"Shut yer trap, Brick!" Doc Mizumi snapped from behind his welding mask as sparks flew from his precision cutting torch.
Brick, who was undergoing a popular surgical modification - being retrofitted for construction, grimaced and bit down hard on a chunk of leather. Since the Defense of Stardown there had been a disastrous shortage of medical supplies like anaesthesia. For that matter there had been a shortage of everything. A shortage of food. A shortage of water. A shortage of workers for the work of rebuilding... Many, like Brick, had opted to get the necessary implants without the pain meds.
And boy did it hurt having skeletal welds undone.
But squinting through the pain and the sparks, Brick could look out of Mizumi's reclaimed downtown surgery onto the central plaza of the ruins of Geneva Prime and it almost made him smile. There, a team of Biomade electrical engineers working with their Mechified partners were putting the finishing touches on the new memorial. Where the statue of the idealized Cheldrun had previously stood on the nose of an ancient spaceship, there now towered an unparraleled work of art in bronze and coursing energy. A Sygola tree. Hammered and welded from the rusted metal remains (what little the moths had left behind) of the former Goshi Tower, the trunk twisted high into the sky, splaying it's branches over the opening of the defunct blackrock mine and for several city blocks in every direction. Pulsating beams of light danced in mesmerizing patterns along the limbs of the tree and from each twig hung dozens of crystalline leaves - the shards of glass that were ubiquitous around the city. When the wind blew, they played a musical tune, and if you examined them up close you would see each one contained a name, laser-cut into the glass, of a victim of the war.
A sudden jolt of agony brought him back to himself and he shot a dirty look at Doc Mizumi, who was unsympathetic and shouted at him to stay still.
The Doc was doing good business these days. His shop was littered with old Bullet-Spitter parts, discarded in favor of more utilitarian implants. In what Brick thought of as a defining metaphor, he could even see an old gun-arm half disassembled on a nearby table - its parts being scavenged to make a scoop.
As part of the rebuilding effort, Doc Mizumi refused to accept any payment but food and spare parts, and from friends like Brick, the Doc wouldn't even take those things. So Brick tried hard not to take the pain personally, and he focused his thoughts on that memorial tree...
Up in the highest branches of the tree, Karak was attaching glass leaves to their respective twigs. He paused for each one and read the name it contained aloud. He'd kept a special handful of leaves aside, sorted them from the millions of shards to be the very last ones hung on the tree. No one but him would know he had done this, and he wasn't sure anyone but him would have cared. He heated each setting with his finger torch and carefully slotted each leaf into its place.
Omar.
Amos.
Tank.
Terry the Canary.
Mickey the Mixer.
The Surgeon.
Acetylene Sue.
Showing posts with label NPC's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NPC's. Show all posts
Foxlings
From her chair in the tower of the Choir of the Sky Elder Moon could hear the sounds of fosterlings at play outside. She had a momentary urge to get up and go to the window to watch, but the aches in her joints persuaded her otherwise. Without a hint of regret she admitted to herself that she was getting old. Not for her a centuries-spanning existence like the life of Elder Winter. She couldn't bear the absence of Mokuzai so long in any case.
Across the room, dappled by the rainbow light bouncing off the ubiquitous Nevergems, her son Hiro sat, looking serious like men his age often do.
"You'll enjoy being a grandfather, Hiro," she said with a concealed smile.
He seemed startled that she had interrupted the silence. "Yes, of course I will, but..." he frowned.
Moon drank her tea and patiently waited for him to work his emotions out. His youngest daughter, Lyre, was about to give birth to her first litter and something about the event was troubling him. As for Moon, she could hardly wait to meet the new kits.
"Mother, you know I'm happy for her, but she's so far away. Away from the safety of the Chantry or the companionship of her Choir. I just wish..." Hiro left the words hanging, and to her surprise his eyes began to swell with tears. Among the Prill emotions are usually expressed through song in a highly ritualized fashion. She supposed she had no one to blame but herself that her own family was so unconventional.
"Hiro, my son, you mustn't wish something different for Lyre. She chose to stay in the sanctuary cities. She is happy there. Those cities represent our hope for a lasting peace, it is good that so many like my granddaughter have the courage to make a life in common with the Children of Steel..." she was prepared to launch into quite a moving piece of oratory on this subject, but Hiro cut her off.
"You've misunderstood. I don't wish anything different for Lyre - it is for me. I spoke last night with Twilight. He has had a vision. You were right about the Riddle of Peace. You were right about all of that. That's the point. Twilight says our vow to Karia has been fulfilled. The forests are safe - and that this next generation will be the first to receive their vulpine forms back. We will be fox-children again!" He paused for breath, before continuing in a rush, "My grandchildren will live a life none of us has known for generations and I will miss so much of it. I wish Lyre was closer so that I could enjoy this."
Midway through his speech Elder Moon had begun crying her own tears, and by the end she was laughing and crying at the same time as the joy in her soul erupted.
"Oh Hiro! Every grandparent that has ever lived has wished their grandchildren were closer to home. You are not alone..."
She got up then, aching joints be damned, and crossed the room to hug her son. Neither of them said anything for a long time, but they clung to each other and looked out the window at a miraculous sky.
Prelude to the End
Kindaichi of the Topaz Gull Clan, formerly 7th Dan of Washi San Academy, in disgrace, had never in her life been so exhausted. Resting against a blood and oil-smeared boulder, inside her mecha, she sobbed, but so dehydrated was she that no tears came. She no longer even had the energy to marvel at the depth of her new bond with her mecha. She could feel the stone she was leaning upon as though it were flesh and not metal which touched it. Hours ago that sensation had been magnificent. Now it was just another factor contributing to her exhaustion.
Eyeless hordes swarmed over the rise barreling her over with their numbers. Their tentacles latched onto her limbs trying to restrain her. In her weakened state, they might have succeeded, but some impossible reserve of determination made her bring her Mochi-Yari to bear. Lancing dead Cheldrun in half, she forced herself to rise out of the mass.
To her left and right other mecha labored, wading through tides of the Enemy, as exhausted as she, perhaps even more bereft of hope and yet they were carried by iron discipline, and absolute confidence in the rightness of their cause. Since this morning dozens of her colleagues had fallen. She watched as Ishikawa of the Jade Falcon Clan was liquefied by some horrible beam from Karaku Oni. The molten ring through the torso of his mecha glowed orange as he fell in a heap and was buried under the advancing army. He fired his bow twice more, annihilating several eyeless with each shot, before dying.
Kindaichi would give no less. At this very moment refugees were fleeing for safety. There was no hope of ultimate victory, but each second she bought would be one more second for the refugees to flee. She told herself this because she could see no redemption for herself in this situation. Every ounce of her body screamed in agony with each movement. Soon, she knew, nothing would keep her in motion and then she would be at the mercy of the eyeless... or she would pass out and her mecha would be dismissed... or an Oni would return... or all of the Oni...
An eyeless was flying through the air, toward her helmet. She recognized him, even without his eyes. It was a high-ranking Hei Shi named Arrow, one who had brought Goshi Directives to Washi San Academy upon occasion. Her Mochi-Yari took his head off in one blow.
Not yet. She would not die, yet.
***
At best the infirmary could be called an endless triage clinic. Nothing approaching actual medicine was being performed here any longer, the Surgeon lamented. It was impossible to even attempt it with the thousands of casualties being rushed through the doors every minute. The injured and dying spilled out of the walls into the fields beyond, laying on tarps and in the grass, not neatly, but piled up. Those who could pull themselves out of the pile to find a wall to lean against were probably those with the best chance of survival, Surgeon concentrated on them. The rest just moaned and wailed for relief, but there was none to give.
A young man, too young to have any right to be participating in the fighting, sat by himself in a rare clear spot on the ground. Both arms were gone from the shoulders. He rocked back and forth slightly, dizzy from blood loss. He would be dead in moments. The Surgeon laid him back on the ground, whispering in his ear though he doubted anything he said would penetrate the shock. Suddenly the man was quite lucid and he looked the Surgeon in the eyes as he spoke.
"They're coming. More are coming. It's not over."
The Surgeon thought he meant the Goshi army, but moments after he left the man's side to attend the next victim he noticed corpses twitching, going into paroxysms, their limbs quaking. It was happening everywhere. Terry the Canary, covered head to toe in viscera, came running toward him, shouting incomprehensibly through her sobs. The corpses were rising. Coming to their feet, without eyes in their heads, they began to consume the wounded and the dying.
Terry embraced him and he thought he heard her say "we tried," and "die together." He would have shaken her out of her hysteria in different circumstances, but he found he could do nothing but hold her tightly to himself and nod and weep. She was always a flighty little girl. Too fragile for times like these. Everyone is too fragile for times like these. Suffering like this was never meant to be inflicted on any man.
He barely realized it when a barbed tentacle burst through Terry's rib cage. She was quiet now, but he kept holding her. He whispered that it would be okay, though he knew it could never be.
He didn't see or feel the blow that felled him.
***
Perched on a branch, Sings-Like-Frog, looked out over the frozen surface of Stardown Lake at the stream of refugees running for their lives. In the distance the mountains were on fire. Smoke poured into the air making midday seem gray and dingy like dusk. Only the sun and the fire of the Wandering Star pierced the gloom above. The Star was almost at its peak and it filled the aging Zipsum's heart with forboding.
Below him, interspersed through the trees were the assembled choirs of the Prill. The greatest massed choir in generations. Even in the midst of the devastation it made him glow with pride to have spent his life among the fox-children. In his warbly croaking voice he sang along with a number of the songs which were familiar to him. No mystical power filled him when he did so. He could not so much as turn one drop of water to ice, but he felt as if he were part of something tremendous, something worth doing.
The terror of the refugees who were arriving on the south and eastern shores of the lake was palpable, but there was an undercurrent of gratitude as well. They were rushed under the canopy of the forest and away to safety where whole cities had been sung into existence for them. Most had no way of comprehending what was happening. They had never before seen a Prill or heard of their wonder-working powers. They stumbled, dumb-founded, between paralyzing fear and disbelief.
In time, they would remember this as the beginning of a lasting peace. That was Elder Moon's hope. Saving millions of Cheldrun from destruction would be the seeds of unity for Karians and Cheldrun. These refugee cities will last. They will flourish and they will remind the children of steel of the debt they owe. Sings-Like-Frog was no diplomat, but he believed her when she spoke about it. She was passionate, and convicted. She persuaded every Karian who heard her and they willingly lent their help to the cause. Something good must come from this travesty.
From where Sings-Like-Frog was perched he could count tens of millions of good things running across the ice.
***
Fighting alongside the Zipsum was good. Fighting with the strength of Karia was even better. Edana Griolsa ripped the tentacles off an eyeless before her and kicked it so hard the rib cage collapsed. Before it hit the ground two Zipsum warriors were on it, plunging poisoned knives over and over again into the flesh. Everywhere she turned her blows were followed by Zipsum knives and arrows. She set them up, and the Zipsum cut them down. It was beautiful to watch.
Overhead a tank whistled through the air. When it plowed into the ranks of the enemy it sent a shockwave of flesh rippling for dozens of meters in every direction. She charged up to it and ripped the cannon free from its moorings. She swung it around her in a great arc, clearing a circle of the dead, breaking backs, crushing skulls. One ducked under her swing and plowed into her at the waist trying to knock her off her feet. She neither braced herself nor avoided the attack. The eyeless merely bounced off her like a granite column. The Zipsum knives silenced him before he could get up.
Deep in her breast a proud Gogajin heart was beating. Decades of rage at the suffering of her people combined with the unbelievable hope that the unification of the clans provided made her and every other Gogajin unstoppable. They would neither tire, nor weaken. They would not surrender or retreat. They would hound the foe across every centimeter and kilometer of the continent if need be. They were Gogajin. Their enemies would die in despair, but they would die with a loud and raucous laugh.
***
Aimi could get used to this feeling - the feeling of rushing through the clouds at the helm of an airship. For most of her life she never questioned the Cheldrun prohibition against taking to the sky, but now that she knew how seductive it was she began to understand it better. Not as good as sex, but not completely dissimilar.
The one thing she did not like about flying the Sennin is how conspicuous it was. Used to arriving unannounced with a surprise knife to the back, it was against her nature to be so exposed to every eye as she whistled through the air. There was no longer any meaningful surface-to-air threat from the Goshi army... was it really Goshi anymore? But it kept her on edge every second. An Oni, she knew, could obliterate the Sennin without effort. She dare not relax her guard.
To make matters worse, Kiyoshi and Rei and friends were always insisting on being deposited as close to the damn Oni as possible. Not only did she object to exposing herself and the Sennin to such danger, she in no way approved of Kiyoshi's reckless behavior. She had a feeling that her approval meant about as much to him as the opinion of a rock. Then reflecting on the awe these people seemed to have of Karia - even believing that Karia was alive and influencing them by giving them their remarkable powers, she glumly noted that her opinion might matter less than that of a rock.
He'd better survive long enough for me to punish him, she thought to herself.
***
Zipporah felt something like butterfly wings fluttering in her uterus. Her eyes widened and she clutched her stomach. It was the first sensation of the life within her and she was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. There was a spark of joy, yes, but it seemed so fragile in comparison with the host of fears that pressed in around her. The meaning of this child was yet to be determined. Everything that it could be could so easily be destroyed by the war... by the enemy... if she lost Moses...
Over and over again lately she had forced herself to contemplate his death. It was the last thing she wanted, and yet every second it was a terrible possibility. Now it seemed a near certainty since the hopes of so many were depending on him... depending on his willingness to sacrifice himself.
He would do it, she knew. She couldn't be angry about it either. She would do the same in his place, but knowing this in no way reduced the enormity of her grief. Instead she was angry at the Dusk Sages. Angry at Karia. Angry at the All. It was not right, not fair, not in any sense good or just that so many should have to suffer for others to live. Perhaps, she reflected bitterly, the Question was nothing but a cosmic wager. A callous game of chance with the lives of, well everything, at stake.
Including the life in her uterus. That above all is why she knew she would lose Moses. If he could do something to ensure that life... anything. Could she bear to see this child grow and live, but never rest in Moses' embrace again?
***
This command center was really no such thing. It was a lost cause. His officers were dead or dying or rising as eyeless. His soldiers were fleeing or cowering or nonresponsive to his commands in any case. The few mecha he still had fighting were beyond his reach and there were no more tanks or artillery and even if there were they wouldn't be of much use. Daitokuji Ichirou, patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan and general of the Stardown Defense Force was grudgingly forced to admit that they had indeed arrived at the end of the road.
Despite the unbelievable efforts of the Heroes of Karia Vitalus, there was no stopping this swarm of eyeless which had enveloped them. He urged everyone to standfast, knowing it was pointless. Those who would fight would fight. The rest were already rushing after the refugees for the frozen lake. Dimly he hoped that his wife and child were safe among those escaping. There was nothing he could do about it either way.
Having given his final orders, and knowing there was nothing left that any general could do to reverse this tide, he calmly walked from the bunker into the open. Bullets ricocheted off the cement around him. He ignored their dangerous buzz, and turned to face the oncoming rush of the Enemy. Countless millions had been killed or destroyed, yet millions more were coming. Among them the cruel, but vibrant First Minds walked, propelling the demonic army by their twisted power. They had overcome every obstacle the SDF placed in their way. They were almost through the pass, to pour on the unprotected refugees below.
One obstacle still remained for them to overcome, however. Daitokuji Ichirou, 12th Dan of Washi San Academy, the greatest mecha pilot who ever lived. He crossed his arms in front of him and silver light rippled over the field.
***
Heaving tanks through the air is hard work. Even Balder had to admit that the Cheldrun know how to make some heavy shit. The heaviest thing in a Gogajin village is a slab of stone, or a plowshare. Nowhere near as heavy as a tank. Not that he was counting, but he was pretty sure he'd hurled about 43 of them so far, and now they were staying away from him or driving for the hills, or unoccupied and lifeless. That was the thing about tanks, without their crew they're just a hunk of metal.
There were less tanks about now, and less artillery, and less Cheldrun actually. The enemies he was wading through now were eyeless, every one of them. The living children of steel had turned on their own army, shooting the eyeless rather than running alongside them. It was one hell of a clusterfuck, because the Goshi soldiers didn't know which side they were on. They were shit-scared of the eyeless, but the Gogajin weren't their friends either. Balder decided to let them shoot first to see if they were an enemy. If they fired on him (to little effect since Karia was blessing him with her strength), then he gave them the tank treatment. If they screamed and ran he let them go.
Over the sounds of the battle he could hear little, but from time to time he heard a Gogajin clan crying their motto and regardless of which clan it was he would shout it along with them and charge with renewed vigor. They were united now, the Gogajin. And Grim, Grim of all fucking people was their leader! Their High-fucking-King! He was doing a good job making a show of it too. He had charged to the top of a rise, near the middle of the enemy army, and planted his standard, waving it for all to see. He taunted the foe to take the hill from him and for hours none had been able to displace him.
Balder made his way that direction, cutting through swaths of eyeless with a torn sheet of metal. From behind Grim he could see a small, unassuming man approaching. Balder recognized him as a First Mind, and he shouted to warn Grim, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of an artillery shell exploding nearby. Rainbow rays burst from the First Mind's fingertips obliterating several of the Gogajin in Grim's entourage. Grim turned around to face his new opponent and Balder could tell he didn't recognize the danger. Grim threw his arms wide, taunting the First Mind, exposing himself. The First Mind smirked and raised his hands...
Then Balder was on him. He had a hand in the First Mind's mouth, and an arm around his chest. Some dark energy tore at Balder, turning his flesh to spaghetti, unraveling him like a wool jumper. It hurt more than Balder cared to admit. He squeezed the First Mind with all of his might, but for his unassuming appearance he was unbelievable strong. The dark energy continued to shred Balder like so much confetti. He lost his balance and tumbled to the ground with the First Mind still in his grasp.
Balder's legs began dissolving. A metal plate burst free from his shoulder when the screws could no longer find purchase in bones quickly turning to gelatin. Balder screamed for Grim to run. Run for his fucking life, but he couldn't see or tell whether Grim had listened. The First Mind continued struggling in his grasp and Balder forced his hand further into its mouth as his vision became blurry, and the world started to fade.
