by K M McGuire
“Scelus, take these four away! Take them to the pit! Who knows what they are now capable of? If they were so easily corrupted to poison our city, what other sorts of evil will possess them?”
Eigan nodded towards Scelus, who made a strange grunting, and the Azuchons (Voden supposed that was what these half-men were known as) pushed them up the stairs. “I want to meet with the guild heads when you are finished. It’s time to press into their new fears and take charge of it before they lose themselves. It’s time to call in your brethren. Time to move quickly,” Eigan said as he approached Scelus. He gave them all a quick glance, his eyes lingered on Vec a moment, curling his smooth lips ever so slightly. “I will have time for you later. I’m glad that you have redeemed yourself, Vec,” he said, and then turned to Koruza.
He whispered something to him, and Voden swore he heard him say something about “the third eye” though Scelus was already pushing them down the long hallway. Voden could see Vec doing everything he could to look anywhere other than towards them. He felt a deep cut of emotions, wondering what Eigan had meant. Had Vec betrayed them from the beginning? He felt now his rage flaring up to his neck, and finally, words began to form on his tongue.
“You knew?” Voden said, trying to pull himself around to face the dejected man. “You knew how this would go?”
“Voden, please don—”
“No, you’re right, Vec,” Andar interrupted, shaking the tears from his eyes. “We should have known this whole time what you were. This whole time! No wonder you fought against me so hard, trying to change my outlook on the world! You had started to gain attachments to us, and felt bad, didn’t you? You were the serpent we had feared born of the outside world!”
“You only have a piece of it!” Vec yelled, pulling against his restraints. The Azuchon muttered something harshly at him, and with his organic hand, punched Vec’s side. Vec groaned in pain but looked at Andar. “You only know the things that make me look bad.” But his voice faded to a whimper, from the pain that came with the hit, or more likely, from whatever he couldn’t bring himself to speak about now.
Scelus began to chuckle. “Eigan was rights,” Scelus whispered to them, when it was only them and the Azuchons. He chuckled. “All ‘cordin’ to plan.”
He gave them a dark grin, shaking his head. He suddenly jerked, as did the rest of the Azuchons, and they jostled the four captives around as they flailed. Their necks suddenly stiffened. A slight twitch of the tongue ejected from Scelus’s mouth, and another odd stutter (worse than the dying convulsions of Voden’s grandfather). A slow animated smile stretched across his mouth. “This is it!” Scelus’ voice breathed, dripping with lust, burning his eyes into Voden. His voice hissed oddly and became more articulate then he had spoken previously. “The start of it all! Ahh, the rise of chaos, the winds of woe. Poverty will be crowned the king, to rule next to fear and violence! The roots of disease firm in the final soil. Blood will drain from the world, and our tongues will lap up its bounty.” He sighed heavily again, as though brushed by a wind of ecstasy. “We who are sovereign will survive!” A sparkle flickered to life behind the glass over his eye. A purple fire birthed from the ends of nothing, flickering the nova of shadowed cosmos, filling the darkened dome with potent purples. A static jolt gripped Scelus again, tongue rubbing his lips, his organic eye rolling back into his skull. It forced him stark and tall, and he squeezed his fist. With a shake of his head, it was over, and he led them further into the keep. He cocked his head and turned back to them. His arcing smile rolled over the gold across his cheek. “This is the war we’ve been building towards! Since we began to dream stories, we always prayed for it. We all wanted this purge. It is here! Doesn’t your tongue twitch to taste it? Mine always has.”
“How fortune shines on you,” Scelus breathed, as a malevolent, toothy smile etched across his features, stopping at the gilded cheek. The torchlight strobed across his face, wavering at his presence. “If it were me,” Scelus said, leaning towards them, bearing his yellow teeth. Voden became painfully aware of how massive he was. Though he was lean, Voden could not question the terror his thin, sinewy arms would be capable of bestowing, let alone that shining appendage that had replaced the other. “Well, count your blessings that Eigan is the prophet of this new age.”
