Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  “You sure?” Link asks jeeringly.

  Twice now they’ve turned themselves around, unintentionally circling back into the tenth ward. It’s as if some magic spell was keeping them from getting to the Forsaken Ward. The thought, even if it’s half meant in humor, makes him think on the strange man he’d met at the ruins of The Brae. He claimed to be Baron’s brother. He also claimed to have seen the end of the world—or something like that. It began in cold and it will end in fire … or something.

  The man also said he shouldn’t trust Baron. Why would he warn Link against trusting his own brother? Well, there are times Link didn’t trust Wick or the obvious lie about his Legacy and what he does with all those hours at night, of which he still does not know a thing. Perhaps it’s often one’s own siblings who are least deserving of trust.

  Link spots the newest member of the Brotherhood in the crowd by the water, the tiny kid with the fear in his small, shrinking eyes. He’s listening to something another brother is telling him, but his eyes are glassy and faraway, as if the fear he felt when he was drowned is now permanently pasted on his face.

  “Did I look like that when I joined the Brotherhood?” asks Link.

  Ames follows Link’s gaze, then smirks, warring red and white scars of his burns crinkling with his mouth. “Something like that.”

  “I looked afraid? Was I afraid?”

  “We were all afraid.”

  Link stares at his reflection again, remembering that last little moment of his life when he breathed water and felt the life of a boy drown within him and the life of a Brother take its place. He thinks about what he saw in the water that day.

  “Did he ask you if you had the vision?”

  Ames shrugs. “Yeah, of course. It’s the whole point.”

  Link keeps staring at his face in the water as it wiggles and dances and shimmers. “Have you noticed that Baron’s … more and more angry each time it happens?”

  “He wouldn’t have a reason to get angry at all if Three Goddess would just give the damn vision to someone.” Ames sighs, stretching his legs by the water and slapping his feet in, disturbing it—one leg smooth, one leg scarred with grotesque burns from ankle to thigh. Link’s reflection ripples until it’s unrecognizable. “Maybe he’ll find a new rat to drown in the Dark Abandon.”

  “A new rat?”

  “Some new boy. Maybe he’ll have the vision that saves us all.”

  Link keeps thinking of the man from the ruins. Hazy visions of the Sisters and that invisible girl dance in his mind, spinning him around and around.

  “It’s always boys,” Ames goes on with a little smirk. “I wonder if Baron has an appetite for them. Young and pretty.” Ames chuckles to himself dryly, then flashes Link a toothy smile. “Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough for the vision?”

  The humor doesn’t touch Link. He stares at the water. For some reason, he feels sick.

  “I saw a girl.”

  Ames lifts an eyebrow at Link. “No, you didn’t,” he retorts with a sneer. “If there was a girl among us, I’m pretty sure the boys would smell her out like hungry dogs to a bone.”

  “The day I drowned.”

  Ames’ eyes turn serious. He doesn’t say a word, watching Link with an intensifying stare.

  “A-At least I … I think I did,” Link amends, suddenly feeling the need to backpedal. “I might’ve just … hallucinated this girl I met once here in the Waterways. She stole something from me and …” Link swallows, not liking the fact that the severity on Ames’ face has not softened in the least. “It isn’t the vision. It can’t be. It doesn’t even make sense. All I saw was her and …” And the gold. And the Sisters.

  “And?” prompts Ames.

  “And … and maybe I’m the one losing my mind.” Link shakes his head. “Just ignore me.”

  Ames stares at him dubiously for a long moment, then finally relents, dropping his head with a great sigh. He glances back at Baron. “He’ll find his mission. And then Atlas will be saved.”

  Just then, Baron calls back to the boys, directing them down the right path, certain that it is the one to not loop back to a previous ward. The boys gather up their things and start to follow Baron over one of the cobblestone crosswalks. When Link follows, he catches Ames staring at him again with those pensive, skeptical eyes. He doesn’t much like that look.

