by M. T. Miller
“I made it in advance,” she said.
The Nameless slapped the cup out of her hands, causing the contents to spill on the ground.
“I could’ve just put it away,” she said.
He clumsily rose again, causing her to step back.
“Where is SIM?” he roared. “If you are hiding him, I will make you die again!”
“Who?” she asked. “My Lord, I want to help; it’s what I’m here for, after all. But I’m afraid I can’t make any sense of what you’re saying. I suggest some rest.” She pointed to the sleeping bag in the corner, bending her body so her waist sprung into view. “I’m certain you’d find it enjoyable.”
“Never with you,” said the Nameless.
Tarantula’s expression went sour, but quickly changed back into one of courtesy. “What else would you like then, my Lord?”
The Nameless pointed at the exit. “What lies beyond that point?”
“Your camp, my Lord.”
The Nameless raised both eyebrows. Back where his memory left him, he was still in the city. He had been executed. SIM had no reason to keep him alive. The way things had fallen into place, it would’ve been relatively easy for him to take full control over the city.
Where am I, then? the Nameless asked himself. Camp, she says? Is this a game? Or a hallucination?
He turned toward the exit, moving forward with careful steps. He sharply turned to Tarantula after hearing her approach.
“Don’t touch me!” he said. This time, she didn’t seem to take offense.
He pulled the curtain to the side, and the light from outside hit him in the face like a sledgehammer. He gripped the flaps of the tent. He tightened his muscles He gritted his teeth.
His consciousness left him regardless.
***
This time, he snapped back sooner. This, in all likelihood, was in response to a familiar voice. It was warm, feminine, and strangely familiar.
“Rush…” he muttered, a moment before realizing that the woman’s hair was short and blond.
Impossible, he thought while his vision sharpened. Above him stood none one other than Lydia, whom he had lost so long ago. With her delicate, aristocratic features and dark eyes under a pair of equally dark brows, there was no mistaking her for anyone else.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked with a voice like velvet. The Nameless had missed hearing it.
“Unforeseen side-effects, obviously,” Tarantula said. Unlike Lydia, who knelt above the Nameless, Tarantula stood up straight. “For someone with his recovery ability, he isn’t taking this well.”
Lydia looked left and right. She wore a sheer black cat-suit with a collar that reached up to her ears. Like Tarantula, her right bicep also bore the black and red fabric. “We should move him from here. Before any rumors start circulating.” She turned to Tarantula. “Well, was it worth it? Did you succeed?”
“We were on the right path,” Tarantula said. “We’ll see.”
“Real comforting,” Lydia said.
Dead! Both of them! the Nameless kept reminding himself. He tightened his muscles and started to rise, forcing Lydia to move out of the way. Ignoring her questioning stare, he looked around.
Tarantula’s tent wasn’t the only one. In fact, it was surrounded by others, both large and small. They extended as far as the eye could see, although in such a crowded place that wasn’t saying much. The sound of countless pairs of boots hitting the surrounding sand quickly grabbed his attention. He faced the nearest group of guards, who instantly stopped marching.
“My Lord!” one of them shouted. The others followed in, all wearing black with red. Notably, none bore firearms. Instead, they were armed with bows and sabers. “Your will?”
The Nameless didn’t reply. Instead, he slapped himself right across the face, expecting something to change. Nothing did. Perhaps… His breathing quickened. Perhaps I have taken Rush’s drugs again. He hoped that he had. Then maybe he’d imagined the explosion along with all this.
“As you were,” Lydia ordered the men in his stead. They marched on, still looking at the Nameless. She gave Tarantula another angry stare.
“It’ll pass,” Tarantula said. “Hopefully.”
Lydia’s frown darkened further. “You’re dismissed,” she said.
“I’ll be here when you need me.” Tarantula slipped back into her tent, barely ruffling the curtain as it obscured the entrance.