The blackness claimed Balder, but not before he ripped the First Mind's skull, without the jaw, from its moorings and tossed it into the fray.
***
At the eye of the storm Jin Kalys labored, obsessively, over his newest equations. They made no sense, even to him. Frankly he had given up certainty some time ago. He understood the exigencies of the circumstances. He had no more time to make them right. No more time to be certain, and the math... his dreams weren't coming as they usually did when the equations were close. His subconscious assimilation of nine branch formal logic must not have been as thorough as he'd once imagined, because now... when he most need to be sure.
Some luxuries life does not afford us. This solution would have to do.
The new inertial dampener/difference engine combination artifact was bulky, intricate, and Jin would even venture, aesthetically pleasing. In other times he would have joyfully joined Sousauryoku in an thorough study of the device. It made him feel amateurish to be so hasty with his preparations, but at this very moment the Eyeless were pushing into the streets of Stardown and the Wandering Star was nearly at it's apex. In less than an hour the fate of life would be decided and in some small way he would take part in that decision. Of any debate he had ever waged he most hoped to earn a piercing for this one.
Sousauryoku leaned over his shoulder to read the last page of notation. For once he didn't make a snide comment, but merely gave a weary look that said "I hope you're right."
"There is no other choice," Jin Kalys assured him.
***
From her birth in fiery glory Karia had been a witness. Only in these last hours was she also an actor. It gave her indescribable pleasure, but also debilitating anxiety to at last be involved in the cosmic drama. For a child whose lifespan is measured in billions of revolutions the span of an hour is the blinking of an eye. She watched, unblinking, as that last hour unfolded and she admitted to herself at last, what she had denied for billions of years - that she was not neutral in this conflict, that her heart sang to her of the beauty of life and could not abide the thought of an eternity without the living. She watched, but not as an enraptured audience, she watched as one who stood much to lose. The living were making their choices. The meaning was being played out. The Question would at last be answered.
Life?
Eyeless hordes swarmed over the rise barreling her over with their numbers. Their tentacles latched onto her limbs trying to restrain her. In her weakened state, they might have succeeded, but some impossible reserve of determination made her bring her Mochi-Yari to bear. Lancing dead Cheldrun in half, she forced herself to rise out of the mass.
To her left and right other mecha labored, wading through tides of the Enemy, as exhausted as she, perhaps even more bereft of hope and yet they were carried by iron discipline, and absolute confidence in the rightness of their cause. Since this morning dozens of her colleagues had fallen. She watched as Ishikawa of the Jade Falcon Clan was liquefied by some horrible beam from Karaku Oni. The molten ring through the torso of his mecha glowed orange as he fell in a heap and was buried under the advancing army. He fired his bow twice more, annihilating several eyeless with each shot, before dying.
Kindaichi would give no less. At this very moment refugees were fleeing for safety. There was no hope of ultimate victory, but each second she bought would be one more second for the refugees to flee. She told herself this because she could see no redemption for herself in this situation. Every ounce of her body screamed in agony with each movement. Soon, she knew, nothing would keep her in motion and then she would be at the mercy of the eyeless... or she would pass out and her mecha would be dismissed... or an Oni would return... or all of the Oni...
An eyeless was flying through the air, toward her helmet. She recognized him, even without his eyes. It was a high-ranking Hei Shi named Arrow, one who had brought Goshi Directives to Washi San Academy upon occasion. Her Mochi-Yari took his head off in one blow.
Not yet. She would not die, yet.
***
At best the infirmary could be called an endless triage clinic. Nothing approaching actual medicine was being performed here any longer, the Surgeon lamented. It was impossible to even attempt it with the thousands of casualties being rushed through the doors every minute. The injured and dying spilled out of the walls into the fields beyond, laying on tarps and in the grass, not neatly, but piled up. Those who could pull themselves out of the pile to find a wall to lean against were probably those with the best chance of survival, Surgeon concentrated on them. The rest just moaned and wailed for relief, but there was none to give.
A young man, too young to have any right to be participating in the fighting, sat by himself in a rare clear spot on the ground. Both arms were gone from the shoulders. He rocked back and forth slightly, dizzy from blood loss. He would be dead in moments. The Surgeon laid him back on the ground, whispering in his ear though he doubted anything he said would penetrate the shock. Suddenly the man was quite lucid and he looked the Surgeon in the eyes as he spoke.
"They're coming. More are coming. It's not over."
The Surgeon thought he meant the Goshi army, but moments after he left the man's side to attend the next victim he noticed corpses twitching, going into paroxysms, their limbs quaking. It was happening everywhere. Terry the Canary, covered head to toe in viscera, came running toward him, shouting incomprehensibly through her sobs. The corpses were rising. Coming to their feet, without eyes in their heads, they began to consume the wounded and the dying.
Terry embraced him and he thought he heard her say "we tried," and "die together." He would have shaken her out of her hysteria in different circumstances, but he found he could do nothing but hold her tightly to himself and nod and weep. She was always a flighty little girl. Too fragile for times like these. Everyone is too fragile for times like these. Suffering like this was never meant to be inflicted on any man.
He barely realized it when a barbed tentacle burst through Terry's rib cage. She was quiet now, but he kept holding her. He whispered that it would be okay, though he knew it could never be.
He didn't see or feel the blow that felled him.
***
Perched on a branch, Sings-Like-Frog, looked out over the frozen surface of Stardown Lake at the stream of refugees running for their lives. In the distance the mountains were on fire. Smoke poured into the air making midday seem gray and dingy like dusk. Only the sun and the fire of the Wandering Star pierced the gloom above. The Star was almost at its peak and it filled the aging Zipsum's heart with forboding.
Below him, interspersed through the trees were the assembled choirs of the Prill. The greatest massed choir in generations. Even in the midst of the devastation it made him glow with pride to have spent his life among the fox-children. In his warbly croaking voice he sang along with a number of the songs which were familiar to him. No mystical power filled him when he did so. He could not so much as turn one drop of water to ice, but he felt as if he were part of something tremendous, something worth doing.
The terror of the refugees who were arriving on the south and eastern shores of the lake was palpable, but there was an undercurrent of gratitude as well. They were rushed under the canopy of the forest and away to safety where whole cities had been sung into existence for them. Most had no way of comprehending what was happening. They had never before seen a Prill or heard of their wonder-working powers. They stumbled, dumb-founded, between paralyzing fear and disbelief.
In time, they would remember this as the beginning of a lasting peace. That was Elder Moon's hope. Saving millions of Cheldrun from destruction would be the seeds of unity for Karians and Cheldrun. These refugee cities will last. They will flourish and they will remind the children of steel of the debt they owe. Sings-Like-Frog was no diplomat, but he believed her when she spoke about it. She was passionate, and convicted. She persuaded every Karian who heard her and they willingly lent their help to the cause. Something good must come from this travesty.
From where Sings-Like-Frog was perched he could count tens of millions of good things running across the ice.
***
Fighting alongside the Zipsum was good. Fighting with the strength of Karia was even better. Edana Griolsa ripped the tentacles off an eyeless before her and kicked it so hard the rib cage collapsed. Before it hit the ground two Zipsum warriors were on it, plunging poisoned knives over and over again into the flesh. Everywhere she turned her blows were followed by Zipsum knives and arrows. She set them up, and the Zipsum cut them down. It was beautiful to watch.
Overhead a tank whistled through the air. When it plowed into the ranks of the enemy it sent a shockwave of flesh rippling for dozens of meters in every direction. She charged up to it and ripped the cannon free from its moorings. She swung it around her in a great arc, clearing a circle of the dead, breaking backs, crushing skulls. One ducked under her swing and plowed into her at the waist trying to knock her off her feet. She neither braced herself nor avoided the attack. The eyeless merely bounced off her like a granite column. The Zipsum knives silenced him before he could get up.
Deep in her breast a proud Gogajin heart was beating. Decades of rage at the suffering of her people combined with the unbelievable hope that the unification of the clans provided made her and every other Gogajin unstoppable. They would neither tire, nor weaken. They would not surrender or retreat. They would hound the foe across every centimeter and kilometer of the continent if need be. They were Gogajin. Their enemies would die in despair, but they would die with a loud and raucous laugh.
***
Aimi could get used to this feeling - the feeling of rushing through the clouds at the helm of an airship. For most of her life she never questioned the Cheldrun prohibition against taking to the sky, but now that she knew how seductive it was she began to understand it better. Not as good as sex, but not completely dissimilar.
The one thing she did not like about flying the Sennin is how conspicuous it was. Used to arriving unannounced with a surprise knife to the back, it was against her nature to be so exposed to every eye as she whistled through the air. There was no longer any meaningful surface-to-air threat from the Goshi army... was it really Goshi anymore? But it kept her on edge every second. An Oni, she knew, could obliterate the Sennin without effort. She dare not relax her guard.
To make matters worse, Kiyoshi and Rei and friends were always insisting on being deposited as close to the damn Oni as possible. Not only did she object to exposing herself and the Sennin to such danger, she in no way approved of Kiyoshi's reckless behavior. She had a feeling that her approval meant about as much to him as the opinion of a rock. Then reflecting on the awe these people seemed to have of Karia - even believing that Karia was alive and influencing them by giving them their remarkable powers, she glumly noted that her opinion might matter less than that of a rock.
He'd better survive long enough for me to punish him, she thought to herself.
***
Zipporah felt something like butterfly wings fluttering in her uterus. Her eyes widened and she clutched her stomach. It was the first sensation of the life within her and she was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. There was a spark of joy, yes, but it seemed so fragile in comparison with the host of fears that pressed in around her. The meaning of this child was yet to be determined. Everything that it could be could so easily be destroyed by the war... by the enemy... if she lost Moses...
Over and over again lately she had forced herself to contemplate his death. It was the last thing she wanted, and yet every second it was a terrible possibility. Now it seemed a near certainty since the hopes of so many were depending on him... depending on his willingness to sacrifice himself.
He would do it, she knew. She couldn't be angry about it either. She would do the same in his place, but knowing this in no way reduced the enormity of her grief. Instead she was angry at the Dusk Sages. Angry at Karia. Angry at the All. It was not right, not fair, not in any sense good or just that so many should have to suffer for others to live. Perhaps, she reflected bitterly, the Question was nothing but a cosmic wager. A callous game of chance with the lives of, well everything, at stake.
Including the life in her uterus. That above all is why she knew she would lose Moses. If he could do something to ensure that life... anything. Could she bear to see this child grow and live, but never rest in Moses' embrace again?
***
This command center was really no such thing. It was a lost cause. His officers were dead or dying or rising as eyeless. His soldiers were fleeing or cowering or nonresponsive to his commands in any case. The few mecha he still had fighting were beyond his reach and there were no more tanks or artillery and even if there were they wouldn't be of much use. Daitokuji Ichirou, patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan and general of the Stardown Defense Force was grudgingly forced to admit that they had indeed arrived at the end of the road.
Despite the unbelievable efforts of the Heroes of Karia Vitalus, there was no stopping this swarm of eyeless which had enveloped them. He urged everyone to standfast, knowing it was pointless. Those who would fight would fight. The rest were already rushing after the refugees for the frozen lake. Dimly he hoped that his wife and child were safe among those escaping. There was nothing he could do about it either way.
Having given his final orders, and knowing there was nothing left that any general could do to reverse this tide, he calmly walked from the bunker into the open. Bullets ricocheted off the cement around him. He ignored their dangerous buzz, and turned to face the oncoming rush of the Enemy. Countless millions had been killed or destroyed, yet millions more were coming. Among them the cruel, but vibrant First Minds walked, propelling the demonic army by their twisted power. They had overcome every obstacle the SDF placed in their way. They were almost through the pass, to pour on the unprotected refugees below.
One obstacle still remained for them to overcome, however. Daitokuji Ichirou, 12th Dan of Washi San Academy, the greatest mecha pilot who ever lived. He crossed his arms in front of him and silver light rippled over the field.
***
Heaving tanks through the air is hard work. Even Balder had to admit that the Cheldrun know how to make some heavy shit. The heaviest thing in a Gogajin village is a slab of stone, or a plowshare. Nowhere near as heavy as a tank. Not that he was counting, but he was pretty sure he'd hurled about 43 of them so far, and now they were staying away from him or driving for the hills, or unoccupied and lifeless. That was the thing about tanks, without their crew they're just a hunk of metal.
There were less tanks about now, and less artillery, and less Cheldrun actually. The enemies he was wading through now were eyeless, every one of them. The living children of steel had turned on their own army, shooting the eyeless rather than running alongside them. It was one hell of a clusterfuck, because the Goshi soldiers didn't know which side they were on. They were shit-scared of the eyeless, but the Gogajin weren't their friends either. Balder decided to let them shoot first to see if they were an enemy. If they fired on him (to little effect since Karia was blessing him with her strength), then he gave them the tank treatment. If they screamed and ran he let them go.
Over the sounds of the battle he could hear little, but from time to time he heard a Gogajin clan crying their motto and regardless of which clan it was he would shout it along with them and charge with renewed vigor. They were united now, the Gogajin. And Grim, Grim of all fucking people was their leader! Their High-fucking-King! He was doing a good job making a show of it too. He had charged to the top of a rise, near the middle of the enemy army, and planted his standard, waving it for all to see. He taunted the foe to take the hill from him and for hours none had been able to displace him.
Balder made his way that direction, cutting through swaths of eyeless with a torn sheet of metal. From behind Grim he could see a small, unassuming man approaching. Balder recognized him as a First Mind, and he shouted to warn Grim, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of an artillery shell exploding nearby. Rainbow rays burst from the First Mind's fingertips obliterating several of the Gogajin in Grim's entourage. Grim turned around to face his new opponent and Balder could tell he didn't recognize the danger. Grim threw his arms wide, taunting the First Mind, exposing himself. The First Mind smirked and raised his hands...
Then Balder was on him. He had a hand in the First Mind's mouth, and an arm around his chest. Some dark energy tore at Balder, turning his flesh to spaghetti, unraveling him like a wool jumper. It hurt more than Balder cared to admit. He squeezed the First Mind with all of his might, but for his unassuming appearance he was unbelievable strong. The dark energy continued to shred Balder like so much confetti. He lost his balance and tumbled to the ground with the First Mind still in his grasp.
Balder's legs began dissolving. A metal plate burst free from his shoulder when the screws could no longer find purchase in bones quickly turning to gelatin. Balder screamed for Grim to run. Run for his fucking life, but he couldn't see or tell whether Grim had listened. The First Mind continued struggling in his grasp and Balder forced his hand further into its mouth as his vision became blurry, and the world started to fade.
The blackness claimed Balder, but not before he ripped the First Mind's skull, without the jaw, from its moorings and tossed it into the fray.
***
At the eye of the storm Jin Kalys labored, obsessively, over his newest equations. They made no sense, even to him. Frankly he had given up certainty some time ago. He understood the exigencies of the circumstances. He had no more time to make them right. No more time to be certain, and the math... his dreams weren't coming as they usually did when the equations were close. His subconscious assimilation of nine branch formal logic must not have been as thorough as he'd once imagined, because now... when he most need to be sure.
Some luxuries life does not afford us. This solution would have to do.
The new inertial dampener/difference engine combination artifact was bulky, intricate, and Jin would even venture, aesthetically pleasing. In other times he would have joyfully joined Sousauryoku in an thorough study of the device. It made him feel amateurish to be so hasty with his preparations, but at this very moment the Eyeless were pushing into the streets of Stardown and the Wandering Star was nearly at it's apex. In less than an hour the fate of life would be decided and in some small way he would take part in that decision. Of any debate he had ever waged he most hoped to earn a piercing for this one.
Sousauryoku leaned over his shoulder to read the last page of notation. For once he didn't make a snide comment, but merely gave a weary look that said "I hope you're right."
"There is no other choice," Jin Kalys assured him.
***
From her birth in fiery glory Karia had been a witness. Only in these last hours was she also an actor. It gave her indescribable pleasure, but also debilitating anxiety to at last be involved in the cosmic drama. For a child whose lifespan is measured in billions of revolutions the span of an hour is the blinking of an eye. She watched, unblinking, as that last hour unfolded and she admitted to herself at last, what she had denied for billions of years - that she was not neutral in this conflict, that her heart sang to her of the beauty of life and could not abide the thought of an eternity without the living. She watched, but not as an enraptured audience, she watched as one who stood much to lose. The living were making their choices. The meaning was being played out. The Question would at last be answered.
Life?
Kijuuki's New Master
Feeling as though the world were strangely distant, Kiko reflected.
In the two months since the Sennin had left the Emerald Isle Kiko had learned more about life and the universe than in all the years preceding. Studying at the feet of the Dusk Sages was an incomparable feeling of exhilaration. They had the gift of literally putting the knowledge directly into her mind with a touch, and so she learned at an unprecedented rate. She supposed the only reason that they worked as they did in stages is to prevent her from going mad, or cracking in half with the strain of a rapidly expanding world view. Even so, each new discovery was such a revolution for her she began to suspect that it must require immense patience on their part to accept her ignorance.
She learned, for example, that Karia was speaking more than ever these days and what she whispered was somehow comforting to the Dusk Sages. Though she never heard the planet speak, she learned to tell instantly when a Dusk Sage was hearing her voice. They became serene, beatific even, and afterward they thrummed with happy energy. It made her wonder if her admiration of the Dusk Sages was similar to their feelings for Karia.
She looked beside her. The dictionary of Cheldrun that Kiyoshi had made for her lay open on the ground. She reached for it, but it was too far away. Still, it was a welcome reminder of all that had transpired. Everything she had seen.
It seemed too immense that one little Prill like her should come to see and know so much, and the more the Dusk Sages taught her the more she realized that it was a tiny fraction of the wonders of the All. It is a shame, she thought, that we all unravel. There is no way to see it all, know it all.
Kiko was relatively certain that she would never know who the man with oily hair and lace cuffs was, nor why he behaved as he did. He was a child of Steel, with eyes like Rei's, but he had arrived on the Emerald Isle without a boat or any other means of transport. The Dusk Sages observed him from a distance without saying anything. They revealed no emotion, but Kiko felt apprehension on their behalf. For a while she told herself that he would want to be a disciple like Kiko, Ramora, and Maruko, but if he had come to study, then he chose the wrong masters. A week after his arrival he was spotted in the company of resisters.
