Anthem's Fall

by S. L. Dunn

  “Who do you think you are?” Vengelis screamed unsteadily to no one, his voice hoarse. “Nerol! We’re not finished!”

  The roar sent spasms of pain up his side, and Vengelis let out a constricted exhale with a grimace. He hacked and spit up bloody phlegm, unable to guess how many ribs must be cracked. His body was broken, but he was too overwhelmed with rage and exasperation to acknowledge it. Mumbling to himself, Vengelis reached into his armor and pulled out the Harbinger I remote. Things were spiraling out of control, and the situation had escalated more than he could have possibly imagined. Vengelis could not wrap his mind around why he and Gravitas Nerol were so evenly matched. On top of that, somewhere in the craven multitude far below, a scientist capable of manipulating Felix technology had Sejero genetics within her grasp. In their unfathomable hubris, the humans were going to bring about their own destruction.

  And it was undeniably his fault.

  Vengelis looked down to the glowing display of the remote and commanded the Harbinger I to lift off and head to his location. It was time to cut his losses. He stashed the remote back into his dinted armor and peered around the afternoon with shaky vision. The buildings that rose around him were in shambles. It looked as though gigantic bullets had riddled them, structural damage from his fight with Gravitas.

  Hoff and Darien were dead. They, too, had joined the fallen ranks of the rest of the massacred Imperial First Class. So much death and destruction, all in the name of some mysterious cause that now seemed vain and futile. He was the last one left.

  How had it come to this?

  Vengelis lifted from his position against the side of the building and pushed out into the open air, rising unsteadily and flying northward up the avenue in the direction Gravitas had gone. A fine dust hung in the air, catching the rays of sunlight. Traveling listlessly above the oblong shadow of the leaning skyscraper, the dust added striking contrast to the daylight and the shadow.

  Vengelis felt wayward and grieved at the cruel cards dealt to him by fate. To this world and their narrow scope, he was the villain, and he resented it deeply. He was another victim, like them, doing his best given the circumstances. Vengelis longed more than anything to be back on Anthem. Even the killing fields of Sejeroreich would suit him.

  Taking his time while approaching the leaning skyscraper, he pulled to a stop above its caved in roof. Below him was a peculiar sight: the bottom portion of the colossal building was gone, vaporized by the incalculable force of the upper building’s collapse. Yet the rest of the structure seemed to hang in the open air as though it were immune to the laws of physics and the longing hands of gravity. A wide radius around the base of the building had been decimated by the momentary collapse, and a few blocks in every direction were covered in powdery debris. Vengelis descended into the thick dome of dust rising from the failing building and surveyed up and down the length of mangled windows and exposed floors in search of Gravitas Nerol.

  It did not take long to find him.

  About halfway up the superstructure, conspicuously pressing his shoulders into the side of the building, was Gravitas. Vengelis found himself hating Gravitas more than anything as he watched his struggle against the collapse, more than even the Felixes. It was this fool’s father that had caused this mess, and now the son had the indulgence of taking the high road at his expense. Vengelis’s face showed no reaction as he slowly descended in front of Gravitas. He lingered in space before him and stared at Gravitas for a long mocking moment.

  “Really?” Vengelis croaked.

  Gravitas said nothing. He glared at Vengelis with a scathing aversion. His entire body was shaking with exertion and his face was trembling and deep red under the impossible load. Steel beams four feet in girth were stacked and bent around his neck and shoulders, their rigidity turned pliable in comparison to the Sejero shoulders upon which they wrapped.

  “And this accomplishes what exactly?”

  “You . . . said . . . you . . . have . . . principles. . . . ” Gravitas gasped feebly. “So do I.”

  Vengelis blinked with contempt. Far below them, the two Royal sons engrossed thousands of ashen dust-covered faces. A cold gust of wind blew by them, and Vengelis could see the strain in Gravitas’s expression as he kept the building upright against the wind’s push on the entire side of the superstructure.

  “And the principles represented here are what exactly?”

