Chapter 63: The Giants Of Tarthas

There was no time for me to get my bearings or wait for the thick smoke to clear. My dark adaptation guided me through the clouds lingering from Hannibal's fury, and I was soon through it, looking through my ghost sight still, as Turk had blasted a gaping hole through the center of the car, leaving it open to darkness. I did see some light, but it was flickering and obscured, coming from the engine exhaust ringing the path Turk carved. I was looking for the giant, my giants, but there were nowhere to be found, so I kept running, ignoring the cries of my name. 

The car was devastated, and I wondered that I did not hear Hannibal roaring through. Battle can do many strange things to one's senses, heightening some while deafening others. There is a sort of blindness that comes over a warrior in the joy of combat. You see what is in front of you perfectly, in such detail as you would never otherwise know, but you are blind to fear and any consequence but that of making a false move. And too you are blind to yourself, and your muscles surrender almost entirely to your training, so, I urge you, should you seek the path of the warrior, to train well. If only Tarrion could have seen me in Pandemonium. 

I could barely stand when I reached the rear sections. The wind was its own monster, and my ears were assaulted with the screeching of steel on steel, and the ravenous devouring of stone beneath clawed metal feet. Pandemonium was moving at speed, and from the angle of the ground below, rising to be in front of me, it was clear that we were climbing. I then understood in part why my traversal of planes was slowed there. In blasting it's anus wide open, Turk had exposed that part of Pandemonium to the living atmosphere of the world, and whatever ward had made it possible to move in ignorance of the city's roving, the ward was broken here. I nearly fell, but I was caught by a large hand. Patches caught me. Had I not been so startled, I would have crossed through him and blasted the space behind his back with my spear, but I missed that opportunity.

"We're climbing!" I shouted over the roar of earth and hell.

Patches found a broken piece of chassis dangling from above, bent it downward and over the floorless space before me, then pointed out and to the left and right. I trusted him, remembering how he gave me food and liquor from his own stores, and from that hanging limb I saw a wave of power, a sea of broad backed leviathans in a rhythmic haul, ebbing doggedly in constant unity, souls bound for toil, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, broken hearts stitched together, the thread made from the skin torn off their backs by whip and scourge, lo! the beleaguered megatheres had pulled apart the flared wreckage Hannibal provided and fashioned tools to gain mastery over Pandemonium's haunches. 

I shouted. I howled. I raved! I dropped, caught the bar, swung, kicked my legs and caught a surface, then ran to where I could grip a single metal rod like a comms mast and watch my great brethren win the day with hard, honest labor. Did Abdiel know this was their plan? The very plan he had himself? I never asked him, but I know he could not have hoped for this. He had no rapport with the megatheres, and they had often taken their own counsel, so I give them all credit, and surely if we had beat them there, Abdiel's remarkable knowledge of Pandemonium's workings could not have worked so quickly as the brawn and heart of these humble champions. They sang as the steered, and they worked in perfect harmony, scaling the hull to place their pry bars where the legs grew errant, never needing to ask for help when it was needed, flowing like a constant river over a time worn mountain, grinding it down stone by tiny stone.

On the note of Abdiel's engineering knowledge, grasp of technical schematics, electrical, plumbing, communications, propulsion, power generation, limb actuation, and the general layout of the Devil's fortress, I wonder if he ever truly gave himself to Blitzkrieg's cause.

Son? Son? I'm here, father. Son? I'm here. Fathers, I'm here. Would you please lift the lid so I can speak? I'm here! Son? Bring another boy. We cannot find our son, and so we will make him, for he is needed. Yes, he is needed. Desperately. How long will it be before he rises? Before the blood is accepted? Yes. It may be many a year yet. We've been working for many a year already. How many? Does it matter? Do you know? You do not? No, I do not. Then how should I? We will pry apart the bodies of the strongest. We've done that. Tyriel failed. Belial failed. Shokan failed. The birds failed, as well as the torches. Even our own line was turned back at the door, thrice. What good will megathere cadavers do us now? We will not use them as agents, but as stock, and from them extract the means to harden the serpens coprum, and our son will rise from water to be given to water, carrying the blood to the door that is hidden, and he will place the fragments of the founders on their thrones; eyes, hands, tongues, hearts, and the great machine will turn, and the golden eye will look upon us through the storm. 

Elvedon...

 

There was a roar, so loud I heard it over all the other noise, and when I turned to see I found myself in that space betwixt unbidden, watching Belial with shock and fear. He came for me, floating like a revenant over grave mists with his arms raised to take the horned moon in his undying hands. But he passed through me, turning his head to pass a mocking glare, and when he seemed about to fall, he took hold of a fragmented ledge and swung like a jackanapes to where the nearest giant heaved against Pandemonium's ire. He was smaller than those purebloods, but he was of the Batch, Belial 11, and his stormbreath brand glowed with green fire when he again raised his arms. A gust of air rushed upward between the giant and the hull, looping over him and under him and back over him again. I could see this vortex with my true sight, a swirl of light just like the corpse glow of Belial's brand. He wore no cloth, fighting naked like a savage. The Devils must have done something to him, because he was no longer the hollowed effigy I saw in upper Haven. He was healthy and strong, his flesh vibrant from fast flowing blood, blood that boiled. 

The giant was overwhelmed and flung from the rail. I found my way to Belial and tried to plant my spear inside his brain, but somehow he thwarted me, flashing his mocking eyes each time I was pushed away by his fiendish slave-winds. I threw my spear directly at his brand, and it would have pierced the very center of that top crossed pyramid, but he caught it, and, fearing it being broken in his hand, I blinked to the space between him and the hull and, reaching under his arm, caught its haft and yanked it free, then blinked again. 

It was my goal to kill Belial, or at least vanquish him before he killed another of my brothers, but the sighing giant came and lifted him by the throat in one hand, then flung him down under the tread of Pandemonium's crushing feet. The others heaved their oars so that Belial was caught underfoot, and what remained was a bloody stain. I don't remember the next few moments, but I was clinging to the sighing giant's back as he carried me to the rent I emerged from. I hurried inward, wanting to tell Turk and the others what I saw, but they were gone. I ran through the riven hallways and through the torn junction, then through the wartorn prison car, and into the next, and saw my comrades hurrying after Abdiel down one of those hallways between hull plates he and I first ran through. We went under the main floor, heedless of the sound we made, and climbed across undulant cables to the next junction, then over others to the next, moving through a ceiling with a spider's web of inky tubes, to at last be near a heavy door with a series of wheels and levers to be opened by. 

There was a rush to open the door, and when we entered we were in a boiler room of sorts. Abdiel led us through cramped aisles of steaming hot pipes and silos, then to a hatch in the floor at the end of an obscure hall. But there was a sound like thunder, and I turned as if answering some call to see the space behind us drenched in shadow. I was towards the rear of our troop, watching an eclipsing mace rise and fall to the sound of screams. I dashed forward and slid under the legs of the Devil, terrified oh this one's vastness, only to be lifted up by another. I pushed through the muck and landed on the floor, and felt to my shock that my foot was lodged within my captor's calf. He dropped to the ground and clutched his leg, then snapped my foot clean off when he tried to wrench free. Blood gushed, and when I woke, I was wrapped in chains and shod with only one boot. My new foot was still growing, and like a child on the cusp of adolescence, I groaned at the pain. The room I was in was thoroughly dark, and my true sight showed me all the Cataphracts bound as I was. Turk's eyes gleamed across from me, and at the end of the cell was a pair that, while faint, was very much like mine.

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