  They continue down the sidewalks of the underground canal. Baron looks particularly proud of himself, as this tunnel looks like new territory for them. The waters are much more calm, almost to the point where they don’t seem to be flowing at all. Distant water droplets echo off the stones, giving these parts of the Waterways the atmosphere of some deep cavern. Even the structure of the tunnels themselves appear more crudely built, with jagged edges along the walkways and sparser lamps. After just twenty more minutes of walking, even the water starts to look black as a slummer’s sky.

  The road splits into two with a tired, twenty-thousand-year-old bridge made of wood giving access to the other side. Link is roughly speculating the age, of course. He wonders if anything is that old. One of the boys expresses a concern that one of the tunnels looks too dark to traverse at all, considering the next lamp appears to be so far in the distance that the area of the tunnel between here and there is completely dark, hiding any sudden bend or break in the sidewalks.

  “REPENT.”

  Link jumps, jerked out of his thought by the one hammer of a word. The boys fall silent as Link looks up to find Baron standing at the other end of the Brotherhood, his eyes locked upon Link’s. Ames is at the priest’s side, and he too stares at Link with a crooked scowl on his half-burnt face. Link would hate to describe it as full of malice, but that may be the most accurate word.

  “Repent, did you?” asks Baron quieter. His words drift straight to Link, sending ice to his gut. “Is that what I was to believe that day you turned my Brae gold?”

  Link swallows, his eyes darting back and forth between Ames and Baron. “I … I don’t understand.”

  “What is it?” asks Baron, taking a step toward him. The boys back away to make a path for him.

  “What’s what?”

  “The mission, dear boy,” he asks so gently, the tone of his voice is nearly saccharine. “The one for which I’ve taken six more Legacies since the day I took yours. The mission I’ve been hunting for. The mission, Goddess-given.”

  Link’s eyes meet Ames’. I was a fool to trust him. “What I saw wasn’t a vision. It was a hallucination. I … I even told you what I saw. I was drowning, for sh-shit’s sake. I saw a friend I once met down here … a girl. I saw—”

  “Three Goddess,” Baron finishes for him. His hand reaches out suddenly, gripping the shoulder of one of the boys. The boy’s brow wrinkles in discomfort. “You saw Three Goddess.”

  “I have no idea what I saw,” Link lies.

  “I knew it.” Baron shakes his head, his mouth tightening to a straight line. “When I pulled you from the water, I knew it. When you fell through the roof, I knew it. When you walked with the boys of Wrath and robbed us of glass and pride, I fucking knew you were the one.”

  “Admit it,” calls out Ames, as if he were some appointed second-hand to the Sister-obsessed priest. “Just admit what you saw.”

  “I saw water,” Link bites back, fuming.

  Baron grips another boy’s shoulder with his other hand. The two boys in his grip wince from the man’s tight hold. “Water,” he echoes, amused by Link’s wit. Though, if Link were to be truthful, he’s not sure he meant it wittily; he was being literal.

  Then, before his eyes, the two boys in Baron’s grip turn gaunt as hundred-year-old men, then brittle and pale white. In the space of five seconds, two piles of dust and bone rest on either side of the priest.

  The other boys step back with sickened gasps. One boy retches, his vomit spilling on the bare feet of the boy next to him. Another steps back so far, he loses his footing and falls backward into the water, then shrieks at how cold it is. Ames
’ expression seems to have sobered completely, all sign of malice or anger lost immediately and replaced instantly with fear.

  “What did you see, Link?” asks Baron, and it is now the priest’s eyes that have gathered the malevolence Ames’ eyes lost.

  “Tell him,” orders someone in the back, his voice shaking with fear. “Yeah, fucking tell him,” orders another one of the boys who always seems to hang by Ames’ side. “Just tell him the damn mission or whatever!” shouts yet another.

  Baron already has someone else in his grip, a boy who looks like he’s a second from emptying his bladder, struggling to free himself from the man’s unrelenting grip. “The mission, child.” Baron’s lips tighten again. “The mission. Tell me.”

  “I s-s-saw shapes. Women’s faces. A friend I once knew.”

  “Lies.”

  The boy in his grip twists and screams as he ages a thousand years in less than two seconds, crumbling into a pile of ash and femurs and one small skull.

