Hero of Arcadia

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  Rote laughed as the explosives rebounded, slammed into the golem with earth-shaking force, and pounded it to the ground.

  In return, autogun fire burrowed into her gut, blowing Rote’s midsection apart.

  With an urgent gasp, the spirit broke up completely, becoming streamers of smoke that shot toward the ground. Pain blazed a trail through their shared mindspace, but this time they shouldered the load together and pushed it aside.

  They landed behind the autogun golem before it could turn. Rote immediately jammed her claws deep into the armored suit, lifted it high above her head, and snapped the machinery in its back like a tree branch. The machine's legs stopped moving as onyx claws tore their way free again, and the autogun slowly spun to a stop, leaking steam.

  “Rote! Finish it!”

  The spirit hardly needed the tactical advice; she eagerly leaped onto the blackened, battered chest of the launcher golem and tore into tritanium.

  “I told you we could do this!” Jone beamed her companion a mental smile. “After all, there were only two—”

  The wall to their side blew apart, and an oversized golem fist swatted them clear of their fallen foe.

  Rote’s arm shattered again on impact, and a high-pitched vibration of agony rippled through her as one of her horns cracked from the force. Half of her hearing cut out instantly; Jone struggled through the pain and replaced the missing sensory input with her own. Together, they shot through the air and across the rubble-filled clearing like a falling star, only to come crashing down and re-form—

  —at the massive feet of yet another golem.

  “You just had to say something, didn’t you?” Rote sighed, her sarcastic facade betrayed by a rising tremor of fright.

  An armored boot eclipsed the sooty sky and descended to crush them.

  Rote caught the blow with one arm, but the war machine pressed down with all of its weight and strength. Pressure mounted, turning the edges of the spirit’s body into plumes of boiling smoke as the golem ground them against the earth. Jone could feel the ache in Rote’s burning “heart” as the strain redoubled and pressed hard against the core of her being, making it hard to hold their form together.

  “There!” Dragging her host’s remaining attention along with her, Jone focused her senses on the golem’s armored, articulated knee joint.

  Rote re-formed her other arm and beckoned to the darkness.

  Shadows swarmed up the construct's knee and poured inside with the pilot still unaware.

  An instant later, they definitely became aware as the shadows tore free bolts and bits of steaming hydraulics. The overwhelming pressure slacked off immediately, and the golem staggered as Rote thrust its foot upward and prepared to toss the construct aside.

  At their back, the quake of golem footsteps approached, and Jone’s expanded senses caught the sound of another autogun spinning up. “No! This way!”

  Instead of pushing the golem’s boot away, they tugged it down instead. Together, they slid underneath and past, yanking the armored foot along with them. Above them, the construct tumbled forward—and ate a facefull of autogun fire. Gleefully, Rote flitted into the air again, using the stumbling golem as a tritanium shield against its fellows.

  Then she darted full force into its back and pushed it at the other uninjured golem.

  The two war machines tangled together and tumbled down with a thump that shook the earth. Engine roaring, the hammer-handed construct lunged at them from the side, but Rote turned smoothly at Jone’s direction and parried the crushing strike aside. A handful of her claws tore away half the golem’s mask-like face and visor in retribution; with her other hand, Rote twisted its hammer arm until the metal screamed in protest, then spun it around and launched the machine completely across the clearing.

  It smashed into a broken tower next to a bleeding river of liquid fire, and ancient stones rained down. As it fell, the two fallen golems rose, one limping. Unbidden, Rote shot towards them, her claws tearing steaming rents in their armor as she flitted around them in a blur. At their feet, the half-paralyzed golem reached out to grasp them, but Jone simply nudged her host to hover just out of its reach. But as soon as they were still for an instant, the new golem with the oversized hands lunged toward them with a hydraulic-powered punch.

  Shadows slowed the blow and dragged it to the side. Rote darted to meet the onrushing construct—and sunk her smoking arm into its chest all the way to the shoulder.

  Somewhere deep inside, the pilot cried out, then fell abruptly silent.

