Chapter 60: Janus And Me

I'm in a hallway, and it is absolutely not a comfortable place for me. I sought a room with a desk, or a parlour, or another bedchamber; preferably one so morose in pallor and rich with story as the chamber with the strapped bed. I thought maybe to sit in the small library, or on the floor in the hallway with the tall windows, my back propped against the wall and the Stylus, given by the Painted Lady, suspended between my fingers, from which my hands would be propped against with bent knees. There like a child I could sit in a place not meant for sitting, and that could be enjoyable. I miss being a child, or rather, I wish I could remember being a child, beyond the tests and questions and pressure to take a stand with one covenant against the other. I met Patches back then, though I didn't know it. How could I? After all, I hadn't met him yet.

Labor Pool 9 was an enormous building, but it was one of the smaller labor pools. There was a library of sorts, in a depressed space of floor, where I saw a beautiful, sexy, even, jinn girl floating about from boy to boy, tapping us on our noses and showing us anything we wanted to see by drawing it in the air with a wand. I asked her to see Labor Pool 8, then 7, then, 6, all the way down to 1, and in a fit of fear-born snark, I asked to see Labor Pool 0. It existed. It was a massive sphere of the same metal that comprised the chassis of the arks, and it was located deep within the ocean, guarded by sound-mad sea beasts that filled the surrounding waters with blood.

"Viktor!" said Kolonizer Kharn. He was trying to be kwiet, but no Devil can, unless they simply keep their lying mouth shut.

This hallway I'm writing in, I'm walking, I couldn't keep searching for the perfect room like the one I left, or something new that I would also enjoy, so I just walked, not being able to find again that wing where my age- old operating table resided. I had to write, I had to pen this down, I had to get it out of my head, and I couldn't wait, so I have the Painted Lady's device between my hands and I am writing on the move, and this hallway is no baroque beauty like the ones I left. I'm deeper in the mountain now, and moving deeper, and it's climbing. When I first came to Clarion, I had just left the throne room of the Founders through a door I did not at first see. I know nothing of the geography between there and here, or what road took me from that deep place to this castle in the middle of my world, which before then I could only see on the horizon, no matter where I stood.

Viktor! said Kharn. viktor! Said Kharn. Viktor! said Kharn. Viktor viktor viktor viktor wiktor WhichTor? Do you want me, or the other Victor? Or maybe you want to speak with Victor 11? No one ever says anything about Victor 0. If there's a Labor Pool Zero, wouldn't there also be a Victor Zero?

I had no idea what a battle I had in store for me.

    I'm                 now       th    is                    ot                              me!

running                            hallway is n      good          r

                                                                                        fo

 

Apologies. That hallway was strange. It seemed to grow small around me, the space in front of my eyes hurling itself forward and out of reach of my feet. I felt an urge that I should run, and somewhere a heavy door slammed shut. I'm in another hallway now, but it runs horizontal from my view, and the lavish decorum I enjoyed before seems abandoned for spartan efficiency. I am tired, so I am sitting, as I thought to do in that beautiful hallway with such tall windows, though now I have no windows to look through, and so I am removed from the sight that eased my many pains. The light I have now is sterile, coming from rectangular lamps that kindled when I came within their reach. 

"Victor," Patches said. He saw me somehow, and his large foot was in front of my eyes, I think. I remember laying down, and I remember him finding me, though it is unclear in my mind how he did. But at a point we were both crouched on the ground behind some machinery.

I asked him what happened, how we were taken. 

"Warcloud," he told me. "She came from a world far from here, bane of dragons, and if Blitzkrieg had not harnessed her the mantas and eels on the sky would have long since gone extinct, leaving us open to far worse poisons than the sky already pours down on us."

"I saw them, when Abdiel and I pierced the veil."

Patches then put his filthy hand on me (he rested it on my shoulder, but it could have spanned my torso) and feigned a look of jealous spirituality.

"I envy you, brother."

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That's when I stood, phasing through his hand without even realizing. I told him never to call me 'brother'. 

He had the aspect one has when they realize they'd just asked for a thing they weren't entitled to and feel foolish. 

"Are there any other surprises like Warcloud, Traitor?"

"Two things," he said. "A, call me that again and I'll kill you. Two, yes, but not here. H.U.N.D. and Motus battled in the west, but they've gone to the stars. Their struggle brought Warcloud, and it prowled the sky from a long ways off after they left until the mantas came. Victor, where are the others?"

"Warcloud's eating the thieves, as are your little nieces and nephews."

He cocked his head to the side. "I'm an only child."

I ignored him, having seen the larval Devils devouring Jadus's soldiers.

"Blitzkrieg has the Cataphracts, except for Turk and Abdiel. I've scoured this whole place and haven't seen them."

"Perhaps Blitzkrieg has killed them."

He shook his lying head. "No. If Blitzkrieg had either Abdiel or Turk, the whole reaver would have heard about it."

I managed to warp my body through a single layer of the partition and climbed above the ground, letting my feet hang and holding my spear ready. "And why should I listen to a word you say, Traitor."

His shoulders slumped, his head drooped, but I didn't believe it.

"We'll settle this after our work is done. For now, you're the only one who can save Goth and the others. Zulu managed to escape and freed Qatar, but they caught him. I don't know where Qatar is. She's sly, and is probably alive, but this is 

their home. They know this reaver inside and out. She can't hide for long. If you can find her, then you two can free the others. Victor, we have to drive Pandemonium to the surface, and someone must find a way to tell Regis where. If you can reach a comm station, or a jinn, call to the numbers of three, seven and nine. Regis will hear your ping and come. You've got to find a way to lead him here."

I remember him making a start as if about to speak, then turning towards the hull. I lowered myself silently and crept behind him while he was distracted, and after he made some comment about the giants, found a gap in his armor and thrust my spear through it into his waist. 

In all my previous battles, it had been enough to use only the basic functions of my spear; that is, to stab people. And so I had yet to build a close bond with the jinn who gave it power to shatter and blast, so it was slow at times to answer my summons, and I had no way of moderating its energetic output. It had spent itself on the Devil Woman, and when I tried to burst the Traitor from within it merely shook a little in my grip. He turned and slapped me with the back of his hand, sending me reeling. Then he turned to the sound of a door opening and he pounded his fist into a console. He turned, came upon me more quickly than I could ever evade, and lifted me into the air. I was falling from the city soon after, my spear in the air above me. My fall broke me, and I lay in agony while my spine unfractured itself, looking all the time at the gangrel creatures loping about just out of reach. My eyes began to close eventually, and the last thing I saw was one taking its spear in its jaws and bringing it to me. It's body looked like the cold steel Pandemonium was made of. It's face was the face of a woman. It's face was the face of Dolores.

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