by M. R. Forbes
It was getting closer.
He gripped the control stone in his hand. He wouldn't try to use it unless he had to. "We need to hide," he said.
Jeremiah started to move. The grinding echoed.
"No. Don't move. Just stand there," Talon said.
Jeremiah paused.
Talon pushed himself against the wall, peering around the corner again. The juggernaut was a one zero. He could disable it if he took it by surprise.
He stayed against the wall and waited. He could hear the juggernaut growing closer. He tensed himself, ready to jump on its back.
Jeremiah put his hand out in front of him before he could. The juggernaut walked across their path and continued on.
"It is safe," Jeremiah said. "It is this way." He pointed east.
Talon moved ahead of him. With each step, he felt his pulse grow a little quicker, his anger building. With each step, he saw a different person ahead of him, a translucent spirit of a past he needed to atone for.
"Murderer," they said to him, their voices growing louder the further he walked. So many faces. So many voices. He didn't even know them. They were people he had killed in his name. Men and women and children. The ones he had slaughtered to protect the promise. The ones whose lives he had destroyed.
Jeremiah pointed him down two more corridors. The background noise was louder here. Wherever the juggernaut was leading him, it was bringing them closer to it. He could make out the sound of rattling chains and gears more clearly now. He clenched his jaw, trying to remember it, trying to figure out what it was. Except he couldn't. The anger was filling him, overwhelming him. The voices were multiplying, the specters joining a mob ahead of him.
He felt like he was losing his mind.
He didn't even notice the juggernaut as it stepped in front of his path.
He nearly walked right into it. He came to a stop at the same time it did. It was right in front of him, a bundle of parts in its hands.
He was going to attack it. He wanted to rip it apart one bolt at a time. Jeremiah reached out and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him gently to the side.
The juggernaut continued.
Talon forgot about it the moment it was out of his sight. He continued forward, all the while growing more and more delirious with anger, sadness, and pain.
As he reached the plain ircidium door in the middle of one of the corridors, and Jeremiah told him, "it is it," he saw Aren standing in front of him, pale and bloodless and cold.
"Avenge me, father," his son said.
One more murder. One more death. One more step. I will avenge you, my son. I will avenge all of you. Every last one.
"We made it, Jeremiah," Talon said softly, approaching the door.
The juggernaut didn't reply.
Talon looked back at his friend.
Jeremiah's remaining eye was dark.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Eryn
Talon is here? In Area North?
Eryn ran from the chamber before he said another word. She raced across the bedroom, grabbing the door and pulling it open.
Worm was standing directly in front of her, facing her and blocking her path.
"Talon is here. You need to let me out," Eryn said. She could feel her heart racing, so many thoughts and emotions vying for control within her.
Worm pointed back towards the chamber.
"Did you hear what I said? Talon is here. Get out of my way, or I'll move you myself."
Worm raised his eyebrows. He didn't believe she could.
"Don't you get it? If he reaches him, he'll kill him. If he kills him-"
She paused. What if Talon did kill him? What if he undid everything that he claimed to have done in the name of protecting the people of the Empire? What if it ended, here and now?
She had listened to his story. The pieces fit, and there was sense in it. Then again, he had a thousand years to plan a story that would make himself look more like a martyr than a tyrant. It was enough time that perhaps he even believed it, true or not.
How could she know if he was telling the truth? He had magic beyond what she even understood. He had the ability to take people's minds and make them forget. He had gone to such great lengths to manipulate people and keep them under his thumb, poisoning her birth-father so that Talon would kill him before he could learn the truth.
What truth?
There was no way to prove his tale one way or another because he had stolen all of history from the world. To keep things from becoming worse? Or to keep the world under his control?
He said he was dying. He wanted her to take his place. To become him. To continue to torment the few for the good of the many. To create more pain and loss and darkness. But was the darkness of an Empire without a past and with no hope for a brighter future better than the darkness of possible extinction?
She stared up at Worm. His eyes were sad, as if they were reflecting the conflict she was feeling.
She closed her eyes. She couldn't help but think about Robar and Sena and Lottie, and all of the people of Elling, who had flocked to her and looked to her for their safety. She thought about the Shifters she and Worm had defeated in the city, behind the same walls now being used for protection. For all she knew, they had returned once she had gone and slaughtered every last one of her people.
That's what will happen. There and everywhere.
If she didn't do as he asked, the Shifters would destroy everything. There would be no more suffering, but only because there would be no one left to suffer. She had no right to make that decision. Only Amman did. Amman would expect her to make the right choice for the good of all. Not the choice that was only best for her.
She needed to get to Talon. She needed to speak with him. He would know the truth. He had to, now that he was here. According to him, Talon had helped make the barrier that kept the Shifters from overrunning their world. There was no way he could come to this place and not remember.
He had always remembered.
"Worm, you have to let me go. Please. He wanted me to come here, to listen so that I could help convince Talon to stop before it was too late. I can't do that if you won't let me out to meet him."
