Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  “Where the fuck is Muni!”

  Her two cat minions or bodyguards swayed slowly with their hands on the rail. They were like pendulums on a clock.

  “I know you know her!”

  Agent Brand’s vendetta made no damn sense to me. Clearly they had history together, which felt like a weird game of cat and mouse. Red feathered bird, two cat people, and a raven.

  My head couldn’t handle all these attempts at clever thoughts while feeling every single person in the prison walk away. There had been a dozen people nearby, but once Agent Brand started screaming across the bars, they all backed into corners

  Pathetic. Cowards.

  I tried the truth. “She turned into a bird and flew away.”

  Agent Brand pointed at me. I debated simply backing down or instigating a fight. “Don’t play with me, criminal, I’ll have you sent over.”

  “That’s not really a threat,” I responded while faking a smile.

  The one time I’d been direct and honest apparently went over her head. That made no sense considering Agent Brand had been there during the entire mess.

  “That bitch is here for you, I know she is. Bring her, now!”

  My senses reported the movement around me. Inmates shuffled farther away. There were guards tapping on old glass monitors in a few rooms. Someone spoke to Warden Bennett and he took a slow deep breath but continued to gaze out the window.

  As for Agent Brand, I thought about her demands for at least three breaths. The results were, I didn’t know where Muni was, right now I didn’t care, and Agent Brand didn’t want Muni for a heavy feather on feather make out session.

  “Listen, Agent Brand? She could be up your ass and I’d never remember.”

  “Oh ho.” She shook her head rapidly.

  We had ventured into full on crazy town. Whatever the hell Muni had done, clearly pushed her sanity to the edge.

  I continued, “Though I suspect she’s not there. The stick you’ve got up there probably takes up—” My conversational banter was cut off as the cat-people-duo-whatevers launched themselves over the rail and across the gap between our walkways.

  The last real fight I’d been in had involved crushing Spike. This proved to be more exciting. I grinned. The far railing bent under a sudden burst of force.

  My excitement dimmed. They were both still human shaped but they cleared the distance. If they were simply cat versions of wolves, this would be boring. Wolves in human form were easy to defeat. Wolves in wolf form were more annoying, and those halfway were a lot more thrilling.

  I threw The Iliad at the female, Dee. She landed poorly on my side of the prison. Agent Brand went for a weapon. It felt like a heavy metal blade instead of standard issue guns.

  Silver. Iron. Simplistic. Hardly worth noticing.

  One foot extended back to catch Don in his stupid face. His nose crunched. Dee clawed her way over the rails. Someone a few cells down shouted. The cat twins screamed.

  “Detestable!” Don sputtered.

  “I’ll trade you,” Dee growled. She pulled herself up and over the rail.

  They came in quickly. This time I had full use of my senses. The battle fit in with so many others. Each swing helped me stop thinking about the past. There was only now, only the fight.

  “High,” Don said.

  “Low,” Dee responded.

  They dove at me. Don bounded up and grabbed the bars above. His fingers scraped against metal and bent the bars. Dee came in from below, tackling my feet.

  I leaned back, put up my hands and grabbed Don’s feet which had been kicking at my head. He grunted and started to pull away. My body twisted to one side, using all my weight to yank him down and onto his sister’s head. Dee spun away, claws out, and tore into Don’s rear by accident.

  He yowled.

  “Idiots,” Agent Brand said.

  They recovered quickly and attacked faster. They swung long claws and I let instinct keep me moving. My body felt warmed by the thrill of battle. The ember of rage at my core pumped out a fresh wave, turning the room stifling. A hand burned and cracked.

  “One oh one,” they shouted quickly while recovering from their unintended collision.

  I stepped down the row and searched for a weapon to bludgeon them with. Agent Brand leapt across the gulf. She got more distance than the others, and grabbed a rail to the floor above. Her foot aimed for the back of my head.

