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?
Showing posts with label Karia Vitalus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karia Vitalus. Show all posts
Prelude to the End of Season Three
A league under the waves, where no sunlight reaches, the Sea-Dragon people known as Sasarrans flitted from luminescent coral apartments to begin their patrols of the surface. The sacred obligation must never be permitted to lapse, even for a moment, into lackadaisical disinterest. Eternal vigilance was required of their whole people to contain the demons who create in order to consume.
Ceralon, a proud matriarch of her people, was not headed to the surface with the others. She swam with strength and purpose deeper into the coral city, headed for the sacred sanctuary, where all the matriarchs would confer. The departing patrol was a delicate rainbow of fronds, fluttering up toward the sunlight. She watched them as they went, proud of their dedication.
Ahead of her the sanctuary entrance yawned - a cavernous opening in the coral leading through twisting passages into the vast heart of the city. It was too sacred a local for common warriors, outsiders or men to enter, but even matriarchs like Ceralon felt a quickening of the heart when approaching it.
The others would want to have her wisdom concerning the strangers who passed from the East a few days ago. She had spent her whole rest-cycle contemplating the matter. It remained perplexing to her that anyone would desire to go to the Emerald Isle who was not a servant of the demons. However, she would shock the matriarchs today by declaring what she believed to be truth - the strangers were genuine. Perhaps events beyond our horizons are underway, she thought. The idea gave her shivers.
Whatever the reality, she would ask the gathered matriarchs to pray for the success of those strangers. Pray for the end of all demons everywhere. Yes, that would be a good prayer.
***
They first named it Shadowfang in the logging camps south of Geneva Prime. In a day and age when teleportation is real, communication is fast. So it was no surprise to find that news of this mysterious killer made it to all the rural outposts and logging camps between Epsis Four and Ithica. It became popular among the easily frightened Mechified laborers to blame any unexplained death on the Shadowfang. Most foremen, just shook their heads and tried to dispel unhelpful superstitions. There were all sorts of things in the jungle that could kill a man.
What was more disturbing than all the reports was the fact that Shadowfang was real and on the move. It was notoriously hard to get any reliable sightings of the beast, but members of a secretive information brokerage out of Marina had been paid quite well to keep track of it. Even they didn't learn much, but they tracked a pattern of violent killings, some by Jevumm, some with Cheldrun weapons, that appeared to be moving along the edges of wilderness toward the north. At best guesstimate it was now somewhere in the vicinity of the Wreck of the Bosporus and still moving.
Goshi had no interest, when informed of the matter. Just another sighting of the Enemy, they alleged, and used it as an argument for beefing up security. But someone on the Biomade Oversight Council was quite convinced otherwise. It appears to be some kind of Karian-Cheldrun hybrid, he wrote in the memo. We should bring it in if we can and study it for interesting genetic properties...
***
"Good Bye, my beloved Moon."
Those had been his words, carried on the wind over countless kilometers. She sang them and re-sang them in her heart and every time it was a song of such sorrow that no one could hear it without weeping. The Grand Chantry, her choir, the prophecies, Karia itself, could dissolve and become nothing for all she cared. Her love, her Mokuzai, was gone and nothing else mattered.
From the balcony of the highest tower in the Grand Chantry she nightly composed songs of rage at the heavens. She waited for the Wandering Star to rise - late as it had been doing every night recently, an omen of doom. She waited and when it came she unleashed everything within her, calling all the power of the winds, all the vastness of the sky to her obedience, begging them to tear the Wandering Star down.
Once Twilight was sent by the Elders to fetch her down since her shrieking was causing such a disturbance that people below were being sent into a panic. Twilight was nearly blown over the edge by her rage and no one had made the mistake of disturbing her mourning from that moment.
The Wandering Star winked at her malevolently from its spot just above the horizon.
"You took my mate from me," she screamed back at it. "But I swear by the Dusk Sages, by Karia, by the primal foundations of music itself that I shall outlive you! I will live to see the day that you never rise again."
Her screams echoed over the forest and the effect was satisfying, but no amount of screaming would ever close the wound in her soul.
***
Ryuunosuke did not believe he could ever hate anyone more than he hated Lord Daitokuji Ichirou. And Kiyoshi. He hated Kiyoshi and Ichirou. And the stupid First Minds. Fucking First Minds and their fucking artifacts. He hated First Mind artifacts and he especially hated Kiyoshi and Ichirou when they used their First Mind artifacts. Fuck fuck fucking hate. Like really loathe...
There was no way to describe his fight with Ichirou without using the words utter and humiliation - two words that Ryuunosuke also hated (unless they were being applied to someone else). It would have been bad enough to die in that duel, but Ichirou had allowed nothing of the sort. He systematically dismantled Ryuunosuke, broke his Katana in seven pieces, and refused to accept his surrender until he had pissed himself in front of the whole Silver Phoenix clan while begging for mercy.
Ichirou still insisted that he would face justice for all the members of the Silver Phoenix clan he had killed, especially Kiyoshi, but he refused to say precisely when that would take place. Until then Ryuunosuke had been dragged along, shackled, behind the caravan as they headed overland toward the city of Stardown. Ryuunosuke only stopped brooding on his inchoate rage when he first glimpsed the enormous purple energy dome - and then only for a moment.
