Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  “For how long?” The other voice is a man’s, deep and booming.

  “Until the city above is broken into pieces by the city above the city above. Let the big beasts eat each other. Then, the littler beasts will battle the littler beasts. And only when all the dust of war has settled down, we rise from the depths and claim Atlas as ours. We can last this siege for many months more. Years, if we have to. We have all the electricity. We have all the water. We have all the food. We—” Her voice echoes away, the charm missing the rest of them as she moves out of range.

  Arrow blinks. He picks up the charm, a metal cup-shaped thing, its sister being the one that dropped into the sewer, into the depths below, into the darkness beyond the darkness …

  He sees Victra blinking, desperate to see through the dark. The city above the city above … Arrow stares at the charm in muted alarm and waits, listening. Listening.

  0171 Forgemon

  He sits at the last table in the corner of the enormous commons room picking at a plate of Lifted City meats. It’s one of the best meals he has ever enjoyed. He even has a chrome canteen of berry blood to wash it down with.

  Aphne circles around a group of men, appearing suddenly and plopping down in a chair across from him. Her short dark cropped-to-the-neck hair bounces as she sits, the spiky loose bits in the back wiggling. She drops her mottled green eyes to his food, then grabs a bone and gnaws a bit of meat off of it.

  “That’s mine,” teases Forge with a smirk.

  “Feasting like a King, are we?” She kicks him lightly under the table, inspiring a laugh from him.

  “I never thought that a life-sentencing to the Keep would be the path I’d have to take to enjoy Sanctum-quality service.” He sucks the rest of the meat off a bone, then discards it to his plate. “I doubt even the Lifted are eating this prettily.”

  “It’s what we get for playing our game smart.” Aphne licks the grease off her fingers, long and slowly; it’s less sexy than it sounds. “Did you hear about how Brane breached another chamber of armor next to the—?”

  “Yes,” cuts in Forge. “I did. He was bragging about it for hours. If ever we needed to wage a war, we’ll be so armored that an outlaw’s bomb couldn’t penetrate us if it sat under our asses.”

  “Well, let’s not get cocky now.” Aphne gives a teasing wink. “He’s such a brag, that Brane. How unfortunate, to have a name like that and yet have so little of it.” She taps her head. “Brains, I mean.”

  “I got the joke.” Forge smiles and drops his last cleaned-off bone onto the tray. He sucks the meat out of his teeth, then goes to picking it out with a fingernail. “Sticky,” he mumbles through his finger.

  Aphne squints as she watches him. “Rhine used to do that.”

  Forge stops, lifting his gaze to her. He pulls his finger out of his mouth.

  “No, no,” she says at once. “I didn’t mean it pained me in any way. In fact, the opposite. It’s kind of cute.”

  “Fuck you,” he spits back playfully, plunging his finger back in.

  Aphne grins. “Rhine would pick all the food out of her teeth after we ate. We were that comfortable around each other. She and I were just a month or so away from marrying, I’m quite sure. I wanted her for my wife, for my forever, always. That’s how true we were in love, Forge. I’m not sure I ever impressed that upon you.”

  He pulls his finger out, then folds his arms on the table. “You did. Rhine occupies your heart. Ellena occupies mine, forever.”

  “You need a shave,” she interjects, and Forge isn’t sure whether it’s her sudden attempt to shift topics to something less painful and heart-tugging, or if she is genuinely distracted by the unkempt beard Forge has since grown on his face over the past few months. “I forget what sort of chin you have. Is it cut down the middle like a baby’s ass, or does it come to a point like my grandma’s elbow?”

  “It’s hairy like the cat between your legs,” answers Forge, and Aphne explodes into laughter, slapping the table and causing his tray to jump. His sense of humor has grown quite crude over the weeks, particularly influenced by Aphne’s constant presence around him.

  And likewise, Aphne has found a certain appreciation for the intricacies of causality. That’s exactly the way she worded it one day when she spent an hour asking Forge questions about his Legacy, curious about the precise nature of it. The inquisition turned into a fit of laughter when he finally answered simply: ‘I know things.’

