Chapter 16: Beneath Our Unmarked Graves

There is a filthiness brought out by the Sun that makes me nervous under the moon. Before Anpiel spread her wings and the Four Winds blew, the Sun was as I said before, a soiled wound that oozed blood and pus. Its light was sometimes orange as an old torch, sometimes red and inflamed, sometimes a jaundiced yellow, and its brightness merely showed more acutely how sullied was the sky. It was covered in filth and dirt and rocky ruin when we crested the top of the sword wound, and seeing it put me in a foul mood. Even the news that we would all be heading for Haven, the coastal hub Noak spoke of, gave me no comfort. I trudged wearily under the solar malaise, my breath growing ever more shallow in the miasma the Dolomites had protected me from. An Ossarian whose name escapes me gave me a mask to wear, and it helped filter the noxious odors and debris, but I still felt growing fatigue. The Vandals wore masks that had the look of armor, with square canisters fastened to slotted mouth guards. Kendra would not wear a mask, and I found myself having to carry her over my back after a matter of hours.

"Were the valley free of thieves," Noak was saying, "people might have settled there. The air was fairly clean."

"That might happen," Kobb replied, "now that Jadus's men and those golems have been destroyed."

"You people should stay there," said one of the tarrasquin. He was pointing a clawed finger at Noak.

"We'd rather move further away," Noak replied. I noticed that no one was willing to reveal where they planned to go after Haven. I decided to do the same, and never again mentioned Thirty-Third Day. Dolores had hinted that Haven might be a good place for Kendra and I to settle down. I did not disagree with her, and had decided that I would delay my journey to Thirty-Third Day until I was older and more experienced. One reason for this was the Bibliotheca, a massive library compiled over generations from books brought to Haven from every corner of the world. Kobb was telling me of it after he heard me reciting a passage from an old book to Kendra to distract her from the burning in her lungs. I urged her repeatedly to wear a mask, but she vehemently shook her head, and screamed and fought when we tried to put one on her. I tried to feel excited about Haven and its library, but as the day wore on Kendra's health faded, until she was too weak to resist us putting on a mask. Then she had to be carried. Fortunately the Vandals had a foldable gurney, and so we lost little time and energy. I couldn't sleep that night, and sat by her constantly, foregoing my watch. In the morning she seemed a little better, to my elation. We still carried her, though, and I got very stern with her when she tried taking off her mask. She didn't when we put blankets on her, at least. I again was indebted to and in admiration of the Vandals. While the Ossarians shivered around their campfires, we wore insulated coats and trousers that staved off much of the cold. For all the Vandals help, however, at this point of the journey, I mostly lamented the attack on the sanctum.

A strong wind began to blow from the south when we were three days out from the canyon. On the wind rode the stench of the giant's corpse; a dry, sickly smell. It was faint, but noticeable, and the Vandals all worried what it might attract. On the fifth day, their worry came to life. I saw on the horizon a shape like I never dreamed could exist. On six legs of tremendous length, a long bodied beast strode at what seemed a glacial pace, though I knew its feet must have swept gales over the land with their force of movement. It towered over boulders and hills, its headless torso floating like a ship over a rolling sea, and its long tail raised like a ship's mast catching the wind. A diamond shaped fin spread outward from the last fourth of its tail, and its feet seemed to be rounded stumps until they came close to the ground. Then a million shadowy fingers spread outward to greet the shaking earth.

"It has no head and now it's dead," Kendra sang on her gurney.

"It's mouth is on the bottom of its body," said a Vandal girl who was between Kendra's age and mine. "It stands over its food and squats down to eat it."

"What's it called?". I was hypnotized by the beast. Its size, lack of a head, and everything else about it seemed to contradict the logic of life. It looked as if someone had fished a whale out of the sea and dropped it on a small grove of gigantic trees.

"Archon," grunted a tarrasquin. They'd taken to walking close to us and the Vandals since leaving the canyon.

"There's only supposed to be two of them on Ataroa," the girl added.

"Will it harm us?". I was almost petrified from my fear of the thing.

