I will protect. I will prevail. I will be king.
My Woadfire sank into the sea as nothing more than tiny, finger-thick trails. But in doing so, I was staking a claim on the world below the waves, and the monster lurking in its depths knew it. It roared again, but I did not withdraw my challenge to battle for this world.
I will protect. I will prevail. I will be king.
The deep stirred, and the voices below uttered a single defeated sentence.
It was the Flood that wrecked us all.
The awareness between myself and my new adversary broke off completely as the mournful voices hushed.
As far as I knew, he was now aware of my existence, but not my location. Beyond that, I could tell that he was old, angry, and powerful beyond anything else I had faced, with the possible exception of Cavus, and only because I suspected Cavus wielded more power than he had displayed.
But when I touched the mind of this thing, I found a creature that scorned Icons and sanity. A monster that had been driven insane by the sight of something else, and that insanity had driven it into a rage that left it hating all life above the waves. When it rose up to ride the waves above, it did so as an unwilling herald, to a doom it did not care to understand.
Nuckelavee, Nuckelavee…
It was the Flood that wrecked us all.
I have bitten off more than I can chew, the broken places in my mind whimpered. In seeking to deal with my own mad urges, I had touched the mind of something I was not ready to battle with. Now, it would seek me out. I had brought doom upon myself. I should have been more careful. I should have been more safe. I should not have wanted this doomed world for myself. I should not have—
Stop, I said as I gathered up all my broken fears. And as they struggled inside my grip, I snapped up the last few still wriggling around my heart, filling my chest with their heaviness, heaved…
And pushed.
Chapter 17: It was the Flood that Wrecked this Home
I was back inside the wet, broken half-world. Rubble drifted all along my feet. A shattered sky floated above my head, dotted with dark spots open to the stars beyond.
This time, though, there was no frightened old asshole to panic every time I sneezed or said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to someone.
I was grateful for that. Even if it meant that I had no idea what to do while I was here.
I decided to walk around and explore. Be alone with my own thoughts. So I strolled through the water and rubble, kicking loose stones out of my way as I wandered. As they rolled away, I looked closer at them. I tried to figure out what minerals they had been made out of, whether they were worked stone or just natural rocks, and whether they had been broken apart deliberately or just by natural decay.
I found it to be a mix of everything. There were plenty of rocks I recognized as limestone, granite, quartz, and other materials from the random geology books I had read. There were just as many that came from minerals or metals that I was certain had never formed on Earth. Most of them looked to have been deliberately shaped, though that ran the gambit as well. Some had once been smooth bricks, some slightly chiseled cobblestones, and others seemed to have just been unworked rocks that the water had taken along for the ride. As far as I could tell, they were just as varied in the damage they had taken, from erosion to intentional cracks caused by a tool, to cavities that suggested someone had tried to blast them apart.
It was not the Flood that wrecked us all, a voice said in my mind, and I realized it was right. The brokenness of this place had come from many sources.
There was no one single grief that had brought about the end of an empire so strong.
Please don’t step on my hand, another voice whispered from the shadows.
It was my own. And it was coming from beyond another pile of rubble.
Surrounded by a ring of broken, tragic-looking stones was a shallow pool with a calm surface. When I looked into it, instead of seeing my own reflection, I saw a young man clinging desperately to the side of a large tank, while a larger, older man looked on in callous indifference.
“Please don’t step on my hand,” the boy begged with my voice, over and over. “Please don’t step on my hand.”
It was me. Living through another one of my deaths. Specifically, the one I had seen when I was anointed by the Well.
“Update,” the water in the pool said. “Memory has been partially corrected. Trauma repair is still in progress.”
“I saved her,” my doppelganger in the vision said. “That’s good, right? You don’t have to step on my hand, right? Please don’t step on my hand.”
The old me started babbling again.
“New trauma detected,” the Well said. “Trauma’s source appears to be the newly corrected memory. Attempting further repairs.”
The picture in the pool fizzled suddenly, like the static screen on an old television. The sound went away entirely as the vision seemed to rewind, making it look like my doppelganger was climbing downward. When it restarted from the beginning, Damanged-Wes was at the bottom of a large and poorly constructed vat, one that was slowly filling with steaming water. He backed away from it, screaming, but as the sound was still muted, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He grabbed at the rough walls of the vat, trying to pull himself up. But even if he managed to do so, I remembered that there was a plank of wood covering the top. He wasn’t going to get out, no matter how hard he tried. But that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t want to be boiled alive, so he clawed at the vat’s walls anyway, until his fingers could find purchase.
The next moment, part of the roof cracked open. A plank of wood fell down into the vat, and a little girl landed on top of it. She was a little black girl, no older than ten, with her hair bound in two braids. She appeared to be screaming as well, probably even more terrified than Damaged-Wes was. When she looked at him, though, she stopped screaming and began mouthing words at him, words I could make out.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
My breath caught at the sight.
Because that little girl was Kayla. My youngest adopted sister.
“Corrections still in progress,” the Well said. “Attempting to repair newly discovered trauma.”