  She missed. I rolled forward. Dee swiped me with inhuman hands and nails cutting the air. I pulled back but not quick enough. The sharpened nails ripped a fresh ribbon across my face.

  My feet moved an automatic pattern to increase our distance. The small amount of space let me consider the type of monster I was dealing with. They moved faster than wolves but seemed to have less striking power. Agent Brand felt like a light bird next to stringy alley cats.

  The analogy wasn’t too far off.

  “Get away!” an inmate shouted at me. He threw his cot against the bars. “You monsters won’t get me in trouble.” The bars rattled as more objects were thrown.

  “You won’t escape me this time!” Agent Brand shouted.

  So, she remembered me. Technically this was my first time actually seeing her. Every other event had been through muffled senses.

  Dee and Don alternated their attacks with brutal coordination, their reactions quicker than a wolf’s. Agent Brand kept swinging her stupid blade. I caught her hand and squeezed my fingers around the weapon.

  She jerked her arm, but whatever race she belonged to did not come with superior strength. The twins attacked from behind. I spun her to intercept their motions.

  My skin sizzled and hand ached as bones reshaped. Agent Brand’s nose turned up as she snarled.

  “You’re trying to use fire? On me?” she asked.

  I smiled, my face aching from the barely repressed transformation. Her red burning feathers obviously related to fire. The best answer to someone immune to my gifts was simple.

  “You’re the dumbest.” Agent Brand’s ranting gave me an opening.

  I lifted the hand and balled it into a fist. She pulled back and raised her blade. My fist smashed into the blade, shattered it, then crunched into her face. She flew backward, over one of the rails.

  The two cat people went wide eyed, then dove after their third companion. I stepped to the ledge and debated how much I wanted to chase down three floors.

  Beware arrogance, for arrogance leads to death.

  Imprinted words vibrated through, disorienting me. Pride was dangerous. It got people punched. Following them to press an advantage might be equally dangerous, and there were dozens of footsteps stomping through the jail.

  Fighting Brand had not been behaving like Warden Bennett asked. I stood still and waited as men with guns came in from all sides.

  Below, the petite woman rubbed a jaw that remained unbroken. It was a shame, but I hadn’t pulled on extra strength to make the attack really count. But they’d also restrained themselves by staying in their human forms.

  “Prisoner, you’re ordered to stand down,” one of them said.

  I slowly lifted a hand and thumbed at blood pooling on my chin. The action brought easily ignored aches and made me realize how badly my clothes had been shredded during that brief scuffle.

  “He’s a one oh one!” Agent Brand shouted.

  The guards were well trained and didn’t flinch, their muscles taut and weapons steady. I turned to see them with my own eyes and took a slow breath.

  They backed up. I saw why. Steam poured from my mouth and one hand no longer resembled anything human. Despite not pulling on my strength, my body hadn’t stayed under control.

  Tal would be ashamed. He’d trained us to control ourselves. Rigid, downright painful discipline to never screw up, ruined in one of the worst places. Part of me felt gloriously happy, because punching her in the face had been a long time coming.

  My body quivered as self-control warred with the desire to break everything in sigh
t.

  “Hands down, prisoner,” the guard said.

  “Just shoot him!” Agent Brand suggested from below.

  I glared at her. She shot daggers back. Getting under her skin made me smile. Throwing these guards would make me happier. Wrecking Warden Bennett’s little kingdom even more would have made me laugh in a voice capable of shaking mountains.

  Agent Brand refused to look away. I played her ballsy staring game and piled up facts. She was weak, moved quick, but the twins moved faster. They flanked her like bodyguards but had very little emotion on their faces.

  My freshly suffered wounds slowly healed and itched like mad. My arm eventually stopped transforming, returning to something resembling human. The guards stayed on high alert the whole time.

  I stared at the trio below as guards came up and cuffed me. They’d just seen my hand be utterly inhuman, or wolf-like, and still felt the need to put silver cuffs on.