“You’ve done enough,” Lydia muttered. She looked into the Nameless’ eyes again. “My Lord, I can see that you’re not well. And if I can, so can everyone else. So I think it’d be in your best interest not to show it so much.”
The Nameless dragged his palm over his forehead, wiping some sweat away. Dead or not, figment or real, she is right. He tried straightening his jacket, then realized that he wore a trench coat. Like everything else here, it was black with red trim.
A fish out of water yet again. “Lydia,” he said. “That is your name, yes?”
Surprised that he had to ask, she nodded.
“I want you to tell me about this place,” he said. “Assume I know nothing.”
Chapter Seventeen
As they walked down what seemed like the central road, the Nameless found it difficult to wrest his gaze away from Lydia. During the few moments he did, he noticed that a lot of tents had stylized patterns drawn on them in red. Most depicted skulls.
Five strange-looking, uniformed men passed by his left. They saluted promptly, but it wasn’t their actions that drew his attention. His temples hurt when he realized they bore the standard facial mutilation of the Skulls gang.
“What you’re looking at,” Lydia said, “my Lord, is the army of the Lordship of Babylon. Your army, to be more precise.”
Maybe I should flee this place, he thought. For the moment, that didn’t seem like the best decision. He still knew nothing of his situation, and Lydia (whether she was real or not) offered potential answers.
“Any of this ring a bell?” she asked.
“Go on,” he said.
Lydia grabbed her chin. “This feels weird. Weirder than usual. You’re supposed to be the one with the plan. My Lord.”
The Nameless was quick to reply. “The sooner you put me back on the right path, the sooner I will be able to plan again.”
“Now, that’s more like the man… the god I know,” she said. “But this won’t be easy. On one hand, there’s so much to say. On the other, there really isn’t, when you really think about it.” She looked at him inquisitively. “You do know we are at war, right?”
We are always at war, he thought. And when we are not, it comes back with interest.
“No,” he said. “You will have to give me some details.”
Lydia sighed. “These are times of strife, my Lord. Everyone is fighting everyone, for control over everything.” She waved her right hand. “Well, everything that’s left. This army, or at least its majority, has spent the last five years in on-and-off war with… let’s say three other powers.”
“Let’s say?”
“Well, there used to be four of them,” said Lydia. “Before you appeared, that is. The fourth one, the most powerful force at the time, had been advancing heavily into our territory. If it weren’t for you, most everyone here would’ve been dead by now.”
“Where did I come from?” he asked. Do not dare say “out of a grave.”
“No one knows,” she said. “You seemingly sprung from nowhere and dealt severe damage to the Skull Kingdom. They were so terri—“
“Wait,” the Nameless said. “Don’t you mean the Skull gang? Led by the Boneslinger?”
“No,” Lydia said. “I mean the Skull Kingdom; once led by the Skull King. The one you killed in battle. The rest of the Kingdom swore fealty to you after that. Remember?”
“In part. The details do not match up, but I definitely recall parts of what you mention.”
“Anyway,” she said, “when it was all done, both Babylon and the Kingdom
were ready to stand behind you.” She smiled, stopping her pace as she extended a hand forward. Before them was a particularly large tent, perhaps the biggest they’d seen along the way.
“Be our guest,” she said, drawing a curtain and signaling for him to step inside.
The Nameless contracted and relaxed every single muscle in his body. He was neither numb nor disoriented anymore. He sized Lydia up from head to toe. If she were alive, she’d look exactly like that. He turned the other way, and started running with all his speed. But she is not alive.
“Nameless!” Lydia shouted.
No title this time, he noticed as he ran. An indication of closeness. Or an attempt. Still, he did not stop. He ran as far as his legs carried him, evading both soldiers and inanimate obstacles. They seemed as surprised as he was.
Impossible! None of this could be happening. Lydia is dead, he repeated to himself as he leapt to his left to avoid another formation. He resumed running as soon as he regained his balance. Tarantula is dead. He almost tripped, but kept his pace. Rush is dead!