They reached the city a few nights ago, entering to fanfare and celebrations. Stardown had become the hub of the resistance to Goshi almost overnight with the creation of the dome. A feat supposedly accomplished by a giant talking lizard - which just proved that the world had gone mad. Lord Daitokuji Ichirou immediately became a general in the resistance and began lending his tactical advice. From time to time he would appear in his enormous silvery Mecha with purple veins of stone all over its surface to impress the citizens and drum up support for the resistance.
Ryuunosuke thought the whole thing was absurd. He hoped Goshi would sweep in here and destroy all of these clowns with a sweep of their hand. He hated purple domes, and giant lizards, and the resistance. He hated it all. Most especially himself.
***
The silhouette of the Geneva Prime skyline receded into the distance at a very slow rate. Every last man, woman and child in this troop was a kill on sight target. So Matthew knew they couldn't draw attention to themselves. Slow and steady, that was the way to go unnoticed. So that was the way they traveled.
Looking back over the ragtag group of 65 or so individuals that were all that remained of the Cheldrun Freedom Coalition, he couldn't help but be very proud. What they were doing was terribly risky, it is true, but since all of their hideouts in the city were ferreted out there really was no place for them to go back to. Hence, they'd agreed to Matthew's proposal that they strike out overland and try to get to Stardown to join the resistance.
Matthew had plenty of worries. He worried that he was an incompetent leader. He worried that he would get all of these men and women killed pointlessly, after he had persuaded many of them to take actions which made an accommodated life impossible. He worried, more simply, that he would get lost on the way to Stardown - geography was never his strong suit. Or that they would arrive too late and Goshi would already have crushed the uprising there.
But he couldn't let his worries distract him now. There were miles to cross. There were mouths to feed. There were Hei-shi to kill. This last part was by far the easiest.
***
Deep in the slums of Geneva Prime battles continued to rage, but the war had long ago been lost. For Cog, a broken shell of a young Mechified with his first adult-sized implant, the war would never end, which meant that he would just go on losing and losing. His whole life was confined to that moment in the alley next to his collapsed tenement, weeping over the body of his mother. He could never escape it, and so he spent his time trying to take vengeance on the Goshi soldiers who brought the tenement crashing down.
His vengeance was the frustrated pointless vengeance of the impotent. He committed vandalism, or threw garbage at soldiers when their backs were turned. Once in a while he was daring enough to shout curses before running away. On most days this would just be ignored, but apparently he'd picked the wrong soldiers to fling garbage at today. They chased him down into an alley and pinned him against a brick wall. One pulled out a military knife and the other joked about practicing cybernetic surgery.
Cog closed his eyes before the pain started. He gritted his teeth, trying not to scream, but it was futile when the knife dug into his arm. They laughed as his adolescent voice cracked when he shouted.
Then, suddenly, they were dead. Cog opened his eyes to see both men with wide eyes. A 3 meter length of rebar had gone through the ear of one and out the neck of the other. They collapsed and the pain in Cog's arm decreased.
He had heard of a hero lurking in the streets of the city. The Bronze God they called him. Cog looked to the end of the alley and saw a figure retreating around the corner. Could it be him?
***
Rumors suggested that one could see the whole of Karia from the top floor of the Goshi Tower. It wasn't true, but Katashi Blade had other ways of keeping tabs on things happening far away. It didn't stop him from peering out the panoramic windows up here in appreciation. Who can say what he saw, but whatever it was he could not have missed the landscape indelibly marked with his hand.
Behind him, Sever and Stitch shifted their weight back and forth uneasily. The Executor was prone to these long moments of silence and it was extremely unsettling. Eventually, Sever couldn't keep it in any longer.
"We really don't know where she is, Executor."
Silence.
"We've checked everywhere. We would have sworn she'd come to us at some point. Maybe she really did die when the Rodan sank."
Silence.
"Anyway, if she's incompetent or a traitor we'll deal with her in our customary way. Just because she's our sister don't me we love her..."
"much." Stitch added helpfully.
Blade made no motion to respond while the brothers kept on prattling in their own defense. Eventually, he cut them off.
"Aimi is most definitely alive, and if you two knew about it you couldn't hide it from me anyway. If you find her, bring her to me. Otherwise, leave me alone."
They both headed for the exit as fast as they could. On the way out Sever asked over his shoulder, "So we're good then?"
The Executor's look was icy, "You two aren't creative enough to betray me. Get out."
***
Far higher than Goshi Tower, from a porthole under the wing of Sennin, Julian looked at Karia Vitalus. From this distance it was a huge blue disk, filling most of his vision. Still, it meant that everything he had ever known was incomprehensibly tiny, overall. A disturbing realization.
He tried to express this to Tara, but he wasn't a very eloquent person, and it was difficult to stay on topic when she was quivering and balling like she was right now. Something about nearly everyone dying and space being a horrible dark place and there being too much blood for her to ever erase from her mind.
When she gets in these moods, she's not very uplifting, he thought.