I felt myself calm down, not completely, but enough to enable myself to watch the rest of the vision without freaking out. The little black girl kept screaming and crying and saying ‘I’m sorry’ to Damaged-Wes. The broken plank of wood seemed to be cracking further, as if it would break apart any minute. Then the picture’s sound began filtering back in, and I heard the little girl calling herself names. She said that she was sad, and pitiful, and that she deserved all of this. Damaged-Wes looked at her blankly, clearly not all there, clearly not recognizing her. Then his head twitched suddenly, and his expression hardened. He gave one more glance to the handhold he had found, as if he was marking it, then he let go of it, dropped into the three-inch deep pit of boiling water and ran toward Kayla, screaming all the way.
Shoes, I remembered, realizing that Damaged-Wes was still wearing them. This was just before they took my shoes away. It may have even been the reason why.
Damaged-Wes snatched the little black girl off the disintegrating raft, turned around, and sprinted as fast as he could back to the vat wall, still screaming. Kayla still sobbed and apologized in his arms, calling herself all kinds of horrible names that made me hate Damaged-Wes for not arguing with her. But he had stopped saying anything at all. He just ran with gritted teeth, with little more than a whimper slipping out as the water boiled around his shoes. He made it back to his old spot and jumped up to grab his handhold, letting out a happy, hysterical shout as his hand closed around it. Little Kayla had finally stopped calling herself names and began crying into the rags over his chest.
Damaged-Wes ignored her. He just dug his feet and fingernails into whatever cracks he could find in the vat’s stone walls, bracing the arm carrying Kayla against the wall so he could climb one-handed. He climbed slowly,
and to his horror, the boiling water continued to rise as well, slowly closing the distance below. But it was not fast enough to reach him, and he was able to make it to the very top of the vat.
He swung his freed hand at the lip, grasping it and pulling himself high enough to see over the edge. It had been a pit, and not a vat, he realized, one they had just dug into the middle of the stone room and covered up with a wooden plank, which had apparently broken apart when Kayla attempted to cross it. It was sloppy work, just another example of how they had stopped caring about getting results for this supposed research of theirs. Their behavior disgusted me, but I chose to get some hope out of it. Maybe they had gotten sloppy with other matters as well, and I could use that to my advantage.
Back in the vision, Damaged-Wes looked confused. The hand and foot holds had been enough to get him this high, but he didn’t have enough leverage to pull himself up one-handed. Little Kayla was still sobbing into his shirt, and he finally looked down at her. His wild eyes narrowed as he studied her, considering.
My heart went cold as I suddenly remembered what he was pondering.
“No!” he suddenly shouted, sounding even more horrified than he had been when the boiling water began pouring in. He shook his head and continued screaming. “No-no-no!”
Kayla screamed as she started to slip out of his grip. Letting go of the pit’s edge, he snatched at her with both hands. Then he braced against the footholds as best as he could, heaved the sobbing little girl over his head, and threw her clear out of the flooding hole. She landed with a painful tumble, but she had rolled a safe distance away from the boiling death trap.
Damaged-Wes let out a happy shout and reached for the lip of the pit. He had done it, I remembered him thinking. He had saved Kayla, instead of going through with that horrible thought he remembered thinking, one that he and I were both still ashamed of. He had done the right thing, and now he was going to climb out of the pit and everything was going to be alright.
Then the rocks supporting his feet broke, and he began to slip downward.
His shout turned into a horrified shriek, but as he began to fall, he made one last, desperate grab with both hands. The hand that had been carrying Kayla missed, bouncing painfully off the rocks at the very last moment. The arm had gotten a cramp somehow. It could no longer support Damaged-Wes’ weight. But his other fist was able to snatch onto the ledge and grip it for dear life.
That was enough, I remembered thinking. One hand would be enough for Damaged-Wes to pull his way clear of the pit, as long as his legs could dig back into the wall, just like they had been able to the whole way up.
But the rocks kept giving way when Damaged-Wes tried to use them as footholds. His feet scraped uselessly all over the stone without finding any purchase. It wasn’t fair, I remembered thinking. Not when he had climbed all this way. But was it punishment? I had wondered next. Did someone hear him, when he thought of dropping Kayla to save himself?
“I’m sorry,” Damaged-Wes said uselessly. “I’m sorry I even thought of it. Please forgive me. Please don’t step on my hand.”
“Attempting further repairs,” the Well interrupted, as the memory continued.
Kayla had gotten up and ran over to grab at Damaged-Wes’ hands. He flinched away from her, afraid that she was going to push him back down for what he had almost done. But she wasn’t strong enough to pull him up by herself anyway. As she tried, another man, one of the Malus guards finally ran into the room snatched the little girl up.
“Idiot!” he hissed at her. “You could have been killed! No dying until you can come back from the dead!”
The little black girl kept sobbing, pointing back to Damaged-Wes, pleading with the guard to save him. But he was only half-listening to her.
“Yes. He’s supposed to die, you moron,” the man said harshly. “He can die as much as we want him to and still come back. But you have to stay unharmed until we can find buyers for all of you. I don’t care about how badly you want out of here, if you take your life to escape, we’re going to torture your friends just like we do him, whether we find buyers for them or not.”