"Only if you walk under its foot," said Kobb, who had fallen back to walk with us.

"Ticks and leeches," said another of the tarrasquin.

"Aye, they can attract parasites that to them are no bigger than a dust mite, but to us would cause quite a bother. We'll keep our distance from that monster, so we've nought to worry about.

"Mites are bad on him," said the tarrasquin. "No wonder he so weak."

The archon was framed by a singular swath of green moonlight, and though I had no previous sighting to compare to, it seemed the great beast was bowed down as if heavily laden. Kobb looked through his monocular, then handed it to me. I gasped, though not at what Kobb wanted me to see. I gasped at the ineffable complexity of the creature's design. An army of craftsmen with every sort of tool and infinite time could not so richly engrave the grandest of cathedrals, and every marking on the archon's magnificent hide glowed a different hue of thinly traced light. If such an animal could be tamed, it could serve as both guardian and guide to a weary people in need of both. I pictured an entire village built atop its back, the people luring flying creatures to its mouth to feed it in return for carrying them.

Then I saw what Kobb had seen, and I felt sick and afraid. All along its soft belly were translucent sacks that roiled with a pallid putrescence. I took them for growths at first, but then I saw that here and there some would remove themselves and scuttle to a less crowded spot on segmented legs, then uncoil a long proboscis that went rigid at full extension and stab themselves back in.

"We should kill it," I heard myself say. Those close enough to hear me laughed.

"You're quick to write him off," said Kobb. "An old bull like that can handle a few ticks."

"More than few," came the tarrasquin rebuttal, "more than ticks,"

The sellsword was right. On the archon's legs were thousands of small eels with dozens of legs apiece. I realized they must all be the size of my torso and shuddered. A cruel, but necessary thought came to me, surely a gift from my fallen fathers.

"The archon must die, and its parasites with it." I was forcefully struck with sadness. How many wide and hidden lands had this creature sojourned across to gather this macabre menagerie? How many vistas that only one so tall had he taken in, and how impassable mountains had he and he alone ascended beyond? Dolores had told me Tarthas could be saved, Asher told me it should be saved, and the archon told me it would be saved. This was to be the first of many purging fires kindled by my hand.

"Poison it." My words were blunt and hard. The others, debating whether or not we possessed the means to destroy an archon at all, let alone the army of parasites it carried along with it, all turned and stared. Doubtless they were dumbfounded more that they did not think of the idea rather than the fact that I did.

"Best way," said Rath, one of the tarrasquin. "Too bad we have no poison."

"We have some," said Dolores. She had come silently close and listened for some time.

"Not nearly enough for that poor brute," said Kobb.

"No," Dolores agreed, "but we aren't far from Matoya's cave."

Kobb lowered his head and shook it. "I'd hoped to pass her by altogether." The tarrasquin looked equally unenthused.

"Who is this Matoya?" I asked. I find it amusing to think about now, that I felt a sense of authority then, being that the plan being discussed was originally mine.

Kobb told me I'd see soon enough, and I did, though it felt like a painfully long journey. We only slept for a few hours, as each one brought the archon worrisomely closer. We travelled due east, towards the wall of old steel that rose so high it blocked the rising of the Sun. I had vague memories of seeing that wall from its base, though I could not place them in any sensible order with the rest of my life. But then all my life before the sanctum, save the great hall with its ceiling of steel girders and gaseous torches, were a fog too dense to see through. It was only the looming visage of the wall that reminded me I'd seen it, in perhaps, perhaps in life. When we finished our march, the Sun was glimmering faintly above the wall, a pale orange stain on a field of rubble.

There were three hills connected by a ridge of broken rock surrounding a standing stone as tall as the Westing House belfry. A line of light blue beames ran the length of each corner of the stone, from the ground to the pyramidal top. Kobb and Omen Brought ventured down to the stone and did a sweep of its perimeter, then waved us all down. Kendra was able to stand and walk now, but she tired easily. She sat down against the center stone and.hummed whenever the lights passed by her. I pressed a finger against the stone where the light appeared, expecting it to feel warm, but it was as cold as anything else in the open air. Other than Noak and his wife, the Ossarians all remained at the ring of hills, watching curiously as the Vandals and tarrasquin inspected the stone for hidden glyphs.