In the mornings Maruko had taken to singing, from memory, all the Prill lore that she could dredge up. Kiko tried to sing along, but Maruko had a better memory and Ramora had a better voice, she felt ashamed. The Dusk Sages genuinely delighted in the company of their creations, though all of their interactions were colored with melancholy. The creations on the island were sick, Kiko knew, and the health of the Prill was a sad reminder for them of the tragedy of their exile. Mostly it was better to sing and learn and observe than the alternative, even if the unraveling is true.
If.
Sadly, Kiko knew that the unraveling was not only true, but inevitable. She looked down at her chest, pierced by two daggers. Another in her thigh was embedded so deep it pinned her to the ground.
The man with the red eyes had come at sunrise to the Flame of Dawning where all the living Dusk Sages were gathered. He greeted them with flowery language (most of which Kiko understood) and argued at length for something so abhorrent that Kiko thought she must have misunderstood. He wanted the Dusk Sages to reclaim their creations, to use them for mana in order to control the Kyo Tee Shee and then to return in power to the continent of their children. He called them 'Initiators' and 'Gods' and said that it was their responsibility to cleanse Karia of the Cheldrun who he called 'Malice'.
The Dusk Sages listened, tolerantly, over a long period as he explained the story of the Cheldrun, and pleaded with them. The Dusk Sages simply shook their heads, with tear filled eyes, but said nothing. He behaved petulantly, like a child who is used to getting his way. He shouted and cursed. He whimpered and cried. He accused them of negligence, of hating their own children, and denying their own responsibility. Kiko could see that his words were wounding them and she tried to intervene, to calm him down.
That is when he exploded. A storm of knives rushed from his coat impaling her and anyone who came close. He rose into the sky, glowing with purple light, and began hurling wave after wave of sharpened blades and incinerating energy upon the gathered Dusk Sages. Kiko shouted for them to flee, to fight back, to do anything, but they just stood there, weeping.
Resisters crawled up the mountainside and began attacking the gathered Sages from the outside, as the man continued to pulse with malevolent power and to rend the ones he had called Gods just moments before. From his hand he unleashed a purple crane, which swelled to enormous size and swooped down on the dying Dusk Sages, greedily dipping its beak in the rainbow fluid which washed in waves over the field. Kijuuki, Mokuzai's Kyo Tee-Shee. As Kiko watched, the crane consumed every Sage there, becoming bloated with mana. The crane gave a piercing shriek which caused the Flame of Dawning to split in half and fall, before returning to its meal.
The resisters were just as voracious, and most horrifying of all, as they ran out of Dusk Sages to consume they fell on one another in their frenzied state. They wrenched masks off of one another's faces, and sucked mana out of one another's eye sockets. The red-eyed man did not cease his slaughter either, but turned his fury on the resisters as well. Rays of purple light from his hands incinerated his targets, and as Kijuuki fed he only grew more powerful, until his blasts were breaking apart trees, then boulders, then mountains, then sundering the island itself.
Kiko couldn't think of anything to do then, but to sing. She looked around, but Maruko and Ramora were lying in heaps, dead. So she let her trembling voice ring out with the Song of Sending, the funeral song of the Prill. It was perhaps the worst rendition of the song ever performed, but The-One-Who-Opens-Doors smiled and nodded at her as he died. The look on his face was one of pride.
From the corpses of the resisters new Kyo Tee-Shee sprang. They joined the feeding frenzy, as the ground trembled and Kiko, who was on the point of passing out but kept singing all the same, wondered if the island were lifting out of the ocean into the sky. She could not hear herself over the roar, but she pressed on approaching the climax. The red-eyed man was completely obscured in a field of purple light now. She no longer cared who he was, it was beyond her.
When her breath was expended, she fell back and looked at that dictionary laying on the ground beside her. Its pages were spattered with rainbow colored blood. The wind took it and blew it out of sight. She imagined the wind was blowing it like a message to the All. We are unraveling as you decreed. Is it what you you hoped?
In the two months since the Sennin had left the Emerald Isle Kiko had learned more about life and the universe than in all the years preceding. Studying at the feet of the Dusk Sages was an incomparable feeling of exhilaration. They had the gift of literally putting the knowledge directly into her mind with a touch, and so she learned at an unprecedented rate. She supposed the only reason that they worked as they did in stages is to prevent her from going mad, or cracking in half with the strain of a rapidly expanding world view. Even so, each new discovery was such a revolution for her she began to suspect that it must require immense patience on their part to accept her ignorance.
She learned, for example, that Karia was speaking more than ever these days and what she whispered was somehow comforting to the Dusk Sages. Though she never heard the planet speak, she learned to tell instantly when a Dusk Sage was hearing her voice. They became serene, beatific even, and afterward they thrummed with happy energy. It made her wonder if her admiration of the Dusk Sages was similar to their feelings for Karia.
She looked beside her. The dictionary of Cheldrun that Kiyoshi had made for her lay open on the ground. She reached for it, but it was too far away. Still, it was a welcome reminder of all that had transpired. Everything she had seen.
It seemed too immense that one little Prill like her should come to see and know so much, and the more the Dusk Sages taught her the more she realized that it was a tiny fraction of the wonders of the All. It is a shame, she thought, that we all unravel. There is no way to see it all, know it all.
Kiko was relatively certain that she would never know who the man with oily hair and lace cuffs was, nor why he behaved as he did. He was a child of Steel, with eyes like Rei's, but he had arrived on the Emerald Isle without a boat or any other means of transport. The Dusk Sages observed him from a distance without saying anything. They revealed no emotion, but Kiko felt apprehension on their behalf. For a while she told herself that he would want to be a disciple like Kiko, Ramora, and Maruko, but if he had come to study, then he chose the wrong masters. A week after his arrival he was spotted in the company of resisters.
In the mornings Maruko had taken to singing, from memory, all the Prill lore that she could dredge up. Kiko tried to sing along, but Maruko had a better memory and Ramora had a better voice, she felt ashamed. The Dusk Sages genuinely delighted in the company of their creations, though all of their interactions were colored with melancholy. The creations on the island were sick, Kiko knew, and the health of the Prill was a sad reminder for them of the tragedy of their exile. Mostly it was better to sing and learn and observe than the alternative, even if the unraveling is true.
If.
Sadly, Kiko knew that the unraveling was not only true, but inevitable. She looked down at her chest, pierced by two daggers. Another in her thigh was embedded so deep it pinned her to the ground.
The man with the red eyes had come at sunrise to the Flame of Dawning where all the living Dusk Sages were gathered. He greeted them with flowery language (most of which Kiko understood) and argued at length for something so abhorrent that Kiko thought she must have misunderstood. He wanted the Dusk Sages to reclaim their creations, to use them for mana in order to control the Kyo Tee Shee and then to return in power to the continent of their children. He called them 'Initiators' and 'Gods' and said that it was their responsibility to cleanse Karia of the Cheldrun who he called 'Malice'.
The Dusk Sages listened, tolerantly, over a long period as he explained the story of the Cheldrun, and pleaded with them. The Dusk Sages simply shook their heads, with tear filled eyes, but said nothing. He behaved petulantly, like a child who is used to getting his way. He shouted and cursed. He whimpered and cried. He accused them of negligence, of hating their own children, and denying their own responsibility. Kiko could see that his words were wounding them and she tried to intervene, to calm him down.
That is when he exploded. A storm of knives rushed from his coat impaling her and anyone who came close. He rose into the sky, glowing with purple light, and began hurling wave after wave of sharpened blades and incinerating energy upon the gathered Dusk Sages. Kiko shouted for them to flee, to fight back, to do anything, but they just stood there, weeping.
Resisters crawled up the mountainside and began attacking the gathered Sages from the outside, as the man continued to pulse with malevolent power and to rend the ones he had called Gods just moments before. From his hand he unleashed a purple crane, which swelled to enormous size and swooped down on the dying Dusk Sages, greedily dipping its beak in the rainbow fluid which washed in waves over the field. Kijuuki, Mokuzai's Kyo Tee-Shee. As Kiko watched, the crane consumed every Sage there, becoming bloated with mana. The crane gave a piercing shriek which caused the Flame of Dawning to split in half and fall, before returning to its meal.
The resisters were just as voracious, and most horrifying of all, as they ran out of Dusk Sages to consume they fell on one another in their frenzied state. They wrenched masks off of one another's faces, and sucked mana out of one another's eye sockets. The red-eyed man did not cease his slaughter either, but turned his fury on the resisters as well. Rays of purple light from his hands incinerated his targets, and as Kijuuki fed he only grew more powerful, until his blasts were breaking apart trees, then boulders, then mountains, then sundering the island itself.
Kiko couldn't think of anything to do then, but to sing. She looked around, but Maruko and Ramora were lying in heaps, dead. So she let her trembling voice ring out with the Song of Sending, the funeral song of the Prill. It was perhaps the worst rendition of the song ever performed, but The-One-Who-Opens-Doors smiled and nodded at her as he died. The look on his face was one of pride.
From the corpses of the resisters new Kyo Tee-Shee sprang. They joined the feeding frenzy, as the ground trembled and Kiko, who was on the point of passing out but kept singing all the same, wondered if the island were lifting out of the ocean into the sky. She could not hear herself over the roar, but she pressed on approaching the climax. The red-eyed man was completely obscured in a field of purple light now. She no longer cared who he was, it was beyond her.
When her breath was expended, she fell back and looked at that dictionary laying on the ground beside her. Its pages were spattered with rainbow colored blood. The wind took it and blew it out of sight. She imagined the wind was blowing it like a message to the All. We are unraveling as you decreed. Is it what you you hoped?
Banishing Shadows
Life is fundamentally about incongruity. That is what distinguishes the living from the non-living: unpredictability, mutation, humor. Ugliness and madness are virtues to be extolled for exemplifying that which is most alive, the true nonconformist. True noncomformists inspire discomfort through their asymmetry discharged in laughter. Laughter is the quintessential expression of the path of wisdom. Especially loud, lengthy laughter at inappropriate times.
Followers of the great sage Wastoraskalix, students of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor, erroneously called Laughers by other Anakarix, are widely ridiculed - just as they intend. Not only ridiculed, but also shunned, because the Laughers tend to do what is least expected. They are unpredictable, rude, downright offensive even, and they laugh in the faces of those who get flustered by their antics.
Which is precisely what was happening to Shadowfang.
Starting even before the battle with Goshi something had been making the refugees and soldiers uneasy. Nightmares were increasing in frequency. People sleeping in their tents awoke in the dark screaming, and the SDF continued receiving reports of missing individuals. The idea of looking for a lone missing person in a crowd of 100 million on the eve of the most important battle ever fought was ludicrous. It didn't end with missing persons, though. The nightmares grew worse.
On the first night of the fight the soldiers wept and prayed to the First Minds because every time they closed their eyes they were haunted by visions of their own death. For some that death came on the battlefield, but others never made it through the night. Bodies were found eviscerated in bunkers, spread over 20 meters of tunnel, and bleeding out under their blankets. Some died of lacerations, others from high-powered bullets, others were crushed. There were no patterns except that no one described the killer the same way. Rumors began to spread that the camps had been infiltrated by dozens or hundreds of Goshi assassins.
The panic was the worst part. Among the refugees intense distrust and even violence flared up. The stress of the war compounded by the fear of shadows made people go mad. With every soldier tied up on the front lines, all anyone could do was pray that riots did not break out.
Disdaining participation in the conflict with Goshi, and offering only hearty chuckles for explanations, the Laughers followed the stories of Shadowfang with interest. Through means no one had time to understand the Laughers tracked this silent disturber of the peace. They tracked him, and they pulled his tail.
Up in the forested mountains around Stardown just before dawn, while the whole world flamed furiously with war, a merry game was being played. The Laughers danced, acrobatically around the most imposing Jevumm ever seen, tugging and tweaking his tails, his whiskers, his ears. A flurry of claws and a terrifying roar followed each such taunt. With terrible elegance the cat sliced through lizard scales spraying blood into the air, but the Laughers only giggled louder each time. The wounded party would scamper up a tree out of reach as others took his place. Perched in the branches of the tree his wounds would begin to close of their own accord.
There are nearly 300 students in the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor. Every single one of them pinched and prodded and ridiculed Shadowfang mercilessly throughout the night driving him farther and farther into a berserk fury. The roaring of the tiger was drowned out by incessant, maddening, crazy-making laughter. And as Shadowfang grew wearier, the sun was rising and the Laughers were only beginning to wake up.
That is when Boristakan, the Ridiculer, twice ranked Philosopher Degenerate, winner of forty-three debates, the first disciple of Samaranthine the Grotesque, and master of the esoteric art of Qibui dropped into the clearing. Shadowfang wheeled, and recognizing him as the leader hunched in preparation for a leap. Boristakan clacked his lizard tongue against the roof of his mouth in a mocking noise and bobbed his head like a bird. In one breath the Jevumm crossed the intervening space, flying through the air, but Kufu's howl of rage became a whimper of despair.
In Boristakan's hands purple flames sprung to life, doing a merry dance that was reflected in his eyes. Too late to change his direction, Kufu bowled into the chortling Anakarix, feeling indescribable pain as the fire singed his face and neck. Then the whole School was upon him, fists alight with fire, scourging the fur from his body. He twisted and heaved. With Gogajin strength he threw his assailants aside. With Biomade dexterity he sprung through gaps and tried to escape. With Zipsum speed he burst free of that throng and fled squealing across the horizon with his tail on fire.
The members of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor collected themselves. They climbed to the tops of the trees to heal their wounds and greet the rising sun. And they laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Followers of the great sage Wastoraskalix, students of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor, erroneously called Laughers by other Anakarix, are widely ridiculed - just as they intend. Not only ridiculed, but also shunned, because the Laughers tend to do what is least expected. They are unpredictable, rude, downright offensive even, and they laugh in the faces of those who get flustered by their antics.
Which is precisely what was happening to Shadowfang.
Starting even before the battle with Goshi something had been making the refugees and soldiers uneasy. Nightmares were increasing in frequency. People sleeping in their tents awoke in the dark screaming, and the SDF continued receiving reports of missing individuals. The idea of looking for a lone missing person in a crowd of 100 million on the eve of the most important battle ever fought was ludicrous. It didn't end with missing persons, though. The nightmares grew worse.
On the first night of the fight the soldiers wept and prayed to the First Minds because every time they closed their eyes they were haunted by visions of their own death. For some that death came on the battlefield, but others never made it through the night. Bodies were found eviscerated in bunkers, spread over 20 meters of tunnel, and bleeding out under their blankets. Some died of lacerations, others from high-powered bullets, others were crushed. There were no patterns except that no one described the killer the same way. Rumors began to spread that the camps had been infiltrated by dozens or hundreds of Goshi assassins.
The panic was the worst part. Among the refugees intense distrust and even violence flared up. The stress of the war compounded by the fear of shadows made people go mad. With every soldier tied up on the front lines, all anyone could do was pray that riots did not break out.
Disdaining participation in the conflict with Goshi, and offering only hearty chuckles for explanations, the Laughers followed the stories of Shadowfang with interest. Through means no one had time to understand the Laughers tracked this silent disturber of the peace. They tracked him, and they pulled his tail.
Up in the forested mountains around Stardown just before dawn, while the whole world flamed furiously with war, a merry game was being played. The Laughers danced, acrobatically around the most imposing Jevumm ever seen, tugging and tweaking his tails, his whiskers, his ears. A flurry of claws and a terrifying roar followed each such taunt. With terrible elegance the cat sliced through lizard scales spraying blood into the air, but the Laughers only giggled louder each time. The wounded party would scamper up a tree out of reach as others took his place. Perched in the branches of the tree his wounds would begin to close of their own accord.
There are nearly 300 students in the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor. Every single one of them pinched and prodded and ridiculed Shadowfang mercilessly throughout the night driving him farther and farther into a berserk fury. The roaring of the tiger was drowned out by incessant, maddening, crazy-making laughter. And as Shadowfang grew wearier, the sun was rising and the Laughers were only beginning to wake up.
That is when Boristakan, the Ridiculer, twice ranked Philosopher Degenerate, winner of forty-three debates, the first disciple of Samaranthine the Grotesque, and master of the esoteric art of Qibui dropped into the clearing. Shadowfang wheeled, and recognizing him as the leader hunched in preparation for a leap. Boristakan clacked his lizard tongue against the roof of his mouth in a mocking noise and bobbed his head like a bird. In one breath the Jevumm crossed the intervening space, flying through the air, but Kufu's howl of rage became a whimper of despair.
In Boristakan's hands purple flames sprung to life, doing a merry dance that was reflected in his eyes. Too late to change his direction, Kufu bowled into the chortling Anakarix, feeling indescribable pain as the fire singed his face and neck. Then the whole School was upon him, fists alight with fire, scourging the fur from his body. He twisted and heaved. With Gogajin strength he threw his assailants aside. With Biomade dexterity he sprung through gaps and tried to escape. With Zipsum speed he burst free of that throng and fled squealing across the horizon with his tail on fire.
The members of the School of the Wisdom of Untimely Humor collected themselves. They climbed to the tops of the trees to heal their wounds and greet the rising sun. And they laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Starbreeze Canyon
Bullets rained from the sky without ceasing.
A more reflective person might have marveled that there was enough lead in the world to make that much ammunition, but it never occurred to Matthew. Matthew was too busy keeping his soldiers alive to ask abstract questions. Ducking from bunker to bunker he cheered the troops in person. He showed green recruits how to aim their rifles. He helped technicians fix a machine gun that was jammed. He made promises he had no idea how to keep, like - "we'll get out of this alive!" and "just a few more hours and they'll back off." No one believed him for a minute, not even himself, but it still felt like he had to say it.