“Saved me,” little Kayla cried. “He saved me! You have to help him! They’ll be mad if you don’t!”
The guard blinked at that news.
“Shit,” he swore. “Really?”
The little girl nodded furiously. He turned back to look at me.
“Please don’t step on my hand,” Damaged-Wes begged again.
I had meant it as a compromise, I remembered. Because the guard would be taking a risk if he killed me after rescuing Kayla, like she said. At the very least, they’d probably want to interview me to find out how she got down there, especially since there wasn’t anyone guarding this room like there should have been. But on the other hand, I was supposed to die, and he knew it, so saving me might get him in trouble, too. But if he just let me hang there? Safest course of action. He wouldn’t have to do anything at all. And why should he? I wasn’t even his job. He didn’t get paid extra for making decisions about Wes Malcolm.
He stepped over to the lip of the pit, Kayla in his other arm, trying to figure out his most convenient course of action.
“Just let me hang here,” Damaged-Wes begged. “You don’t have to step on my hand. Please don’t step on my hand.”
My doppleganger went into a loop then, unable to stop himself from begging. I knew the rest of what was about to happen, so I looked away.
“Memory repair complete,” the Well said. “Attempting to repair trauma caused by regaining accurate depiction of events.”
“Good luck with that,” I said with a shrug, trying to block out the experience again. “I’m not sure just what I’m supposed to gain from having a clearer picture of how I died painfully and unfairly. Again.”
“Repair was attempted per the following directives:” the Well replied. “Directive one: All is not lost. Directive two: Failure is not permanent. Directive three: Greater things are yet to come. Will continue attempting to bring subject’s mind under Universal Law.”
I flinched.
“You know of Universal Law?” I asked the entity trying to repair my mind.
“Affirmative. Currently conducting repairs so that new information regarding Universal Law may become evident.”
“Can you tell me more about them?” I asked, turning away from the pool that had displayed the agonizing memory. “Are there only three? What purpose do they serve? Why do they have their names? Can they help me?”
“Further information requires a sound mind, or a mind currently on track toward recovery. No further information can be processed until the subject’s mental and emotional health can be improved.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to improve by watching one of my most painful memories?” I demanded.
“Records show that past pain is in itself a Challenge to overcome. While trauma is harmful and best avoided, victory over it is one of the greatest potentials for growth. Subject has already begun displaying power granted by the trauma he has overcome.”
“If you say so,” I shrugged. “Most of the Rises I’ve gained have come from saving the Woadlands and Avalon.”
“Negative,” the voice of the Well corrected. “The gains received from recent events have been augmented by the Challenger’s earlier victories in recovering from trauma.”
“Bullshit!” I snarled. “I haven’t recovered, or I wouldn’t be seeing the flashback in your little puddle! I wouldn’t be keeping Breena up at night with my nightmares! I wouldn’t spend so much time talking to myself, or have a part of my brain that thinks he’s a horny invisible dragon!”
“Also negative,” the voice of the Well replied calmly. “Imperfect victories are not reclassified as failures. They retain their victory classification. Records show the subject has resisted the despair imposed by the following conditions: Physical disability. Cognitive disability. Physical pain resulting from said disability. Emotional pain resulting from said disabilit
y. Physical pain resulting from being the target of abuse. Emotional pain resulting from being the target of abuse. Emotional pain from the loss of a loved one. Emotional pain from denied opportunities. Each condition has been proven to inhibit growth. Subject’s current existence is in itself a victory.”
“That’s—” I started to say, then stopped. My words caught in my throat. They fell back into me, dissolving in my core.
I started shaking. I thought of how rare my Paths and Ideals and bloodlines and even my dragon bond were. I thought of the fact that I had gained all of them on my own, discovering many of them shortly after throwing off my disability. A condition imposed upon me by a mixture of magic and technology.
It should have been impossible, I realized. It all should have been impossible. And this was not the first time I had reflected on that fact. Even now, it wouldn’t sink in completely. But that was okay.
Imperfect victories are still classified as victories, the Well had said.
If that was true, then every day for the past two years, even the days when I had barely made it out of bed, were a victory.
Which meant that this current vision, the one of me dangling, and babbling, and begging for my life… was a victory.
Which meant my pain was not my failure.
My trauma was not my failure.
My existence in spite of them, however, was a victory.
I stopped shaking. I took another step toward the pool, looking at the pleading, sobbing figure. This time, the sight of him didn’t shame me.
“I get it,” I said. “This painful memory isn’t my sky either. Not my heaven. Not my god.”
The water of the Well rippled, and the vision ended.
When I awoke, Breena and Via were talking together over plates of food.
“So I told Stell, ‘alright then. Since you’re so confident I’m wrong, let’s make another bet,’” Breena said between a mouthful of toast. She was only a couple feet tall right now, which made the large bite she had taken look especially ambitious. “‘This time, I want your favorite reggaeton track AND a whole tray of Guineve’s strawberry-buttermilk cupcakes. But if you’re right, I lose the rest of my vacation days. Double or nothing, round two.’”
Lighting Distant Shores (Challenger's Call Book 4) Page 40