  Another boy is already in his grip. Two more boys. Others begin to wrestle with Baron’s hold on them, trying to free their friends from the mad priest—the priest who’s been touched by madness, by violent greed, by shattered faith.

  “THE VISION! NOW!” demands Baron.

  Two more boys turn to dust, along with those who held on to the others in hopes of freeing them.

  Boys have started to run. One abandons his robe, having gotten it snagged on a jagged stone coming out of the wall, and races into the darkness wearing nothing at all.

  The back of Link’s heel hits the ledge, almost making him lose his balance. He swallows hard, staring at Baron who now stands all by himself. Even Ames has taken off running.

  “They’re all just puppets,” mutters Baron over the sound of retreating footsteps and boys shouting and distant droplets of water echoing through the cavernous halls. “Each and every one. Empty visions and blank eyes and no gold in them. You, boy, child of gold, golden of spirit, golden of fingers, golden of faith …”

  “Stay away from me,” hisses Link, sidestepping down the path.

  Baron approaches, unheeding. “You were touched by the Sisters. They gave you the key. Why wouldn’t you want to hand it to the one who guided you there? To the one who’s supported you since your grievous fall through my very roof? I am your friend.”

  “Y-Y-You’re a murderer. You took their lives … all their lives …! You said we only die when the Brotherhood does!”

  “When I do,” Baron corrects him, “or when I choose to take back my Goddess-given gift of unlife. But you have nothing to fear, boy, child, Link, for I wouldn’t take the unlife of the one who was touched by the Goddesses. You’re, on the contrary, the only one I need.”

  “You wasted th-their lives …” Link stumbles, drops to his ass, then scrambles back to his feet. “How can you have so little value for lives after … after what you’ve preached? What you’ve taught me? What you accused the Wrath of?”

  “Little sacrifices. I’ll take twenty lives if it means saving the whole city. Cut off a finger to save the hand. Trim a branch to save the tree. Link, let us save the world together.”

  Don’t trust him. Link is all alone in the tunnel with Baron. The other boys were smarter and fled so as not to meet their end. And I must do the same.

  “Link. Don’t run.”

  But run he does. Link bolts down the pathway, hopping over every crack and uneven turn of stone as he flees. Baron’s voice hollers down the hall, echoing into Link’s sensitive ears from all directions. He runs as fast as his feet will carry him.

  The next time Baron shouts, Link realizes he’s chasing after him. Link’s running becomes increasingly more frantic. He turns a corner and runs so fast, he’s reminded unsettlingly of a day when he escaped hounds in the courtyard of some rich family Dran and the gang had abandoned him in. Hounds, he decides. You’re being chased by hounds again—or rather, by one big, scary hound that could end you. Never let settle your feet. Run, run, run.

  When he turns the next corner, he finds Ames against the wall catching his breath. When his wide, worried eyes meets Link’s, he realizes the chase has caught up to him. Ames breaks into a sprint, flailing his arms to gather speed as he joins Link, racing down the winding paths of the Waterways.

  “REPENT!!” comes the priest’s broken voice, flying down the hall faster than the water races at their side.

  Link and Ames run and run and run, but no matter the distance they make, Baron’s voice seems always just a step behind. Link grits his teeth, prays to the Goddesses of which he never truly held faith, not truly, and he begs them for mercy. Sisters, if ever you had a moment’s reprieve for a Lesser, please, spare me your priest, spare me this chase, spare me the misery. I reject your mission. I want nothing of it. Take the vision back, if that’s even what it was.

  The boys escape down the tunnels, haunted by the desperate cries of the priest who will not let them go.

  0159 Tide

  Is he dead? Did I kill Anwick Lesser?

  He races past the threshold of the Dark Abandon. He doesn’t look back to verify whether Scorp has followed him or not. His legs are shaking by the time he finally stops, and he worries whether they can hold his weight. He doubles over, heaving with breath that fills and evacuates his lungs in deep and desperate mouthfuls, as if he’s drowning in air.

  Scorp drops to his knees next to Tide, sucking in lungful after lungful as they take in the comfort of their home. Tide stares at his skinny, shaky, shirtless partner as they recover. His eyes graze over all the ink that decorates his skin, wondering what it all means. He never cared to ask. Why do I suddenly care now?