  Gravitas shook his head a quarter of an inch from side to side. “One’s that require . . . no explanation.”

  The building shifted loudly from far above, and the thick beams bent deeper around his shoulder blades. Gravitas sunk a few feet, failing under exhaustion and the incomprehensible load. Vengelis descended with him, and peered up the length of the shadowed windows, having to turn his neck upward to see the maimed spire looming far overhead.

  “Let go. This is over,” Vengelis said. “Listen to reason.”

  Gravitas buried his chin into his chest and heaved himself upward several inches. Vengelis saw him watching the crowd that had now begun to flee from the base of the building.

  “Let go!” Vengelis shouted.

  Gravitas did not budge, and Vengelis smoldered with fury.

  “As we speak, a scientist within this city is unwittingly playing architect to this entire world’s destruction. That includes all these people. I know you think of them as innocent, but they aren’t . . . no one with intelligence ever is. They are brilliant and conniving, and will stop at nothing to secure dominion over their way of life. Just like we did. So know this as you hold that building on your back and spew your would-be logic at me: all you have done today is assure their self-destruction. After your strength wanes and you fail under the load of this building, I will destroy this city. I have to, in order to stop them from bringing about their own end. I will raze this city to save their world.”

  Vengelis awaited a response, but nothing came.

  “I can give them salvation from an extinction,” Vengelis said with a tone of finality. “It is all I can give them, and it is more than we received.”

  “Annihilation.” Gravitas exhaled.

  “What?”

  “Annihilation is all you can give them. That is all Sejero strength has ever been able to give. For all of its grandeur, our blood knows only destruction.”

  Vengelis looked past his feet to the intersections below. Insect-sized people were fleeing from the base of the tower, some limping with injuries, others laboriously dragging the wounded away from the teetering tower.

  “What are you talking about?” Vengelis said.

  “We were born out of atrocity. The Sejero were created during the Primus race’s darkest hour, and in the wake of their creation the Primus race has never advanced forward. We were born out of apocalypse, and that is all we have ever provided. We’ve mired our beliefs in truths that aren’t so, based our worldview on certainties that were never intended by the natural order.”

  “There was necessity to our creation.”

  “There was desperation. Terrible desperation,” Gravitas gasped. “Our bloodlines were created to protect, only to protect. Our power was derived from a need for good. And yet all we have managed to do is obliterate.”

  Vengelis waved a dismissive hand. “Had it not been for the Sejero, Anthem would have been swept into destruction. What good did the natural order of things do for us, then, when our entire world was covered in mushroom clouds and killing fields?”

  “The blood of the Sejero vanquished the Zergos invasion, yes. But the same blood—the same power—then turned on the morality of our own civilization and vanquished it, too, with equal force. The day we were given the strength of gods, we abandoned everything that made us men. What chance does sovereignty and morality have when the whim of a few unmerited individuals can deny them from all? When we stepped out of the boundaries of the natural world, our race might as well have been destroyed. Everything we once stood for, what the people down there still strive for, was lost forev
er.”

  Vengelis stared at Gravitas for a long moment. Nerol’s body was beaten beyond recognition, his armor torn to ribbons and cracked throughout, his eyelids swelled to great fruits, and his nose and jaw were distended and bleeding profusely. The building pressed down on him with an unimaginable force, and yet he held obstinately against it, trembling with exhaustion. An obvious truth that had been staring Vengelis in the face since he first set eyes on Gravitas Nerol suddenly dawned on him. Its sheer obviousness crashed over him like a dousing of icy water. He bowed his head in shame of his own lacking restraint and reason. Vengelis had heard all of these sentiments before, many times over.

  “You trained under Master Tolland,” Vengelis centered his attention bleakly on the fleeing people and debris-covered pavement within the broad shadow of the building. “Didn’t you?”

  “I . . . Yes.”

  Vengelis slowly closed his eyes and shook his head in disgrace of his own imprudence. “So did I.”

  Gravitas looked up, both startled and affronted. “You lie!”