  At their side, instead of striking while they were occupied, the limping golem took an unsteady step backward.

  “They’re afraid,” Jone noted quietly.

  “Good,” her host hissed in reply.

  Darkness encircled the limping goliath’s limbs as Rote tore her hand free of its companion's chest. Human blood coating onyx claws evaporated in an instant. The ensnared golem struggled, breaking through shadowy strands, but it was too late—there were always more dark ribbons that came to the spirit’s call. As its resistance flagged and failed, those sharp ribbons sawed deeper and deeper into the construct’s limbs, venting gouts of clean gray steam into the air as Rote’s powers cut it apart.

  The golem fell to the ground, like an oversized, broken clockwork toy—except with a person trapped inside.

  Jone could feel the vibrations of the trapped pilot screaming as Rote drifted slowly, menacingly closer, and dug in her metaphorical heels. “That’s enough.”

  Rote stalled, hovering over the fallen construct’s chest.

  “No,” the spirit finally replied. “It’s really not.”

  Jone looked on helplessly, as her host hooked merciless claws into the war machine's chest plate and tore it open, exposing its pilot to the unforgiving atmosphere.

  Fire bloomed for an instant from within the wreckage, then died away.

  “That wasn’t necessary!” the Arcadian snapped. “That was an execution!”

  “And?” Rote flexed her claws.

  “You didn’t have to! They were helpless. You don’t have the right—”

  “Then who does?” At her core, Rote’s anger swelled, a searing, unwavering blaze. “Who else will answer the crimes against my people, if not me?”

  “But—”

  “She was just a soldier?” The spirit scoffed. “Spare me. These pilots are specialists. How many of my kind do you think she’s killed, Jone? Or enslaved?”

  The only reply the Arcadian could muster was silence.

  “Exactly. Our elders. Our children. How many died in slavery because of her? How many terrified spirits were crushed underfoot trying to resist? Trying to protect those they cared about? This is one thing you and I will never agree on—”

  A series of clicks caught at Jone’s expanded senses from across the clearing.

  As one, they spun.

  At the edge of the burning river, the missile golem unleashed one last barrage from its battered explosive racks.

  Quick as charcoal lightning, Rote picked up the paralyzed golem at their feet and threw it in the way.

  The massive body smashed through the volley of missiles, twisted tritanium plates tearing free under the assault. But the goliath remained intact—intact enough to slam into its standing companion and topple them both into the seething fissure of fire.

  It seemed that with enough heat, even tritanium could melt.

  “There.” Rote dusted smoke off her hands with a sense of satisfied finality. “Do you have a problem with that, too?”

  “No,” Jone replied quietly. “I don’t necessarily agree with you on this...but I don’t fully disagree, either. These are your people, and what they’ve gone through is horrible.”

  Slowly, the seething anger in Rote’s core simmered low and directed itself away from Jone. “You should have seen this place once,” she finally thought back. “Yeah, these were still ruins, just not as...ruined, I guess. My people spiraled along the wind, bathed in the flame. Played
and lived in the abandoned shells of these old temples. Now...” She gestured around. “Now this place is truly dead.”

  “And I’m truly sorry, Rote.” With the heat of the battle over, Jone could feel the tremor of her own fatigue as she drew her senses back in. “I should have done more. And when we go back, I will. I promise you that.”

  “I hope so.” The spirit took in the scene, gazing at the wreckage of scattered golems with a rising sense of pride and satisfaction. Of righteous vengeance. “Because you and I are the only hope they have.”

  Together they drifted away from the battlefield, carried by the wind. Jone took the time to rest and restore her mind, but with the quiet came more questions. “Rote...where are we? Is this truly the Core of the World?” Though neither the old religions nor the folk tales she’d heard had ever actually described the place, it still didn’t look like what she’d always imagined.

  The spirit huffed quietly. “You could call it that, or the New World. I’ve heard your people call it both. But neither label matters; this was—is—our home, first and foremost.” She considered for a moment. “And it doesn't really have a name, not in the way you’d understand it.”