"Here," said Omen Brought. He had his torched raised above his head. On the surface of the stone, which was as smooth as fresh forged iron, a faint symbol shone in the torch light.

"She leaves a sign when she's out scavenging," explained Vandal boy. He was younger than me by the freshness of his face, but as well armed and equipped as any of the Vandal adults. "That way anyone looking to buy can see where she's at, so long as they know how to read her signs."

I nodded my thanks, then shivered in the cold. The clothes given me were warm, and my robe had rejuvenating properties, but I was completely unused to the natural air outside the sanctum. I went to Kendra and sat by her until Omen Brought gave the signal to move. I was beginning to see that he and his mercenaries were far more capable than even the Vandals, and I wondered how long they had been in Ataroa. Rath came near us and looked thoughtfully at Kendra. His head plate and row of horns looked devilish in the dim light of Vandal torches.

"Sister?", he asked.

I nodded. She may as well have been.

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"She look different than you. Not like sister."

"Why would you ask someone a question, then deny the answer?". I was in no mood to be tested by a stranger. Rath shook his head, and I was so angry I would have shoved him back against the monolith, were I the size and strength I am now. I'm not a big man, to be sure. But I'm taller than most, and while slender, the rigors of riding with Turk and his band have made me hard of body and unyielding in spirit. These are the true traits of a warrior, not thickness of limb or mechanical poise.

But I was still a small boy who knew next to nothing of the world, or so I thought, and so I contented myself with an eye roll.

Omen Brought and Kobb went off on their own, while Rath and Dolores kept a vigilant watch with both groups' top scouts. I put my arm around Kendra's shoulder and held her tight. All the while I watched the archon. It was not coming directly our way, but it was coming closer all the same, and I was haunted by the sight of the parasites. There were so many, so large, so many...

My stomach churned as I imagined what pain the poor creature must have been enduring. Wether caused by the sickened air, the increased cold, the decrease of food and water, or the overall shock of the bizarre and unexpected change in my circumstances, I saw a vision that became so real to me I would have felt it against my skin if I'd reached out to touch it.

My mind is quick to flee from the corporeal to seek its answers. You might label me a lunatic for this. I will not judge my own sanity, as doing so would likely be the first proof that I have none, for I would deem myself one of the few sane members of my kind, if not the only. But, what I will openly state with surety, is that I see things that many do not, and along with a bright inward lamp comes the hardening of morals needed to set the bones of my world to heal despite its screams. So call me mad if you will, I have no shame. For with this celerity of soul, I have traversed infinite planes to confine the spirit of darkness within its primeval crypt, and soon there will again be light.

So as a scholar into a tome, I dove into an entrancement while watching the archon. I had yet to see any of the arks, so I had no comparison to the unearthly sway of its elongated body on its six legs that would otherwise stride in ignorance of terrain or fatigue. And while the sickness that flooded its veins from the backwash of parasitic swill did somewhat subdue its transcendence, it could still be seen, and while apparently weakened, its wind-treading stride remained a thing not of our world.

The foreignness of the animal chased my thoughts from the confines of Victor Thirty-Nine and Tarthas itself, and the scene that unravelled took place in a womb of black perpetuity. Points of light, swaths of color, and cascades of lightning followed by soundless disturbance painted for me a guess at what the sky kept hidden. Or maybe it was the birthplace of the sky, and the dying orb that rose in fraction at the bottom of my view was the prison we call the world. The orb churned, noxious and covered with steaming clouds that reeked of piss and puke before my own desire for freedom cleansed it and washed it white. It was now an egg, over which a woman in a clean white robe lay, arms coiled about the egg with so much love. Her eyes and lips were closed tight. She would never let go of the egg. This was long before I ever set foot in the pinnacle tower of Clarion, and the reason I look back on my waking dreams with so much credibility.