It was true that the experience of the Rusty Nail Rogues in space had been less than glamorous, and more than a little harrowing. Even now, they drifted without power a short distance from the Wandering Star, hundreds of kilometers above the ground, when at any moment a terrifying Oni or thousands of mutated eyeless might pore out of the gaping crater Moses had created. Presumably Kiyoshi would turn the engines on soon and they would go home. At least Julian hoped so.
The planet is such a small place. I never want to see it like this again.
***
As for Karia herself? The words of the Dusk Sage kept rippling through her thoughts... there is no Peace.
Her fragile little self was wounded to the core by such a pronouncement. She felt the emptiness where her chosen soul should have been. She felt the edges unraveling and knew the horrible truth of the saying. There is no Peace.
She wanted to know the answer. Every blade of grass and pebble of sand quivered in anticipation of the climax of the cosmic drama, but once answered there would be no more mystery. Would the absence of mystery feel like the death of Mokuzai? Like a hole collapsing at the edges and dragging meaning and hope with it into the abyss?
There is no Peace. Karia did not like this answer at all. Not one little bit.
Ceralon, a proud matriarch of her people, was not headed to the surface with the others. She swam with strength and purpose deeper into the coral city, headed for the sacred sanctuary, where all the matriarchs would confer. The departing patrol was a delicate rainbow of fronds, fluttering up toward the sunlight. She watched them as they went, proud of their dedication.
Ahead of her the sanctuary entrance yawned - a cavernous opening in the coral leading through twisting passages into the vast heart of the city. It was too sacred a local for common warriors, outsiders or men to enter, but even matriarchs like Ceralon felt a quickening of the heart when approaching it.
The others would want to have her wisdom concerning the strangers who passed from the East a few days ago. She had spent her whole rest-cycle contemplating the matter. It remained perplexing to her that anyone would desire to go to the Emerald Isle who was not a servant of the demons. However, she would shock the matriarchs today by declaring what she believed to be truth - the strangers were genuine. Perhaps events beyond our horizons are underway, she thought. The idea gave her shivers.
Whatever the reality, she would ask the gathered matriarchs to pray for the success of those strangers. Pray for the end of all demons everywhere. Yes, that would be a good prayer.
***
They first named it Shadowfang in the logging camps south of Geneva Prime. In a day and age when teleportation is real, communication is fast. So it was no surprise to find that news of this mysterious killer made it to all the rural outposts and logging camps between Epsis Four and Ithica. It became popular among the easily frightened Mechified laborers to blame any unexplained death on the Shadowfang. Most foremen, just shook their heads and tried to dispel unhelpful superstitions. There were all sorts of things in the jungle that could kill a man.
What was more disturbing than all the reports was the fact that Shadowfang was real and on the move. It was notoriously hard to get any reliable sightings of the beast, but members of a secretive information brokerage out of Marina had been paid quite well to keep track of it. Even they didn't learn much, but they tracked a pattern of violent killings, some by Jevumm, some with Cheldrun weapons, that appeared to be moving along the edges of wilderness toward the north. At best guesstimate it was now somewhere in the vicinity of the Wreck of the Bosporus and still moving.
Goshi had no interest, when informed of the matter. Just another sighting of the Enemy, they alleged, and used it as an argument for beefing up security. But someone on the Biomade Oversight Council was quite convinced otherwise. It appears to be some kind of Karian-Cheldrun hybrid, he wrote in the memo. We should bring it in if we can and study it for interesting genetic properties...
***
"Good Bye, my beloved Moon."
Those had been his words, carried on the wind over countless kilometers. She sang them and re-sang them in her heart and every time it was a song of such sorrow that no one could hear it without weeping. The Grand Chantry, her choir, the prophecies, Karia itself, could dissolve and become nothing for all she cared. Her love, her Mokuzai, was gone and nothing else mattered.
From the balcony of the highest tower in the Grand Chantry she nightly composed songs of rage at the heavens. She waited for the Wandering Star to rise - late as it had been doing every night recently, an omen of doom. She waited and when it came she unleashed everything within her, calling all the power of the winds, all the vastness of the sky to her obedience, begging them to tear the Wandering Star down.
Once Twilight was sent by the Elders to fetch her down since her shrieking was causing such a disturbance that people below were being sent into a panic. Twilight was nearly blown over the edge by her rage and no one had made the mistake of disturbing her mourning from that moment.
The Wandering Star winked at her malevolently from its spot just above the horizon.
"You took my mate from me," she screamed back at it. "But I swear by the Dusk Sages, by Karia, by the primal foundations of music itself that I shall outlive you! I will live to see the day that you never rise again."
Her screams echoed over the forest and the effect was satisfying, but no amount of screaming would ever close the wound in her soul.
***
Ryuunosuke did not believe he could ever hate anyone more than he hated Lord Daitokuji Ichirou. And Kiyoshi. He hated Kiyoshi and Ichirou. And the stupid First Minds. Fucking First Minds and their fucking artifacts. He hated First Mind artifacts and he especially hated Kiyoshi and Ichirou when they used their First Mind artifacts. Fuck fuck fucking hate. Like really loathe...
There was no way to describe his fight with Ichirou without using the words utter and humiliation - two words that Ryuunosuke also hated (unless they were being applied to someone else). It would have been bad enough to die in that duel, but Ichirou had allowed nothing of the sort. He systematically dismantled Ryuunosuke, broke his Katana in seven pieces, and refused to accept his surrender until he had pissed himself in front of the whole Silver Phoenix clan while begging for mercy.