  They jerked me away. One held up a copy of the book that had been left for me.

  “Contraband,” the guard said while frowning. “Illegal books.”

  “Someone left me a present,” I responded dryly.

  “That’s two strikes, one for the contraband. One for fighting an Agent,” he said.

  “Well that makes four and a half.” It might have been only three, but it didn’t matter. I needed to go to the other side of the island anyway. This way I’d get an escort instead of needing to sneak through the abandoned parts of a nearly empty jail.

  They said stuff. I ignored them and counted my wounds. It helped keep me stable and in current events. We walked down corridors, again, and outside toward the giant wall separating the island’s two territories.

  Then they shoved me into a small room with two doors. Agent Brand pushed guards out of her way. They shook their heads and kept guns leveled over her.

  “At dawn, they’ll send you over. Then your ass is mine,” she said.

  I shook my head. Whatever was going on in her brain was chump change compared to a giant people devouring sea monster. Maybe it pissed her off that she wasn’t being taken seriously.

  They closed the door and left me in darkness. That was all I got, an obvious threat from a scrawny pale woman who only knew how to have vendettas. She probably had a perfectly sane reason, like Muni skipped out on a really important parking ticket.

  The darkness made it harder to hold onto present events. I let my senses roam enough to pick up the area. Above me was the tall fence, while my temporary home sat between these two versions of jail. Two dozen heavily armed guards could be felt pacing.

  I took inventory by poking my flesh. Small jabs of pain from my side helped prevent the past from sweeping over me.

  Blood had soaked into my clothes. There were tons of scratches all over that didn’t heal fast enough. Despite my performance and pushing back Brand’s trio I hadn’t walked away unscathed. Their claws were sharp, like razors that’d torn along my skin.

  Hubris made me believe that fighting against the three of them would be easy enough. I’d treated it like a warmup for some bigger fight. They weren’t like the scrubs at Bottom Pit’s brawls. Don, Dee, and Agent Brand were highly trained.

  They were also the lesser of my possible enemies. It was fucked up how the fight had left me in worse shape, berating myself over poor choices, and oddly happier.

  Then there were the others, lost somewhere in the forest that swallowed Atlas’s other half. I struggled to pull on the cord to Leo and follow it along.

  The connection caught for a single moment, long enough for me to hear Leo say, “What the hell is that?” and feel the ground groan under enormous pressure.

  Then I blacked out.

  15

  Useless Revelations

  “Harken to me,” a sweet voice said. It hummed at a pitch that felt like a violin being played, if such a thing were possible.

  I jerked to with a start.

  A lanky woman, or man, or some weird mix of the two, crouched in front of me. Gender didn’t matter so much as the white and black wings on its back. They were folded tightly. It was like a snow owl on a human body.

  I was utterly beyond lost. This wasn’t new, given how the last year had been going, but it was annoying. I struggled to remember where I’d just been but lost focus under the weight of this person’s stare.

  The only clear thought was how many goddamned feathers were fluttering around this stupid island. Black ones on Muni. Red on Agent Brand. Now white. At least the person’s eyes were distinct enough. One eye was blue and the other red.

  “Who—” My mouth numbed like I’d been dipped in yet another round of drugs. I couldn’t even growl in annoyance.

  “Don't worry about me. We each have our stories, and mine isn't important. But yours is, silly mortal. At least to those who can set me on fire should I not listen.”

  I felt dizzy and tried to place where I’d heard those words before. A hand reached to push the person back but lost strength halfway.

  “Who are you?” The second attempt was easier.

  “Not a Hidden, but in hiding. Yes? I’ve been asked by that shrew to come see if you’re well. Apparently she doesn’t believe Roy. Which is a shame, your brother in spirits has no concept of subtly. Still, the motley crew frets like hens.”

  The voice and style of talking down to me started to ring a bell. There’d been someone at Bottom Pit during my last visit. My eyes had been burned out and I’d never seen what they looked like, but they also called me a mortal.

