Chapter 61: Atlas Did Not Shrug

 found a room, finally, after wandering through doorless and windowless halls for almost two days. I've run out of food, too. I never expected that to happen, as rarely as I actually eat. Those waybread cakes were more for flavor, to eat simply to alleviate boredom, or to stave off the discomfort of my innards generating nutrients. Like my undeath, which, to be clear, is not the same thing as I read of in numerous tales from the Bibliotheca, but a continuous reminder that I am unnatural, that the memories of a mother and father are not mine. Victor Zero sat in that dining room. Victor Zero watched the sky fill with detritus while a girl whose name and face are none of my concern waited, flaunting her young body in a scant bathing suit worn just for him. I had Eris, my dying bride huddled in robes, and we lived in a mausoleum, and the ground up bones of Victor Zero's world have always been my sky.

The room I'm in reminds me of the labor pools. The floors and walls may not be smoothed and glossy stone, but they are grey and plain, and the windows overlooking a large, empty space remind me of the windows I looked up at while drinking the quicksilver tincture, where old eyes probed and judged. Sometimes, I wander through these corridors of time and wonder if they ever even happened, because much about them seems so anachronistic of the dream I amble through now. Labor Pool 9 was a building so large it seemed empty, gigantic and square, a hall filled with empty space, though there were at least a hundred of us there. They screamed in our faces, tempted us with food after days of starvation, or had attractive older women put their hands on our knees while they talked in pouting voices, now and then twitching a finger further up our thighs. Many of us would choose one covenant or the other, to end the frustration being afflicted on them, only to be taken to the smaller rooms of white painted walls to be gassed and recycled.

 

there was a tyfloch

I remember now, seeing a boy, no, a group of boys, blurry, in the side of my view, and many of them were sick. Was it the rot? Days went by, or maybe months- I'm afraid to admit it, but I think it may have been years. How did we not age? One tyfloch spread his wings, and they attacked him with lightning staves. And he... I think... it's gone. But they were there. There might be giants, the building certainly was large enough to have housed a few of them, but I am told Belial's strain was older. So Labor Pool 9 was where human and tyfloch potentials were sent, and we had to make a stand of a spiritual nature to be given a brand.

I was very fortunate, for the giants found me. It's not that incredible, as they were following Pandemonium, albeit at a safe distance. They held true to their course, not turning around and giving up though the army they bolstered was captured in front of them. Warcloud claimed a few of their ranks, and many I saw had scars. My first day with them was spent learning how to walk again. The fall shattered all of my spine, and my legs seemed to have forgotten their past connection. I could only stand for half an hour at the beginning, and one of the simian megatheres would hold a finger out for me to brace myself on. They fed me from crumbs of their rations, gave me water, taught me a few of their words, and told me in their grand halls they had mosaics made of the Batch. I was interested to learn that Belial 11, the one I encountered above Haven, was a pariah among them, as he had shown great promise when he was young, and fell so very, very far. I also found it interesting to learn that they once set a guard over the Dolomites, long ago.

Giants live for many years, but they remembered little of the Fall. We had time to talk while we traveled, as we were only following now to keep up, and not to intimidate or overtake. So I asked them lots of questions as we rode and as we sat. And I thought. I thought and I thought and I thought, while I rode in a bundle in a sidecar, on my back, the wind blowing over me. I had to remove my hood while we rode, as it chafed something awful being ruffled by the wind. I often felt inclined to weep, and did at times, remembering the appalling way the giants were treated at the sanctum, and how hard it was to watch a broken one die. When I asked them why they stayed so far away from other kindred's settlements, they told it was because they'd grown weary of being taken as slaves, and I could not fathom that they ever would, being so large and strong.

"It was a good plan," said Horm, the one who most often lent me his finger. "Turk thought it through. Shoot the engines. Nothing shoots the engines, so the engines are weak. Shoot the engines then, and scare the worm above ground. It was a good plan."

"I don't know if any of us ever managed to fire a shot," I said, remembering the sight of Harbinger and Sundance being mangled. My spine and legs had united, but much of my fall still plagued me, and it hurt me physically as well emotionally to recall our failed pursuit, as my ears thumped the muffled sound of a window holding back a turbulent wind. Every moment I recalled took an effort that paid back much less than it cost. "The Traitor. He knew of a defense that we did not."

"You mean Colonizer Kharn? The merchant's apprentice?" asked a wrinkled old simian. A giant's voice is somewhere between the richness of milk and the rumble of an avalanche.

I nodded. "He knew, but did not warn the Cataphracts."

One of the taller man-like giants sighed. I felt a constant lump in my throat while in their company, recalling the harm I did to them as a thrall of the Dolomites. I grew very fond of those waiting for their ends at the westing house. I wondered if any of them knew the ones I had, so I asked if any of them knew of an Anassa.

"Every tribe has their anassa," said the tall man who sighed.

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"So it's a title, and not a name?"

They all nodded, and told of their matriarchs, and how loyally they all hoped to serve theirs and be called their distant sons. I remember looking skyward out of habit, but saw only the plague tunnel left by Pandemonium. I noticed that the tall, sighing giant was quiet while the others told me of their queens, so I staggered over to him and sat in the shadow of his knee.

"I thank you, human," he said when the talk had died down. "I was son by birth to my anassa. She was taken by the Devils long ago, and we were driven to the fragmented land to the west on leaking barges salvaged near the old northern sanctum. I was too young to fight, and we struggled to find new ships that could carry us. I hoped to find her, or my father and uncle. But I have not, so I hope to avenge them, so I won't have failed them entirely."

"The Dolomites ran tests on their skin," I heard myself say, "and their wombs."

"Why?" Asked the sighing giant, mournfully.

"They wanted to make the perfect soldier to defeat the dangers of Tarthas. Your skin is hard and resilient, and your infants always survive birth." I said nothing of how I helped calibrate the instruments used in testing the tolerances of giantess skin, or how I administered toxins found at high altitudes. These were noble creatures, but there were precious few of them left, and I could not bring myself to admit to them how I'd aided in the torture of one of their last great queens.

"Don't throw your life away," I said, looking up. "Live beyond this fight, and lead your people to a new dawn."

"A new dawn?" the sighing giant asked. "What new dawn? After the Devils fall, another like them will rise. Lord V, or the pretender king of Thieves' Gate. Or perhaps Turk and his Cataphracts will grow old beyond reason, and turn to madness like the Dolomites. They were once wise teachers. Yet you saw what they became, Victor of the Batch."

How my stomach knotted then, realizing that there was a good chance he'd suspected me of participating in his mother's pain. I wish I had some ray of hope to give him for his father and uncle, but if my suspicions were correct, they fared no better.

"No," he continued, sitting cross legged and shaking his head. One of them passed around bowls, and another followed with a kettle I could have comfortably lived in and served a thick broth cooked on one of those metallic plates that stands in when a fire cannot be lit. The sighing giant was quiet for a moment, looking down at his broth through sad stone eyes and drooping grey locks. "No. I will not survive this fight. I've been readying for it all my life. What is a hound without hares to hunt?"

We ate, I from a small spoon that I held with both my hands, and then, after a brief rest, we rose and mounted, then speedily hunted our hares.

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