He'd been given charge of the smallest force of soldiers. Small. Heh. Just over half a million infantry and a dozen pieces of artillery were assigned to the defense of Starbreeze Canyon. Even though he tried, he couldn't possibly cheer on that many soldiers face to face. So he used his radio. Frequently news reached him too late for anything to be done about it. His inexperience in military engagements showed through at times. He regretted accepting the commission, but no one else had stepped forward and General Daitokuji seemed to trust him. Embarrassingly, his soldiers seemed to trust him too. Perhaps they knew how unfit he was for leadership, but given the circumstances...
Our only choice is trust in times like these.
His only victory had been when the eyeless Zipsum started sabotaging the artillery. He saw one speeding by. He saw its bloody eye sockets. It's just like Ben Hamor, he thought. He remembered that battle. He remembered being inspired by Moses then. More importantly he realized what they were and the kind of threat they posed. So he unhesitatingly had everyone direct their fire at the Zipsum until they stopped coming. "Even when they fall down, keep shooting until they are bloody smears, or they'll get back up." When reports came through that both General Sousauryuko's artillery and General Daitokuji's artillery had been decimated by the Zipsum attacks there were plenty of congratulations heaped on his shoulders, but it was short lived.
Goshi's army came by the millions. 120 divisions, he was told fell on his position. It hardly mattered what the number was. It was effectively infinite. The artillery fired every shell they had to fire and when nothing was left they started firing shrapnel and stones. The bunkers collapsed under armored onslaught like so much cardboard. The soldiers Matthew had been rallying that morning were dead by evening. Still the enemy pressed on.
Matthew rallied the survivors around his command center in the rearmost bunkers on this front. They fought hard, Karia bless them. His own arm gave out mechanical squeals of protest from constantly throwing grenades. They fought like the fate of the world depended on them, even while Matthew desperately hoped it did not.
Tanks were soon rolling over their position, the 53rd Armored Division "The Steel Pigs". Climbing out of foxholes demolition specialists got under the tanks and attached charges. It was a sight of rare beauty to watch a tank liftoff like a hippopotamus trying to catch the moon. But there would never be enough charges to take care of all the tanks. A nearby whistle and a thunderous crack told Matthew that another bunker had collapsed, likely killing all the soldiers inside.
Night falling was a welcome advantage for the defenders. Though the fighting never ceased, it nevertheless became harder for the foe to pick out targets. Matthew had his teams clearing rubble filled tunnels and putting them to good use, changing positions to confuse the enemy, desperately striving to hold their toenails on that last inch of ground, to keep Goshi out of the canyon. That was the mission. Keep them out. As long as possible. If Goshi got into Starbreeze Canyon they could cut off the retreat of the main Stardown Defense Force. It would mean a rout and that would mean artillery bombarding the refugees sooner rather than later.
A division of infantry charged his position. Many of them were cut down by the machine guns, but soon enough they were forcing their way into the bunker. Muzzle flashes illumined the fight like thousands of strobe lights. Matthew buried his fist in an armored rib cage, blades twisting out of spring loaded compartments in his forearm. He didn't watch his opponent die, he moved to the next. He felt a sting in his neck as a bullet grazed him. The head of a man he'd met this morning exploded in gore behind him. That man had children in the refugee camps.
Who can say how long he waged that fight? It seemed as if they would never cease pouring into the bunkers. Matthew lost the use of his left arm from some explosion, but he was killing well enough with only the right. Everywhere he turned there were more of them, and every time he turned there were fewer of his own men fighting with him. In the smoke and blood he began to wonder if he was killing the same men over and over, so indistinguishable were they. A tracer round flashed past his nostrils just as he crushed the throat of another invader and in the light he saw the man for what he was. An Eyeless. Around him the dead were standing up and rejoining the fight.
Finally a voice called him out of his shock. "Retreat!" it said, "We must retreat commander, to the Canyon..."
Matthew knew he was right. He scrambled for the radio, drilling an Eyeless in his way. He screamed the retreat into the receiver like a frightened child and followed his men out of the bunker into the night.
Flares were being launched into the air to light up the sky so the artillery could continue their bombardment. The battlefield was a sea of writhing dead, and from their grasp a handful a terrified and wounded veterans sprinted toward the canyon. Matthew watched his troops, this bedragled and shit-scared group of survivors flee carelessly ahead of him. He watched in sorrow and empathy as they wailed and pissed themselves, firing blindly behind them to discourage pursuit. Then he watched with awe and pride as they came to their senses and remembered to follow a path that would avoid the mines they had placed. He called after them encouragingly, not sure where he found the strength inside himself, as they formed up in ranks at the canyon entrance. They remembered their duty. They remembered what was at stake, and Matthew remembered too. They must try, somehow, to find the strength...
As Matthew screamed these words of courage to the troops and allowed the fragile spark of hope to glow in his chest he was interrupted by the looks of shock on their faces. They pointed back to the battlefield, and he turned to look.
In the center of the field something enormous had risen. Rough hewn, like it had wrenched itself out of the stony ground, it easily spanned two hundred meters and stretched half that height toward the stars. It walked on six armored legs and swept the earth before it with enormous pincers. Where it went the ground trembled and all life was corrupted and died. Tumors spread along the surface of Karia herself and the spark of hope was extinguished.
Weeping, Matthew sent word to General Daitokuji that Starbreeze Canyon was lost.
A more reflective person might have marveled that there was enough lead in the world to make that much ammunition, but it never occurred to Matthew. Matthew was too busy keeping his soldiers alive to ask abstract questions. Ducking from bunker to bunker he cheered the troops in person. He showed green recruits how to aim their rifles. He helped technicians fix a machine gun that was jammed. He made promises he had no idea how to keep, like - "we'll get out of this alive!" and "just a few more hours and they'll back off." No one believed him for a minute, not even himself, but it still felt like he had to say it.
He'd been given charge of the smallest force of soldiers. Small. Heh. Just over half a million infantry and a dozen pieces of artillery were assigned to the defense of Starbreeze Canyon. Even though he tried, he couldn't possibly cheer on that many soldiers face to face. So he used his radio. Frequently news reached him too late for anything to be done about it. His inexperience in military engagements showed through at times. He regretted accepting the commission, but no one else had stepped forward and General Daitokuji seemed to trust him. Embarrassingly, his soldiers seemed to trust him too. Perhaps they knew how unfit he was for leadership, but given the circumstances...
Our only choice is trust in times like these.
His only victory had been when the eyeless Zipsum started sabotaging the artillery. He saw one speeding by. He saw its bloody eye sockets. It's just like Ben Hamor, he thought. He remembered that battle. He remembered being inspired by Moses then. More importantly he realized what they were and the kind of threat they posed. So he unhesitatingly had everyone direct their fire at the Zipsum until they stopped coming. "Even when they fall down, keep shooting until they are bloody smears, or they'll get back up." When reports came through that both General Sousauryuko's artillery and General Daitokuji's artillery had been decimated by the Zipsum attacks there were plenty of congratulations heaped on his shoulders, but it was short lived.
Goshi's army came by the millions. 120 divisions, he was told fell on his position. It hardly mattered what the number was. It was effectively infinite. The artillery fired every shell they had to fire and when nothing was left they started firing shrapnel and stones. The bunkers collapsed under armored onslaught like so much cardboard. The soldiers Matthew had been rallying that morning were dead by evening. Still the enemy pressed on.
Matthew rallied the survivors around his command center in the rearmost bunkers on this front. They fought hard, Karia bless them. His own arm gave out mechanical squeals of protest from constantly throwing grenades. They fought like the fate of the world depended on them, even while Matthew desperately hoped it did not.
Tanks were soon rolling over their position, the 53rd Armored Division "The Steel Pigs". Climbing out of foxholes demolition specialists got under the tanks and attached charges. It was a sight of rare beauty to watch a tank liftoff like a hippopotamus trying to catch the moon. But there would never be enough charges to take care of all the tanks. A nearby whistle and a thunderous crack told Matthew that another bunker had collapsed, likely killing all the soldiers inside.
Night falling was a welcome advantage for the defenders. Though the fighting never ceased, it nevertheless became harder for the foe to pick out targets. Matthew had his teams clearing rubble filled tunnels and putting them to good use, changing positions to confuse the enemy, desperately striving to hold their toenails on that last inch of ground, to keep Goshi out of the canyon. That was the mission. Keep them out. As long as possible. If Goshi got into Starbreeze Canyon they could cut off the retreat of the main Stardown Defense Force. It would mean a rout and that would mean artillery bombarding the refugees sooner rather than later.
A division of infantry charged his position. Many of them were cut down by the machine guns, but soon enough they were forcing their way into the bunker. Muzzle flashes illumined the fight like thousands of strobe lights. Matthew buried his fist in an armored rib cage, blades twisting out of spring loaded compartments in his forearm. He didn't watch his opponent die, he moved to the next. He felt a sting in his neck as a bullet grazed him. The head of a man he'd met this morning exploded in gore behind him. That man had children in the refugee camps.
Who can say how long he waged that fight? It seemed as if they would never cease pouring into the bunkers. Matthew lost the use of his left arm from some explosion, but he was killing well enough with only the right. Everywhere he turned there were more of them, and every time he turned there were fewer of his own men fighting with him. In the smoke and blood he began to wonder if he was killing the same men over and over, so indistinguishable were they. A tracer round flashed past his nostrils just as he crushed the throat of another invader and in the light he saw the man for what he was. An Eyeless. Around him the dead were standing up and rejoining the fight.
Finally a voice called him out of his shock. "Retreat!" it said, "We must retreat commander, to the Canyon..."
Matthew knew he was right. He scrambled for the radio, drilling an Eyeless in his way. He screamed the retreat into the receiver like a frightened child and followed his men out of the bunker into the night.
Flares were being launched into the air to light up the sky so the artillery could continue their bombardment. The battlefield was a sea of writhing dead, and from their grasp a handful a terrified and wounded veterans sprinted toward the canyon. Matthew watched his troops, this bedragled and shit-scared group of survivors flee carelessly ahead of him. He watched in sorrow and empathy as they wailed and pissed themselves, firing blindly behind them to discourage pursuit. Then he watched with awe and pride as they came to their senses and remembered to follow a path that would avoid the mines they had placed. He called after them encouragingly, not sure where he found the strength inside himself, as they formed up in ranks at the canyon entrance. They remembered their duty. They remembered what was at stake, and Matthew remembered too. They must try, somehow, to find the strength...
As Matthew screamed these words of courage to the troops and allowed the fragile spark of hope to glow in his chest he was interrupted by the looks of shock on their faces. They pointed back to the battlefield, and he turned to look.
In the center of the field something enormous had risen. Rough hewn, like it had wrenched itself out of the stony ground, it easily spanned two hundred meters and stretched half that height toward the stars. It walked on six armored legs and swept the earth before it with enormous pincers. Where it went the ground trembled and all life was corrupted and died. Tumors spread along the surface of Karia herself and the spark of hope was extinguished.
Weeping, Matthew sent word to General Daitokuji that Starbreeze Canyon was lost.
Elder Moon Goes To War
The dome of the Grand Chantry Council Chambers glistened in the sunlight. Within, the council deliberated Elder Moon's proposal.
"Her plan would constitute a violation of our oath to defend the forests! How can we protect this old growth if we are decimated by a foolish quest?" Elder Suburi of the Choir of the Flora spewed his words with vehemence.
"I assiduously disagree, with Elder Suburi," the voice of Elder Mandrake of the Choir of the Earth came from the opposite side of the chamber. "Defending the forests by his definition means endlessly tending this garden and avoiding any conflict. I say Elder Moon has finally hit upon the right idea here. The Cheldrun are a grave threat to the survival of all Karians. If there is a war to be fought against them, I say we fight!"
Elder Jethro registered his agreement, "My daughter is very likely in the midst of that war, I cannot abide those who would tell me to sit back and do nothing."
Elders Haku and Mora of the Choirs of Fire and Fauna respectively snorted in disgust. "You call the work of our people, the labor of uncovering the lore of the Dusk Sages, the sacred duty of our guardians, our oath to the forests and everything that has mattered to every Prill for the past two centuries nothing?! You have contracted the same madness as Elder Moon here," they gestured to Moon who had remained kneeling in the center of the chamber, head bowed this entire time.
Before she could respond Elder Suburi was upon her chastising her with harsh language that raised her hackles. "It is indeed a madness that has afflicted our sister Moon. Everyone witnessed her decline, and her irrational behavior at the death of Mokuzai. Flaunting our customs, after many weeks since Mokuzai was reunited with the forest, she continues to wear her mourning gown and to ignore her responsibilities as an Elder. Were it not for the respect she is owed for her years of service, the Choir of the Sky would long ago have stripped her of her tails and sent her into retirement. She is past all usefulness as a leader, and now she comes in here with this proposal that would destroy our peace..."
Elder Moon gave Elder Suburi a look that caused him to stop short, sputtering and unable to speak. Slowly she rose to her feet, and in a voice like gravel she said, "There is no peace." Her words echoed around the chamber, and no one dared break the silence that followed.
Elder Moon looked around at her peers, eyes brimming with tears, and began to sing. It was a song all of them knew. A song about young lovers. A song written by a great Prill composer so many centuries ago that he was more myth than history. A song which every Prill agreed defined them, and defined love. A true song.
In the song a pair of fosterlings fall in love. They love each other with such a passion that even when they are subsequently fostered out to separate choirs they cannot think of anything else. They sing for one another across the distance, a sad song of loneliness. The two grow up and though their love for one another never wanes they discover different talents in themselves. They end up committing to separate choirs. The young man is gifted with a talent for Dusk Sage lore and he commits himself to uncovering a secret never imagined by any choir. Unfortunately an envious rival kills him before he ever finds what he was seeking. The young woman, stricken by her loss defies the conventions of her people. She abandons her choir and journeys to the place where the young man lived. While the guardians of tradition try to prevent her she takes up his work. Both choirs, offended by her disregard for custom, trap her in her den without food. Ignoring her hunger she works day and night on the lore her lover left behind and just before she starves to death, she succeeds. She comes out of the den and confronts her opponents. She has composed a new song. As she dies she sings it to them. It is the song of love.
Silence reigned for several minutes after Elder Moon finished singing.
Then, tears streaming down her face, she said, "Mokuzai never solved the Riddle of Peace. I mean to finish his work for him."
Elder Suburi, his face flushed, fell to his knees, "And we will follow you until you have."
"Her plan would constitute a violation of our oath to defend the forests! How can we protect this old growth if we are decimated by a foolish quest?" Elder Suburi of the Choir of the Flora spewed his words with vehemence.
"I assiduously disagree, with Elder Suburi," the voice of Elder Mandrake of the Choir of the Earth came from the opposite side of the chamber. "Defending the forests by his definition means endlessly tending this garden and avoiding any conflict. I say Elder Moon has finally hit upon the right idea here. The Cheldrun are a grave threat to the survival of all Karians. If there is a war to be fought against them, I say we fight!"
Elder Jethro registered his agreement, "My daughter is very likely in the midst of that war, I cannot abide those who would tell me to sit back and do nothing."
Elders Haku and Mora of the Choirs of Fire and Fauna respectively snorted in disgust. "You call the work of our people, the labor of uncovering the lore of the Dusk Sages, the sacred duty of our guardians, our oath to the forests and everything that has mattered to every Prill for the past two centuries nothing?! You have contracted the same madness as Elder Moon here," they gestured to Moon who had remained kneeling in the center of the chamber, head bowed this entire time.
Before she could respond Elder Suburi was upon her chastising her with harsh language that raised her hackles. "It is indeed a madness that has afflicted our sister Moon. Everyone witnessed her decline, and her irrational behavior at the death of Mokuzai. Flaunting our customs, after many weeks since Mokuzai was reunited with the forest, she continues to wear her mourning gown and to ignore her responsibilities as an Elder. Were it not for the respect she is owed for her years of service, the Choir of the Sky would long ago have stripped her of her tails and sent her into retirement. She is past all usefulness as a leader, and now she comes in here with this proposal that would destroy our peace..."
Elder Moon gave Elder Suburi a look that caused him to stop short, sputtering and unable to speak. Slowly she rose to her feet, and in a voice like gravel she said, "There is no peace." Her words echoed around the chamber, and no one dared break the silence that followed.
Elder Moon looked around at her peers, eyes brimming with tears, and began to sing. It was a song all of them knew. A song about young lovers. A song written by a great Prill composer so many centuries ago that he was more myth than history. A song which every Prill agreed defined them, and defined love. A true song.
In the song a pair of fosterlings fall in love. They love each other with such a passion that even when they are subsequently fostered out to separate choirs they cannot think of anything else. They sing for one another across the distance, a sad song of loneliness. The two grow up and though their love for one another never wanes they discover different talents in themselves. They end up committing to separate choirs. The young man is gifted with a talent for Dusk Sage lore and he commits himself to uncovering a secret never imagined by any choir. Unfortunately an envious rival kills him before he ever finds what he was seeking. The young woman, stricken by her loss defies the conventions of her people. She abandons her choir and journeys to the place where the young man lived. While the guardians of tradition try to prevent her she takes up his work. Both choirs, offended by her disregard for custom, trap her in her den without food. Ignoring her hunger she works day and night on the lore her lover left behind and just before she starves to death, she succeeds. She comes out of the den and confronts her opponents. She has composed a new song. As she dies she sings it to them. It is the song of love.
Silence reigned for several minutes after Elder Moon finished singing.
Then, tears streaming down her face, she said, "Mokuzai never solved the Riddle of Peace. I mean to finish his work for him."
Elder Suburi, his face flushed, fell to his knees, "And we will follow you until you have."
An Unfair Advantage
Arrow saw the flying hunk of concrete a second too late.
It smashed into him before he could disLocate, knocking him to the ground and crumbling into rubble over him. He spit blood and teeth into the dirt and disappeared.
He reappeared on the top of a Goshi barracks in order to get a better vantage point. It proved to be a bad move as the Sennin came rolling by at a steep arc, .50 caliber bullets ricocheting off her hull. The wind she displaced nearly blew him from the roof and white tendrils of dust popped up all around him where stray bullets and shrapnel hit the building. He rolled against a retaining wall for cover and tried to catch his breath.
Fuck. Fuck. Motherfuck. He cursed about the pain in his ribs, he cursed about several near scrapes. He cursed the obscene contradicting orders coming through the network.
