by Amanda Churi
And most importantly, I would defeat Him.
Five
From Insanity
“Is… This… Far enough?”
His hammer fell away from the wall as his spine nearly gave out, Griffin quickly catching his tool-bound hand with the other as he released a stream of exhausted, carbon-potent air. The mob of Encryptors staggered on behind him, dragging their feet and hugging their bodies, vainly attempting to retain some of their body heat in the winding, frigid tunnel.
It had been two days—two days of moving at a slug’s pace. For once, their survival depended solely on Griffin’s endurance and strength, which was a scary thought considering how little of either he had. All while he plowed through ice-infused rock and minerals of irritating strength, taking short breaks every half-hour or so, the walls around them would occasionally shake. The screeches and hums of deadly engines stormed the tunnels as low, foreboding claps of thunder as the rebels gradually ascended toward the surface.
The Proxez had obviously not given up their search—nor would they ever—and it was frightening to know that no matter how far they traveled that there was a chance, and a large one, that the Proxez would ambush the tattered rebellion the moment they struck air.
Sybil, following closely behind Griffin on Flye’s shoulder, reached for the heavens with her neck and took a swift sniff. “A bit more,” she said.
A wave of disbelieving groans followed her statement—Griffin’s was perhaps the loudest.
“Hey!” Virgil barked. “None of you have her keen sense of smell, so keep your lips shut!” He shifted his bloody eyes back to the youngster, giving her a nod. “You’re doing a great job. Just keep at it.”
Griffin scoffed, raising his hammer and smashing the wall in disgust. “You’re doing a great job,” he mocked under his breath. “Not that Griffin fellow who’s been slaving away like a serf day and night.” His complaints drowned away into cross and high-pitched, gibberized speech that not even the creator of such words could decipher as he continued to hack away at the layers of rock.
It didn’t matter if he was part cyborg or not; it didn’t matter how much he tried to make up for the sins of the past. The view that all took on him would never shift away from the label of “useless.”
He didn’t want to feel like this any longer, but what could he do to escape it? Take his worthless life? It would accomplish nothing—it would only further solidify the universal viewpoint that he was a disgraceful, pathetic, troublesome being who could never be entrusted with a heavy mission. He was too weak for that—too insignificant and lacking.
And it didn’t matter that he had reconciled with his brother when each waved goodbye to their once entwined lives; Kevin’s amazing place in history and jaw-dropping powers would always make Griffin look like nothing more than an insect in comparison to the legendary dragon. Even standing amongst the Resistance, he had always been less—the only difference was that they had appreciated him in spite of his flaws.
A single burning tear streaked his cheek as he continued to barrel forward, the rate of his swings increasing with the building ire. The clouds of dust surged toward him, organic shrapnel bouncing off his eyelids and coming dangerously close to penetrating the lenses, but the heat, the power of resentment gushing from his eyes burned it all away.
Eero… Mabel… I will find you, and now, with this arm, I can… I will be even with you!
Sybil and the others lowered their heads and shielded their eyes as the aftermath of Griffin’s excavation work struck their faces. With the flap of her wing protecting her face, Sybil took another quick whiff. Her eyes exploded, and she bounced into the air. “LERIALS!”
Her announcement halted Griffin. Jaw clenched and lips puckered, he rotated and found the frantic lerial levitating close to the ceiling and smashing her nostrils against the rock like a hound.
“You smell them?” Seek pressed hopefully.
Sybil gave a grunt of confirmation, scraping the ceiling with her claws and taking rapid, deep sniffs. “Returned, lerials… I smell them both! Straight up ahead!”
Griffin kept his eyes to her for a moment, confused. “…Wait… Returned? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oooh! Yeah! They’re our neighbors! Now let’s go!” Bubbling with anticipation, she began spinning her claws, openly allowing the soil to crash into her face.
“Avenger, halt!” Virgil barked, stopping Sybil in place. “Why are you so eager?”
She launched the dirt out of her nostrils with a snort. “Because my friends and family are up there!”