The camp was massive. The Nameless’ sense of time went away along with the rhythm of his breathing, but the rows of tents and armed men stretched on and on.
He reached the camp’s edge abruptly, after running behind a heavily armored bunker-like structure. Spiked barricades extended beyond it, so he stopped running. There may have been explosives or other kinds of traps, and he wasn’t keen on the idea of losing limbs again.
Still panting, he allowed himself to fall on his knees. Despite being nearly breathless, he unleashed a scream that threatened to tear through his vocal cords.
Maybe I am in hell, he thought, but quickly shot the idea down. Wherever gods went after death, it most certainly wasn’t the Christian afterlife. Besides, one would expect hell to be torment, not a jumbled reality full of resurrected people.
“My Lord,” someone said while coming in from behind his back. By the way the man spoke, the Nameless concluded he was a Skull. Or whatever they were called here.
The Nameless kept looking at the horizon. Absolutely nothing about it was familiar. He pointed a finger forward without looking at the Skull. “What lies in that direction?”
“More desert, my Lord,” said the Skull. “At least ten full days of riding ‘til you hit the shore.”
Zero sense. The Nameless kept scanning the horizon, hoping for something, anything familiar to come into view. Maybe this actually is the afterlife, and my torment is to go mad.
He turned toward the Skull. Aside from him, a dozen more men were near. More approached.
“Tell me, soldier,” he said. “Do you know of anyone named Rush?”
What passed for the Skull’s expression changed.
The Nameless interpreted it as surprise, so he continued. “A woman with pale skin, purple hair, as strong as a horse.” A foul temper. Beautiful.
The Skull was about to speak, but someone beat him to it. “My Lord, you’ve just described the leader of the Juicers; the most psychotic gang in the States!”
The Nameless’ eyes widened. “She’s alive?”
“Yeah,” the soldier said confusedly.
“But not for long, right, my Lord?” another soldier asked.
The Nameless didn’t reply. Instead, he walked past these men, back toward the center of the camp. More were on the way, but he ignored them as well. Lydia, if he could call her that, offered some semblance of answers. Whether or not they were correct, at the moment they were all he had.
He found her some five minutes later. She was accompanied by what seemed to have been a bodyguard, navigating the torrent of soldiers that flocked to the scene of his scream.
“My Lord!” she shouted as soon as their eyes met. Immediately, her retinue started pushing their way toward him. “Are you injured? In pain?”
“I am fine,” the Nameless said.
“But… the scream,” she said, now some ten feet away. She kept getting nearer.
“It will not happen again,” he said once they were eye to eye. “I have made a mistake, but now I wish to learn.”
“Yes,” she said, apparently considering his words. “But there’s so much to say.”
There was so much the Nameless did not know. Was this a dream, or was his old life a hallucination? Was he dead, and was this place his torment? Had he slipped into a different reality? For the moment, there was no way to know. But until he did know, he would need to get his bearings. Survive.
“I know where we will start,” he said. “Tell me of my enemies, Lydia. I want to learn everything.
***
Once more, the Nameless was led to the largest tent. This time, he agreed to enter it without fuss.
The curtains that made up the walls were red on the inside. Numerous candles burned from long holders, making the Nameless question the presence (or absence) of electricity in this world. In the tent’s center was a large, round table. On it was drawn a map. Predictably, not one part of it was familiar. Three figures stood around this table, all facing the Nameless. Not one of them was supposed to be alive.
David, Wallace, and Azarian. The governor and two former sheriffs of Babylon. The latter two wore military uniforms. They seemed to be high-ranking officers.
“Lord Nameless,” said David. “We’ve been told you have memory problems.”
When did I not? the Nameless asked himself. “I remember enough to know who you are, Torres.”
“And these two?” David spread his arms.
“Wallace and Azarian,” the Nameless said. “But I am not here to be tested. As far as I know, you work for me, not vice-versa. Or am I mistaken?”