He held his gaze with Voden, smiling, waiting for his fear to bubble to the surface. Then he turned his attention to Andar. His reward was not at all what he hoped for, and his smile was then reduced to a quiet sliver. Voden pursed his lips, looking at how low Yael held her head, her body only moving because she had no other choice. He could see her eyes spark white, and her eyes strain, but each time she tried to Syphon, the energy surrounding her wrists sparked with violent whips of light, and Voden could hear the cube whirling inside her captor’s chest. The brute laughed as a ripple of light shimmied up the grooves that lined the metal arm, flashing the filigree into a wave of light.
“You’ll only make it worse on yourself.”
After scoffing at him, she no longer made any attempts to draw energy, her face now drawn, as though the shackles had been draining her own energy as well.
Scelus pulled them further into the depths of the keep, through dusty halls and past ancient wooden doors.
“What is to be done with us?” Andar asked, keen to keep the half-man chattering on. Perhaps that was wiser than escape.
Scelus looked at him, tongue spearing out the corner of his mouth. A vague eagerness twinkled in his smug eyes. Andar was stone in his expression. Scelus halted and squeezed his arm. He did his best to hold his face from wincing, pressing his eyes tight, hoping to divert the pain. Scelus smiled. He looked at the door before them: a stone arch, like teeth around a tongue, and he knew this was the doorway of their fate, ready to swallow them. Scelus nodded and the Azuchons opened the door. Into the mouth of fate they were pushed, flicking back the door into a room where Voden had ignorantly dreamed of grandiose heroism.
And just like the dream Voden had once had, the laboratory that had once belonged to Koruza was barren and cold. Its previous glimmer of inspiration had been turned into the dust twirling in silent eddies of hungry abandonment. Only pieces of parchment roamed the single carpet laying across the room, responding to the sudden opening of the door, forcing motion into the stagnant area. Scelus grunted, pushing them inside.
“We were all just pawns in this, weren’t we?” Andar asked, staring around the room. The revelation seemed a bit frantic, and Voden understood this realization was deeply disturbing. “Vec, the biggest one. You knew we wouldn’t make it. Somehow you…you knew we would return. You knew this was all going to happen! Those Azuchons on the shore. They were there only to scare us! They—” he stared at Scelus, the sun burning through the window. His eyes drained suddenly, as hope was blown quickly from his mind. “What is going to happen to Adetia?” Andar muttered. His panic hung in the vaulted ceiling, like a sword tied to a ripping string, like a swinging pendulum just above their necks.
Scelus threw his head back and laughed, his head manically twitching as they were escorted to the center of the room. “It’s a shame being sharp now will hardly matter.” He kicked back a rug where a wooden trapdoor lay beneath its dusty stitching. Scelus bent down and pulled the brass handle. The sound of sliding slate filled the room. Slabs of stone moved out of the wall of the hole to form an ominous staircase. With a short gesture, the Azuchons led the foursome down the stairs into the dark pit.
Voden went down first, scanning the cold, wet wall, and he kept tight to it, aware that there was nothing to keep him from falling off stairs. His feet met the floor of the room, his boot muffled by the hard and grimy surface. Scelus followed closely behind the procession, a silhouette of nightmares, with only the glint of a ghastly purple to remind them of Scelus’s deprecation.
“It has always been the plan,” Scelus said, as purple light gleamed throughout the dirty room. “Adetia was doomed to fall since the Scarred King established it! Even his kin
gdom could not last. Utopia is found in lands we are forbidden to see. What is fair does not belong in the hands of the Great Beyond. All Beyond the Veil are too far detached to see truly what is fair. Eigan knows the way, because he is exactly like us! He has led us to the Ancient Ones that will bring our eternity to our hands.” He twitched, his purple eye flickered a moment as he continued. “The heavens are worthless, horded by apathetic beings. It has come time to pull their throne and sit on it ourselves.”
“You are a fool if you believe that!” Andar cried, spitting anger against the half-man cloaked in the shadow. He pulled against his restraints, but with a buzz of energy, it pulled him tight against the Azuchon holding him.
Scelus snorted. “It’s funny to think you speak as though you ever had a choice,” Scelus breathed. Deeper the purple pulsed, beating the thought further into their heads with malice. He tapped the glass portal on his chest. “These stones have already altered the course of time! There is power here that was once wielded by the Keepers! We harness their seed! Koruza’s research, the Scez working towards this goal, we have tapped into true power! But Eigan made quite the fool of you!”
