by Joe Darris
He feels none of the rumbles from below. So the elk have stopped their assault. He doesn't know to thank Urea or damn her.
“Impressed?” the hermit says, his voice tinny and unfamiliar but also thick with anger, revulsion, contempt. He stands across the stratospheric garden, silhouetted by the constant charges of lightning that cracks down from the heavens. He stands tall and sneers arrogance. Kao can hear the strain in his voice. Baucis intends to kill the Hermit, they all know it.
There, on the edge, near the maddening blue energy, stands the hermit. He has the same mad grin as the demon chief in his safe room, but he holds Kao's sister in his arms.
Kao leaps forward, towards his sister and the possessed old man, but the possessed hermit wags a finger and clicks his tongue.
“Long way down,” he looks over the edge and whistles like a bird, shrill at first, then gradually drops in pitch. The message is clear.
“Sister,” he growls.
“She's as healthy as she was when I found her. She's just unconscious...”
Kao doesn't respond.
“Knocked out? Doped up? Drugged?”
Kao nods.
“Good, you get that one. I've practiced too. I can understand you now, sort of. I think it’s like interpreting a painting, sort of instinctual.”
“Give her.”
“Of course my engineers disagree. They say its all waves stacked upon waves, feedback loops that let me into his brain, but not him into mine. This body is like a second skin, hhis mind a filter for my own. But I guess you don't understand any of this, Wild Man.” He sneers the last two words, but Kao understands neither sarcasm nor irony. He bares his teeth in a hungry smile, it is a title he accepts.
Kao growls. He understands: its their magic, their tools, their energy that give them this power, nothing inside of them besides the stones. Tools can be broken, magic understood, power stolen. He moves his weight forward imperceptibly. He's hunted bigger game than this, though nothing as dangerous. The illusion of distance is important. The trick is to make them think they are safe.
“You know you're more p-popular than me? It's true. The Spire loves you, or most of it does anyways. Ntelo's convinced them this is all your fault, that you're here to end all of us. Still, some of them are into doom and gloom. Maybe they're jealous some of us ruined the end of times. Maybe we weren't supposed to survive at all. Is that why you're here?”
“I'm here for family.” He inches closer. He can see the fury in the hermit's eyes now. He is still in there, powerless.
“Oh no no, these sharp eyes can tell you're getting closer,” he spins and dangles the girl towards the edge. Kao steps back with a snarl. “I don't actually know if she'd fall all the way or just get torched in the field. Your species is the first animal we've encountered not inundated with conductives. It'd be interesting to see if she just passes through with minimum burns, or gets stuck. I don't even know if we could have contained you without those...” he points at Kao's prongs, hidden beneath the folds of leather. The girl half slips out of his arm. “Don't worry I got her!” he giggles, “I guess The Scourge doesn't run up into the mountains?”
Kao only growls.
“Its a clever place to live, or lucky really,” the hermit chuckles, a foreign and ugly sound the hunter never heard the old man make, “That's how you managed to survive the Scourge?”
“Scourge?” Kao feels out the word in his tongue.
“The organism we created that wrecked everything, it got loose in the flood.”
Kao's mind hurts. The flood? All this didn't grow up in a moon.
“Who sent the storm?”
“No, no, silly monkey. That storm was just a little hiccup, a mistake. I never wanted that. I'm speaking about the Deluge. The big one. We couldn't have done something like that. This one remembers, listen...”
The hermit's body shakes then trembles, his arms jerk and legs fidget then he cries in a version of of his own voice, more ragged and tired than Kao remembers, “don't listen to him! He tells lies! He wants us as slaves, the girl is already-” but he speaks no more.
Dead. He was going to say dead. But Kao can smell her. She is warm. He can smell her clammy sweat and her palpable fear. After a moment the hermit's body loosens and the metallic whiny voice comes back.
“The storm?”
“Oh that, I didn't do a thing. I wanted all of your people to join us here, to lord over our garden. Our children destroyed you. You know them. One's the cat that brought you up here, the other's the bird that brought me your sister.”
Kao shakes his head, “No. you lie.”