“You mean the traitors,” Virgil corrected.
The light left her eyes; her upper body suddenly dropped, leaving her suspended by her feet. She grunted, folding her arms and squinting her blackening orbs. “And you’re traitors to the Proxez.”
Challenged, Virgil heftily advanced until they were face-to-face. “Yes, but we are fighting for good; the lerials are not.”
Sybil irritably scrunched her sniffer. “A bit one-sided, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“So, you’re saying that the Bots are traitors too? The Players in the empire who are scared and so they hide? Anyone who isn’t an Encryptor, huh?” With an enraged snarl, she swung herself forward, clasping onto Virgil’s nose. Her thin lips twitched, her sharp tongue pressing on her fangs as she desperately attempted to keep her rage from spilling out and controlling her. “My family—we were manipulated. Those Bots—they were reworked. They are not traitors; they are victims, just like the Encryption!”
She dislodged a single hand from Virgil’s frozen face, grabbing the scrawny wire tied about her neck and slamming it up against his nose. A small, reflective black orb strung together with wire tried to force itself up Virgil’s nostril with each push—each infuriated shove by the overwhelmed child. “We’re living creatures who give our lives fighting for what we believe is right, just like Laelia did to get this! Don’t you ever call her or anyone else a traitor just because their way of thinking is different from yours!”
Virgil touched the soft wounds left on his nose, unsure how to react.
“Sybil… If I may…”
Her head snapped back, her hostile eyes watching Justus and Embry approach. “What you hold…” Justus said, his voice cracking with surprise. “Is that what I think it is?”
A steaming huff shot from Sybil’s button-nose as she proceeded to hang like a bat once more. “If you’re talking about this stupid video-thing that Laelia made sure I got to you, then yeah.” A row of claws sliced through the wires that kept the camera around her neck, and with a mighty swoop, Sybil knocked it into Justus’ hands. “There better be something good on there for all that she went through…”
Justus was beside himself with fascination, staring into his cupped palms. He merely chuckled, nodding once before gently placing the camera into his jumpsuit pocket.
Griffin tried to read Justus’ odd expression, understand his strange reaction, but Griffin couldn’t get through, couldn’t make sense of what was going through Justus’ mind as his eyes suddenly lost their warmth, delving into a world apart from which he stood—a world of equations and code trying to be pieced together into a working program.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Sybil’s high-pitched voice redirected Griffin’s attention to the demon. “Huh? Me?”
“Duh,” she snorted coldly. “You kicked their butts before; they won’t be jumping to attack you again.” At that, Sybil dislodged herself from above, landing on the ground. She pointed to the ceiling. “Dig at a sharper angle. They can’t be more than fifteen feet up.”
Griffin looked to Virgil for permission, but the battle-hardened soldier had lost interest, swiping the blood drawn from his nose and whisking it into his mouth.
“Just dig,” Seek urged, coming up beside Griffin and gently tugging on his arm. “No use trying to get to him while he’s fantasizing.” She turned him around so that he faced the end of the tunne
l, releasing her tender hold when Griffin was in position.
Sybil scampered up his shoulder, taking a firm seat and poking her finger in the desired direction. “Now go! Onward!”
“…I’m not a horse, you know,” Griffin reminded her as he strenuously raised his weapon.
“How would I know what a horse does? Now, let’s a go!”
Griffin snorted, powerfully bringing his hammer down on the softening walls. A shattering ripple effect started at the site of impact and traveled at a diameter close to six feet, an avalanche of natural elements falling around them and masking the air with musty, suffocating particles.
“Charrggee!” Sybil exclaimed, bunching her teeny fingers into a victorious fist. “Faster! Faster!”
Griffin smirked, her playfulness managing to empower him. Strike after strike, they drew closer to their destination, but the farther they headed up, the looser the earth became, making Griffin’s swings less and less effective. Soon, they had hardly two feet of maneuverable space. The soil continued to resist his onslaught, and when he refused to back away, they added roots to the buffer: thick, solid, seemingly impenetrable roots. It did not matter how hard he swung at that point; the tree who decided to stand in their way would not back down.