  “You really don’t believe me? After all you have seen of my fighting style and techniques? After this prolonged back and forth stalemate? Look at us both; we are equally beaten. Nerol, we are the same: students of the greatest teacher of our time.”

  “Master Tolland wouldn’t . . . ”

  “Tolland sent me here, Nerol!”

  “He would never do that,” Gravitas’s voice became enraged, his tone betrayed. “Master Tolland would have died before he sent a slaughterer to this world.”

  “Come with me, Nerol. Come back to Anthem and turn your values into realization. You seek to defend those weaker than you from death. Anthem lies on the brink of ruin! Cold and pitiless machines are ripping through our civilization. Our civilization, Nerol! Fight alongside me, and together we can defeat the Felixes. I know we can. The two grand sentinels of our world will return in a display of glory and splendor unparalleled since the fall of the old world and the rise of the Sejero!”

  “Tolland . . . would never have wanted this. You’ve been here one day and you’ve already killed so many. Master Tolland would never have sent an Epsilon here.”

  “Nerol!” Vengelis’s voice grew in feverish intensity. “He did. I didn’t know you were here; you have to understand me. When Tolland told me of Filgaia, it was in the midst of Sejeroreich’s fall. We were surrounded by madness. His words were drowned out in the carnage. I had to assume Tolland sent me here because of the humans. I had to push them! Each hour lost in this errand, scores of my people—our people—die. You must understand that?”

  Vengelis tried to weigh Gravitas’s thoughts. At last he spoke into the dusty wind. “Come back with me, Gravitas Nerol. Come back to Anthem and save your people.”

  Gravitas said nothing. The steel supports pushed and gnawed against his shoulders, and he sunk several feet.

  “Return with me to avenge a dying race,” Vengelis pleaded. “Return to become the champion among equals that you are!”

  Gravitas looked up, his face was severe and his eyes were bloodshot from his strain. His tone was harsh. “No.”

  “You must come with me.”

  Gravitas shook his head. “If I return, and we together destroy your machines, if all that you hope for comes true, it will only lead to the second rise of oppressive rule. How long will it be until the next Yabu race, the next human race, is bent to our descendants’ will? No. We were given our shot . . . we failed.”

  The momentary rise in color suddenly drained from Vengelis’s face. His lips went white with fury. “I will only ask once more.”

  “Save your breath. I won’t willingly let go of this building. Upon my shoulders rests the faith of an entire spectrum of existence. I will not forsake it to misery and despair. As a martyr I can provide for them a cohesion that may hold their society in tact. So go on; kill me. Then return to Anthem and die yourself. In time the horrors we have seen will be forgotten.”

  “And there will be no changing your mind on this?”

  “None,” Gravitas said.

  A moment of silence fell between them, each with expressions pained and miserable.

  “Very well,” Vengelis said. He knew what he had to do, it was clear to him now. “I thought Master Tolland sent me here for human scientists, but now I see I was wrong. He did not send me here for the humans at all. He sent me here to retrieve you, to recruit your help. Master Tolland knew that together we could defeat the Felixes.”

  “He . . . never . . . ” Gravitas gasped.

  “If you will not come back to help me save my people, so be it.” Vengelis leaned in close to Gravitas, their faces a foot apart. “But I will not aid you in helping yours either. Make no mistake, Nerol, the Felixes will be created; the people down there fear us too much, and their dread will push them to create terrible things—things that will shock this world like nothing you can possibly imagine. You will be forced to embrace what I have seen, to feel the horrors I have felt, and only then will you understand my actions today. When you look into their blue gaze you will realize your mistake.”

  “I . . . ” Gravitas sunk several feet, the building hitched, and he screamed out, his strength failing.