When I saw the dream egg hatch I thought the child that emerged to be Asher, but as it rose its face and body changed. All peoples were contained within its shell, and as it rose the mother fragmented away as did the poor boy atop the westing house, and the great Neophilus of olde. I felt hope, but the changing child began to slow its metamorphosis, and each new shade or shape began to swell and hold still, so that the creature was malformed and hideous, its face a misconstrued mass of lumps and craters. The parasites grew weary of the tainted archon's blood, and one by one they began detaching themselves and creeping for the sick child.

I heard my name through my growing unease. Kobb had returned with Omen Brought. There was no one with them. Kendra was by my side, but had slumped away from me and slept on the cold ground. I didn't like her lack of color. I laid my jacket over her and went to Kobb and Omen Brought. By the time I reached them at the height of the tallest hill, they had already departed again, this time bringing several more scouts with them. I asked Dolores to watch over Kendra. She told me I would need my jacket, and that she would put a blanket over Kendra and stay by her, as well as send two of her people along with me.

"Only if they're silent, and don't question anything I do." My days serving the Dolomites taught me what a boon it was to be assisted by silent servitors. I set out with the boy who spoke of the glyphs, and a girl with bright red hair who possessed a strange, awkward, gawking set of features that I found oddly attractive. We donned packs with rations and flares, then I went to retrieve my jacket from Kendra once Dolores had gone to her with a blanket. On my path to her, I saw that the glyph had changed. It was fading very slowly, and a new one had begun to manifest lower on the monolith. I didn't recognise the script, but it pulsed at a regular interval that sent a harmonic message through my bones. I kissed the top of Kendra's head after reclaiming my jacket, and chose a direction that filled my gut with a calming throb.

The path we struck brought us back the way we came at first. We drew close to the Ossarians, and I heard a few hushed voices talking of the dead boy and the Dolomite's little monster. The Ossarians were often an uneducated bunch, in any iteration, not prone to comprehending nuance. But when I heard talk of the dead boy's mad pet, I grew irritated. But I was pressed by the urgency of the situation, and spared them the earful brewing in my thoughts.

My frustration towards them faded when we were out of sight of the stone. This happened much more quickly than I ever would have expected. We walked briskly for a half mile, and as if we passed through a curtain, the standing stone and the distant torches of our companions were gone. We went straight for another hundred paces or more, then found a steep decline leading to a flat space marked by small hillocks. We went to the middle of the space and searched, as I felt a nagging sensation, as if being called, and coming close enough to a hillock for our torches to illuminate them found they were made of rubble and corpses.

I felt afraid, and without checking the freshness of the corpses I withdrew, turning to the direction of our approach. I stopped suddenly, more afraid of what I saw there than the heaps of dead bodies. Where we came from, where I'd seen the lights of our companions go dark, the world was walled off from us by a curtain of translucence that seemed to carry on for miles. If I were to attribute a color to it, I would say it was black, but there were thin waves of violet, and greenish blue flashes darting like water insects. The soot ridden sky was gone. The cloaked moon was gone. Our torches soon flickered and went out. We though, we glowed. I saw the Ossarian children lined by pale halos, and when I looked at my hands, they shimmered gold. A soft gold, a light gold, almost white, but gold. It was the first time in my life I'd seen golden light. I see it again now, growing an inch a day, but there was nary a time between, and so I indulge in the memory of it now. I saw gold, and it came from me. I've abandoned the thought that I might be chosen, determined just to be a man who tried and never quit. But when I closed the tombs and laid the dark spirit to rest, seeing the light that came from my hands split the sky shook me down to my spinal marrow.

"Ooh," said a voice. I might have taken it for an animal, or some musical instrument accidentally activated in one of the rubbish heaps, but it bore the distinct emotion of a person intrigued by what they saw. I turned toward the sound, noticing that the glow around the Vandal children had dimmed and mine had increased. Atop the furthest heap, a furlong or so away, a hunched figure was holding a corpse by its arm. It dropped the arm and immediately came toward me.