He erupted into a fit of chuckles, joined by the other Azuchons. The laugh was a chorus that was too cold to echo. He snapped his fingers, and the Azuchons released them from their shackles, flaring with bursts of energy. Voden’s arms dropped to his side, tingling while the Azuchon’s hand began to fragment back together.
“No, excuse me, Eigan never made a fool of you. Only your sacred Great Beyond! Such divinity to allow you to believe in choice, making your steps so docile and complacent to this so-called Will. It’s as if you never had the ability to choose.”
The beam of purple shifted like the tail of a shooting star, and he pressed on a section of his metallic head. A gentle click rang out, and a purple glow illuminated around the small diamond shape. He pulled the diamond from his head, and a dot encircled by a glowing ring pulsed with a hum of light as he held it. the spot left behind shared the same glow, as if it were a small, beady pupil gazing out from Scelus’s forehead. Voden swore he could hear Scelus’s smile stretching. He stepped over to Yael, and she struggled against him.
“It’s for our protection,” he mocked, while his fellow Azuchons held her arms back. He took the small chip and pressed it against her forehead. She screamed, the metal glowing like molten iron, the purple ring greedily remaining unchanged. After an agonized moment, the iron glow faded, and all that was left was the small golden chip, purring with light at the same rate as the spot missing from Scelus’s armored skull. “There. Good luck using Syphon. You’ll only make things worse.” He tapped the spot on his head and pet Yael’s face. He turned to leave, beginning to head up the stairs, where he twitched again and looked back. “This is all you were meant to be,” he said, as though to himself. “Just a means to an end.”
He shot Andar a look as his fellow Azuchons shuffled up the stairs. He walked over to him and whispered something in his ear, and a deep fear spread across Andar’s skin in a fit of terrified shivers. Scelus smiled in the din, and he left them to dwell in the darkness, laughing as he closed the door. Tiny ribbons of light seeped through the cracks of the weary trapdoor. Shadows of speckled dust brought hardly enough light to give any semblance of themselves. They listened to the stone sliding back into the wall, sealing their fate below the room where all of this had started. As the silence grew, the realization that they had no hope left beyond the four corners of the wall triggered Voden’s despair. He dwelled on all the events leading up to their current predicament and settled on the moment they had met Vec. Voden’s anger foamed at his teeth.
“I just don’t understand,” he said finally. “I gave you all of my trust. I should have trusted Andar’s gut from the beginning. He’s never steered me wrong! I betrayed his trust for you! And I can’t help but wonder if you were the reason for that fire! You started all of this, so we had to trust you!”
“Hold on, Voden,” Vec said defensively, but Voden pushed him against the wall. His elbow hit Vec’s chest, hoping it popped the man’s lungs.
“You knew who we were the second you found us!”
Andar spoke up, his voice trembling with accusation. “You became family to me, Vec! You’ve broken my heart!”
“It’s not that simple, Andar,” Yael muttered.
“You need to know the truth. Maybe it can heal your wounds. I just…I can’t see a happy outcome no matter how much I reach for it now. Life has been cruel to me.”
Voden held Vec against the musty wall, damp moisture clinging to the air around them. He could see the tiny semblance of the eye on Yael’s head. He hated the glow, as if Scelus was watching them bickering. Voden watched the sweat beading at Vec’s brow, and he pursed his lips, not wanting to give those horrid men the satisfaction if they were indeed watching them, but he could not control the seething from his own lungs.
“Explain.” Voden said, pressing the words through his teeth.
“Then let me go,” Vec whispered calmly. Voden tightened his lips, still leering at Vec. His rage fell a notch as he let Vec go. “I did it for my family.” Vec sighed in a rather defeated manner. Voden still watched him cautiously, and he turned to Yael. She looked away.