"All units forward march," they said. Surely they didn't mean the Hei Shi, that would be idiotic.
"No, 10 divisions stay back to guard the camp. The rest forward march. Hei Shi engage the Gogajin force." That made no sense either. The Hei Shi are not trained for large scale military engagements. Ask them to assassinate some generals or something, but a vague "engage" order was asinine.
Nevertheless, Arrow knew better than to disobey an order. As long as he had a disLocator embedded in his spine Goshi command could send him wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. It wouldn't take long for them to realize that he was in the wrong place and then they'd bring him in for "discipline". So he clenched his fist and disLocated to the sky over the mob of Gogajin, picked a target and disLocated again.
He appeared on the Gogajin's back, psychic knife buried in the kidney. It mattered not. These fuckers were unstoppable. The Gogajin grabbed his arm, shattering the bones with her grip, and threw him like a wet rag under the hooves of another Gogajin in animal form, charging the machine gun emplacements. Arrow twisted so the hooves only dealt him a glancing blow, but they still knocked the wind right out of him.
Before he could move another brute was on top of him. He shoved his knife under the bastard's chin and blood came running out, but as fast as he drew life and energy out of his assailant it seemed to come right back. They were invincible, literally, invincible. All around him his fellow Hei Shi, and Goshi soldiers were having as little success as Arrow. The Gogajin grabbed his throat and crushed his windpipe before he disLocated again.
This time to the infirmary. Dizzy, stumbling and unable to breathe, he didn't even register his surroundings. Lights flashed. He heard shouts. He could tell the infirmary was busy, probably swamped with sudden injuries. His throat was bad, he knew. If he didn't get air soon...
He grabbed the nearest doctor, some girl in a white coat. She just fell over, arrows protruding from her back. Arrow sobbed, collapsing to his knees. Vision swimming he could feel the darkness reaching out to claim him.
A voice pulled him back from the abyss for a moment. A small voice. He turned to see a blood-drenched Zipsum standing in front of him. The Zipsum was not alone, they were all over the infirmary.
"I am Cuts-Through-Bone, and Karia has made me invincible!"
Arrow said nothing as the knives plunged through his skull.
It smashed into him before he could disLocate, knocking him to the ground and crumbling into rubble over him. He spit blood and teeth into the dirt and disappeared.
He reappeared on the top of a Goshi barracks in order to get a better vantage point. It proved to be a bad move as the Sennin came rolling by at a steep arc, .50 caliber bullets ricocheting off her hull. The wind she displaced nearly blew him from the roof and white tendrils of dust popped up all around him where stray bullets and shrapnel hit the building. He rolled against a retaining wall for cover and tried to catch his breath.
Fuck. Fuck. Motherfuck. He cursed about the pain in his ribs, he cursed about several near scrapes. He cursed the obscene contradicting orders coming through the network.
"All units forward march," they said. Surely they didn't mean the Hei Shi, that would be idiotic.
"No, 10 divisions stay back to guard the camp. The rest forward march. Hei Shi engage the Gogajin force." That made no sense either. The Hei Shi are not trained for large scale military engagements. Ask them to assassinate some generals or something, but a vague "engage" order was asinine.
Nevertheless, Arrow knew better than to disobey an order. As long as he had a disLocator embedded in his spine Goshi command could send him wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. It wouldn't take long for them to realize that he was in the wrong place and then they'd bring him in for "discipline". So he clenched his fist and disLocated to the sky over the mob of Gogajin, picked a target and disLocated again.
He appeared on the Gogajin's back, psychic knife buried in the kidney. It mattered not. These fuckers were unstoppable. The Gogajin grabbed his arm, shattering the bones with her grip, and threw him like a wet rag under the hooves of another Gogajin in animal form, charging the machine gun emplacements. Arrow twisted so the hooves only dealt him a glancing blow, but they still knocked the wind right out of him.
Before he could move another brute was on top of him. He shoved his knife under the bastard's chin and blood came running out, but as fast as he drew life and energy out of his assailant it seemed to come right back. They were invincible, literally, invincible. All around him his fellow Hei Shi, and Goshi soldiers were having as little success as Arrow. The Gogajin grabbed his throat and crushed his windpipe before he disLocated again.
This time to the infirmary. Dizzy, stumbling and unable to breathe, he didn't even register his surroundings. Lights flashed. He heard shouts. He could tell the infirmary was busy, probably swamped with sudden injuries. His throat was bad, he knew. If he didn't get air soon...
He grabbed the nearest doctor, some girl in a white coat. She just fell over, arrows protruding from her back. Arrow sobbed, collapsing to his knees. Vision swimming he could feel the darkness reaching out to claim him.
A voice pulled him back from the abyss for a moment. A small voice. He turned to see a blood-drenched Zipsum standing in front of him. The Zipsum was not alone, they were all over the infirmary.
"I am Cuts-Through-Bone, and Karia has made me invincible!"
Arrow said nothing as the knives plunged through his skull.
When it Rains...
Black smoke billowed into the sky. The Behemoths continued their slow and steady march south, cutting and burning through the jungle like glaciers sliding over hot metal. The ground was scorched and smooth behind them, while copper towers spewed ash and smoke skyward. The noise was obnoxious, so Arrow scanned the mind of the Mechified sergeant in front of him who was busily shouting incomprehensible words.
Something in the sky.
Yes, Arrow thought he might have seen it too in the midst of all the charcoal clouds. He sent the message buzzing over the psychic network to his superiors. Not my business, he thought.
The reports arrived on Rain's desk before they were sent. Two or three scouts reported an unidentified flying object at high altitude, and scans from the Varan revealed it had to be an airship. Only one other airship it could possibly be, so she didn't waste any time double-checking the scout's reports. Her lieutenants stood around anxiously expecting some kind of attack order.
"Don't be idiots," she told them. "How many times do you have to have your asses handed to you before you learn to change tactics. If they want to look, let them look. It won't change their fate any. I mean for this to happen on a battlefield where lives are at stake. Make them choose between protecting the rebels, or coming after us. We have nothing to gain by inflicting stupid casualties on ourselves at this point."
She could tell that her lieutenants disagreed, but were equally relieved not to be the one tasked with going after the Sennin. Let them disagree. They know that I'm the only one here with enough brains to get this thing done. There were times when Rain wished she had Katashi Blade's facility for making people give unquestioning obedience, but what she couldn't accomplish with force of personality, she managed by obsessive planning. Every man and woman in her chain of command owed Rain a debt, or feared her with good cause. So even if the obedience came with questions, it came all the same.
She ordered the Varan to follow the Sennin so she'd have an idea of what her enemy knew about her army, but it wasn't long before word was sent back that the Sennin had been lost.
"They have a good pilot," was the lame excuse.
Whatever. Knowledge wouldn't win them the war. Not by a long shot.
For example, she knew that at best she'd be facing a force of 10 million or so untrained and poorly equipped rebels. An enormous army by any standard, but at her disposal she had the combined forces of the former Yogensha League, every militia and conscripted force Goshi had been able to assemble during their months of political dominance, and a great many more divisions hastily recruited, but well armed. Dragging along behind her like some bloated centipede she had over 56 million infantry. In two separate columns coming from Thalosh and Galata she could rely on another 23 million. She had enough vehicles to make a necklace for the planet, including almost 1/2 a million tanks, and a silly amount of artillery besides. Still fighting for her, she counted 114 Mecha, among them the best pilots surviving from Washi San Academy.
Even she felt like this was overkill. As conservative as she could be, as much as she liked to rig the odds in her favor... it was unreasonable to imagine any result but a massacre. In fact, some part of her dimly held out hope that the rebels would see her army arrayed before them and realize the futility of their position. Kiyoshi and Moses at least claimed to be reasonable people, and Daitokuji Ichirou had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Surely, they would be willing to give their lives rather than inflict certain death on countless refugees. Only lunatics would push this thing to its ultimate conclusion.
The other part of Rain, with a bit of sadness, told her that she was indeed dealing with lunatics.
Which is why she was not even content relying on her obscenely large army. Her deal with the Shadowfang had gone rather well. So far they had fed him three members of the Biomade Oversight Council in return for his cooperation. It was an exorbitant price to pay for the somewhat dicey prospect that he would succeed, but Rain considered it a worthwhile investment, even with the risk, whenever she imagined the potential chaos he could cause.
And while Shadowfang was a risky investment, she was growing more and more satisfied with herself for taking Drives-Like-Oni up on his suggestion to capture the Many Kicks Tribe. While it had incited the rest of the Zipsum tribes against Goshi, they were more of an annoyance than a real concern and since their aggression wasn't very discriminating, it was likely to cause just as much of a problem to the Rebels as to her. No, the rewards of having these captives were going to be substantial, if fleeting... the oxymoron made her giggle inwardly.
Giggle. That's odd. Rain had never been one to indulge in laughter much, but then she had never been one to bleed from the tear ducts as she had been doing from time to time lately. She'd been careful to limit her exposure to White Rock, but she could read the signs, and they made her more convicted to finish this business post-haste.
Wiping the drop of crimson from her cheek she looked up in time to see her newest adviser entering the tent. Toshiyaki Onyx, was his name. A member of the Biomade Oversight council who agreed to serve her rather than remain a prisoner. He'd been the source of a number of brilliant suggestions, and he had Rain's gift for keeping people off-balance. There was something about his eyes that set people on edge, and Rain liked the discomfort she sensed in her lieutenants whenever Onyx was around. Still, there was something about him that she didn't trust.
"Have you been working with Whiterock again, Onyx?" she asked, tossing the soiled tissue in the trash. He nodded, and she went on, "make sure you're thoroughly cleansed before coming to see me next time. That stuff is poison. You should stay away from it yourself."
"Of course, executor. I've only come to tell you that our experiments with the Zipsum have been very promising. You should get the results you're after."
"Good. Now let me attend to the annoying supply chain issues." The dismissal in her voice was firm and he immediately departed. As Onyx left she remembered why she didn't trust him. Toshiyaki Onyx had been one of the Biomade Oversight Council members that she fed to Shadowfang. No sooner had she realized this than she promptly forgot it again.
Something in the sky.
Yes, Arrow thought he might have seen it too in the midst of all the charcoal clouds. He sent the message buzzing over the psychic network to his superiors. Not my business, he thought.
The reports arrived on Rain's desk before they were sent. Two or three scouts reported an unidentified flying object at high altitude, and scans from the Varan revealed it had to be an airship. Only one other airship it could possibly be, so she didn't waste any time double-checking the scout's reports. Her lieutenants stood around anxiously expecting some kind of attack order.
"Don't be idiots," she told them. "How many times do you have to have your asses handed to you before you learn to change tactics. If they want to look, let them look. It won't change their fate any. I mean for this to happen on a battlefield where lives are at stake. Make them choose between protecting the rebels, or coming after us. We have nothing to gain by inflicting stupid casualties on ourselves at this point."
She could tell that her lieutenants disagreed, but were equally relieved not to be the one tasked with going after the Sennin. Let them disagree. They know that I'm the only one here with enough brains to get this thing done. There were times when Rain wished she had Katashi Blade's facility for making people give unquestioning obedience, but what she couldn't accomplish with force of personality, she managed by obsessive planning. Every man and woman in her chain of command owed Rain a debt, or feared her with good cause. So even if the obedience came with questions, it came all the same.
She ordered the Varan to follow the Sennin so she'd have an idea of what her enemy knew about her army, but it wasn't long before word was sent back that the Sennin had been lost.
"They have a good pilot," was the lame excuse.
Whatever. Knowledge wouldn't win them the war. Not by a long shot.
For example, she knew that at best she'd be facing a force of 10 million or so untrained and poorly equipped rebels. An enormous army by any standard, but at her disposal she had the combined forces of the former Yogensha League, every militia and conscripted force Goshi had been able to assemble during their months of political dominance, and a great many more divisions hastily recruited, but well armed. Dragging along behind her like some bloated centipede she had over 56 million infantry. In two separate columns coming from Thalosh and Galata she could rely on another 23 million. She had enough vehicles to make a necklace for the planet, including almost 1/2 a million tanks, and a silly amount of artillery besides. Still fighting for her, she counted 114 Mecha, among them the best pilots surviving from Washi San Academy.
Even she felt like this was overkill. As conservative as she could be, as much as she liked to rig the odds in her favor... it was unreasonable to imagine any result but a massacre. In fact, some part of her dimly held out hope that the rebels would see her army arrayed before them and realize the futility of their position. Kiyoshi and Moses at least claimed to be reasonable people, and Daitokuji Ichirou had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Surely, they would be willing to give their lives rather than inflict certain death on countless refugees. Only lunatics would push this thing to its ultimate conclusion.
The other part of Rain, with a bit of sadness, told her that she was indeed dealing with lunatics.
Which is why she was not even content relying on her obscenely large army. Her deal with the Shadowfang had gone rather well. So far they had fed him three members of the Biomade Oversight Council in return for his cooperation. It was an exorbitant price to pay for the somewhat dicey prospect that he would succeed, but Rain considered it a worthwhile investment, even with the risk, whenever she imagined the potential chaos he could cause.
And while Shadowfang was a risky investment, she was growing more and more satisfied with herself for taking Drives-Like-Oni up on his suggestion to capture the Many Kicks Tribe. While it had incited the rest of the Zipsum tribes against Goshi, they were more of an annoyance than a real concern and since their aggression wasn't very discriminating, it was likely to cause just as much of a problem to the Rebels as to her. No, the rewards of having these captives were going to be substantial, if fleeting... the oxymoron made her giggle inwardly.
Giggle. That's odd. Rain had never been one to indulge in laughter much, but then she had never been one to bleed from the tear ducts as she had been doing from time to time lately. She'd been careful to limit her exposure to White Rock, but she could read the signs, and they made her more convicted to finish this business post-haste.
Wiping the drop of crimson from her cheek she looked up in time to see her newest adviser entering the tent. Toshiyaki Onyx, was his name. A member of the Biomade Oversight council who agreed to serve her rather than remain a prisoner. He'd been the source of a number of brilliant suggestions, and he had Rain's gift for keeping people off-balance. There was something about his eyes that set people on edge, and Rain liked the discomfort she sensed in her lieutenants whenever Onyx was around. Still, there was something about him that she didn't trust.
"Have you been working with Whiterock again, Onyx?" she asked, tossing the soiled tissue in the trash. He nodded, and she went on, "make sure you're thoroughly cleansed before coming to see me next time. That stuff is poison. You should stay away from it yourself."
"Of course, executor. I've only come to tell you that our experiments with the Zipsum have been very promising. You should get the results you're after."
"Good. Now let me attend to the annoying supply chain issues." The dismissal in her voice was firm and he immediately departed. As Onyx left she remembered why she didn't trust him. Toshiyaki Onyx had been one of the Biomade Oversight Council members that she fed to Shadowfang. No sooner had she realized this than she promptly forgot it again.
Guerrilla Tactics
Cuts-Through-Bone chewed Mazu leaf to help him hold still. Crouched under a fern he lay trying to take shallow breaths and not rustle the bush. The vanguard of the Goshi army was approaching and they must have no warning of the attack or it would fail. So he chewed and chewed and felt his limbs go tingly and relax.
Cuts-Through-Bone was of the Cloudclimber Tribe, but he was just as angry as the messenger from the Many Kicks Tribe had been, when he described what Goshi had done. The anger had been bubbling near the surface for a long time now for most Wild Zipsum. It was bound to explode, and explode it had.
There had never been such a massive or coordinated Zipsum offensive. Whole tribes had mobilized, disappeared into the jungle and reassembled as fighting units in the path of the Goshi army marching toward Stardown. Attacks were made daily on the supply train, on the scouting parties, on the vanguard itself. Out of the jungle thousands of Zipsum would materialize, poisoned blades on fists, and launch an assault that at most would last a minute or two. Afterward the jungle floor would be littered with corpses, vehicles would be sabotaged, and food supplies poisoned.
It gave Cuts-Through-Bone deep heart joy whenever a unit of Zipsum archers would launch volleys into the air, shift, run to a different location, and begin launching volleys anew from the opposite direction. Watching the Children of Steel run in panic from little shafts of wood made him laugh and laugh, and sometimes pee a little.
But he was no archer. He went in with the knives, flashing fast. They could not blink or hesitate because their bone and wood armor would disintegrate in one blow from a Mechified arm, or a stinging bullet. Sometimes his unit would rush into the fray and his knife would shatter on the first impact and he would run around screaming until his sense came back and he leapt up into the canopy. If the Cheldrun deployed blue-smoke he knew to run upwind or he would be dead. Many of his litter-mates were dead because they didn't run soon enough.
The noise and smell of the Cheldrun was unmistakable and could be detected for many kilometers. They marched in huge numbers. More than ever before. More than even the Zipsum, and the Zipsum are the manyiest of the Karians. They tried to avoid the Jungle, but too much Jungle was in the way to be avoided entirely. Instead, they rolled their machines over the wood. Huge metal behemoths belching black smoke and scaring the poor Jevumm hunters away. These machined left a charred trail of death across the jungle several kilometers wide, and through this channel the army marched.
There would be no question of the Zipsum defeating this army, though Cuts-Through-Bone boasted every time he went out that he killed the most powerful Cheldrun General during the fighting. Even in his agitated, drug-altered state, he knew that it was like attacking a mountain - fun for a while and you can graffiti your name with your knife, but nothing will come of it. Nevertheless, when you bury a knife in an unprotected thigh, or scratch the tip of your blade along a lily-white cheek and you know that it will swell up and ooze puss for days before they die... it is hard not to be very satisfied with yourself.
Cuts-Through-Bone was of the Cloudclimber Tribe, but he was just as angry as the messenger from the Many Kicks Tribe had been, when he described what Goshi had done. The anger had been bubbling near the surface for a long time now for most Wild Zipsum. It was bound to explode, and explode it had.
There had never been such a massive or coordinated Zipsum offensive. Whole tribes had mobilized, disappeared into the jungle and reassembled as fighting units in the path of the Goshi army marching toward Stardown. Attacks were made daily on the supply train, on the scouting parties, on the vanguard itself. Out of the jungle thousands of Zipsum would materialize, poisoned blades on fists, and launch an assault that at most would last a minute or two. Afterward the jungle floor would be littered with corpses, vehicles would be sabotaged, and food supplies poisoned.