“They feared you. They ended your people, not me.”
“You taught them to fear us.”
“I thought we were the only humans to survive...” he pauses for a moment, looks at his own body. Though Kao knows not if he's looking at the hermit's long hairy arms or his own stubby fingers. “I guess we were, you're definitely not human.”
“I am not like you.”
“Mmm... . No, you're not. You're so robust! A part of the earth and its crazy rhythms of hunger. Your form doesn't beg the questions of weakness like ours does. You're hairy and strong, its clear you're supposed to be down there in the mud fighting with the panthers.
“I am of the mud...” Kao growls.
“Poor choice of words. You don't believe in divine intervention? You weren't put here by a god to take what you wish from this lump of resources?”
“I was sent to the end the gods.”
“To rid your Natural world of us interlopers? I suppose that's what the old religions taught, the gods are blamed and killed, we did the same thing to our goddess, 'Mother Earth' in the end times, before the Scourge. The citizens believe you were sent here by her to destroy us.”
“I came for family.”
“In the skin of my creation? You insult me! You came to end us. All you've done is cause chaos. The old one stirred rebellion in our howluchins, you sowed insurrection in our vultus flock, and taught the biselk to destroy the Spire. Come on, you're here to kill us. It's in your blood. You're the antithesis of our very existence.”
“I want her.”
“I want you to be together. I don't believe Nature is trying to end us, I think Nature's trying to save us. That's why she brought us you two. It's a spiritual mandate. I must use your kind, fly in the face of the old gods so new ones can be born. Don't you want to be the father of the next stage of humanity?”
“I don't want to be like you.”
“You could live up here, there's trees and grass, we could even bring up animals for you to hunt, nothing like the biselk of course. We can't have something like this happen again.”
“She's my sister.”
This causes the possessed hermit to pause. “Hmmm... that's not good,” a slow, vile smile spreads across his face, “then I'll guess I'll have to be the father.”
Kao can take no more. He screams at the hermit and charges forward, lowers his head, he sees no other way out of this. His people will end, but he cannot allow this demon to infest his sister.
“Now!” the hermit yells, and lightning cracks from the sky. It goes for the tallest, most metallic object, the anarchic set of antlers atop the hunter's head. Two million volts blast through his skull, down his arm and straight into his shoulder. He keeps running though, he must. Then another lightning bolt strikes, and another. Each one makes his brain run a thousand times faster, then sputter out to nothingness. Finally he collapses, his body ceases to function. His muscles contract and extend of their own accord. He urinates on himself. He cannot breath. He opens his eyes and looks through the charred eye holes of the skull. A column of smoke rises from the roots of the prongs still in his arm, it smells like burning meat. He is being cooked from the inside. Still he cannot move.
“Stupid Ape. I wouldn't have brought you up here without a plan. We could have done it the fun way, but we can easily freeze a billion of your seed and use them as we wish.”
&n
bsp; It is harder to understand the words, the symbols he learned at the beginning of this quest. His body pumps with adrenaline, his weapon, his force, but it is too late, his reserves are empty. His brain slows down, synapses are fried solid, others burnt to nothing. His whole body burns, he manages to look down and see patches of his shroud are slowly melting away into nothing while chunks of fur spiral smokey columns. He's dying, or close to it. He has no more fight. The pain is too much.
Synapses try to fire, something about lightning melting the leather he wears despite prongelk down below being unaffected by it. Only one substance melts prongelk leather, bile of the kingcrow.
“You are a magnificent specimen, you will be the crown jewel of my symphony, the centerpiece, all will bow to you, to us, this body is too old for my taste.” The hermit leans over the hunter's body. He can just see him out of the corner of his eye. He tries to focus on his sister, the limp form cradled in his arms, but cannot.
His brain screams: How is his leather melting? How could bile get in here? He understands nothing of Baucis's words. His brain keeps jamming that question at him. He looks up, but its hard to focus his eyes. There is a light in the sky, a big round bright light. It calms him. He imagines this is how prongelk feel as he steals their lives away with his knives. He feels washed in its round light. The light calls him home.