“You’re right,” David said. “You command, and we assist.” He lowered his hands on the table, obscuring the northernmost part of the map. “So command.”
As he approached the table, the Nameless noticed a lone figure standing in the shadows to his left. Tarantula. What little he could make out from her features indicated a smile. Apparently, she was amused.
The Nameless pulled up a chair and sat. For several minutes he observed the map, causing David to withdraw his hands. The whole area, unfamiliar as it was, was clearly separated into five colored wholes. The south, surrounding a stylized figurine of the Nameless himself, was blood red. Territorially, it was the largest. The north was blue, and in its center stood a purple miniature of Rush. He stared at it for a good while before he proceeded to the rest of the map.
The east and the west were, respectively, colored black and white. A black-suited figurine stood in the former, while one depicting a woman in white was in the latter.
“What am I looking at here?” he asked. He’d considered trying to lie about his knowledge, but that would only hurt him in the long run. There were things he needed to know, and little time to learn them.
The men exchanged glances.
“I recognize the generalities,” the Nameless said. “We are the south. To the north are the Juicers, yes? Led by Rush, the purple woman.”
David was the only one to nod, most likely by virtue of being the one the Nameless looked at.
“What lies to the east and west?” asked the Nameless. “The Movement and the Church?”
David nodded. “Correct, my Lord. The Dark Movement and the Church of Radiance. We’re not on the best of terms with either.”
“No one is on the best of terms with anyone,” Lydia added.
Somewhat different names, the Nameless thought. Variations on what he had known from before. “The Movement raises the dead. The Church employs gifted people. Saints, I believe they are called.”
“Just one,” David corrected him. “Matriarch Chastity claims to have been sent down from Heaven by God Himself. So she isn’t employed as much as the Church is in her employ. We don’t know how much of this is a lie, of course, but eyewitnesses confirm that she’s capable of quite a bit.”
The Nameless’ brow furrowed when he remembered what she and Emile had done in the pyramid. He stared at her fig
ure, perhaps for too long.
“He can’t lead an army in the shape he’s in,” Wallace spoke up, causing everyone to turn to him. In turn, he looked at Tarantula. “If… when he recovers, I imagine he’ll have a bone to pick with you.”
The spider-goddess stepped out of the shadows. She no longer bore her amused smile. “Lord Nameless knew the dangers involved in what he wanted me to do. I did exactly what I was asked; no more, no less.”
David said, “And that doesn’t mean anything to us now, let alone our Lord. If he doesn’t regain his memories, we’re all done. Give us one reason, Tarantula, one reason not to have you executed. As far as we know, you’ve scrambled his memory on purpose, out of revenge for what he did to your insane Management!”
“I went over to his side of my own will,” she said. “If I wanted to poison him, I’d have tried it before. Right now, our fates are intertwined. Even you must see that.”
David slammed his palm against the table, causing Rush’s miniature to drop on its side. “All I see is an assassin who missed her chance!”
“Silence!” shouted the Nameless. He waited some five seconds before speaking again. “Tarantula, what was the nature of this ritual? What did you do to me?”
“My Lord,” she said, “I merely supervised you as you imbibed a certain herbal blend. You asked me to help you regain your supposedly lost divine might. We reasoned that bringing you closer to the spirit world would help. Awaken what was asleep, if you will.”
“What does this have to do with my memory, then?” he asked.
“To open your eyes,” Tarantula said, “the spirits show you things. Sometimes those things seem so real that they distort your awareness of what’s real and what isn’t.” She smiled. “But in this particular case, I choose optimism. If you were this shaken by what you saw, just imagine what it may have awakened.”
Could it be? the Nameless wondered. Regardless of whether it was true, he would not try to concentrate in front of these… people. He turned back toward the map, and again noticed the fifth colored area. It was bright grey, with parallel red lines, and separated Church territory from that of Babylon.