It gave Cuts-Through-Bone deep heart joy whenever a unit of Zipsum archers would launch volleys into the air, shift, run to a different location, and begin launching volleys anew from the opposite direction. Watching the Children of Steel run in panic from little shafts of wood made him laugh and laugh, and sometimes pee a little.
But he was no archer. He went in with the knives, flashing fast. They could not blink or hesitate because their bone and wood armor would disintegrate in one blow from a Mechified arm, or a stinging bullet. Sometimes his unit would rush into the fray and his knife would shatter on the first impact and he would run around screaming until his sense came back and he leapt up into the canopy. If the Cheldrun deployed blue-smoke he knew to run upwind or he would be dead. Many of his litter-mates were dead because they didn't run soon enough.
The noise and smell of the Cheldrun was unmistakable and could be detected for many kilometers. They marched in huge numbers. More than ever before. More than even the Zipsum, and the Zipsum are the manyiest of the Karians. They tried to avoid the Jungle, but too much Jungle was in the way to be avoided entirely. Instead, they rolled their machines over the wood. Huge metal behemoths belching black smoke and scaring the poor Jevumm hunters away. These machined left a charred trail of death across the jungle several kilometers wide, and through this channel the army marched.
There would be no question of the Zipsum defeating this army, though Cuts-Through-Bone boasted every time he went out that he killed the most powerful Cheldrun General during the fighting. Even in his agitated, drug-altered state, he knew that it was like attacking a mountain - fun for a while and you can graffiti your name with your knife, but nothing will come of it. Nevertheless, when you bury a knife in an unprotected thigh, or scratch the tip of your blade along a lily-white cheek and you know that it will swell up and ooze puss for days before they die... it is hard not to be very satisfied with yourself.
In a Gogajin War Camp
Up a steep slope covered in scree, a hundred meters above the camp of the united clans, Grim sat alone between a pair of enormous standing stones. The stones were new. Monoliths erected just this afternoon, but likely to stand for millennia. Grim had determined that the clans would build these monuments at each place they camped, to mark their passage. He told the clans that it would be to display their glory to the world, so none of the other races would ever forget the season that the Gogajin marched united. In his heart, he also considered the possibility that it might be the only memorial left of his people's passing, if this offensive was a failure.
Below him the rowdy, merry sounds of a Gogajin gathering roared and tumbled about the landscape. With every clan represented, the racket could be deafening at times. On the other hand, even the Jevumm were leaving these travelers unmolested.
Someone scrabbled over the scree and came limping into view, a dark silhouette, illumined only by moonlight. By her pained gait he knew her for Keena, a clan-leader, a matriarch, and a wise one at that.
"You should be in the festivities, or in someone's bed, Keena."
With a grunt she sat down beside him. "I could say the same to you Grim, don't be an ass."
He smiled, showing his big flat teeth, and elbowed her in the ribs, a bit harder than he'd intended. "Well if you've come up here to chew on my balls, I've had enough today. A man can only take so much leadership and decision making. Then he has to sit quiet and drink mead until he pisses honey."
"The day you learn to piss honey is the day you might get me to chew on your balls. Till then, just pass me the flagon."
He gave her the mead and they sat in silence for a long time. To his surprise it felt better to sit silently with her beside him, than it did to sit alone.
"Keena," he started, "I've listened and I've listened to the advice of these Children of Steel. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me things that are hardly to be believed. He tells me that the armies of Goshi will not only teleport and fall out of the sky, but they will roll across the land in metal fortresses. He tells me they will launch bombs that turn stone to liquid and people to ash. He tells me they will have things called cannons and artillery. None of this frightens me."
Keena just drank her mead and watched the encampment below.
"Having clawed my way out of the mines in Geneva Prime I knew some of this. I even knew, which is far more terrifying than all their weapons, that the Children of Steel are as numerous as pebbles on a mountainside. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me that their population on Karia numbers over 400 million. It is a number I cannot even conceive of. What would 400 million Gogajin colts look like? Don't answer: a disaster, I know. With all the gathered might of all the clans at our disposal we have maybe a quarter of a million. Maybe. Still this does not frighten me."
He let the silence return for a few minutes, searching for the words he was after.
"We're Gogajin. We'll make our impact felt regardless of the odds. I'm not worried about my people doing their part. I couldn't be prouder to walk and work and fight and die alongside these people... It's just... High King? Me? I'm strong and I'm relentless, but I'm not wise like you Keena. I'm not..."
She tried to interrupt him then. He was being a damn fool and she was going to tell him so, but he talked right over her.
"It's more than me feeling out of my depth. It's like this whole thing, is bigger than us. I remember, when we were escaping from the mines. There were some people who helped us. When I was around them I felt like they were the kind of people who could pull this off. The kind who could keep it all from going to shit. One of them was a Vorax, the last Vorax I ever saw. She healed me with her tears. With her tears! It's like she could weep away the pains of the whole world if she tried. They were all like that - gifted."
"Grim, you idiot..." Keena interjected, but he gave her a firm look, and with his grizzled face he had especially firm looks.
"No Keena. I know I sound crazy, or like I'm forgetting who I am, but I'm not. I am Grim, Fiochmahr Clan. I am the strongest, fastest, stubbornest fucking Gogajin in this camp. I will out run, out throw, out crush, out fight, out drink, or out fuck anyone who says otherwise. But I'm also no fool and when I look up in that sky I see a universe which doesn't care how much you can lift or how far you can throw it. There are things at stake here beyond our ken, and there are people out there who have the power to influence things for good or ill, but I am not one of those people. The best I can do is gather all of these donkey-sons and daughters together to throw our might at the hungry maw of the beast and pray that it makes a difference..."
There was a long pause then, while Grim took the flagon back and drained it without taking a breath.
Keena looked at him appreciatively and he seemed to give her permission to speak, so she started softly, "Ah Grim. Even if what you say is true, what would we be if we didn't play our part? Could any Gogajin look themself in the face ever again if we didn't fight to our very last breath for what we love? If there is to be a future, I want to know that we will walk into it with our pride and honor intact."
In the moonlight she could see the tears glisten on his face even though he made no sound. His voice rumbled like stone as he said, "Then let us hope that the ones who hold the keys to the future decide to make it open for us."
Below him the rowdy, merry sounds of a Gogajin gathering roared and tumbled about the landscape. With every clan represented, the racket could be deafening at times. On the other hand, even the Jevumm were leaving these travelers unmolested.
Someone scrabbled over the scree and came limping into view, a dark silhouette, illumined only by moonlight. By her pained gait he knew her for Keena, a clan-leader, a matriarch, and a wise one at that.
"You should be in the festivities, or in someone's bed, Keena."
With a grunt she sat down beside him. "I could say the same to you Grim, don't be an ass."
He smiled, showing his big flat teeth, and elbowed her in the ribs, a bit harder than he'd intended. "Well if you've come up here to chew on my balls, I've had enough today. A man can only take so much leadership and decision making. Then he has to sit quiet and drink mead until he pisses honey."
"The day you learn to piss honey is the day you might get me to chew on your balls. Till then, just pass me the flagon."
He gave her the mead and they sat in silence for a long time. To his surprise it felt better to sit silently with her beside him, than it did to sit alone.
"Keena," he started, "I've listened and I've listened to the advice of these Children of Steel. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me things that are hardly to be believed. He tells me that the armies of Goshi will not only teleport and fall out of the sky, but they will roll across the land in metal fortresses. He tells me they will launch bombs that turn stone to liquid and people to ash. He tells me they will have things called cannons and artillery. None of this frightens me."
Keena just drank her mead and watched the encampment below.
"Having clawed my way out of the mines in Geneva Prime I knew some of this. I even knew, which is far more terrifying than all their weapons, that the Children of Steel are as numerous as pebbles on a mountainside. Ishikawa Tetsuro tells me that their population on Karia numbers over 400 million. It is a number I cannot even conceive of. What would 400 million Gogajin colts look like? Don't answer: a disaster, I know. With all the gathered might of all the clans at our disposal we have maybe a quarter of a million. Maybe. Still this does not frighten me."
He let the silence return for a few minutes, searching for the words he was after.
"We're Gogajin. We'll make our impact felt regardless of the odds. I'm not worried about my people doing their part. I couldn't be prouder to walk and work and fight and die alongside these people... It's just... High King? Me? I'm strong and I'm relentless, but I'm not wise like you Keena. I'm not..."
She tried to interrupt him then. He was being a damn fool and she was going to tell him so, but he talked right over her.
"It's more than me feeling out of my depth. It's like this whole thing, is bigger than us. I remember, when we were escaping from the mines. There were some people who helped us. When I was around them I felt like they were the kind of people who could pull this off. The kind who could keep it all from going to shit. One of them was a Vorax, the last Vorax I ever saw. She healed me with her tears. With her tears! It's like she could weep away the pains of the whole world if she tried. They were all like that - gifted."
"Grim, you idiot..." Keena interjected, but he gave her a firm look, and with his grizzled face he had especially firm looks.
"No Keena. I know I sound crazy, or like I'm forgetting who I am, but I'm not. I am Grim, Fiochmahr Clan. I am the strongest, fastest, stubbornest fucking Gogajin in this camp. I will out run, out throw, out crush, out fight, out drink, or out fuck anyone who says otherwise. But I'm also no fool and when I look up in that sky I see a universe which doesn't care how much you can lift or how far you can throw it. There are things at stake here beyond our ken, and there are people out there who have the power to influence things for good or ill, but I am not one of those people. The best I can do is gather all of these donkey-sons and daughters together to throw our might at the hungry maw of the beast and pray that it makes a difference..."
There was a long pause then, while Grim took the flagon back and drained it without taking a breath.
Keena looked at him appreciatively and he seemed to give her permission to speak, so she started softly, "Ah Grim. Even if what you say is true, what would we be if we didn't play our part? Could any Gogajin look themself in the face ever again if we didn't fight to our very last breath for what we love? If there is to be a future, I want to know that we will walk into it with our pride and honor intact."
In the moonlight she could see the tears glisten on his face even though he made no sound. His voice rumbled like stone as he said, "Then let us hope that the ones who hold the keys to the future decide to make it open for us."
A Dead Little Girl
I leave Rei's tent and go find a place off to myself. I find one near the generators they have set up, and I run a cable out to a heavy metal table. Someone goes and gets me a chair. Its weird not doing things myself, even now. I sit down and feel a sigh slip out. Too much is happening. I can't think about it all. And if I made a mistake, bringing all those people here to die...
For what feels like the hundredth time today I wonder if Kyoshi would fly me to Marina. I know its gone way past that, but...I tried, and failed. Too heavy. Too much.
I shake my head, huff out another harsher sigh and lay the thing down in front of me. In the glare of the electric lights it looks like a big, wilted flower. I can see veins of some kind of metal through it. I look for a power source, and can't find one. It must run on psychic energy or something.
I spend some time looking at it closely, and then I separate out some leads from the cable and attach them to what seem like nodes in the webwork. When I switch the power on, the glove lights up. I can see channels of energy flowing through it. They're just fading into the air, becoming heat, because in this they don't do anything, but it lets me see where the web is broken, torn, thinned, stretched...I am about to ground myself and get to work before it hits me.
There's the red glow, there, and then its...healed. Looks good as new, the webs of energy still shining to my eyes. Now, seeing more of how it fits together, I can see how it might be modified. I couldn't tell you, or draw up a diagram or anything. I just...see. I hunch down and get to work, careful but quick.
When I'm done, I detach the leads after I cut the power.
I think I saw where they brought Aimi. Kyoshi is probably still talking to his brother.
***
She's there, and looks surprised to see me, then looks like the cocky nothing she usually gives everyone.
"Looking to sow your wild rice already, Moses? Why, your litter isn't even born yet." She gives me a look that would be alluring from anyone else. Her eyes are still like one-way glass.
"No. I've, uh, I've actually got a present."
"Listen. Moses. I'm taken. If I wanted to fuck a machine, I'm sure I could make that happen without all the smell and the talking. So if you've got flowers or candy or something, I'm really flattered, but -"
She shuts right up when I hold up the glove. Yeah, Aimi, it isn't that hard to figure out what you want.
"I've seen you playing around with weapons you find. Well, not playing. I know you're dangerous. But they just don't fit the bill, do they?" She just watches my hand. I know she's measuring for a leap. "Its good as new. Better than new, actually. I figured, you know, the stuff we end up fighting, its usually bad to get close. So now you can sort of discharge the energy you make from a distance. Not that far, maybe ten meters or so, and it won't do as much as it does otherwise, but..." She's breathing harder. I suddenly feel bad and disturbed all at once. I want her to listen, though, this once, so I toss her the glove. She snatches it out of the air with a flash and slides it over her arm in a motion that's almost too quick to see. She clenches her deadly little fist and out flashes the pink blade.
She looks up at me, almost unguarded, almost actually here. "I don't get it, Moses. What's the deal? You're not trying to seduce me - it must be the lack of a tail. I figured Rei would get this fixed and give it back to me. But you? It doesn't add up."
How to say it?
"When we met, a year ago, in the control room for the lift out of Goshi Mine...you know, I've never been afraid of you. Don't get all offended. I know you're an assassin, but...after a cable-car load of tentacled eyeless, you weren't that scary. What scared me was...I was scared for the other people you might hurt, the other people you could get to. That we might have sacrificed so much just to be free, and you could ruin it all on a whim, or because it was your job. It was...I didn't understand how someone could be like that." Her eyes are glass again. "No! Listen, I'm not done."
I look at her until she stops pretending to be admiring her glove. "Listen. I...know what it means...to be made for a purpose. One you sort of chose, maybe, but never really got to choose. One that got chosen for you, where you just...fit into bigger things that were happening around you. I know what that's like. And..." shit this is hard "and I know you've done terrible things. On a whim, as a job, whatever. But now I know a lot more about that too. Maybe this whole time, I had to go out into the world, and suffer, over and over again, until I turned into the person who could call down gems out of the sky, rust out a city of millions of people. All of the cities. Refugees, homeless, hungry, because of me."
"How many people did I kill, do you think? I...don't have the guts to even ask. You think you've killed that many, Aimi? I doubt it. You'd be one busy girl. And I did it all, and now, it looks like...like it might have all been a mistake. I might have done just what the Enemy wanted. I can't even know if the things I've done...if they were right. I can't even know if they were right."
A long pause stretches out between us. Now she's looking at me, and I'm looking away.
"If...if we get through this...if we are going to survive...we can't know what will happen. Its too much. No one understands. Elder Moon doesn't understand. Jin-Kalys doesn't understand. We don't understand. Maybe Mokuzai would see it, but he's gone. Maybe peace is gone. But, " I look back at her "but I know, I know that if we don't trust, then we'll die. If we can't trust, we'll all die, one way or another. No trust, no hope. That's it." I feel myself trail off.
She smirks slowly and broadly. "Moses. Are you saying you trust me? Because I'm still a very bad girl." She clenches her little fist again and the blade leaps to life.
I don't move, and she wilts, just a little, thrown again. I don't know why I want her to see. I don't know if she can. Is she going to understand me, now? Is she going to forgive me? Hardly. I might as well ask the lamp-post outside for reassurance. She's a dead little girl. Maybe not dead, not yet. I guess we'll see, now.
"Maybe. Kyoshi does. Rei does." I pause. "And look. I don't think you can stop me, if it comes to it. And I don't sleep anymore. You seem to like Zip. Rei is family. You love Kyoshi. I don't know if anything can kill Baldr. HighDive can kill anything, and I think you know it after the fight today. And Una saved your life, so killing her would be...just really sick. I think you'd need a reason to kill Raoul. I wouldn't try Ichirou. And...as far as Kyoshi knows, you spared Namie. So I told myself those things, and I decided to give you the glove back."
"And who knows? Maybe, I hope, I won't regret it."
I go out just as Kyoshi is going in. He looks alarmed, sees Aimi with her blade out, looks back at me, but I'm still walking. I'll let her tell him all about it.
***
I get lost looking for my own tent, and when I come in I wake Zipporah up. She rolls over to look at me from under the covers - I realize its cold outside and close the tent flap. The brazier inside starts re-heating the small space.
"Moses...are you going to sleep tonight?"
I stand there for a moment, take a deep breath and feel myself unwind. I give her my best sly smirk.
"Nope." And I don't leave the warmth of the tent after that.
For what feels like the hundredth time today I wonder if Kyoshi would fly me to Marina. I know its gone way past that, but...I tried, and failed. Too heavy. Too much.
I shake my head, huff out another harsher sigh and lay the thing down in front of me. In the glare of the electric lights it looks like a big, wilted flower. I can see veins of some kind of metal through it. I look for a power source, and can't find one. It must run on psychic energy or something.
I spend some time looking at it closely, and then I separate out some leads from the cable and attach them to what seem like nodes in the webwork. When I switch the power on, the glove lights up. I can see channels of energy flowing through it. They're just fading into the air, becoming heat, because in this they don't do anything, but it lets me see where the web is broken, torn, thinned, stretched...I am about to ground myself and get to work before it hits me.
There's the red glow, there, and then its...healed. Looks good as new, the webs of energy still shining to my eyes. Now, seeing more of how it fits together, I can see how it might be modified. I couldn't tell you, or draw up a diagram or anything. I just...see. I hunch down and get to work, careful but quick.
When I'm done, I detach the leads after I cut the power.
I think I saw where they brought Aimi. Kyoshi is probably still talking to his brother.
***
She's there, and looks surprised to see me, then looks like the cocky nothing she usually gives everyone.
"Looking to sow your wild rice already, Moses? Why, your litter isn't even born yet." She gives me a look that would be alluring from anyone else. Her eyes are still like one-way glass.
"No. I've, uh, I've actually got a present."
"Listen. Moses. I'm taken. If I wanted to fuck a machine, I'm sure I could make that happen without all the smell and the talking. So if you've got flowers or candy or something, I'm really flattered, but -"
She shuts right up when I hold up the glove. Yeah, Aimi, it isn't that hard to figure out what you want.