“How are we going to reach the surface if these bastards won’t break?!” Griffin raged, plowing forward again. His hammer was met with unmatchable strength. The root snickered and made his mallet vibrate, the reverb traveling up Griffin’s arm and into his chest, rattling his gut.
“You can’t break them!” Sybil told him with an amused scoff. “Only demons can!” Scuttling over the crest of Griffin’s shoulder, Sybil wiggled her hips before springing across the abyss between Griffin and his opponent, wiping out on the root stomach-first. A dazed grunt pierced her lips, but she picked herself up, straightening herself as she moved her gnarled hand behind her back, her fingers tapping the air as though conjuring a forbidden element. Her eyes sealed themselves off from the world, reminiscing in their lovely darkness until they were violently awoken with a bullet of purple light. A battle cry launched from her fangs, and her arm slashed before her, sinking into the timbers.
And getting stuck.
“Waaattt?!” Aghast, she stared at her trapped claws, grabbing her lodged wrist and prying her fingers free. “Hey! That was rude!”
Wisps of rock and clay trickled down from the roots entwined above their heads, the walls suddenly tremoring, warning those amongst them of their power.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Sybil piped loudly, all hostility dead as she latched onto the closest root in a shushing hug. “Easy! What’s going on with you?!”
Another quake of the land gave them their response, the tremor strong enough to force the Encryptors to reach for the walls or roots—whatever they could use to stay on their feet.
“Please!” Sybil begged. The lerial went on to communicate with the tree in a series of whimpers and pleas while Griffin stood against the unstable wall, dumbfounded. What the heck is she doing?
“Amazing…”
Griffin’s heart slammed up into his throat when Flye suddenly appeared at the head of the crowd, her jaw gaped and pupils consuming the sclera. “What is?” he miserably asked.
“The Returned!”
The tree’s tantrum halted as Flye shoved past Griffin, extending her arms in worship. “OMG, I read about you guys! I never could have imagined that this was where Desmond sentenced you, though! Wowza, just wow!” She sprinted forward, grabbing one of the denser root hairs and shaking it at lightning speed. “So cool, so cool! What legacies! It’s an honor to finally meet one of your kind!”
Griffin’s eyes resorted back to that of his embryonic state, large and guppy-like. The Returned? As in the Returned? Like Lucy? “The Returned… Are trees in the future?”
An empty hiss flooded the manmade tunnel as the roots contracted and fractured the land below them, knocking Griffin and many others to the floor.
“No, no, I’m sorry!” Flye apologized, helping to quell the Returned’s fluctuating emotions. “He’s just rude! Ignore him!”
“What?!” Griffin retorted, struggling to stand. “I was just stating a fact!”
“It’s not a fact! It’s a common misconception!” Flye’s fascinated smile returned as she took the root she was holding in a tight embrace. “These poor things were cursed with a second, eternal life if they gave in to their sorrow-drenched hearts. The Returned who were killed… They were lucky. But these Returned…” Flye sighed, pressing her forehead to the root she nurtured. “I feel for you… They took your happiness, they took your sanity, and your crumbling body returned to the very ground that condemned you—frozen and trapped forever.
“…Shortly after the fall of Phantome, Desmond lined them up…” Flye went on, intrigued faces meeting her at every angle. “The longer the Returned survived, the more unpredictable they became as their past and current lives battled within. Their veins blackened, their reasoning waned, and vengeance soon became next to impossible to resist. As their involuntary acts of crime increased, Desmond’s patience fled, and he marched them over the divide and into the inhospitable land.
“Typo, Desmond, and a scarce few others tortured them, purposely pushing them to their limits and forcing them to transform. Those few who resisted to the ultimate degree were taken back and forced to touch Reeve’s crystal, becoming the first naturally made Elites under the hand of Desmond. But these souls…” Her large eyes fell upon the root, a cold tear rising. “They were left to serve as an indefinite symbol of Desmond’s capabilities… Of all Lords. As a result, the Returned only react to those also broken by evil—demons, specifically. They’re not trees—they never will be. Trees give innocent life, and the Returned… They are the symbol of eternal, sterile life—which is no life.”