  Vengelis watched sadly as Gravitas Nerol’s strained body began to steadily sink against the weight of the skyscraper. He wondered, watching the tears of hopeless exhaustion fall down Gravitas’s cheeks, if perhaps the strength of the Sejero had at last waned against the ages. With a terrible moan, Gravitas Nerol’s strength failed. He slipped backward and was swallowed by the nest of mangled steel. At once the building collapsed inward from its own unsupported weight. The entire superstructure plummeted past Vengelis in a deluge of carnage. Vengelis floated numbly in the sudden dousing of sunlight, staring vacantly into the empty space where the skyscraper had just stood. His mind was void of thought as a tremendous cloud of dust and ash bellowed and swelled upward in the skyscraper’s stead.

  As though it were a perfunctory task, Vengelis numbly departed the calamity of the fallen skyscraper and flew unhurriedly down the length of the avenue to retrieve Darien. Below him, the streets of Midtown were now mostly desolate of evacuees. Long shadows of the tall buildings were lengthening in the flagging afternoon sunlight, and the power outage across the city accentuated the abandoned gloom.

  The giant Royal Guard was dead amid a demolished Times Square. Vengelis took hold of Darien by his rigid ankle and carried him into the sky, the giant’s huge arms dangling free and reaching down to the streets. Vengelis hauled the enormous body up to the rooftop where Hoff lay, and cast the loyal soldier he himself had killed alongside his departed Lord General.

  A muffled beep sounded from the Harbinger I remote, indicating that the ship was near, but Vengelis ignored it as he gazed regretfully across the city to the endless lands to the west. The adrenaline had abated its pacifying hold on his broken body, and he could not believe the hurt that now coursed through him. He limped in agony to the ledge of the roof and gingerly lay down on his back far above the evidence of his inflicted pain and misery far below. His body was encompassed with pain, but as he turned his head and looked past the nearby spires and into the broad horizon, he felt only anguish.

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Vengelis allowed his eyelids to shut, and he simply stopped caring. Allowing the defeat to drench over him, he listened to his own labored breaths and stared to the serene clouds in the far distance.

  It had always been Gravitas Nerol.

  The purpose of Master Tolland’s intent had not been hidden from him either; he had known from the beginning that someone had traveled to Filgaia on the Traverser I. But how could Vengelis have known it was a warrior equal to himself? How could he have known there was an equal to himself? He hated the Nerols: one, the bringer of ruin, and the other, a self-proclaimed saint, each equal in their ignorance. He resented Master Tolland and his cryptic orders. He despised Kristen Jordan and her negligent courage.

 
The throes of destiny had cast him as the herald of genocide. In his misery and desperation he had lashed out and extended the bloodshed to a blameless people. A large part of him knew he should chase down Kristen Jordan and Madison and tear the sample of Sejero genetics from their grasp. But there was no practical way of finding them without drawing out the slaughter, and he could not bear any more blood on his hands. Vengelis decided to pass the compass of fate, to place it in the hands of another lost navigator. A mighty gift had unintentionally been given to the people far below. How they used this offering would be up to them—he only hoped Kristen Jordan would prove more cautious than his own people.

  Vengelis could not bring himself to grasp the true enemy, cold and callous: the Felix. In the midst of his hardships, the true enemy had been shrouded. As he looked across the cityscape, he was filled with a great sadness.

  Everything he once had was lost.

  His expression hopeless and distraught, Vengelis pulled the Blood Ring off the swelling knuckles of his finger. He looked at the brilliant ring for a long heartbreaking moment, its lustrous scarlet hue against the ruin of the streets below. What valorous achievements Sejero strength had ever achieved in legend and myth had long been overshadowed by the brutality of this ring’s history.

  Vengelis reached out over the ledge of the building and turned his palm, letting the Blood Ring slip from his hand.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Kristen

  Side by side, Kristen and Madison ran steadily up along the length of the chilly shadow cast by the teetering skyscraper. Plaster and dust spilled off their hair and clothes and billowed behind them as they jogged past shattered storefronts and overturned cars. They were two faces in the indiscriminate mob, though the mass was noticeably diminishing as they crossed the intersections westward and put distance between themselves and the high-rises of Midtown. Out of danger from the collapsing skyscraper, they each still ran as fast as their dust-filled lungs would allow.