Ichirou still insisted that he would face justice for all the members of the Silver Phoenix clan he had killed, especially Kiyoshi, but he refused to say precisely when that would take place. Until then Ryuunosuke had been dragged along, shackled, behind the caravan as they headed overland toward the city of Stardown. Ryuunosuke only stopped brooding on his inchoate rage when he first glimpsed the enormous purple energy dome - and then only for a moment.
They reached the city a few nights ago, entering to fanfare and celebrations. Stardown had become the hub of the resistance to Goshi almost overnight with the creation of the dome. A feat supposedly accomplished by a giant talking lizard - which just proved that the world had gone mad. Lord Daitokuji Ichirou immediately became a general in the resistance and began lending his tactical advice. From time to time he would appear in his enormous silvery Mecha with purple veins of stone all over its surface to impress the citizens and drum up support for the resistance.
Ryuunosuke thought the whole thing was absurd. He hoped Goshi would sweep in here and destroy all of these clowns with a sweep of their hand. He hated purple domes, and giant lizards, and the resistance. He hated it all. Most especially himself.
***
The silhouette of the Geneva Prime skyline receded into the distance at a very slow rate. Every last man, woman and child in this troop was a kill on sight target. So Matthew knew they couldn't draw attention to themselves. Slow and steady, that was the way to go unnoticed. So that was the way they traveled.
Looking back over the ragtag group of 65 or so individuals that were all that remained of the Cheldrun Freedom Coalition, he couldn't help but be very proud. What they were doing was terribly risky, it is true, but since all of their hideouts in the city were ferreted out there really was no place for them to go back to. Hence, they'd agreed to Matthew's proposal that they strike out overland and try to get to Stardown to join the resistance.
Matthew had plenty of worries. He worried that he was an incompetent leader. He worried that he would get all of these men and women killed pointlessly, after he had persuaded many of them to take actions which made an accommodated life impossible. He worried, more simply, that he would get lost on the way to Stardown - geography was never his strong suit. Or that they would arrive too late and Goshi would already have crushed the uprising there.
But he couldn't let his worries distract him now. There were miles to cross. There were mouths to feed. There were Hei-shi to kill. This last part was by far the easiest.
***
Deep in the slums of Geneva Prime battles continued to rage, but the war had long ago been lost. For Cog, a broken shell of a young Mechified with his first adult-sized implant, the war would never end, which meant that he would just go on losing and losing. His whole life was confined to that moment in the alley next to his collapsed tenement, weeping over the body of his mother. He could never escape it, and so he spent his time trying to take vengeance on the Goshi soldiers who brought the tenement crashing down.
His vengeance was the frustrated pointless vengeance of the impotent. He committed vandalism, or threw garbage at soldiers when their backs were turned. Once in a while he was daring enough to shout curses before running away. On most days this would just be ignored, but apparently he'd picked the wrong soldiers to fling garbage at today. They chased him down into an alley and pinned him against a brick wall. One pulled out a military knife and the other joked about practicing cybernetic surgery.
Cog closed his eyes before the pain started. He gritted his teeth, trying not to scream, but it was futile when the knife dug into his arm. They laughed as his adolescent voice cracked when he shouted.
Then, suddenly, they were dead. Cog opened his eyes to see both men with wide eyes. A 3 meter length of rebar had gone through the ear of one and out the neck of the other. They collapsed and the pain in Cog's arm decreased.
He had heard of a hero lurking in the streets of the city. The Bronze God they called him. Cog looked to the end of the alley and saw a figure retreating around the corner. Could it be him?
***
Rumors suggested that one could see the whole of Karia from the top floor of the Goshi Tower. It wasn't true, but Katashi Blade had other ways of keeping tabs on things happening far away. It didn't stop him from peering out the panoramic windows up here in appreciation. Who can say what he saw, but whatever it was he could not have missed the landscape indelibly marked with his hand.
Behind him, Sever and Stitch shifted their weight back and forth uneasily. The Executor was prone to these long moments of silence and it was extremely unsettling. Eventually, Sever couldn't keep it in any longer.
"We really don't know where she is, Executor."
Silence.
"We've checked everywhere. We would have sworn she'd come to us at some point. Maybe she really did die when the Rodan sank."
Silence.
"Anyway, if she's incompetent or a traitor we'll deal with her in our customary way. Just because she's our sister don't me we love her..."
"much." Stitch added helpfully.
Blade made no motion to respond while the brothers kept on prattling in their own defense. Eventually, he cut them off.
"Aimi is most definitely alive, and if you two knew about it you couldn't hide it from me anyway. If you find her, bring her to me. Otherwise, leave me alone."
They both headed for the exit as fast as they could. On the way out Sever asked over his shoulder, "So we're good then?"
The Executor's look was icy, "You two aren't creative enough to betray me. Get out."
***
Far higher than Goshi Tower, from a porthole under the wing of Sennin, Julian looked at Karia Vitalus. From this distance it was a huge blue disk, filling most of his vision. Still, it meant that everything he had ever known was incomprehensibly tiny, overall. A disturbing realization.
