Chapter 44: No

Once, when I was newly taken in at the Bibliotheca, perhaps six months or so, the novelty of a warm bed and consistent nutrition had worn slightly thin, and I chafed at the walls put up about me by my so-called benefactors. I slipped through a door I had thought closed and found myself a hatchling spider crawling along the vast web of tunnels and passages connecting the unfinished decks on the seaward flank of Haven. Vestigial machinery had been hoarded there in a bygone age, and I spent several weeks evading discovery amongst the tall rows of stacked power generators and heaps of dead golems. I spent three days inside a box that offered tremendous warmth in that cold region of the city, as it was large enough I could furnish three distinct floors with packing pads and discarded chairs into a makeshift fort. I only left when tinkering with an array of softly glowing lights revealed them to be a nerve cluster, and I discovered my fort to be the vessel of a very old jinn who did not take well to being woken. Eventually I tired of hiding, and so I emerged, assuming that the caretakers of the Bibliotheca had tired of pursuing me, and walked openly in the areas surrounding the vast sea dock.

One day I stumbled on a small airlock, much like the one I used on my last excursion with Eris. A diver had been too long afield, and after the seal on his dive suit was cracked he came out flailing his arms like a motorized mu ren zhuang. He was hypoxic, having pushed his suit's supply of air passed its limit, and was an amnesiac, whirling about in wild fear and confusion. In time the men helping him were able to retrain him. One injected him with a needle, and in a moment he came to, looking about him with shock and slow realization. I was now that diver, and the needle was a knife that stuck in my side. I removed the knife, and saw with a fair amount of disconcertion that my body was not reknitting itself. Instead my skin tried in vain to clasp its frayed edges together, but a scummy liquid was perpetually congealing between the gnawing lips of the wound. I wiped the stuff away and my skin began to meld, though the poison that counteracts my nature demands a thorough removal, and so in this one spot I have a scar. I treasure that scar, and wish I had more. After Eris's death, I cut and gouged myself many times, but always I healed. Here, in this one spot, I have proof of a wound, and that my body might truly belong to me.

I was naked, slick with water, freezing cold and terrified. I dropped to the ground and began reflexively taking the robe off one of the servants, then stopped as my wits sharpened. They were much smaller than I, and none of their clothing would fit. But, and this is fortunate, in my haste to cover myself I saw that the servant I disrobed was not purely flesh and blood. Eyes, ears, nose, digits, and many other small portions of its form had been removed and replaced with metal plugs. I sighed, as I was very relieved, and took the knife that had stabbed me and stood again. I searched the room, finding nothing I could wear, and saw a tank like that of the woman I saw while being carted here. I went to it, looking closely along its thick translucent walls into the fluid that still coated my body. There were no tubes or apparatus inside the tank, but the greenish tint to the water on my skin was all the proof I needed that I had been held there.

The hallways were empty, dimly lit, and had the putrescent smell of sickness. I moved quick and quiet, searching for doors with my fingers, but the hallways went on forever without opening into any room or closet. When I a doorway appeared, I went running, no care for what lay beyond, and I took hold of the shape that came out of it. It was a servant, though a different type than the short, round headed creatures I had killed. This one was as tall as me, and quite strong. But it was not a martial servitor, and I was able to overpower him and take his robe. I then cursed myself for not first looking to see where the door had closed. Let me ride naked into war, but put me not in a cage. I felt the servitor's neck, and that there was still some life in him, so I lifted him up and ran his hands along the wall, summoning a small line of light to appear in a part of the wall. I dropped the servitor and jabbed my fingers into the crack and pried with all my might. I managed an opening just barely large enough to fit through, but when I looked in the room I panicked. On a table, a lucien with molten sores was being cut into while she writhed and screamed.