  “You and I … were so fucking close …” Scorp finally gets out between uneven breaths.

  His hands still on his knees, bent over, Tide shakes his head and says, “We can’t see the Queen.”

  Scorp lifts an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “We didn’t get either of those dumbasses. We’ve only gathered nine. We’re short a set of eyes.”

  His partner sighs. “I’ve seen others short their load. We will just owe them an extra next month.” Suddenly Scorp rounds on Tide, his teeth bared. “Fuck, man, why did you almost bring the whole fucking warehouse down on our heads??”

  Tide’s face scrunches up. “The fuck you talking about?”

  “The wind, you idiot!”

  “It wasn’t me!” he shouts, furious. “It was a f-fucking …”

  But Tide can’t quite complete the sentence, as he’s completely unsure of where that wind came from at all. It wasn’t a storm; the moment they got out of that warehouse, they no longer felt its effects. The wind was contained, much in the same way it contains itself when Tide uses it. But that wasn’t my wind, he keeps telling himself, a thousand times since they fled that warehouse. Was the wind from Wick’s stupid partner? Does he also have a wind Legacy? There was so much noise in the air from the storm of warring winds around them, Tide couldn’t hear a damn thing, let alone a source of the raging weather.

  “You’re helpless.” Scorp sighs, slaps his own face. “Two more trains and we’re in the Abandon. Keep your feet moving.”

  Tide snorts at his partner, not needing to be bossed around. Still, he breaks into a light sprint and keeps up with Scorp as they jog the rest of the way down the smoggy street. The first dead train station passes by on their left, its rail hovering over the road and hugging the nearby building. Too soon, they already pass the next depowered rail, this one twice as high from the ground, a rickety metal tower leading up to the station where people would board or disembark. I wonder if Atlas will ever have a running train again.

  No matter how many times he’s passed through its daunting threshold, the Dark Abandon always sends a chill of fear up Tide’s spine. He would never admit that out loud, but it’s ever exhausting to wear a brave face in front of the others who reside here in the forbidden spot of Atlas that even the Kings and Queens don’t touch. It’s so far off-center from
the city that there isn’t even a bit of Lifted City that stretches over it, as if even the city in the sky has retracted its arms and fingers in fear.

  That also means they’re safe from the Mad Bolt, which cannot reach this far. The Dark Abandon is an L-shape that hugs the Wall and has many levels beneath the surface that, hundreds of years ago before the great explosion, was ripe with underground marketplaces, secret trade routes, cave dwellings in which people lived, and even a Sanctum-kept tunnel that led straight to the Keep. Its passage has long since caved in, collapsing in on itself and barring entrance to (or exit from) the Keep.

  The criminals and the homeless and the hopeless all live in the streets near the entrances of the Dark Abandon, as far away from the black, unbeating heart of the Abandon as possible. The farther you go in, the less people you see, and the more shades you begin to notice. That’s what they call the weird hallucinations and the ghosts and the unexplainables that seem to lurk in every corner: the shades. Even during daylight hours, the Abandon carries an unmistakably intimidating, ghostly essence about it, as if even the buildings are alive in a sort of spiritual manner, staring at you with broken teeth for doors and eyeless eyes for windows, watching your every move and counting your heartbeats, secretly knowing when your last one will be. Every wind that pushes through the street is the mocking, breathy laughter of a dead Queen or King.

  The blunt three-story tower—or fortress, as Tide prefers to call it—looms at the end of the road, just under the shadow of the Wall at its back. If it weren’t for the pale glowing that creeps out from under Tide’s armor, the way to the fortress would be pitch black for the pair of them. Even still, Tide blinks and finds himself walking too close to his partner, as if he wants to hold his hand or, at a moment’s fright, throw Scorp in front of him for protection.

  The fortress doors open smoothly after Scorp and Tide identify themselves. Scorp swings by their room of lodging where all the other hunters keep their loot. Tide watches as his partner struggles to heave the thick, woolen bag over a shoulder. After too many sad attempts, Tide sighs and grabs it away from his partner without a word, slinging it over his own shoulder with ease.