He tried to express this to Tara, but he wasn't a very eloquent person, and it was difficult to stay on topic when she was quivering and balling like she was right now. Something about nearly everyone dying and space being a horrible dark place and there being too much blood for her to ever erase from her mind.
When she gets in these moods, she's not very uplifting, he thought.
It was true that the experience of the Rusty Nail Rogues in space had been less than glamorous, and more than a little harrowing. Even now, they drifted without power a short distance from the Wandering Star, hundreds of kilometers above the ground, when at any moment a terrifying Oni or thousands of mutated eyeless might pore out of the gaping crater Moses had created. Presumably Kiyoshi would turn the engines on soon and they would go home. At least Julian hoped so.
The planet is such a small place. I never want to see it like this again.
***
As for Karia herself? The words of the Dusk Sage kept rippling through her thoughts... there is no Peace.
Her fragile little self was wounded to the core by such a pronouncement. She felt the emptiness where her chosen soul should have been. She felt the edges unraveling and knew the horrible truth of the saying. There is no Peace.
She wanted to know the answer. Every blade of grass and pebble of sand quivered in anticipation of the climax of the cosmic drama, but once answered there would be no more mystery. Would the absence of mystery feel like the death of Mokuzai? Like a hole collapsing at the edges and dragging meaning and hope with it into the abyss?
There is no Peace. Karia did not like this answer at all. Not one little bit.
The All
Spinning beyond time. Ever changing yet eternally consistent, the All is that which is. It initiates ineffably, untraceably and implacably the Unraveling.
The All unravels galaxies.
Galaxies unravel stars.
Stars unravel planets.
Planets unravel life-givers, the Dusk Sages.
The Dusk Sages are the last tools of the All. The final stage before the Question. It is they who unravel life.
The Unraveling is inevitable, more certain than gravity, but it continues not for itself, but for the possibility of the conditions of the Question. The Question is all that lives. Life itself is what the All is asking and all of the tools of the All, galaxies, stars, planets and sages, exist but to create the conditions of life.
Questions require answers.
As the Unraveling progresses, life spreads, and advances. But eventually the tools themselves unravel completely. The crisis. The cataclysm. The All has addressed its question to the void and the drama plays out. An answer is given.
Does a question cease being asked once it is answered? Is there only one answer? The choices of the living are opaque. The intention of the All is unknowable. Curiosity and anticipation are all that we have.
Karia is a tool of the All. Not living herself she worships life. She bends her ear to their songs and she watches avidly. A desire to know how it will unfold her only pressing reality. She acts as a tool - according to the demands of the one who wields her. Choice is not a gift she possesses, but her actions nevertheless have consequences. The ones she has marked and bound to herself will bear those consequences and likewise she will know weal or woe in accordance with their behavior. It is the first time in countless eras that her future has been uncertain. She likes it.
An answer will be given. Praise the All, an answer will be given, at last.
Asamu-Oni
The ground where Asamu-Oni sat was saturated with wrong. The Sygola trees around it, lush with life only days before, were dead and decaying now, their leaves gone, their trunks split open and festering like corpses. The lagoon was a deep red, like an eyeless socket, a pit of blood in the jungle. Gone were the laughing Zipsum of the Riverswift Tribe, the birds of the air, and the frogs in the lagoon. In their place maggots and bacteria swarmed, greedy for this hoard of carrion, but an observant eye would see how quickly the scavengers were destroyed by the malevolent presence in that place. Their shriveled corpses piled up, becoming food for the next insatiable but doomed flesh-crawler.
Karia wept to see the destruction as she asked the presence, "Who are you?"
I am Asamu-Oni, the one who rots.
"Why are you here?"
I was called.
"What is your purpose?"
I will avenge my brother, Garandou-Oni, the one who takes.
The trunk of a giant Sygola tree collapsed with a noxious fart. Rotting from the inside, foul gases built up until they forced their way through the soft bark, rending the tree in half. Karia shuddered, the smell was horrible. Asamu-Oni shifted his weight, sending black tendrils leaking along the ground, pulling himself like an obscene pile of refuse through the jungle.
"They will be expecting you."
That is good. The taste is sweeter when the death is foreseen.
"Many things have been foreseen regarding them."
But only one of these is certain.
"I have given them gifts and curses for moments such as these."
Your breath is wasted Karia. I am going to eat your children. All of them. And then I will shit them out and they will sit on you, rotting, for eternity.
Karia wept to see the destruction as she asked the presence, "Who are you?"
I am Asamu-Oni, the one who rots.
"Why are you here?"
I was called.
"What is your purpose?"
I will avenge my brother, Garandou-Oni, the one who takes.
The trunk of a giant Sygola tree collapsed with a noxious fart. Rotting from the inside, foul gases built up until they forced their way through the soft bark, rending the tree in half. Karia shuddered, the smell was horrible. Asamu-Oni shifted his weight, sending black tendrils leaking along the ground, pulling himself like an obscene pile of refuse through the jungle.
"They will be expecting you."
That is good. The taste is sweeter when the death is foreseen.
"Many things have been foreseen regarding them."
But only one of these is certain.
"I have given them gifts and curses for moments such as these."