  There is a man whose Legacy can sense the precise position of the sun in the sky, which turns out to be remarkably convenient, as the folk of the Undercity otherwise have no means to tell day from night. It is through this man that they know there has passed two months of war above them on the surface. They no longer refer to their prison as the Keep, as the dignity of being a human being is lost in that name. It is the Undercity, and runs as a city ought to run by all rights.

  There was soon deemed a ruler of sorts when Sanctum broke apart, but he wouldn’t deign to call himself a ruler; he insisted that simply his name would suit him just fine. But that didn’t stop the others from choosing a name for him. King of Bones, they’ve come to whisper amongst themselves. The name comes from the peculiar situation in which his Legacy was learned. Shortly after Sanctum crumbled to madness, the Guardian and the keepers in the mines were rebelled against by the prisoners, and the resulting battle caused all four of the four exits to the mines to cave in, and several lives—both prisoner and prison guard alike—were lost.

  One life, however, was found in the rubble of fallen rock and dirt. Half-buried, the young man was pulled out, and his bones were exposed along one arm. Snapped was his leg, and crushed was his skull. The miracle was that his eyes still moved, and though he was unable for hours to draw a breath, his lips still parted to say, ‘It was always my fear that I’d one day be buried alive. Thank you for both having me live that fear as well as helping me escape from it today.’

  His Legacy was that he could not die, simply put. Cut off his air supply or break all his bones, the young man would live somehow. It was from the grotesque, bone-exposed way in which they had found him that he earned the title King of Bones. ‘If you sit me on a throne,’ he warned them, annoyed by all the attention, ‘I will turn it into a toilet just to show you how very kingly I’m not.’

  Forge has found no reason to mistrust him. In fact, he likes him.

  “I like him too,” murmurs Aphne later that afternoon when they are perched high atop a pile of barrels containing berry blood. “I think the Undercity needed someone precisely like him to lead.”

  Forge studies the young slightly-deformed man, who’s handling a line of people, tiredly suggesting what they should do to manage certain disputes, and offering solutions to troubles they’re having in securing the one and only way out of the Undercity, which is heavily manned by over fifty guards—made up of their own—at all times. He tries to pick up on what is being said, but so many people talk all at once that it is difficult. Regardless of the warring opinions and heated words, the young King of Bones handles each concern with patience—despite the stressed, tired look of his eyes. The young man looks about the age of his son Aleks, though it’s hard to tell with his misshaped arms, scarred and reddened skin, and dented head.

  And then he’s thinking on his sons. Here I am, feasting on the meals of the Lifted while my sons fight for their lives in the city above. The comforts he feels are guilty ones. He has only known stress and panic within his mind for decades. This is the first time in so long that he’s known peace within himself. But do I deserve it, when my sons could be dying or dead above me? And Ellena …

  Ellena and her tangles of hair. Ellena and the spots of mud on her face and chin. Ellena and her hands that work magic when she puts them on his body. Forgemon Lesser closes his eyes and feels her hands upon him, dreaming of her touch. The way her fingers would bump as they pushed through the hair on his chest, as they clung to his big, metalworking arms, as they crept devilishly lower,
lower, lower until he’d gasp with relief when she found her destination.

  “Need a hand with that?” mutters Aphne.

  Forge opens his eyes and glances downward, noting the stiff protrusion. He does nothing to hide it, turning toward Aphne with a wrinkle in his lips. “Changing our tastes now, are we? Suddenly got yourself an appetite for cock?”

  “Aye, the kind I can wear and thrust in a woman’s body.”

  Forge laughs. “Those exist?? In what ward? I’ve never—!”

  “Oh, you’ve never heard of anything at all, have you?” Aphne lets out a hearty guffaw, slapping Forge on the back in the way his buddies at the metalshop used to. “For someone who knows things, to know so little. How else am I to give my lovely Rhine a good fucking? Am I to grow a dick in a pot and plant it ‘tween my legs?”

  Forge snorts, leaning his back against the cold stone wall and watching the King of Bones handle the people. “He’s remarkably patient.”