He continued to stand in the doorway. She clenched her teeth in anger and retreated to the bed. Talon's sword was resting on it in its scabbard. She lifted it and drew the blade, turning back to Worm.
"I don't want to hurt you."
He stared at her. He didn't believe she could.
"I love you, but you have to let me out. I'm not going to ask again. This is more important than you or me."
She approached him with the blade, and at the same time began to call on her magic. The reactor was powerful, and it came so easily. She wasn't sure even Worm could resist the amount of energy she could use against him if she needed to.
"Worm," she said again, begging. "We have to stop him."
He smiled and nodded, finally stepping aside.
The move surprised Eryn until she realized that he had been testing her, to see how far she would go. To judge how firmly she believed in his words and the action she would take.
She ran from the room with Worm trailing behind her. She descended the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her, spinning around and around the tower so quickly she began to feel dizzy. Her pulse quickened with every step, from the exertion, from the excitement, from the anxiety and fear. She still didn't know what she was going to do when she found Talon. She only knew she needed to reach him and to be there with him in the end.
"Which way?" Eryn asked as they reached the base of the tower. She didn't know where to go. Did Worm?
He did. He took the lead, running ahead of her, out of the main entryway and into a second room. There was a round transport platform that would lead down into the reactor.
There was also a statue. Eryn gasped when she saw it, drawing to a stop in the center of the stone disc. It was made out of metal. Not ircidium, but copper or gold. It was intricate, lifelike, and be
autiful. Nine figures of various shapes, sizes, and ages, wearing suits of some kind of armor, arranged so that each face was visible. They held their swords up over their heads in victory. A dead Shifter General lay at their feet.
"If only that had been the end of it," she said as she used her magic to begin lowering the platform.
They sank hundreds and hundreds of feet, down into the depths of the reactor. They passed over fifty levels of corridors and shafts and living spaces, all of them dark and lifeless and forgotten.
Eryn could hear the noise the moment they reached the bottom. The shifting of chains, the turning of gears. A machine to perpetually pour more and more ircidium into the shaft that led to the core? She would know soon. All she had to do was find Talon.
Worm put his hand gently on her shoulder and pointed. She didn't know how, but he knew which way to go.
"Thank you," she said, following behind him as they hurried off once more.
They navigated through the corridors. The reactor was like a maze to Eryn and she quickly lost her bearings, becoming dependent on Worm to get her where she wanted to go. She froze the first time they crossed paths with a juggernaut until it passed them by without a look, and she realized they were as simple as the one that had carried her up from the dock.
Minutes passed. Her heart was beating so strongly she could feel it in her throat. Her breath was ragged, her body tired. It seemed as if they had been running for miles. All the while, the din of the machinery grew louder and louder.
Eryn's heart skipped a beat when they turned the corner, and she saw Oz standing in front of an open door. It looked terrible. Beaten and bent and burned. But it was here!
"Oz," she said, approaching the juggernaut.
Except it isn't Oz, is it?
Jeremiah didn't move or react to her arrival. She stopped in front of him, looking up. His eyes were dim. No steam escaped from his faceplate. He had brought Talon here. He had died to do it.
"I'm so sorry, Jeremiah," she said.
She began to turn towards the open door, for the first time noticing the sobbing coming from the room behind it.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Eryn
Eryn entered the room. It was a large, expansive room, unlike anything she had ever seen before. It seemed as if it was alive, with veins of ircidium overlapping and crossing what appeared to be thousands of branches of dark red liquid. The liquid undulated slowly, thicker in some areas, thinner in others, always moving from point to point and encasing the entire space.
A living space, that much was clear, though there were no doorways or halls, and the sparse furniture was unlike anything she had ever seen before. A bed, a table, a bathroom with a stall like a stable and a strange spigot hanging over it, and books.
Hundreds and hundreds of books.
They were arranged on a shelf placed away from the wall, organized and neat. Next to it was a small writing desk. A journal sat on it, words half-written on an empty page.
It was amazing and terrifying. His room. The one he had described to her. The one that let the magic out, but prevented the prozoa from coming in.
Talon was sitting in the center of it. He was leaning over someone, his body obscuring her view of all but the legs. The shimmering material of a garum was visible beneath the folds of a robe.
His body shivered. The muscles on his arms clenched and loosened.
He was crying.
"No. No. No. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. What have I done? What have I done?"
To Eryn, it was as if the entire world came to a stop in that instant. As if time became no more than a concept, no more than a definition of something that could be explained but never felt. There was no question in her mind that the person Talon was holding was him. There was no doubt that he had done what he had promised to do.
And he was crying.
It wasn't a regretful sob. It wasn't as if he had attacked and killed the wizard and then remembered the promise after. It was worse than that. So much worse. It was a cry of utter and complete agony, of pain so deep and so old that the well of it could never run dry. It was beautiful in its horror, a soul-wrenching whine of total emptiness. She had never heard anything like it and hoped she would never have to again.
"Talon."
She said his name softly. He didn't hear her. He couldn't hear anything right now.