Your breath is wasted Karia. I am going to eat your children. All of them. And then I will shit them out and they will sit on you, rotting, for eternity.
Prelude to the End of Season One
From the deck of Goshi's flagship Mothra, a Mechified seaman on break surveyed the bustle in the port. Puffing the stub of a cigar, his eyes followed the progress of a newly emptied freight-train up the steep rails to the tunnels which would lead into the valley of Geneva Prime. The city itself was obscured from view here, but over the edge of the mountain he could see wisps of smoke rising, a sign that the chaos was ongoing. Fuckin' unpreceden'ed, he thought. Never thought I'd see the day when Goshi was out of control in their own city.
A chill rippled down his furnace-heated torso. Instinctually he looked up to the state room balconies and caught sight of a man, all in white, on the highest level. The seaman knew he'd been overheard.
Jump overboard. The command was matter of fact, betraying no emotion, but brooking no disobedience.
The plunge into the filthy harbor water was surprisingly serene. Panic didn't set in until he was two-thirds of the way to the murky bottom and realized how difficult it is to swim when your body is a metric tonne of metal.
***
The thoughts of Katashi Blade, like icy wind, rushed over the telepathic network into the ear piece of the Vice President for Distribution, Rain. Yes, Executor. As you command.
Ever the instrument of precision, Rain, had taken over as acting director of Security, in addition to her other roles. The officers in Goshi's security force had come to hold her in a kind of awe already, in her first day. She was far less capricious than their previous superiors, but also completely immune to bargaining. Failure meant termination, and she demonstrated this immediately by issuing orders to banish the loved ones of every officer up the chain of command who had been involved in the debacle at the mine entrance. Yes, she used the word debacle, and she meant it. Nothing like that would be happening under her watch.
Especially not now. While Katashi Blade journeyed to Marina to hold another demonstration of the White Rock DisLocator for the Biomade Oversight Council, this time without interruptions, she was effectively the most powerful person in Geneva Prime. That meant she was responsible, and while Rain was responsible things were going to function like clockwork.
The Executor's orders might have shocked another person, but Rain, didn't hesitate for a moment. Her mind went straight to work calculating costs and came to the same conclusion, she imagined, as him. It would be cheaper this way, and send a message not likely to be forgotten in the near future. She pressed the button on her intercom, a pink light bloomed.
"Yes, director?"
Rain thought carefully about her exact words, "Order the Heishi to begin deploying heat bombs in sectors 4, 35, 171 & 215. Do not stop until I notify them I have received the unconditional surrender of the Underground Mechified Army."
There was stunned silence from the other end.
"Don't think about it, just do it. It's a long walk for your loved ones to get to Stardown from here." She clicked the intercom off, her mind still rattling out a cost-benefit analysis.
***
Out the windows of the Goshi Tower the streets of central Geneva Prime were a battleground. After the initial onslaught at the mine entrance it had spilled into nearby slums, becoming a guerrilla war of slow attrition, confusion and chaos. Goshi soldiers ran in columns down the streets, firing up at insurgents tossing homemade bombs from tenement windows, or disappearing into alleyways. Countless Mechified, spurred by the heroic display put on by Moses at the memorial, had swelled the ranks of the insurgents till it was impossible even for the UMA to know who was a combatant and who was a bystander. As a result, everyone became a target for Goshi bullets.
Behind a manufacturing plant a Heishi breathed his last gasps as a pneumatic hammer pounded like a piston through his skull. Amos shook the gore from his metal arm and looked defiantly at the ring of blue-armored elite soldiers around him. His face was wild and streaked with oil, which he spit in brown streaks from his chapped lips. Who knows what was broken, but it was leaking into his lungs and it tasted like shit.
"C'mon motherfuckers. I haven't had a conscience since my brother Omar was killed. Get too close to my hammer here and you won't have one anymore either."
The Heishi pounced all together. Amos disappeared under a wave of blue.
***
A muscular hand burst up out of the rubble. Concrete dust settled all around. With superhuman effort someone slowly lifted a massive slab, formerly of the ceiling and, placing their feet under it, heaved it to the side with a crunch. From within the rubble of a destroyed tenement, thin wheezing breaths could be faintly heard.
The slow emergence of this casualty from the fallen structure went completely unnoticed by columns of soldiers jogging past in the street. Neither did they notice a small mechified boy weeping in an alleyway over the corpse of his mother, recently retrieved from the same collapsed building. They jogged by with determination, eyes scanning only for potential threats, missing the signs of anguish around them.
The hand grabbed a piece of rebar and heaved. Statuesque shoulders, dreadlocked hair, and then the whole upper body of Balder the Gogajin rose from the ruins. Concrete dust caked in his wounds, labored breathing betraying a pierced lung, his back a nightmare landscape of bullet wounds, half of his face crusted over with an unsightly scab, Balder dragged himself to his feet, and walked on a broken ankle into the street. Instead of blood, his veins flowed with righteous anger and there were some Goshi soldiers nearby who were good candidates to help him do some anger management.
***
The students at Washi San academy were sombre listening to the announcement. It made no sense. Lord Daitokuji Ichirou, patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan and first pilot of the academy turned traitor? They might as well have said that gravity temporarily reversed directions or, contrary to all former knowledge, the sun really does revolve around Karia. Impossible. Ichirou and traitor were words that never belonged in the same sentence together unless the traitor was being struck down by Ichirou.