  “Aye.” She reaches over and gives the stiffness in his pants a flick of her fingers. Forge recoils, lifting a leg too late to block the assault, then winces and gives her a playful shove. “I’ve never had a brother. I could make one of you.”

  “If you weren’t young enough to be my daughter …”

  “Rhine had a brother twenty years younger than her. Name was … shit, I forget. Was. Fuck me, I’m speaking in the past tense again, am I? No, we’ll see them again. We will.” She brings her knees up to her chest, hugging them. “Even if she was executed that day, touched by Metal Hand—destroyed in an instant—or sentenced to another Keep for life.”

  “Twelve Keeps,” mutters Forge, thinking on it suddenly. “One for each ward, I’d always presumed. But only four make up this Undercity, as the passages beyond these four Keeps have caved in. Do I have that right?”

  “From what I’ve been told, you have that right.”

  “Then what of the other eight? There’s eight other Keeps full of men and women. Could we not unite with them and share our resources? Our power is in numbers.”

  “No. Your power is in numbers, math man,” she retorts. “Our power is in keeping what we have and letting Atlas starve away before we reclaim it.”

  “So our power is in greed?”

  Aphne sputters, about to argue something back, but then draws silent. “Well,” she says, “I guess that is sorta what I’m saying. You think it’s a good idea to invite eight other Keeps into our Undercity, though? Eight other Keeps, which might still be run by guards who keep to the old ways? And what of the prisoners, who we do not know? They might have their own leaders. Cruel leaders. Vicious leaders who would turn us over and shake out all our foodstuffs and comforts. No; even they we must be wary of. And besides,” she adds, kicking back and crossing her legs, “the electricity generators and the mines are in our Undercity. The other eight Keeps have nothing.”

  Forge smirks, mulling it over and giving his beard an itch. It doesn’t make sense to him that they have nothing. They must have food, too. And water. And perhaps even electricity, even if the main generator is in the Undercity’s control. There may be other means of electrical generation elsewhere. It’d be arrogant to assume otherwise.

  “We’re the city beneath the city beneath the city.” Aphne gives a wink before sliding off the barrels. “See you at sundown.”

  Forge lifts out of his thoughts. “Where you off to?”

  “Some lady with perky tits gave me the eyes in the food storage. I’m going to see if she wants something stored in her pussy.” She gives a lurid wiggle of her eyebrows before disappearing around the corner.

  On his own, Forgemon takes to wandering the crowded halls and enormous commons rooms on his own. The math has kept away from him for quite some time, and he doesn’t miss it. There was a time when he was trapped in one of the cells of the catacombs, put there after being caught trying to escape. (There’s a tiny part of him that’s not sure he’s forgiven Aphne completely for failing her half of the plan.) It was in that tiny room in the catacombs—cell nine-thousand nine-hundred and twelve—that Forge’s Legacy seemed to spin out of control. He saw futures of fire and burning. He saw his sons’ deaths—all of them. He saw his wife with arrows in her. He saw birds falling from the sky, birds he thought he recognized as people. He saw a world full of water, the ocean, and through it he desperately swam, swam, swam … unsure until then whether he was even capable of swimming.

  His Legacy had haunted him so terribly, and he’s ever glad not to be in that vile place anymore—mentally and physically. If he never again had an attack of the math, he’d count himself lucky.

  Forge is in the armory suddenly, unsure how he got there. No one else is around except for another man near the door, who seems occupied with a clipboard he’s studying intently. Forge walks the aisle of armor—white breastplates of the Sky Guard, white gauntlets, white greaves, white codpieces, white leggings … and then the lesser slumborn models, discarded armors from Guardian who have been stripped of their equipment, or outright robbed. Forge stops to consider a leather suit of armor hanging on the rack. It carries the Guardian emblem on its chest. He wonders if Halvesand or Aleksand wear this very same thing.

  The door to the armory opens, the awkward shape of the King of Bones slips inside, and then it shuts. The one by the door greets him quietly, then asks a question about something he’s read on the clipboard. The King gives a quick shake of his head, mutters, “Ask me later,” and then carries on toward the armor. The man with the clipboard smirks, appearing slighted, then departs the room.