  "I don't understand. How..." I drifted off from exertion. This was a terrible time of night for me to wake, especially after being stabbed. Too many things were happening in a row. The memories bled over into the now and made it all a muddle.

  "As you wish. Let me say this. There are, were, realms tied to this mortal plane, and when the elves performed their rituals, over and over, there was a price. Those other realms were torn and revenged, those left here were cast into the void, and only some of us made it."

  Hell, these drugs were too good. Half of what the figure said didn't even register.

  "You too?" I finally asked.

  "Not all of us survived the walk, and some went mad."

  He, she, the white winged person, must have meant the space between worlds. Where the chime of existence had been and all those items transformed from one object into the next. They called it a “walk” as if it were simply striding between realities.

  "Mad?" I needed to know if the person I’d been with survived. Maybe they had gone mad.

  The androgynous person smiled and lost focus. I, too, drifted as my mind clouded over again. The fact that we both were drifting on confused me.

  "Shush. Maintaining a connection is hard enough. Your mind is weakened by whatever that bird brain did to you." There was a light press of fingers to my lips. The skin felt soft but firm. "I have questions.”

  "Okay..." This was clearly a twisted dream. I tried to make out the other figure somehow. There wasn’t much beyond white wings and glowing eyes. They were red and green now, or was that blue? My vision rolled back and blackness swam over.

  "Before the purge, there were many fantastical creations. Before the world was sundered and restarted by those foolish elves, there were Gods and demons. Before your kind died for their sins, there were other monsters."

  Now my mind was stringing together a dream based on vague memories. My kind was comprised of creatures larger than houses and had leathery wings. When we flew, the sun was blotted out.

  "Your kind, creatures older than the Gods of man. Born of a lost age in a lost world. Older than I am, which is quite impressive considering you are mortal and I am not." The sweet musical voice made me even sleepier.

  "Okay." I watched the eyes. They bobbed in the darkness and gave off an eerie light that kept switching colors. Blue and green? Green and red? It was so hard to focus; this had to be more than drugs.

  "I told you, most of mankind's gods were killed after the Purg
e, and others went mad. Some hid. Your kind became fewer. Other monsters died, but not all."

  "So?" I knew all this.

  "So, why have you survived? What purpose does your existence offer when the very gods have been killed, imprisoned, or driven mad?”

  Daniel’s face popped into my mind. A memory swallowed up the moment. Daniel stood on the hillside and repeated the words to me. "Sometimes it takes a monster to kill a monster."

  “What a sad fate,” the person said. “It is a frustrating thing to be enslaved by our natures. Worst still, to be enslaved by those who call themselves friends.”

  He, she, shook its head.

  “What of time, will you give of yourself to tear the world apart again? To alter it, as your breed has before you?”

  This person must have meant dying to alter history. That’s what Daniel said happened. It’s what Candy, the elf, had alluded to. The past could be altered, in a sense, but this world would never exist. I’d seen what remained as time recreated existence.

  Nothing, a chime of noise, a tidal wave of creation.

  “If I have to,” I answered.

  What the hell did this other person expect from me? I managed to formulate my thoughts enough to know they were sent here, or somehow causing me to dream about them, because of Boss Wylde. That much made sense, but the rest of this conversation annoyed me.

  “That worries me.”

  “Me too,” I responded. There had been a time, when I’d spoken to Father Thomas about altering the world. I’d seriously considered it. “But if I have a choice, I won’t.”

  “Your nature changes those around you. You gain power, and lose freedom. One day, you may not have a choice. That’s what happened to the greatest of your kind. And his wife, and sons, and daughters. Enslaved by their ties.”

  I shook. He’d said something that made my heart stutter and blood run cold. “What am I?”

  “Mortal,” they said. I could make out the light-hearted amusement in their melodious voice. “Foolish. Male.”

  “My race,” I clarified.