Whatever the students thought, the Grand Master knew what was necessary to save his academy. However much it grieved him, he must cooperate with Goshi and order his students to pursue and capture Ichirou at any opportunity. With a solemnity bordering on the funeral of a beloved monarch the students struck Ichirou's banner - the purple field with three silver feathers. They removed it from the place of honor and ritually desecrated it. The Silver Phoenix clan would require a long time to overcome this dishonor.
***
A nurse rolled her cart down the corridor checking room numbers - ah 324. She looked at the checklist and noting the patient's name, Malicious, withdrew a serial coded syringe from the appropriate compartment. As a precaution none of the nurses in this hospital ever know what the syringes contain, since many of the patients are telepathic and it increases distress if they realize what treatment they are given. Thus, blissfully ignorant, this prim young nurse went into the room where a teenage girl with ebony hair lay unconscious in traction.
She checked the patient's pulse, steady. Listened to her breathing, even. Then turned her arm so that she could have access to a vein, nice and plump.
The syringe went in silently and the clear fluid was dispensed in moments. The orderly rubbed the spot with a little cotton swab to get the drop of blood, and cheerily departed.
Malicious was dead before the door swung closed.
***
Karia watched all of this with something bordering on obsession. Such an intricate web. So complex, the chains of consequences. So many purposes being fulfilled and denied, discovered and destroyed. Karia knew that, as a planet, she had no pulse, even still she felt her heart pounding. There will be ramifications, she whispered, for all of this. There will be prices to be paid and yet...The thing which continually drew her back to this scene is the amazing depths to which these people reached in themselves to find the price that is asked and meet it. Almost instinctually, they seem to understand that their lives matter.
Not just their lives. All lives. Life itself is the question that the cosmos are asking. It could all so easily not be. A tiny shift of a universal constant here, a miniscule blip in the laws of physics there. The universe sat back like an artist considering the composition, undecided. Paint it back to white? Or let the riot of colors continue...
The marked ones, the ones that Karia had cursed with gifts, they would be the pivotal actors in this drama. How would they answer the question? Karia wondered. No, she practically shrieked and danced about in anticipation. Did they feel it? Did they intuit the answer? Did they know the enormous burden that was being placed on them, or comprehend the vastness of that one word question:
Life?
A chill rippled down his furnace-heated torso. Instinctually he looked up to the state room balconies and caught sight of a man, all in white, on the highest level. The seaman knew he'd been overheard.
Jump overboard. The command was matter of fact, betraying no emotion, but brooking no disobedience.
The plunge into the filthy harbor water was surprisingly serene. Panic didn't set in until he was two-thirds of the way to the murky bottom and realized how difficult it is to swim when your body is a metric tonne of metal.
***
The thoughts of Katashi Blade, like icy wind, rushed over the telepathic network into the ear piece of the Vice President for Distribution, Rain. Yes, Executor. As you command.
Ever the instrument of precision, Rain, had taken over as acting director of Security, in addition to her other roles. The officers in Goshi's security force had come to hold her in a kind of awe already, in her first day. She was far less capricious than their previous superiors, but also completely immune to bargaining. Failure meant termination, and she demonstrated this immediately by issuing orders to banish the loved ones of every officer up the chain of command who had been involved in the debacle at the mine entrance. Yes, she used the word debacle, and she meant it. Nothing like that would be happening under her watch.
Especially not now. While Katashi Blade journeyed to Marina to hold another demonstration of the White Rock DisLocator for the Biomade Oversight Council, this time without interruptions, she was effectively the most powerful person in Geneva Prime. That meant she was responsible, and while Rain was responsible things were going to function like clockwork.
The Executor's orders might have shocked another person, but Rain, didn't hesitate for a moment. Her mind went straight to work calculating costs and came to the same conclusion, she imagined, as him. It would be cheaper this way, and send a message not likely to be forgotten in the near future. She pressed the button on her intercom, a pink light bloomed.
"Yes, director?"
Rain thought carefully about her exact words, "Order the Heishi to begin deploying heat bombs in sectors 4, 35, 171 & 215. Do not stop until I notify them I have received the unconditional surrender of the Underground Mechified Army."
There was stunned silence from the other end.
"Don't think about it, just do it. It's a long walk for your loved ones to get to Stardown from here." She clicked the intercom off, her mind still rattling out a cost-benefit analysis.
***
Out the windows of the Goshi Tower the streets of central Geneva Prime were a battleground. After the initial onslaught at the mine entrance it had spilled into nearby slums, becoming a guerrilla war of slow attrition, confusion and chaos. Goshi soldiers ran in columns down the streets, firing up at insurgents tossing homemade bombs from tenement windows, or disappearing into alleyways. Countless Mechified, spurred by the heroic display put on by Moses at the memorial, had swelled the ranks of the insurgents till it was impossible even for the UMA to know who was a combatant and who was a bystander. As a result, everyone became a target for Goshi bullets.