The tiny root in her hands pulsed, the fibrous hairs brushing over Flye’s grime-scathed face, wiping away her own flaws and guilts. Sniffling, Flye closed her eyes, unable to look at the burdened root as it retracted from her hold and rested atop her head instead, stopping beside the disguised vial of nightmares that Flye always kept close. Despite the darkness it housed, the poisoned dreams glimmered a virgin purple when the root tip tenderly touched the glass.
It paused, cold, stiff, blind as it registered the evil that lived within the warrior. Nothing happened for a moment, all sets of eyes on edge and bustling with suspicion.
The frail root turned limp, falling over Flye’s face. Surprised, she blinked away the exposed tears, watching in fascination as the root pulled back—first that one and then all others that interfered with their desired path, unwinding above, below—all around them, holding them in an amorphous cage of crumbling dirt.
“FLYE, MOVE!” Griffin yelled, snatching the entranced girl at her gut and shoving her to the ground as the earth collapsed above them. Sybil shrieked, jumping off her withering root and shooting beneath Griffin’s rickety shelter as he threw his arms out and arched his torso forth, protecting the stunted Flye, who could only stare up as the soil cascaded around her and gave way to infertile light. Her awestruck, enlightened grin remained, even as pounds of soil crashed down from above, striking Griffin in both the head and spine as he endured the burden of Atlas for the sake of the two girls below him.
“Whoa…” Flye whispered, mesmerized as the final flurries of soil floated down. “Awesome!”
Griffin’s face crumpled in relief when it was over—when his concaving back could safely rise and be rid his body of the swallowing weight. “For… You…”
The wise Encryptors had hustled back far enough to avoid the wrath of ground zero, all looking on as the cloud of dust cleared and coated the surrounding environment. They resembled a pack of ghosts: the whites of their eyes glowed in the darkness that enshrouded the caverns, uncertain whether or not it was safe to come forward.
Flye chuckled, standing up with Sybil nestled in the crook of her arm, giving an “all clear” thumbs up to the Encryptors. Sybi
l cautiously lifted one of her oversized ears that had been shielding her face. Still, the lerial did not react to Flye’s positive signal, her eyes shooting around on high alert.
“Why are you being such a scaredy-imp?” Flye teased. “Lerial got your tongue?”
Sybil did not answer, merely looking at Flye with shadow-flocked pupils. Flye’s playful smile dropped as soon as she made eye contact.
The Encryptors who slowly filed forward appeared oblivious to the tension, but Griffin was not, sharply drawing his breath as the hairs on his arm shot up. Something heavy… Something evil was smothering the air, choking his fight or flight response and locking him down with fright instead.
Blaring wails hit the trapped army with full force—their eardrums boomed, nearly ruptured by a high-pitched, damaging ring. Griffin slammed his hands over his ears, unable to look away as he watched his disoriented allies desperately try to protect their sense of hearing. Flye merely winced, and Sybil did not even blink. Instead of focusing on themselves, the duo turned their necks up as one, staring through the hole that revealed them to the enemy.
A swarm of black, deceptive shadows slithered down the rigid walls of earth. A hue of betrayal ignited in Flye’s eyes, Sybil’s thin lips curling and irises burning as she bounced out of Flye’s protection, perching on the soldier’s shoulder and fervently snapping her teeth as the nightmares descended. Her wings expanded in a snap, her blood vessels pounding and skin spewing a defensive, toxic slime, but the small warrior was not enough to intimidate the horde—their growls and shrieks only grew in volume and ferocity, dirt and rock alike tumbling down the weak wall and toward their prey.
Griffin’s teeth clashed, his skin stinging as he recalled their rigid claws and fangs tearing through. The closer they got, the deeper the pain seeped. His knees racked, beads of terrified sweat breaking through his scalp, but against everything his body advised, he changed his previous selection to fight.