  “But...wait.” The more the Arcadian thought about it, the more confused and dismayed she became. “The Endless Abyss...that’s where we go when we die, locked into Gravekeeper Jones’ eternal embrace. But...if it’s not actually endless, and at the bottom actually lies your home, and this is how the Queen’s ships have been getting to the ‘New World’ all along, then what’s really true? And what happens when we—” She bit off the end of the thought.

  “As awesome as I am, I can’t answer that one for you. You’re the first Jone I’ve seen down here.” Rote flitted to the top of a crumbling, leaning tower taller than a warden’s lighthouse and paused at the top to look out over her burning world. Flames flickered and plumes of smoke came and went; in the distance, the deeper, darker shadow of some other oversized, blocky structure loomed. Beside them, an ancient, tilted stone statue stared outward as well, the fine detail of its proud features long ago wilted from extreme heat or scratched away by vicious rents. “But as I told you once before, my people served a different set of masters long before you came to enslave and harvest us.”

  Rote considered the statue for a moment, then ran one of her claws along a gash, effortlessly gouging it deeper. “We shattered the records of that history when our first oppressors disappeared, though. And there are few, if any, still alive who know more. Elizabethian explorers saw to that.” Flashes of the three dark spirits locked in deadly combat flashed through her thoughts again; both of them tried not to focus on the images. “Only a little of that knowledge was ever passed on to me, though I’ve put a little more together over the years with you.”

  “Please, anything’s better than not knowing the truth.”

  “What’ll you give me for it?” The spirit snickered at her own joke for longer than Jone felt was appropriate. “And is it really? You’d think there’d be limits to that.” She shook her smoky head. “Anyway, I think Bellamy told you once about how your shattered world lies close to many others; I wasn’t really paying attention at the time. She could also probably explain how my world and yours are not one and the same, that this place isn’t really the Core of your world but instead a place reached by falling past the boundaries of your own. Much like how spells and portals can transport you to those nearby worlds,” she idly tapped the gold-and-onyx amulet resting between her breasts, “and even bring some things back with you.”

  Shocked, Jone focused sharply on the cold chill of the otherworldly pendant, so real, so heavy, and her world went sideways for a moment. “Where did that...when did…”

  Rote shrugged. “It’s been here the whole time, O observant one. It followed you. I guess you never noticed how a lot of people never seem to spot it? Or how even you forgot it was there half the time once you finally stopped bitching about how weird it was? That’s because it’s not supposed to be here. Makes it slippery. At least as far as I can figure.”

  “I guess...I’m just surprised it followed me here after death.”

  For a long moment, the spirit went completely and utterly still.

  Then she buried her head in her hands, tugging gently at her horns. “Oh, for crying out loud. Not this again.”

  “What? I don’t understand—”

  “You’re not dead, dumbass.” Rote puffed out a long-suffering curl of smoky breath. “Why do we keep having this conversation? Wasn’t twice enough for you? It sure was for me.”

  “But the Revenge exploded. It was a trap. I felt myself fall...and burn away. And then I hit the ground…” Jone paused. “And what do you mean, twice? I only argued that I was dead after Sam raised me, never again.”

  Rote’s second sigh sent smoke curling around her form like a playful sylph. “Oh, if only you remembered our full history together.” She shook her head. “Anyway! Not important. Your ‘endless fall’ is actually a portal to our world, a trip that your kind can’t survive unaided.”

  “Ah-hah!” Jone beamed the thought at her triumphantly. “If that’s true, then how am I here?”

  “Because I swapped bodies with you,” the spirit rolled her onyx eyes as if it should have been obvious. “I said unaided, after all.” She tapped a claw to charcoal lips. “Though I guess if bodiless means dead to you, then you’re technically right.”