She felt Worm move up behind her, and then move towards Talon. She reached out, grabbing his wrist before he could intercede.
"Don't," she said.
Talon must have sensed the man's presence, even when he had ignored hers. His head snapped to the side, his body shifting as though he was going to defend the person in his lap. His face was pale, his eyes were red and puffy. He looked sick and old.
The motion finally gave Eryn a glimpse of him.
Her heart was already thundering in her chest. When she saw the long white hair, delicate, wrinkled, aged features, the rise of breasts beneath the robes and the stains of blood soaking through them, it threatened to stop.
"No," she whispered, the understanding washing over her in a flood of cold. She finally knew who he was. Not a man at all.
Alyssa.
Her eyes moved to Talon. She had no way to begin to understand all of what had happened, but she understood enough. She wanted to run to him, to fall on her knees and put her arms around him, to try to find some way to bring him comfort. She couldn't. She knew with every bit of her being how impossible any kind of comfort would be.
His eyes moved over her, meeting hers for a moment, the smallest change in them suggesting he recognized her and that some basic part of him was thankful she was safe. Then they landed on Worm.
Seconds passed as they stared at one another.
"Teran?" Talon said.
Worm stared back, his eyes filling with tears. His face changed, as though he had only at that moment remembered who he was. He shifted his head in the slightest nod.
"I'm sorry," Talon said to him. "I'm so sorry."
Tehran moved forward. Eryn didn't try to stop him. She followed him, still holding his wrist. He shifted beneath her until she was holding his hand.
"Talon, what happened?" Eryn said.
He had stopped wailing, but the tears still ran freely from his eyes, and she could tell he was struggling to hold the emotion in.
"I didn't know. I didn't know. Not until it was too late. The anger. The fury. The vengeance. I couldn't see. I was so blind. I'm sorry. Alyssa, my love, I'm sorry."
He leaned down, kissing her forehead tenderly.
"The promise," he said. "I remember the promise now. The one I made over a thousand years ago. To love and honor and cherish. To support in all things. I became this for you. The First of Nine. A weapon. A monster. A murderer. I did it for you."
He began crying again, his forehead resting on hers, his tears dripping onto her face. Her eyes were open, and Eryn watched as they dilated and moved. She gasped, struggling to gain her breath.
"Alyssa?" Talon sat up to give her more air.
She gazed up at him. There was no anger there, no malice. Eryn knew the look of love.
"I'm so happy to see you again, my love," she said, fighting to push the words out. Her voice was harsh and deep, weathered and worn, the toll of a thousand years coursing through it.
"Alyssa. I'm sorry. I'm so-"
"No. Thomas, it isn't your fault. It never was. I know you did this for me. That you took all of the pain for me, to spare me what you could. I know the procedure changed you, hurt you, took your mind." Tears began to form in her eyes. "I'm the one who is sorry. For asking it of you, for stealing your memories. For Aren, and for Teran. I tried so hard to protect you, to stop you before it was too late."
"I should have listened. I should have stopped when you asked me to. All the times you asked me to. I should have returned to the tower for my orders."
She smiled. "That was never who you were, Thomas Rast. You were always the best of me. Of all of us. Yo
u were always convinced there was another way, even when time proved there wasn't."
"I should have kept my promise. The only promise that ever mattered. Alyssa, I'm sorry."
She lifted her hand. It was wrinkled and thin, spotted with age. She put it to his cheek. "I tried to keep you away because I knew what would happen. Poor Jeremiah. He tried to bring you to me. In his simple mind, he didn't understand that we couldn't be together. I know you better than you know yourself. I've tried to keep our world alive. For over a thousand years, I've lived with the pain and suffering we caused. I brought misery to many so that they might live and hope for a better tomorrow. We're nothing without hope."
She lifted her other hand, reaching out for Teran. She shifted her head to look at him. "The Shifters captured Teran, Thomas. We both thought he was dead. But they didn't kill him. They studied him until somehow he escaped. They took his voice. They gave him scars. So many scars. I covered them with the tattoos. I filled them with ebocite to make him immune to all but the most powerful of magic. I took his memories of it. I had to. No human being could survive the torment he survived."
Talon looked at his son. He put out his hand, and Teran took it. Alyssa placed her hand on top of theirs. Eryn felt the moisture of her tears running down her cheeks. She fought to stay under control, the emotions bringing her magic towards the surface. She couldn't begin to imagine what Teran had been through at the hands of the Shifters. They had all been through so much to keep the Empire alive.
"I'm old, Thomas. I don't have an ebocite heart to keep me going, only the purity of this room to extend my years. I sent Teran out into the Empire to find someone to replace me. He brought me others, but none of them was strong enough. Not until now." Her head tilted towards Eryn. "I told you that you would have to make a choice, Eryn Albion. Every word I said was true. I know you believe it now."
"Yes. I believe you. But what you're asking me to do-"
"I know. It is a cruel fate for certain. Go over to the wall there. Look through it. You will see."