"I've seen you playing around with weapons you find. Well, not playing. I know you're dangerous. But they just don't fit the bill, do they?" She just watches my hand. I know she's measuring for a leap. "Its good as new. Better than new, actually. I figured, you know, the stuff we end up fighting, its usually bad to get close. So now you can sort of discharge the energy you make from a distance. Not that far, maybe ten meters or so, and it won't do as much as it does otherwise, but..." She's breathing harder. I suddenly feel bad and disturbed all at once. I want her to listen, though, this once, so I toss her the glove. She snatches it out of the air with a flash and slides it over her arm in a motion that's almost too quick to see. She clenches her deadly little fist and out flashes the pink blade.
She looks up at me, almost unguarded, almost actually here. "I don't get it, Moses. What's the deal? You're not trying to seduce me - it must be the lack of a tail. I figured Rei would get this fixed and give it back to me. But you? It doesn't add up."
How to say it?
"When we met, a year ago, in the control room for the lift out of Goshi Mine...you know, I've never been afraid of you. Don't get all offended. I know you're an assassin, but...after a cable-car load of tentacled eyeless, you weren't that scary. What scared me was...I was scared for the other people you might hurt, the other people you could get to. That we might have sacrificed so much just to be free, and you could ruin it all on a whim, or because it was your job. It was...I didn't understand how someone could be like that." Her eyes are glass again. "No! Listen, I'm not done."
I look at her until she stops pretending to be admiring her glove. "Listen. I...know what it means...to be made for a purpose. One you sort of chose, maybe, but never really got to choose. One that got chosen for you, where you just...fit into bigger things that were happening around you. I know what that's like. And..." shit this is hard "and I know you've done terrible things. On a whim, as a job, whatever. But now I know a lot more about that too. Maybe this whole time, I had to go out into the world, and suffer, over and over again, until I turned into the person who could call down gems out of the sky, rust out a city of millions of people. All of the cities. Refugees, homeless, hungry, because of me."
"How many people did I kill, do you think? I...don't have the guts to even ask. You think you've killed that many, Aimi? I doubt it. You'd be one busy girl. And I did it all, and now, it looks like...like it might have all been a mistake. I might have done just what the Enemy wanted. I can't even know if the things I've done...if they were right. I can't even know if they were right."
A long pause stretches out between us. Now she's looking at me, and I'm looking away.
"If...if we get through this...if we are going to survive...we can't know what will happen. Its too much. No one understands. Elder Moon doesn't understand. Jin-Kalys doesn't understand. We don't understand. Maybe Mokuzai would see it, but he's gone. Maybe peace is gone. But, " I look back at her "but I know, I know that if we don't trust, then we'll die. If we can't trust, we'll all die, one way or another. No trust, no hope. That's it." I feel myself trail off.
She smirks slowly and broadly. "Moses. Are you saying you trust me? Because I'm still a very bad girl." She clenches her little fist again and the blade leaps to life.
I don't move, and she wilts, just a little, thrown again. I don't know why I want her to see. I don't know if she can. Is she going to understand me, now? Is she going to forgive me? Hardly. I might as well ask the lamp-post outside for reassurance. She's a dead little girl. Maybe not dead, not yet. I guess we'll see, now.
"Maybe. Kyoshi does. Rei does." I pause. "And look. I don't think you can stop me, if it comes to it. And I don't sleep anymore. You seem to like Zip. Rei is family. You love Kyoshi. I don't know if anything can kill Baldr. HighDive can kill anything, and I think you know it after the fight today. And Una saved your life, so killing her would be...just really sick. I think you'd need a reason to kill Raoul. I wouldn't try Ichirou. And...as far as Kyoshi knows, you spared Namie. So I told myself those things, and I decided to give you the glove back."
"And who knows? Maybe, I hope, I won't regret it."
I go out just as Kyoshi is going in. He looks alarmed, sees Aimi with her blade out, looks back at me, but I'm still walking. I'll let her tell him all about it.
***
I get lost looking for my own tent, and when I come in I wake Zipporah up. She rolls over to look at me from under the covers - I realize its cold outside and close the tent flap. The brazier inside starts re-heating the small space.
"Moses...are you going to sleep tonight?"
I stand there for a moment, take a deep breath and feel myself unwind. I give her my best sly smirk.
"Nope." And I don't leave the warmth of the tent after that.
Cat and Mouse
It begins as a game. Kufu has never been in a city like Marina, and he needs time to learn the rhythms of the Cheldrun here - how they live, where they find food and water, their patterns, how they defend themselves. To hunt them of course.
Two delectable options immediately offer themselves. The first is enjoyed in the Outer Market District. There is tremendous commotion as hordes of refugees and rioters and heavily armed police clash in the streets below. Kufu finds a perfect place to sleep during the day, tucked between massive air-circulation fans that are now silent and useless. Most of the grand domes of Marina are shattered, and now broken shells arch over the inhabitants, spindly and corroded metal skeletons once housing shimmering glass. At night he descends and takes prey almost at will. Bodies and parts of bodies are found - a soldier with a helmet but no face, his throat torn out and entrails eaten. A vast pool of blood in an alley in which nothing remains but a pair of shoes, a hat and a left hand.
And swirling around him are nightmares echoing in the minds of the Cheldrun, twisting their bodies in restless movement as they try to sleep, making them cry out to awaken themselves.
The second options is best indulged a few days later, when Kufu is holed up in the abandoned construction site of a southern-style high-rise building, plastic tarps snapping in the wind around him, stretched out on the floor, sniper rifle braced against his shoulder, eye peering through the scope.
Heads explode before the report of the shot is heard. Businesspeople in rumpled suits dance a jig as multiple rounds tear through their bodies with rapid succession. The wind carries the thin sound of giggling. And of course, there are more nightmares.
He learns enough. The city is in a state of controlled chaos, a Maneater Ant nest swarming with frenetic activity, but nowhere near as organized. Even Shadowfang would leave such a nest alone. Marina, however, seems far more accommodating. And he is not here for mere sustenance, mere entertainment. He has traveled many hundreds of kilometers to come here, because this is where the leaders of the most powerful tribe of Cheldrun, the Biomade, live and have their chiefs. The chiefs sit on a Council - wise, since there are more than one. Oversight is its name.
Shadowfang will eat one of these chiefs, and when he does, he will be as strong as a chief of the Cheldrun. The Cheldrun's territory will be his territory. The Cheldrun secrets will be his secrets. He will restore his real name, Eris - NO! - Kufu! Kufu! Chieftain of Cheldrun and Karian, the Hunger of Karia, the Dream-stalker...and he will then turn, at last, to sating the hunger once and for all. To devour. To consume. To evolve.
At last he finds one - called Groom - who serves one of the chiefs of the Biomade. He doesn't ask, he simply bites, and rips, and tears, and chews, and when he is done, he remembers what Groom remembered, briefly but for long enough. He learns of members of the Council, particularly the one that Groom served, and he learns of another chieftain - one called Rain. Another Biomade chieftain, but one of a different kind. The leader of many warriors, gathering her strength to crush her foes.
Rain. Rain. Rain tastes of nothing, of sky, but this rain, this sweet Rain...it is his sudden purring that gives him away, his distracted state that allows it to happen.
There is the barest intake of breath, the slightest brush of feet on the carpet of the abandoned apartment where he is sheltering during the day, and they are upon him. They are like shadow-shaped Cheldrun, flickering in the afternoon light like reflections on water, fast - how did I not smell them!? - and rage wells up in Kufu, as well as surprise. He remembers seasons ago, hunting along the edges of a Gogajin village. They are celebrating the culmination of some kind of competition with other villages. A huge one, a champion perhaps, comes outside to relieve himself, reeking of meed and donkey. Kufu took him, his strength, his iron grip, and as he remembers he swells, muscles rippling and twisting beneath his skin.
The Cheldrun hunters are upon him and are almost immediately thrown back. One collapses gasping with a crushed sternum. Another is seized and hurled out the empty window frame to fall silently, ten stories down, landing with a crack like a dropped egg. Their blades flicker pink and slash, stealing strength, then blue, shedding thick blood. At last, as he crushes the wind out of another attacker, one pounces on top of him, slashing with a flicker of blue and then slamming the suddenly pink blade into the base of Kufu's skull. He goes limp at last as she drains him, dancing nimbly aside as he crashes heavily to the floor, already shrinking in stature, forgetting the Gogajin champion, forgetting everything.
They take his limp form, the rifle he was cleaning as he mused, clear the room and disappear with a flicker.
***
Shade delivers the package, which she was brought in to do. She mourns the three dead bounty hunters in her crew and waits with the fourth while he is in the hospital until they say he is in stable condition. With the remaining five, she divides up the sum that the Executor has paid them - the cash is dicey, perhaps just so much toilet paper in a season or less, but the promises, written up as contracts, are far more valuable. Not for the first time, nor the last, she silently thanks the Gengineers who performed the dihybrid cross which led to her...unique ability. She'd read that the extinct Vorax could do something similar. Well, maybe explorers would come across one in some out of the way place, and she'd get a chance to read the studies that would be published when they vivisected it. She'd love to learn how they do their trick.
Goshi will land on its feet, given enough time. Who will oppose them? Refugees with a famous terrorist at their lead? Hardly, however many apocalypses he can pull off, the son of a bitch. A few seasons of starvation and economic stagnation should take the wind out of them. It always does. Until then, there's no end to the work. And after, still more work. Goshi will come right back - maybe this tiger-man will even help them out, once he hears the deal. But either way, Goshi is the future of this planet, and it isn't down for the count, not by a long shot. They'll be back -
And then everything will be right as Rain.
Two delectable options immediately offer themselves. The first is enjoyed in the Outer Market District. There is tremendous commotion as hordes of refugees and rioters and heavily armed police clash in the streets below. Kufu finds a perfect place to sleep during the day, tucked between massive air-circulation fans that are now silent and useless. Most of the grand domes of Marina are shattered, and now broken shells arch over the inhabitants, spindly and corroded metal skeletons once housing shimmering glass. At night he descends and takes prey almost at will. Bodies and parts of bodies are found - a soldier with a helmet but no face, his throat torn out and entrails eaten. A vast pool of blood in an alley in which nothing remains but a pair of shoes, a hat and a left hand.
And swirling around him are nightmares echoing in the minds of the Cheldrun, twisting their bodies in restless movement as they try to sleep, making them cry out to awaken themselves.
The second options is best indulged a few days later, when Kufu is holed up in the abandoned construction site of a southern-style high-rise building, plastic tarps snapping in the wind around him, stretched out on the floor, sniper rifle braced against his shoulder, eye peering through the scope.
Heads explode before the report of the shot is heard. Businesspeople in rumpled suits dance a jig as multiple rounds tear through their bodies with rapid succession. The wind carries the thin sound of giggling. And of course, there are more nightmares.
He learns enough. The city is in a state of controlled chaos, a Maneater Ant nest swarming with frenetic activity, but nowhere near as organized. Even Shadowfang would leave such a nest alone. Marina, however, seems far more accommodating. And he is not here for mere sustenance, mere entertainment. He has traveled many hundreds of kilometers to come here, because this is where the leaders of the most powerful tribe of Cheldrun, the Biomade, live and have their chiefs. The chiefs sit on a Council - wise, since there are more than one. Oversight is its name.
Shadowfang will eat one of these chiefs, and when he does, he will be as strong as a chief of the Cheldrun. The Cheldrun's territory will be his territory. The Cheldrun secrets will be his secrets. He will restore his real name, Eris - NO! - Kufu! Kufu! Chieftain of Cheldrun and Karian, the Hunger of Karia, the Dream-stalker...and he will then turn, at last, to sating the hunger once and for all. To devour. To consume. To evolve.
At last he finds one - called Groom - who serves one of the chiefs of the Biomade. He doesn't ask, he simply bites, and rips, and tears, and chews, and when he is done, he remembers what Groom remembered, briefly but for long enough. He learns of members of the Council, particularly the one that Groom served, and he learns of another chieftain - one called Rain. Another Biomade chieftain, but one of a different kind. The leader of many warriors, gathering her strength to crush her foes.
Rain. Rain. Rain tastes of nothing, of sky, but this rain, this sweet Rain...it is his sudden purring that gives him away, his distracted state that allows it to happen.
There is the barest intake of breath, the slightest brush of feet on the carpet of the abandoned apartment where he is sheltering during the day, and they are upon him. They are like shadow-shaped Cheldrun, flickering in the afternoon light like reflections on water, fast - how did I not smell them!? - and rage wells up in Kufu, as well as surprise. He remembers seasons ago, hunting along the edges of a Gogajin village. They are celebrating the culmination of some kind of competition with other villages. A huge one, a champion perhaps, comes outside to relieve himself, reeking of meed and donkey. Kufu took him, his strength, his iron grip, and as he remembers he swells, muscles rippling and twisting beneath his skin.
The Cheldrun hunters are upon him and are almost immediately thrown back. One collapses gasping with a crushed sternum. Another is seized and hurled out the empty window frame to fall silently, ten stories down, landing with a crack like a dropped egg. Their blades flicker pink and slash, stealing strength, then blue, shedding thick blood. At last, as he crushes the wind out of another attacker, one pounces on top of him, slashing with a flicker of blue and then slamming the suddenly pink blade into the base of Kufu's skull. He goes limp at last as she drains him, dancing nimbly aside as he crashes heavily to the floor, already shrinking in stature, forgetting the Gogajin champion, forgetting everything.
They take his limp form, the rifle he was cleaning as he mused, clear the room and disappear with a flicker.
***
Shade delivers the package, which she was brought in to do. She mourns the three dead bounty hunters in her crew and waits with the fourth while he is in the hospital until they say he is in stable condition. With the remaining five, she divides up the sum that the Executor has paid them - the cash is dicey, perhaps just so much toilet paper in a season or less, but the promises, written up as contracts, are far more valuable. Not for the first time, nor the last, she silently thanks the Gengineers who performed the dihybrid cross which led to her...unique ability. She'd read that the extinct Vorax could do something similar. Well, maybe explorers would come across one in some out of the way place, and she'd get a chance to read the studies that would be published when they vivisected it. She'd love to learn how they do their trick.
Goshi will land on its feet, given enough time. Who will oppose them? Refugees with a famous terrorist at their lead? Hardly, however many apocalypses he can pull off, the son of a bitch. A few seasons of starvation and economic stagnation should take the wind out of them. It always does. Until then, there's no end to the work. And after, still more work. Goshi will come right back - maybe this tiger-man will even help them out, once he hears the deal. But either way, Goshi is the future of this planet, and it isn't down for the count, not by a long shot. They'll be back -
And then everything will be right as Rain.
An Impossible Situation
Night is a time to let the mind wander shaded paths, to slacken one's bright focus. Heavy-lidded, Jin-Kalys is curled around a low table in an out-of-the-way tea-house in Stardown. He has been given freedom to move throughout the city, and is learning to ignore the Cheldrun who are curious to see an Anakarix sitting a tea-house, or going to a public bath, or walking down the street, or buying food with the city vouchers he receives. In the press of refugees and others who have come to the city, it is impossible to hide or to move about surreptitiously. Engineers are busy constructing temporary shelters and buildings on the outskirts of the city. Some arrive with supplies in tow, but as many others do not. Wherever possible, refugees and freedom-fighters are conscripted to work building shelters, digging new drainage, laying new pipes and power cables and so on.
There is the sense that, though there is a great deal of work to do, it need not be of lasting quality.
This will be over all too soon. Word has reached the city (by Zipsum, if nothing else) that Goshi has retreated to Marina, and is organizing some kind of massive military offensive. The hammer is being drawn back, and will be brought down one last time, not flickering Hei-Shi but the whole remaining might of Goshi Mining Corporation, wounded, hemorrhaging money, but far from dead.
Jin is distantly aware of this. He has two tasks in mind as he lounges in the tea-house, relying on the warmth of the tea to help him concentrate. Working after dark is for mammals. The first task is the completion of a sizeable letter in tiny, even, angular script to be delivered to Sighing Web of Trees via well-paid Zipsum messenger. Fortunately, food-vouchers can be traded for candy. In the letter, Jin is primarily concerned with describing his various adaptations of Nine-Branches Formal Logic. Stories of world war are of secondary interest, mentioned only as illustrations. Anakarix can be fearsome opponents if they are defending their tree-villages and particularly the tombs of the sainted lizard sages, but they are hardly a people to trek hundreds of kilometers across the continent to help Cheldrun fight Cheldrun.
It is difficult, but possible, to translate rational argument into purely written form. Jin is relying on an archaic script which retains markings to represent posture and positioning, as if the speaker were physically present. Someday, when this is all over, Jin hopes to return to Sighing Web of Trees to personally defend his theses.
The second task is...difficult to describe. Before he left his village, what seems like years ago now, Jin had made a crucial argument for non-rational processing, ultimately earning his most recent dewlap piercing. He is finding, however, that speaking is easier than doing. To clear the mind, to silence it, to wait patiently for answers to arise - almost impossible.
The conclusion he's reached about the energy-nullifying field that is currently spreading in the center of the city can't possibly be correct. If it is, then the city is doomed until the energy feedback runs out and begins to revert to a static state...and it is very difficult to predict when this will be.
The problem is a simple one conceptually but an impossible one practically. The energy-field steals kinetic energy around it. The obvious result is the intense cold that surrounds the device. Of course, any Anakarix more than a few years out of the Ovumcreche knows that Sol burns because it moves. A poet would say that it dances, spinning recklessly, dizzyingly. The movement, coupled with its immense mass, radiates warmth to the whole solar system. Karia, moving far more slowly around Sol, is far cooler, so that instead of fire, there is warmth for life, arising from the planet and radiating out from Sol. Planets closer to Sol are faster, and therefore of course, hotter, while those more distant are far cooler, moving in far larger ellipses. Karia, at the perfect distance, is the sole world with life, or so the sages say.
Obviously, some kind of intelligent being will have to get close enough to the device to alter it sufficiently. This being will have to carry with it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, because it will be immediately sapped when it enters the nullifying field. Based on measurements taken at the edge of the field and Jin's careful calculations, aided at many points by Sousauryoku and his various calculating devices, this creature would have to be traveling at a speed that is many times that of sound. This amount of kinetic energy would burn said creature alive, incinerating it even if there was some contrivance by which it could be brought up to that kind of velocity.