Behind a manufacturing plant a Heishi breathed his last gasps as a pneumatic hammer pounded like a piston through his skull. Amos shook the gore from his metal arm and looked defiantly at the ring of blue-armored elite soldiers around him. His face was wild and streaked with oil, which he spit in brown streaks from his chapped lips. Who knows what was broken, but it was leaking into his lungs and it tasted like shit.
"C'mon motherfuckers. I haven't had a conscience since my brother Omar was killed. Get too close to my hammer here and you won't have one anymore either."
The Heishi pounced all together. Amos disappeared under a wave of blue.
***
A muscular hand burst up out of the rubble. Concrete dust settled all around. With superhuman effort someone slowly lifted a massive slab, formerly of the ceiling and, placing their feet under it, heaved it to the side with a crunch. From within the rubble of a destroyed tenement, thin wheezing breaths could be faintly heard.
The slow emergence of this casualty from the fallen structure went completely unnoticed by columns of soldiers jogging past in the street. Neither did they notice a small mechified boy weeping in an alleyway over the corpse of his mother, recently retrieved from the same collapsed building. They jogged by with determination, eyes scanning only for potential threats, missing the signs of anguish around them.
The hand grabbed a piece of rebar and heaved. Statuesque shoulders, dreadlocked hair, and then the whole upper body of Balder the Gogajin rose from the ruins. Concrete dust caked in his wounds, labored breathing betraying a pierced lung, his back a nightmare landscape of bullet wounds, half of his face crusted over with an unsightly scab, Balder dragged himself to his feet, and walked on a broken ankle into the street. Instead of blood, his veins flowed with righteous anger and there were some Goshi soldiers nearby who were good candidates to help him do some anger management.
***
The students at Washi San academy were sombre listening to the announcement. It made no sense. Lord Daitokuji Ichirou, patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan and first pilot of the academy turned traitor? They might as well have said that gravity temporarily reversed directions or, contrary to all former knowledge, the sun really does revolve around Karia. Impossible. Ichirou and traitor were words that never belonged in the same sentence together unless the traitor was being struck down by Ichirou.
Whatever the students thought, the Grand Master knew what was necessary to save his academy. However much it grieved him, he must cooperate with Goshi and order his students to pursue and capture Ichirou at any opportunity. With a solemnity bordering on the funeral of a beloved monarch the students struck Ichirou's banner - the purple field with three silver feathers. They removed it from the place of honor and ritually desecrated it. The Silver Phoenix clan would require a long time to overcome this dishonor.
***
A nurse rolled her cart down the corridor checking room numbers - ah 324. She looked at the checklist and noting the patient's name, Malicious, withdrew a serial coded syringe from the appropriate compartment. As a precaution none of the nurses in this hospital ever know what the syringes contain, since many of the patients are telepathic and it increases distress if they realize what treatment they are given. Thus, blissfully ignorant, this prim young nurse went into the room where a teenage girl with ebony hair lay unconscious in traction.
She checked the patient's pulse, steady. Listened to her breathing, even. Then turned her arm so that she could have access to a vein, nice and plump.
The syringe went in silently and the clear fluid was dispensed in moments. The orderly rubbed the spot with a little cotton swab to get the drop of blood, and cheerily departed.
Malicious was dead before the door swung closed.
***
Karia watched all of this with something bordering on obsession. Such an intricate web. So complex, the chains of consequences. So many purposes being fulfilled and denied, discovered and destroyed. Karia knew that, as a planet, she had no pulse, even still she felt her heart pounding. There will be ramifications, she whispered, for all of this. There will be prices to be paid and yet...The thing which continually drew her back to this scene is the amazing depths to which these people reached in themselves to find the price that is asked and meet it. Almost instinctually, they seem to understand that their lives matter.
Not just their lives. All lives. Life itself is the question that the cosmos are asking. It could all so easily not be. A tiny shift of a universal constant here, a miniscule blip in the laws of physics there. The universe sat back like an artist considering the composition, undecided. Paint it back to white? Or let the riot of colors continue...
The marked ones, the ones that Karia had cursed with gifts, they would be the pivotal actors in this drama. How would they answer the question? Karia wondered. No, she practically shrieked and danced about in anticipation. Did they feel it? Did they intuit the answer? Did they know the enormous burden that was being placed on them, or comprehend the vastness of that one word question:
Life?
Karia Vitalus
From the beginning she was watching. At first she watched merely because she was curious and because, if she was perfectly honest, there wasn't much else for a planet to do except spin around and around all day getting dizzy. She watched oceans bubble up and freeze, then melt and shift around. She watched continents playing their games of bumper cars, bouncing on tip toes across beds of hot magma. She watched bacteria fizz and eat and multiply and diversify and start piling on extra cells until some of the cells on the outside started getting crispy and hard and they turned into trilobites.
She watched trilobites for a long time. What is it about them that they stick in the fossil record so... adamantly?
She watched fish and reptiles and algae and plants and insects. Sometimes, though she hoped they didn't notice, she napped. She took a long snooze through the cretaceous. Despite what most young boys believe, dinosaurs are not that interesting.
She watched ice come and retreat, and come and retreat again dozens of times. She watched births and deaths and usually she had a hard time telling the difference. She watched a lot of things, but through all of it she was watching indifferently; watching only because the cosmos had seen fit to put her here and give her something to watch. It wasn’t much of a show either.
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