The servitors operating on her turned, drew knives and came toward me. I struggled to wrench myself free, but the wall had pinned me in place, and was threatening to snap me in half. I tried to let fear flow into me, to summon the power by which I escaped Belial's clutching hands, and by which I escaped my tank while my engrams were in euphoria. But I could only struggle, and as I fought to exit the wall closed tighter. Desperate, my mind wrestled free of my efforts, and I lunged into the room, slipping through the closing wall with such little resistance that I barrelled into the nearest servitor and knocked him to the ground. He did not live to hinder me, and I rose with only one opponent to dispatch. The girl I stabbed, at the base of the throat, and her misery was ended. I felt the wrists of my foes for life but there was none, so I searched them, wondering if they carried some badge that commanded the building to let them pass through its hidden doors. I happened to notice that the plug in the center of their brows had a small screen that glowed softly when I dragged them near the wall. I carved them out and gripped them in my hands and the door opened. I then walked with my arms outspread, each hand clutching a key, and door after door opened. Soon I was followed by an army of plodding servitors armed with small knives and surgical equipment. We marched together to the hymn of their patients howling in agony, and, as I hoped, their chorus of keening brought the good doctor to me. He came from a large doorway that opened up, as chance would have it, in a curve of the endless hallway that was directly in front of me. I glimpsed the room he left, seeing many tables with people of every sex and species, their bodies connected by filaments that spread through and across them like spiderwebs mingling with purple moss.

Danders had clearly not suspected the sound to be the herald of my escape. He came out alone, the door behind him shutting without any servitors following, and it seemed he only saw me after first inspecting the crowd and open doors behind me. I gave him no time to act, rushing forward instantly, and had his arm behind his back and my confiscated knife to his throat. The keys I let clatter to the ground. I felt his free hand fumbling for a pocket in his longcoat and I slammed him hard into the wall. A small metal device fell from his hand. I repeated the process until he was out of concealed weapons to reach for, then commanded his horde to halt. One of them carried a blunderbuss of the kind that spewed combustible gel. I ordered him to slide it across the floor. Doctor Danders tried to kick it way, but I jabbed my knee into his kidney and caught it with my foot. I then lifted his wrist and forced him down to his knees so I could pick it up and quickly stow it in the side pocket of my robe. I then felt somewhat validated for prioritizing its acquisition.

"Take me to the surface," I rasped in the doctor's ear.

"No," he said.

I pulled his arm higher and pressed the knife into his fat neck. "I'm leaving here. Take me to the surface."

"You can't. I won't."

One of the smaller servitors tried to rush past us with a long dirk drawn, but I saw him, and the doctor shouted for him to stay back. I then forced him into a prostrated position and held him down with my knee. I drew the pistol and fired a small burst, spritzing the would-be attacker with gel that ignited on contact. He screamed and ran into the wall, then fell and rolled on the floor until he was no more than a charred stain. Danders was weeping and cursing every miscreant member of the Batch. Seeing that he cared for these creatures, I repeated my request. He begrudgingly complied.

I slew him before leaving, making sure that I was close enough to the doorway to leave in case it snapped shut on his death. What conversation I wished to have took place while I donned my gear. We stopped on the way to reclaim it, and I bound him with the robe I'd taken while I dressed in my armor.

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"What is this place?"

"My sanctum. Do you think the Dolomites are the only sages trying to save us?"

His face no longer had the aspect of an owl, but that of a bloated fish with a hook in its lip. I opened my mouth to unleash a retort, but I realised with stabbing guilt that this sanctum was not fundamentally different from the one I'd been reared in. "You're no sage," was all I could think to say. I then cut his bonds and followed him at spearpoint. We passed through a series of rooms hidden to me at my arrival. There were storerooms with shelves laden with vials and tinctures, and pills like those my Eris took. Last was an antechamber where a dozen or more people waited in silent pain. I could see from the shapes beneath their robes that they had all been grievously afflicted. Some were deformed, some had weeping sores, some had the eggs of parasites throbbing under their skin, others coughed blood into handkerchiefs. They all looked at us pleadingly as we passed.

I pierced the doctor through the throat before leaping through the opening in the outer wall, and when I'd egressed, I emptied the blunderbuss of all its gel onto the building. A sound came from the flames like a living thing. It was loud, and it was horrible, still heard from a mile away where Tomorrow Gives Her Hope and few others found me. They'd come searching when they'd caught wind of my assignment.

"That sound..." she said.

"Death. By fire."

They all looked at the fireball on the horizon. I turned back and saw the predator that had stalked in the distance wrapping itself around the building, now grown shockingly large. It joined with the sanctum's death knell as the flames consumed them both and everything within. A vision came to me of the infant catching fire as it lay beneath mounds of rubble.

"Goth will not be pleased," said Tomorrow Gives Her Hope.

Doctor Danders screamed across memory; Tarthas is trying to kill us all!

A fragment of mine may have laid in wait for me in the sanctum of the good doctor.

They'd brought a spare steed for me, which I calmly mounted, saying nothing.

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