  And the King of Bones, apparently not having seen Forge, lets out a hearty sigh, then collapses under a row of armor. He stares up with big, blank eyes, muttering unintelligibly to himself.

  “Hard responsibility, kid?” grumbles Forge lightly.

  The King flinches, glances over at him, then gives a shrug. “It’s a long day, that’s all. And I’m no kid.” He sighs. “Not anymore.”

  Forge sits down on the floor himself across the way from the young man. “Can’t tell your age, really. What are you? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-four. You’re the math man, is that so?”

  Forge blinks. “Who told you?”

  “Your loudmouth friend. I like her. Her Legacy reminds me of my own,” he says.

  Forge is confused by that comment. He isn’t sure how making adaptive copies of objects compares to being unkillable. “How so?”

  The King doesn’t answer that. Then, he just grunts and says, “Too many things on the brain. I can’t keep it all straight in my head, all the decisions one has to make. Never wanted to be leader. Math man, tell me, how’s this all end?”

  “How does what end?”

  “This. Our siege. That. King Impis’s reign. How does it end?”

  Forge has been proud of keeping the math quiet. A part of him genuinely fears waking it back up to ponder and calculate what the future may hold for them … or, even more frighteningly, what it may not hold for them. “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “My Legacy makes me lose my mind a bit. I’m afraid I haven’t tried to … posit a future in quite some time. I prefer the peace in my head.”

  “Oh, how I can relate to that. You ought to be in charge, if you simply learn to live with the crazy in your mind. You might be the greatest weapon we have, really. Knowledge is a weapon. The things you know are … things no one ought to know. I’ve met a crazy man or two in my life who said a crazy thing or two. One once told me the world ends in fire. Is that true?”

  The words send chills up Forge’s neck. He shifts uncomfortably, thinking of his time in the catacombs. I saw fire. “If it does, I hope there’s a way to prevent that future.”

  “Ah, but there’s supposed to be. It’s all about the Goddess. What a bunch of shit that was.” The young man chortles derisively.

  “How so?”

  “I never got to find out.” He stretches on the floor. “Married?”

  “Married? Ye
s … I am.”

  “She here? Or out there?”

  “Out there.”

  “I hope she’s alright.” He props his head up with a scarred elbow dug into the floor. “It’s remarkable, the things people give up for a little bit of underground safety … and luxury. I’ve considered so many times just pushing through those guards we have at the gate and heading off on some grand adventure to find my parents. If they’re still alive.” He starts drawing shapes on the ground with his toe. “I could do it. Someone else would step up as leader. You could.”

  “I can’t lead without the math. And with the math, I’m crazy.”

  “You had the math before and you weren’t crazy. I saw you. They gave you twenty, didn’t they? Red? Those fucks. I would’ve liked a chance to turn the work onto them.” He chuckles, biting his lip and looking off. “Alas, compassion and being a leader and all that. What kind of example does it set to make our motto vengeance?”

  Forge rests his head on the ground, staring up at the grated ceiling. A hum from some machinery somewhere reaches his ears, a soothing sound. “I’m not sure I’ve anyone to blame for my being here. I protected my son. Sanctum believed a lie. I’m not sure anyone came out proper in the end. I wouldn’t wish the world to be more vengeful. There’s enough of it in our hearts, I agree with you there.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t say there’s no room for vengeance.” The young man smacks his tongue suddenly. “Your story is a noble one. Mine is foolish. I’m here because I trusted too easily.”

  “That so?” Forge crosses his arms, kicking a foot up onto a metal leg of the armor rack. “Tell it true.”

  “My best friend. Likely, my only friend. I was betrayed, and all these years, locked up for the crime of being slumborn. I suspect that is why the majority of us are here. I believe in vengeance. I believe in peace, too. And when I get my vengeance, I will have my peace.”

  “Your best friend,” Forge says. “You wish him dead?”

  “Aye, but that’s the hilarious irony of it. I cannot have him dead if I wished it. And with every passing day, I’m running out of time.”