No. His heart pumps stronger. The moon!
The moon! The moon! I worship the moon! It makes him feel stronger and smarter, but not tonight... tonight something obscures it. A blue shimmer that hurts and hurts if you get close to it. A blue shimmer that runs through the bones of prongelk and the wings of kingcrows. He can't feel the moon because of that.
A flash in the sky and he does feel the moon! Something is screaming in pain, and the walls are pulsing, he can feel their power. Through their surge he feels the moon's faint pull. It cools him, reminds him of his home lands, of picking seeds under its big round face, or hunting when it rose late in the night. He remembers aiming his blades carefully in its silver light. He has thrown so many.... When he was a boy he always believed in the moon. When the hermit told them stories of the Hidden he always imagined the moon as one of them. She was a quiet one, she just sat in the back and rooted for you, for the good ones. He was her favorite, the young hunter was. He believed in no gods but the moon. And she did not need to be believed in, she was there every day, pulling the streams and lighting the night.
Kao knew he was dying, for feathers float in front the moon. It grows blacker and blacker, more and more feathers obscure it, the vile one-eyed kingcrow comes for him, Kao knows it. Yet he feels the moon's power increase.
I am not your enemy he pleads, but the bird does not stop. It grows closer and closer. He hears it scream for him, than an explosion. Feathers and bile rain down from above.
The hermit drops the girl and dives to the ground. He is coughing and coughing.
Moonbeams fill Kao's soul with strength. He feels purified, protected, powerful. His brain speeds up. His muscles ache less.
Reflexes return and Kao deftly snaps off prongs from his helmet. He throws each one faster than a bullet towards the shimmering dome above him. As each connects it ignites into an explosion of sparks and lightning. Each connection causes the field to flicker, he feels the moon's tug more and more as the projectiles collide.
Then the bird is upon them. There's a huge crack of lightning and it forces its way through the field, tendrils of electricity cling to its feathers. It hops and tries to shake them free but cannot. The kingcrow hops over to the apes. It starts to rain, but it’s not water. It’s tiny droplets of bile. Each time he inhalesit burns, when he exhales it tastes of blood.
“Stupid ape!” the hermit screams, his voice ragged, his eyes furious. He grabs the antlered helmet from off the hunter. It crackles and bolts of lightning hop from it to the hermit as he wraps himself and girl in its protective shroud. Kao feels the electric burn start to subside. Now he smells his own hair like vomit as the bile starts to digest it outside the kingcrows’ bellies.
The kingcrow hops closer. It whips its head back and forth, constantly checking its prey. Lightning dances across its obsidian black feathers. It sees the two apes in front of it, then squawks at the one with the rack of horns.
“Skup! Its him! Not me! Skup, listen! It's him!” One-eye ignores him. It lunges towards the hermit and the possessed old man abandons the girl as he tries to escape. The bird leaps and with a flap of his wings is upon him. Lightning arcs from the bird to the hermit, the antlers serve as they were intended, perfect antennae. Each snap of the bird's beak makes jolts of electricity, every bite pouring power in the hermit's body.
Kao runs to his sister. She is warm, but unresponsive. He snarls. He looks up to see the bird step back, shaking its head. It looks like it fights a tiny wasp, but Kao knows the brother is trying to regain control, save his mentor. The bird takes ungainly steps backwards.
Kao's lungs burn. The room is filling up with vaporized bile. The sound of choking is raucous.
The hermit throws off the lightning rod of a helmet and it slides to the edge of the roof, into the field, there it stays, crackling and whining a high pitched squeal into the air.
Kao goes to the hermit. He grits his teeth and snaps off the final prong jutting from his arm. He grabs the old man in his free hand, lifts him up, and carries him towards the wall. The entire time the crazy man is sputtering, half in the tinny voice, half in his own. The hunter knows how to free him, but it may end the body. It is what he would want.