  “So…” She took a deep mental breath and a moment to steady herself. “So that’s what you meant when you said ‘it worked.’ You were trying to—”

  “Save your life. Yeah. You’re welcome.” Rote grinned. Jone felt too many teeth shift in their mouth. “I felt the potential when you manifested me back on that warship and we wrecked it. And as we fell and transitioned from your world to mine, I pushed free of your form and subsumed it. It was a shot in the dark, but what choice did I have?” The spirit took a sudden, sharp breath and her honeyed voice went quiet. “I couldn’t let you die on me again. Not like this. Not if this time, I could somehow stop it.”

  For a long moment, Jone was silent as well. “Rote?”

  “...Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  She shifted, momentarily uncomfortable. “Well, what did you expect? I still need you.” She shifted again, her posture suddenly rigid with a tremor of wary alertness. “Wait. Shhhh. I sense something.”

  At first Jone thought her friend was just trying to change the subject. But a moment later she felt it too, her senses piggybacking off of her host’s. Something shot through the dark toward them, like a flaming spark in the night. Something familiar. “What is that?”

  “Better question: what part of ‘shhhhh’ don’t you get?” Rote pushed off the tilted tower, floating freely in the air as she searched. “And why is this feeling so familiar?” Her arm shot out, and she fell silent. “There!”

  Far below them, a trio of small golden sparks shot past, spiraling around one another as they flew. Behind them trailed one flaring vermillion orb, fire stretched out behind it like a falling star as it tried to keep pace. All four darted by beneath Rote’s transparent, smoky legs, curving a path through the ruins as they headed back toward where the four golems lay.

  “That can’t be…” Rote swept low into the lights’ wake, her mental voice fascinated. “But it is.”

  “Those three...they’re the sylphs we rescued earlier, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. But it’s more than that.” Without warning, the spirit shot off after her kin. “That last one. The ifrit. I recognize them.”

  Moving at an incredible speed, it only took them moments to catch up. But as soon as they arrived, Rote paused. Instead of bursting into the open area on the other spirits’ metaphorical heels, she stopped sharply and lingered at the edge of a broken archway, staring into the clearing.

  “What’s wrong? If you remember them, that’s wonderful, right? So why hesitate?”

  “Because it’s been over two hundred years, that’s why,�
� she replied. A reverberation of something close to anxiety rippled outward from her core. “What if…” She sighed. “When I left, I was as close to royalty as our people possess. But I was sent away to be a savior. Not…” She gestured at herself with a smoky hand. “Not whatever I’ve become instead.”

  “You’re not a failure.” Jone picked the unspoken thoughts out of her host’s mind and felt her flinch. “If anyone failed, it was me. They shouldn’t blame you for that.”

  “Try telling them that.” Rote watched as the three bright spirits drifted around the ruins, cautiously searching, staying clear of the fallen golems. The largest spirit floated in the center, waiting, a patient blob of flame. “No, seriously. If they get mad, try to tell them it was all your fault.”

  Jone gave her the mental version of an amused snort and a comforting smile. Then, gently, she nudged her friend toward the debris-strewn clearing.

  The trio of sylphs noticed near immediately. At first they darted away, obviously alarmed. Then, as Rote drifted into the open, they slowed and returned, a drifting spiral of bright sparks on the wind. Cautiously, they separated enough to circle around her, as if inspecting her, their little humanoid figures flickering with what felt like curiosity...and awe.

  The flaming orb rumbled, and the sylphs startled and broke apart, streaking away to re-form behind its back. Slowly, the animate blaze took shape as well, expanding upward and outward into the hulking figure of a burly man made of flame, his lower half a whirling inferno and the top of his head and shoulders crowned by flickering tongues of fire.

  Slowly, carefully, he bowed.

  Jone pushed her senses out a little further and studied him. The ifrit seemed old, though she couldn’t quite put any of her nonexistent fingers on why. Maybe it was the slow ripples and vibrations that creased his visage, or the more gradual pulse of the brightly glowing ember she could spy deep within his barrel chest. Maybe it was the cracks and creases in that same vital organ, or the measured, alien intelligence and experience in his cracked carnelian eyes.