted Ziesqe’s trail of damaged walls and kept it in sight.

  The next few minutes passed at an agonizing pace. Andy refused to look over his shoulder, but based on their speed, and how close the ceiling had become, he knew they were more than halfway there.

  A sudden flurry of caws, barks, and roaring nearly made Andy flinch and tug on the antennae.

  “What was that?” he yelled to his friends.

  “It’s an abomination!” Titus replied, from his shoulder.

  Andy took a second to look.

  It’s the monster I saw flying over the city. What is it after?

  The abomination flew alongside them. Andy chanced another look and saw that the three heads were staring at him, cleverness and contemplation apparent in their eyes.

  “What is everyone looking at?” Emma yelled. “I don’t see it!”

  “Neither do I,” Dean added.

  “Do we try to fight it?” Letty asked, standing and summoning the blade.

  The abomination made a curious grumbling at the sight.

  “No. I don’t think we have a chance. Let’s not provoke it,” Andy said.

  Letty slowly released her blade but refused to take her eyes away.

  “There’s the other ravager!” Blue called out.

  Andy saw the creature, clinging onto the side of the pillar, mere feet from the glowing ceiling, which now shone like steel as far as he could see.

  Andy slowed their ravager to a halt alongside the other. The two beasts regarded each other with a snap of their mandibles, but nothing more exuberant. Their ravager inclined its head towards the ring balcony.

  “This balcony surrounds the pit that contains the Cogito,” Andy said.

  He climbed up onto the ravager’s hull and summoned the blade before jumping over the rail and onto the floor.

  Andy tensed his body and pulled the Argument from limb to limb. The armor appeared. The motions now felt second nature.

  “Neat trick,” Letty said, landing beside him, her own blade drawn. “Can you teach me?”

  Andy gave her a quick smirk but kept his guard up.

  They stepped forward and allowed the others to climb over.

  Clang gestured, and the goblins formed groups and advanced around the circle.

  Andy shook his head, realizing that they would find nothing.

  “They’re down in the pit,” he whispered.

  Andy stepped towards the steel bars that encircled the pit and contained the Cogito. He looked down.

  “You’ve made it,” Ziesqe said. “It’s time, Lysander. You should have done this when I asked and spared the city such destruction.”

  “The city is saved, Ziesqe. It’s over.”

  Ziesqe snorted a derisive laugh. “I stand this close to so much death, to crippling destruction, and you consider the city saved?”

  Vague threats, but no attack.

  Jolting arcs of silver and purple light flashed between the ryle and the Cogito. Andy could see winces of pain on their faces.

  “What can you do, Ziesqe? All that’s left is to try and fool me with another empty threat. I know this is a trick.”

  Ziesqe remained silent.

  “Do you know what I think?” Andy asked, eying his friends. “If you so much as touch the Cogito, it will incinerate you.”

  Ziesqe grimaced painfully. “If you have seen through me so, why come here at all?”

  “To kill you.”

  Andy saw Dean and Emma give him a strange look, while the Caspians nodded approvingly. Letty’s face was like stone.

  Ziesqe shook his head and spread his hands. “What happened to the child I entered the city with? Where has he gone? You aren’t Caspian, and yet, you aren’t the boy.”

  Andy stepped through the open grate and started down the circular steps. He raised his hand and held the blade towards Ziesqe. Silver light arced between Andy’s weapon, armor, and the Cogito. He felt wind suddenly coursing through the pit.

  “Surrender!” Kal commanded, drawing her own blade.

  Ziesqe tried to summon his armor, but thick arcs of silver light cut across him. He stumbled against the wall, heaving and losing his armor and blade.

  Kal struggled to keep her blade steady as blasts from the Cogito buffeted her.

  Letty took the top of the stairs and was ready to follow Andy down.

  Andy reached the pit and approached Ziesqe and Kal. They backed away to the wall, both struggling and writhing with pain.

  “It’s time,” Andy said, within striking distance.

  “I will surrender if you touch the Cogito!” Ziesqe said, raising a shaking claw.

  Andy sighed, releasing his blade and armor.

  “Andy! What are you doing?” Letty called out. “Don’t!”

  Andy smiled and laid his open palm against the Cogito.

  Every pair of eyes looked on in horror.

  Nothing happened.