He pulls back the knife and drives it into the base of the hermit's neck, then shoves the barb directly into the shimmering field behind him. The hermit's entire body electrifies. His eyes sparkle, he twitches and drools and then finally goes limp as the field fades, then blacks out. Everything goes dark. The shimmering blue field vanishes. The hunter steps back from the edge, then drops the hermit.
Kao soaks up the moonbeams. He feels their subtle power buffeting his system. His blood pumps faster, his brain returns to normal. The charge isn't in the air anymore. A breeze comes through and blows out the mist of bile that threatened to drown them all with blood from their own lungs.
He peers down at the hermit. He is frozen, twisted and contorted. His muscles are tight, his eyes wide open. He does not move.
Then a clamor from the door he came through and Baucis, the pudgy little man jumps through the opening, bent low, dragging his knuckles. His veined head pulses fiercely. He hoots and grunts in the hunter's tongue. He sounds like a child. His voice is so high pitched, his growls so soft. He stands and beats his chest, then runs towards Kao. He slows down when he sees the body on the floor. He hoots angrily, runs around punching the floor, bushes, whatever he can get his hands on. Then he gets on top of the hermit's body and starts banging his own skull against the body.
“Me! Me!” he hoots. But its no use. He is stuck. He looks to the hunter, frowns and spits on the floor, “Not me,” he says, jamming the demon's thumb against his chest. Then he runs towards the edge of the roof. Before Kao can say a word he leaps from the ledge.
Kao races to the edge but he is not close to the speed of gravity. He watches the hermit fall into nothing. He cries not. This is how it must be. Instead he turns to his sister and leans over her. She is breathing, barely. He leans in to feel her pulse and a little jolt of electricity jumps from his finger to her neck. Her eyes flutter open and she breathes in sharply. For a moment they do nothing, only stare into each other's eyes. Saying more than words ever can, the language of brothers and sisters.
Then the ground shifts, and the horizon goes off kilter. The Spire falls.
Chapter 44
Beware false idols and false prophets! Beware usurpers and liars! Trust that wherever our Prince and Princess take us, one wise enough to know Nature's whims will rise to lead.
Victory is a wonderful feeling.
But Kao's victory is short lived, for as soon as the hermit threw his consciousness from t
he tower, taking Baucis's body with him, the Spire gave way, and survival trumped any vestige of success Kao felt.
“Urea's coming,” his sister says, and a moment later she bursts from the doorway Kao came through minutes ago.
If the crowd of people expected Kao, they were anticipating Urea. As soon as she enters the already leaning garden, the crowd cheers, desperate for a savior in this time of their greatest need.
Skup follows at her heels and is greeted by an even more tremendous applause. Kao knows not why they celebrate, they'll all fall from the sky this day if nothing is done.
Urea turns to Kao's sister. Kao can tell they're communicating but they use no words.
Skup chimes.
Kao hears none of this but a hunter reads body language like a scholar reads books. He knows his sister speaks with them and he is thankful for it. He has played his part, now it is their turn. He looks to Skup, his sharp eyes makes clear he is the Hidden mind behind the kingcrow that haunted Kao throughout his quest.
Skup cries into the night sky. Its a high and piercing shriek, Kao wouldn't have been surprised to hear it from a kingcrow's beak. Skup's greatest ally lifts its beak from the gore of the bird it defeated. The crowd of Naturalists kneel, a thousand services never prepared them for what they are about to witness.
The kingcrow shrieks at Skup, and Skup shrieks back. The two circle, each hopping sideways in odd half-bird, half-human steps.
No one has ever seen anything like this. Men cheer, children cry, women faint. The people of the Spire are accustomed to seeing the hunts through their own VRCs, and just a scant few hundred possess the ancient technology. People have seen Skup's kingcrow before, whenever it delivers food, or when Skup would brave the clouds and fly it near she Spire for Ntelo's services, but nothing like this.
Kao can sense the tension in the air, The kingcrow challenges the mind it knows was in its own for dominance. If Skup missteps, the deadly winged predator will kill him, and everyone else by extension, no one else can get them down from their Spire. And they have no time. The ground is shifting, and something is glowing brighter than the moon down on the surface. Kao can feel the energy its throwing off in his bones.