“And he told you?” Voden asked, coldly, feeling his trust dwindle with her. She only nodded but it deepened the pain. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hold on, Voden,” Vec said, putting up his hands. “Eigan is a monster! You should know by now! Look, I know I have been anything but trustworthy most of the time I have known you. But, hear me out. No need to be mad with her! If, by the end you hate me, fine. Don’t do that to her. I made her swear not to tell you. I didn’t know this is how it would end, I swear to you on the last bit of trust you can offer.”
Voden looked down at the dark, dusty ground. What choice did he really have? For all he knew, these were the last people he would ever see. Better in good company than misery. He felt too much of his emotions, between the betrayal and the loss of his grandfather…he felt his heart might hemorrhage his emotions until he was ripped to loose particles of dust
“Fine.”
Vec sighed, shaking his head, staring off a moment at the ceiling, trying to reflect, trying to push the obvious pain away, just like he always did. “It had to have been at least ten years ago. I was young and heard stories of this mystical city called Adetia. It sounded like a dream. So, when I was old enough, I searched for it. I found the domed city and the green island sitting out in the lake. But when I got to the dome, Eigan was on the other side and greeted me. He asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted to enter the city. He smiled and told me I could, if I could do him a favor. Of course, I figured, might as well, and he told me to find the Lady of the Lake, and she would give me an elixir. The elixir would prove I was worthy.
“So, I met Blossum, absurdly beautiful and fiercely horrifying. She wouldn’t let me have the vial unless I could break her curse, but if I failed, she would take my life. I hardly knew how to respond. I was hardly older than you, though I guess that’s just an excuse. I ran. I was riddled with fear, so I thought to return to Eigan and see if there was another option. Eigan was only furious. His anger was perhaps worse than Blossum’s, and he kept spewing insults at me, at how I was the one cursed, that I was abandoned by the Beyond, and that’s why I could not be allowed in. It was all by my own choice that I would be lost to the Collapsing Plane. It was by Eigan’s grace that I could be given a chance, but it was by the Great Beyond’s refusal that I couldn’t succeed. He settled down and finally told me there might be another way, but he was going to contact me when he needed me. I left and had given up, wondering how a place meant to be so unjudgmental could be run by someone who was. So, I made my own way in the world, going as far from there as I could. I went north. No way he could find me there. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I found my wife—”
“You were married?” Voden asked, astonished by the news.
> “’Am’ if she’s still alive,” Vec’s eyes grew miserable. He breathed heavy, choking it back. He took a moment before he spoke. “They burned my village, Voden. They kidnapped my wife and son! All that was left was a note, saying I needed to make sure you got the elixir. If I didn’t help, my family would be killed.”
Voden could see the pain in his eyes as he looked away.
“You’re not the only one who lost everything trying to do the right thing!” he said. “I told Yael about my wife and my child because I was scared! I had only hoped that Eigan was crazy and erratic because he cared about his city. And how do you expect I tell you so you still continued on? Terrible people make promises banking on the good still having hope. Then, when it’s gone, they make sure they can never regain their ability to hope. The furthest depths of oppression. Then I got to know both of you—all three of you! I didn’t think anything could become better, but I saw a hope in you that I had been without for so long! I feared for you! Andar, you were like me, but so much smarter! I didn’t want this pain for you, not for any of you, but I defied you for what was most important to me! Everything I had hoped to believe in was in the two of you! All my hopes!” He sniffled as the tears fell into his shirt, eyes swollen. “I guess there is no chance, when fate intervenes. Maybe there really is no choice to life at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Andar whispered. They exchanged an awkward glance with each other, which did not help distill the pain that kept bearing further down on them.
“Don’t be,” Vec exhaled. “It’s about time all this ends. Being drawn and quartered by misery leaves a man broken, ready to die but unable. I’ll take my lot.”
Voden could hear someone slump against the wall. The silence now stole everything away, even the whistles of emotions Voden had had, giving in to the fullness of dread thick amid the room. Though his mind raced, it led nowhere. It grew tired traveling past the same spectacle of himself, cowering in his depression, boxed out of his own emotions, knocking for a response that could not come. It must have hurt so deeply, but he was entirely numb to it, seeing he had no escape from killing his grandfather, from entering his journey, to dooming his home. He saw the purple light that marked Yael’s head, staring at the unblinking eye.