There was a deranged form of femininity in the figure's movements, but whatever its gender, it was not human, nor was it of any kindred I'd seen in the westing house. It was covered in discolored scraps of other garments which it held together at the chest with a small, segmented arm. Its other two arms were much longer, and I noticed they had three pointed fingers; one shorter digit opposed to the others. The shorter arm only had two, and it gave me a shiver to look at it. As it came close, I saw it had a bundle of refuse strapped to its back. It seemed the mongrel's loping gate was in part to keep the bundle from falling off. This did not make its movement any less unnerving to me. In fact if it were not for the Vandal children, I might have turned and ran. But I did not want to alarm them or appear craven, so I stood still, even when the creature reached with one of its gangrel arms and placed a pointed finger on the lapel of my jacket, right over my brand. I tried to make out the details of its face, hoping by doing s9 to ledden my fear, but I could perceive nothing recognizable under the sullied rags draped over what I assumed to be its head. In truth, it looked more like a claw at the end of a finger than a head mounted on a long neck. The 'neck' was jointed, and though the 'head' swiveled, it was too thin and angular to house proper sensory organs.

"There you are, Matoya," boomed Turk. The creature recoiled, and I turned, delighted, and looked in happy surprise at that magnificent man I so admired. He had just dismounted when I saw him, as his destrier bobbed in the still air. I smiled widely, and he said my name. My brand burned with pride.

"I'm glad you survived, Victor Thirty-Nine. I worried for you when we came across your sanctum. How is your friend?"

"Hurt, but alive." He said 'we', and as if queued by the word, my eyes saw his band. One by one they stepped through Matoya's photonic veil. There were six of them; four men and two women, from various kindreds. A tarrasquin man of massive size, a lucian woman who's phosphorus skin gleamed under translucent armor, a human in furs and a human in steel, and an antagarthan wielding two spears, and a tyfloch whose entire body was wrapped in red leather, even her wings.

They were a motley bunch, the Cataphract and his team. Each looked as if they were hand picked and highly specialized, with their venerable captain standing in the place of fallen fathers. Jealousy and hope were a two edged blade. It gladdened me to see that Turk was in the habit of taking in strays, but here were six people in the place I wished to occupy alone.

"Lift your cloak, Matoya," Turk said, the very pitch of his voice a command, "you have patrons at your door."

The creature hobbled dutifully to Turk, dropped its bundle on the ground, fumbled through it, and produced a ghastly skull that sent a clammy trickle of sweat down my back.

"Where did you find that?" Turk asked, his voice mean, angry and fearful.

The creature reached inside its tattered shroud and pulled out a roundish, flat object, which it somehow fastened to the front of the rags covering what I refused to believe could be a head. It then spoke in a high and eerily delicate voice, with an accent I had never heard and scarcely understood. "I cracked its shell," it said, and then held out its other hand skyward.

Turk snarled in the dark. "And where is its meat?".

"He came from underground."

Turk's monochromatic eyes blazed. "That's not what I asked you."

The creature clicked the fingers of its upturned palm together, as if to request payment. This did not please Turk.

"Get that piece of trash out of my sight," he said. "You'll burn it if you have any sense."

Matoya, whatever she was, tucked the skull back into her pile of scavenged debris, then spent an interminable amount of time gathering it all back together in a maddeningly meticulous manner.

"He yours?", she asked after slinging her bundle back over her bent over back. She was pointing at me.

"No," Turk replied. My heart sank. "Not at the moment," he added. My heart rose.

"Boss," said the massive tarrasquin, "target's getting close."

"Raise your cloak, Matoya." Turk was done waiting.

Matoya reached under another of her rags and I heard a faint click, then the air became charged and I felt my skin prickling. A ball of violet light glowed directly above us, and a luminous tear seemed to ripple upward from the ground in a circle around us, until it met at a point within the violet ball. There was a brief flash, followed by an uncomfortable discharge of energy, and we were once again under the afflicted sky of Tarthas. The Vandal girl drew a small blunderbuss from her belt and shot a flare in the sky. Could I do this all again with my knowledge of today intact, I would have slain Matoya and taken her cloak.

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