  Andy’s eyes stuck to the Cogito. Finally, he realized that the sound of rushing water had ceased. Everything was silent and still.

  “It doesn’t belong to me,” Andy said, feeling it to be true.

  “There’s a lad.”

  Andy turned and saw everyone frozen in place. Caspian moved among them. He smiled and gestured out of the pit. Andy followed, a mix of emotion and uncertainty kept him in awed muteness.

  There was other movement. Long shadows ran from the pillars in a circular motion.

  “Their champion circles us,” Caspian said. “I can see his purpose.” Caspian’s eyes shone silver and the air pulsed.

  The beast roared in fury, as if sensing this.

  “Will it attack?” Andy asked.

  Caspian shook his head. “A part of that beast is mine. It knows courtesy, and will keep its distance, at least for now. If I should step among the living—”

  The two neared the rail and looked out over the city.

  Andy felt afraid to ask, but had to. “Why didn’t you take me? I felt it. It was so close back there in the plaza, and again, here at the Cogito.”

  Caspian sighed. “At first, I thought it simple exigency, resisting Ziesqe’s plan. He wanted this circling beast to attack and take us, which it will only do, if we become one. I cannot control you completely, and we would fail to resist its assault.”

  Andy nodded, looking out on the circling monster. “But that wasn’t why?”

  Caspian shook his head. “Not at all.” He laid a hand on Andy’s shoulder.

  Andy felt the touch, but not in the way he had expected. There was no pressure, no touch to speak of, but there was a warmth.

  “I hated you,” Caspian said.

  Andy blinked; past fear or dread, he felt pain, but not for himself.

  “The things I have seen, Lysander—and yet, I feel I must apologize for the intrusion I now admit.”

  Andy felt his jaw drop. He expected almost anything from Caspian, but not this.

  “Close your damned mouth,” Caspian ordered, before chuckling. “My shameful act: I watched as you sat with my beauty.”

  “Ithmene,” Andy whispered.

  Caspian nodded. “I watched as you discovered yourself in the words that spilled. Past my will to scoff at you, to imagine myself in your place, to disparage your smallness, I felt every piece of your passion and agony. In the moment of your own pleading admission, when you clutched that girl, and I felt your heart burst, I remembered. When you cried
on her, a girl I would know for a night, and you sat with her, warm and trembling, lost in the unknown and smiling despite it, I remembered.”

  Andy bit his cheeks to keep his composure.

  “I could speak to you of the time when I was a man with another name. I could show you my glories. But no, I will speak to you of a lesson, taught to me by a dead man, two centuries on.”

  Andy scowled.

  “Indeed, you should make a face. As should I. The lesson has been painted across the scape, plain to all, save these hollow eyes. I had perspective once, and it lent me greatness. I lost it, and now I clutch at its tail, fearful it may slip free this very moment.”

  Caspian was silent. His silvered eyes tensed and his brow furrowed, hinting at what storms spun in the mind of the immortal.

  “I knew a man who said, ‘I am the instrument of providence. She will use me as long as I accomplish her design, then she will break me, like a glass.’” Caspian took a deep breath. “I heard those words so long ago, yet they ring in my ears these past hundred hours.”

  Andy’s eyes widened at the agony in Caspian’s face.

  “For a time, I was the instrument of providence. I did not know that she had broken me. I could not see what she had done to me. I did not have the dignity to die. Where did my time go, Lysander? What songs may still be sung up there, beneath the sun? Does the sky still burnish? Do birds sing in the still before dawn?”

  Andy nodded.

  “I stood by the Aegean and the birds once called me to a dawn. The fall of Thea’s hair about my face and the shining pins within begged me back to rest, but that morning, I left. She still sets a place for me, in a home I have never seen.”

  Andy saw a glint in Caspian’s eye and a silver tear dripped onto the stone rail.

  “I am broken, and my people are broken. Dreams of violence replaced our hope of full and free life. They accepted their chains and my promised blood kept those chains from chafing. I killed the last of the Occidentus and Orientis Obscura, the last human Seers of those ancient orders. I flung their bodies at the ryle. I killed millions. I mutilated their species.” Caspian paused and clenched his fist. “The songs in my breast are now only thunder. The love for what goodness still clings to this sunken pit, is now only disgust. My gift to our people: a dread vision, rivers of blood. I lost myself; what was me, is spoilt.”