There is a second solution, also impossible. The creature could be somewhat slower in the approach, only perhaps as fast as the fastest Zipsum on Karia, but it would have to continuously accelerate once it entered the field. The force required would be tremendous - more like one of the Cheldrun bullets leaving the tube of one of their guns.
Either way, once it reached the device intact, it is...possible...that something could be done. A great deal of energy must be introduced into the system, in order to buy Stardown time and achieve the two ends of the operation: 1) maintain the shield so that Hei-Shi don't rain down on the city and 2) prevent the city from being doomed to a frigid stasis, killing everyone under that selfsame dome.
If this theoretical bullet-creature could reach the device, it would be actually laughably simple to impart tremendous energy into the system - but impossible for any such creature to survive the interaction. Once the energy was imparted to the device, the creature would be left there, frozen and trapped, if it was not obliterated by the impact.
Sousauryoku has another solution, which, on the current theoretical level, is fascinating. He is designing an engine to be placed in the device. The metaphysical problem, of course, is that the device is currently powered by sacrifice, for all intents and purposes. It is fueled by lost potential. But Sousauryoku seems unable to clearly perceive this fact. He wants to understand it in terms of a particular kind of energy as the Cheldrun narrowly perceive it.
The Cheldrun cannot see - their devices are powered by sacrifice. The artifacts that they attribute to their First Minds exact some kind of price. In many cases, they pay it intuitively, not understanding why it is that ritual observances sometimes activate the devices. Even in their mundane technologies - something is expended, lost, in order that something else is achieved. The Mechified burn Blackrock. The Allskins burn incense and chant and hold to ancient ways. It is the Biomade who sacrifice most, but who understand their sacrifice the least, because it is of a kind that even Jin must admit he cannot comprehend precisely. They sacrifice aspects of themselves. They think they are being perfected, but they are only being pared down. In carving a plank, much of the tree is lost. Is a plank better than a tree? The Biomade think so. Jin couldn't disagree more...but it isn't his place to point any of this out.
In the end, however, the rule is the same. It is no different from the ancient stories of the Karians - in the beginning, the Dusk Sages created, and as they did so, they diminished. It is the nature of things.
Jin sighs and puts down his pen, massaging one clawed hand with another, staring off into the night. What will have to be sacrificed, what will have to diminish, before this is over, for better or worse?
He shakes his head abruptly. I need more tea. There is still a lot of work to do.
There is the sense that, though there is a great deal of work to do, it need not be of lasting quality.
This will be over all too soon. Word has reached the city (by Zipsum, if nothing else) that Goshi has retreated to Marina, and is organizing some kind of massive military offensive. The hammer is being drawn back, and will be brought down one last time, not flickering Hei-Shi but the whole remaining might of Goshi Mining Corporation, wounded, hemorrhaging money, but far from dead.
Jin is distantly aware of this. He has two tasks in mind as he lounges in the tea-house, relying on the warmth of the tea to help him concentrate. Working after dark is for mammals. The first task is the completion of a sizeable letter in tiny, even, angular script to be delivered to Sighing Web of Trees via well-paid Zipsum messenger. Fortunately, food-vouchers can be traded for candy. In the letter, Jin is primarily concerned with describing his various adaptations of Nine-Branches Formal Logic. Stories of world war are of secondary interest, mentioned only as illustrations. Anakarix can be fearsome opponents if they are defending their tree-villages and particularly the tombs of the sainted lizard sages, but they are hardly a people to trek hundreds of kilometers across the continent to help Cheldrun fight Cheldrun.
It is difficult, but possible, to translate rational argument into purely written form. Jin is relying on an archaic script which retains markings to represent posture and positioning, as if the speaker were physically present. Someday, when this is all over, Jin hopes to return to Sighing Web of Trees to personally defend his theses.
The second task is...difficult to describe. Before he left his village, what seems like years ago now, Jin had made a crucial argument for non-rational processing, ultimately earning his most recent dewlap piercing. He is finding, however, that speaking is easier than doing. To clear the mind, to silence it, to wait patiently for answers to arise - almost impossible.
The conclusion he's reached about the energy-nullifying field that is currently spreading in the center of the city can't possibly be correct. If it is, then the city is doomed until the energy feedback runs out and begins to revert to a static state...and it is very difficult to predict when this will be.
The problem is a simple one conceptually but an impossible one practically. The energy-field steals kinetic energy around it. The obvious result is the intense cold that surrounds the device. Of course, any Anakarix more than a few years out of the Ovumcreche knows that Sol burns because it moves. A poet would say that it dances, spinning recklessly, dizzyingly. The movement, coupled with its immense mass, radiates warmth to the whole solar system. Karia, moving far more slowly around Sol, is far cooler, so that instead of fire, there is warmth for life, arising from the planet and radiating out from Sol. Planets closer to Sol are faster, and therefore of course, hotter, while those more distant are far cooler, moving in far larger ellipses. Karia, at the perfect distance, is the sole world with life, or so the sages say.
Obviously, some kind of intelligent being will have to get close enough to the device to alter it sufficiently. This being will have to carry with it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, because it will be immediately sapped when it enters the nullifying field. Based on measurements taken at the edge of the field and Jin's careful calculations, aided at many points by Sousauryoku and his various calculating devices, this creature would have to be traveling at a speed that is many times that of sound. This amount of kinetic energy would burn said creature alive, incinerating it even if there was some contrivance by which it could be brought up to that kind of velocity.
There is a second solution, also impossible. The creature could be somewhat slower in the approach, only perhaps as fast as the fastest Zipsum on Karia, but it would have to continuously accelerate once it entered the field. The force required would be tremendous - more like one of the Cheldrun bullets leaving the tube of one of their guns.
Either way, once it reached the device intact, it is...possible...that something could be done. A great deal of energy must be introduced into the system, in order to buy Stardown time and achieve the two ends of the operation: 1) maintain the shield so that Hei-Shi don't rain down on the city and 2) prevent the city from being doomed to a frigid stasis, killing everyone under that selfsame dome.
If this theoretical bullet-creature could reach the device, it would be actually laughably simple to impart tremendous energy into the system - but impossible for any such creature to survive the interaction. Once the energy was imparted to the device, the creature would be left there, frozen and trapped, if it was not obliterated by the impact.
Sousauryoku has another solution, which, on the current theoretical level, is fascinating. He is designing an engine to be placed in the device. The metaphysical problem, of course, is that the device is currently powered by sacrifice, for all intents and purposes. It is fueled by lost potential. But Sousauryoku seems unable to clearly perceive this fact. He wants to understand it in terms of a particular kind of energy as the Cheldrun narrowly perceive it.
The Cheldrun cannot see - their devices are powered by sacrifice. The artifacts that they attribute to their First Minds exact some kind of price. In many cases, they pay it intuitively, not understanding why it is that ritual observances sometimes activate the devices. Even in their mundane technologies - something is expended, lost, in order that something else is achieved. The Mechified burn Blackrock. The Allskins burn incense and chant and hold to ancient ways. It is the Biomade who sacrifice most, but who understand their sacrifice the least, because it is of a kind that even Jin must admit he cannot comprehend precisely. They sacrifice aspects of themselves. They think they are being perfected, but they are only being pared down. In carving a plank, much of the tree is lost. Is a plank better than a tree? The Biomade think so. Jin couldn't disagree more...but it isn't his place to point any of this out.
In the end, however, the rule is the same. It is no different from the ancient stories of the Karians - in the beginning, the Dusk Sages created, and as they did so, they diminished. It is the nature of things.
Jin sighs and puts down his pen, massaging one clawed hand with another, staring off into the night. What will have to be sacrificed, what will have to diminish, before this is over, for better or worse?
He shakes his head abruptly. I need more tea. There is still a lot of work to do.
Under the Dome
A gnarly arthritic hand reaches up to stroke a long snowy white beard.
Sousauryoku considers the documents before him. They are on crinkled paper, bits of papyrus and other improvised material, but the carefully scrawled script is all the same - it is the meticulous foreign hand of the Anakarix sage Jin-Kalys. Reading it is like trying to decipher an alien mind, not unlike deciphering First Mind writing really, a process Sousauryoku is very familiar with. Frequently it is unclear whether it is all a bunch of worthless arcane drivel, but once in a while something disturbingly accurate creeps through the endless equations. It is enough to keep him searching.
A young Allskin boy brings him a steaming cup of tea and bows ceremonially three times on his way out the door.
Nuisance, that. Sousauryoku had grown accustomed to being something of a celebrated rebel before all this business started. He was either known as "the Allskin innovator" or "a traitor to tradition" depending on who you spoke with. He liked both epithets. He'd earned them by his unorthodox scientific opinion that First Mind Artifacts were really just an advanced form of Cheldrun technology that society had somehow lost the necessary knowledge to duplicate. Where most Allskins treated anything connected to the First Minds with something like religious fervor, praying to them, wafting incense over them, and hoping that they would magically start working, he thought it should be possible to dissect them and learn their fundamental mechanical nature in order to recreate it.
Advice to anyone who wants to be popular among Allskin traditionalists - don't start breaking their precious First Mind Artifacts in order to find out how they work.
Of course, he'd been right, well partially. He had to admit that he hadn't been able to conclusively demonstrate any of his theories, but from time to time he'd managed to get an artifact to do a new trick, or self-destruct in dramatic fashion. Proof, as far as he was concerned, that they could indeed be manipulated predictably. If you could predict some rather surprising results.
What made him even more of a controversial figure was his adamant attachment to all the usual outward expressions of Allskin tradition. He still wore a kimono. He kept his beard long, to show his age and status. He visited his parents shrine on a monthly basis, and so on. Maybe he was just cantankerous. Maybe he just liked the lifestyle. Regardless, he never changed his mind because of popular opinion.
However, his social role of rebel genius was seriously compromised, and against his will, when that Anakarix sent the dome roiling into the sky. Because the artifact had been his, and because people were fools, he'd somehow gotten part of the credit for that feat, and now with a full blown war on their hands the citizens of Stardown had elevated him to mythic-heroic status and he could no longer go anywhere without someone idiotically bowing and scraping their faces on the floor.
Nor did it help that he'd accepted the title of General, in the newly minted Stardown Defense Force. He'd had to. He had no military expertise, but there was no one else in this 2-second operation with an ounce of good sense. Well, except for that Daitokuji fellow. And the lizard. The lizard who might just know more about what the hell is going on than even Sousauryoku.
He tossed the papers down on the desk in frustration and acknowledged Jin-Kalys who had been sitting by the window soaking in the sunlight this whole time.
"Which piece is the bloody beginning?"
The Cheldrun language sounded strange rolling off of his reptilian tongue, "None of them. The Nine branches interweave, they do not evidence an artificial priority. The quintessential aptitude of the logician is residing in the whole rather than dissecting the parts."
"That sounds like a clever way of saying you've forgotten."
Normally that might have gotten a rise out of the sage, but he was too happy in the sun to let it bother him. "Not at all. If you wish I can arrange the pages according to a variety of sequences which may increase intelligibility for a mind unaccustomed to polyvalent temporal-symbolic mathematics. Would you prefer the order in which I penned the material, or the order of increasing complexity?"
It was at that moment that Head-Like-Steel, one of the Zipsum couriers the SDF was using lately, burst into the room.
"The machine thingy got worse again. Three people got frozed. We pulled them out, but we broke two steel poles doing it. Still no one can get near."
Sigh.
This was apparently a side-effect even Jin-Kalys hadn't counted on. Since the First Mind artifact was activated, the dome had been thrown up, yes, but so had an inertial dampening field in the vicinity of the artifact. Jin himself had barely escaped the field when it activated and now no one, literally no one, could get close to the bloody thing to figure out what was going on. Those that attempted were either rebuffed or else frozen solid. And this was no harmless cryogenic stasis either. The victims often died, or if they lived they lost digits and patches of skin to the frost. What was worse, is that the dome appeared to be growing day by day, and as the dome grew, so did the inertial dampening field. It had already completely claimed the old facilities of Stardown Technology and Research, Sousauryoku's company. It was starting to leak out beyond the walls of that facility now.
Sousauryoku stroked his beard a few times in silence before dismissing the Zipsum with a nod.
"Change of plans. We'll assume this isn't a load of rubbish, or at least that you can use the same skills you used to activate the device in the first place, in order to control it or shut it off..."
Jin-Kalys interrupted, "Deactivating the artifact at the present would be a catastrophe! We..."
"Well, then you'll want to find a way to control it, won't you."
"But no one can get to it at the moment. We'd need someone of miniscule stature and almost impossibly fast..."
"Are you telling me that the work of the sainted and eternal lizard sage, Asterakalys, the Helio-Synthesis model, as you have applied it through nine-branch formal logic is not up to the task?"
Silence.
With a jaw like iron Jin Kalys asked, "Did you retain the schematics of the artifact from your former facilities?"
"Of course." Sousauryoku couldn't help but give a satisfied smirk at that.
"Then let us get to work."
Sousauryoku considers the documents before him. They are on crinkled paper, bits of papyrus and other improvised material, but the carefully scrawled script is all the same - it is the meticulous foreign hand of the Anakarix sage Jin-Kalys. Reading it is like trying to decipher an alien mind, not unlike deciphering First Mind writing really, a process Sousauryoku is very familiar with. Frequently it is unclear whether it is all a bunch of worthless arcane drivel, but once in a while something disturbingly accurate creeps through the endless equations. It is enough to keep him searching.
A young Allskin boy brings him a steaming cup of tea and bows ceremonially three times on his way out the door.
Nuisance, that. Sousauryoku had grown accustomed to being something of a celebrated rebel before all this business started. He was either known as "the Allskin innovator" or "a traitor to tradition" depending on who you spoke with. He liked both epithets. He'd earned them by his unorthodox scientific opinion that First Mind Artifacts were really just an advanced form of Cheldrun technology that society had somehow lost the necessary knowledge to duplicate. Where most Allskins treated anything connected to the First Minds with something like religious fervor, praying to them, wafting incense over them, and hoping that they would magically start working, he thought it should be possible to dissect them and learn their fundamental mechanical nature in order to recreate it.
Advice to anyone who wants to be popular among Allskin traditionalists - don't start breaking their precious First Mind Artifacts in order to find out how they work.
Of course, he'd been right, well partially. He had to admit that he hadn't been able to conclusively demonstrate any of his theories, but from time to time he'd managed to get an artifact to do a new trick, or self-destruct in dramatic fashion. Proof, as far as he was concerned, that they could indeed be manipulated predictably. If you could predict some rather surprising results.
What made him even more of a controversial figure was his adamant attachment to all the usual outward expressions of Allskin tradition. He still wore a kimono. He kept his beard long, to show his age and status. He visited his parents shrine on a monthly basis, and so on. Maybe he was just cantankerous. Maybe he just liked the lifestyle. Regardless, he never changed his mind because of popular opinion.
However, his social role of rebel genius was seriously compromised, and against his will, when that Anakarix sent the dome roiling into the sky. Because the artifact had been his, and because people were fools, he'd somehow gotten part of the credit for that feat, and now with a full blown war on their hands the citizens of Stardown had elevated him to mythic-heroic status and he could no longer go anywhere without someone idiotically bowing and scraping their faces on the floor.
Nor did it help that he'd accepted the title of General, in the newly minted Stardown Defense Force. He'd had to. He had no military expertise, but there was no one else in this 2-second operation with an ounce of good sense. Well, except for that Daitokuji fellow. And the lizard. The lizard who might just know more about what the hell is going on than even Sousauryoku.
He tossed the papers down on the desk in frustration and acknowledged Jin-Kalys who had been sitting by the window soaking in the sunlight this whole time.
"Which piece is the bloody beginning?"
The Cheldrun language sounded strange rolling off of his reptilian tongue, "None of them. The Nine branches interweave, they do not evidence an artificial priority. The quintessential aptitude of the logician is residing in the whole rather than dissecting the parts."
"That sounds like a clever way of saying you've forgotten."
Normally that might have gotten a rise out of the sage, but he was too happy in the sun to let it bother him. "Not at all. If you wish I can arrange the pages according to a variety of sequences which may increase intelligibility for a mind unaccustomed to polyvalent temporal-symbolic mathematics. Would you prefer the order in which I penned the material, or the order of increasing complexity?"
It was at that moment that Head-Like-Steel, one of the Zipsum couriers the SDF was using lately, burst into the room.
"The machine thingy got worse again. Three people got frozed. We pulled them out, but we broke two steel poles doing it. Still no one can get near."
Sigh.
This was apparently a side-effect even Jin-Kalys hadn't counted on. Since the First Mind artifact was activated, the dome had been thrown up, yes, but so had an inertial dampening field in the vicinity of the artifact. Jin himself had barely escaped the field when it activated and now no one, literally no one, could get close to the bloody thing to figure out what was going on. Those that attempted were either rebuffed or else frozen solid. And this was no harmless cryogenic stasis either. The victims often died, or if they lived they lost digits and patches of skin to the frost. What was worse, is that the dome appeared to be growing day by day, and as the dome grew, so did the inertial dampening field. It had already completely claimed the old facilities of Stardown Technology and Research, Sousauryoku's company. It was starting to leak out beyond the walls of that facility now.
Sousauryoku stroked his beard a few times in silence before dismissing the Zipsum with a nod.
"Change of plans. We'll assume this isn't a load of rubbish, or at least that you can use the same skills you used to activate the device in the first place, in order to control it or shut it off..."
Jin-Kalys interrupted, "Deactivating the artifact at the present would be a catastrophe! We..."
"Well, then you'll want to find a way to control it, won't you."
"But no one can get to it at the moment. We'd need someone of miniscule stature and almost impossibly fast..."
"Are you telling me that the work of the sainted and eternal lizard sage, Asterakalys, the Helio-Synthesis model, as you have applied it through nine-branch formal logic is not up to the task?"
Silence.
With a jaw like iron Jin Kalys asked, "Did you retain the schematics of the artifact from your former facilities?"
"Of course." Sousauryoku couldn't help but give a satisfied smirk at that.
"Then let us get to work."
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