“O Great Spirit, great mother of all things, why have you forsaken us? Our prayers go silent, our bread more ash than grain, our bodies rotting from within. What great crime have we committed? What vile sin have us children committed to lose even a mother’s love?” -Lament of the Weeper, first part of the Litany of Acceptance.
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The last time John had felt so small, the place he had known to be his home and indeed the centre of his whole world had burned. A memory he tried his best not to hold onto, but regardless painfully perserverant. He had not even been conscious the whole time, ARTOS taking over his body for much of the latter half of the experience. But the memory of blood-red skies was not one he could so readily forget. Nor the fact that the next time he regained consciousness, he had to grapple with the fact his whole effective family was just gone. He hoped the other Rats got away at least…
In the alien memories gifted from ARTOS, those simulations of ancient wars now long forgotten, he had also felt small. But that was distant, a second-hand perspective of a second-hand memory. It didn’t leave him feeling breathless like he did in the presence of Cobalt’s father, it didn’t fill him with a primal dread like seeing the wounded sky. But the Prince, the Prince was up there.
[So why did you resist?] ARTOS asked, clearly puzzled despite the lack of tone in its… voice? Thought?
Why wouldn’t I? He responded simply.
[Odds of victory were smaller than my programs could calculate.] ARTOS pressed.
You wouldn’t understand. John said, not as a critique, but a simple statement of fact. ARTOS was becoming more human, uncannily so. He should have been more concerned about it he knew, but really, it didn’t matter any to him.
He was sick of being helpless, an observer of his own fate. He understood the urge the machine had to know what it could never know, even if it could not yet understand him.
Which was exactly why it bothered him so much, he supposed, to feel this way again and know there was nothing he could do about it.
[I see.] ARTOS commented without much else, for what was there to say. He smiled a little, Cobalt, protective as she was, always worried about the machine sharing his brain. Recent revelations probably made that warranted, but it was good to always have someone here with him.
“John… are you alright?” Cobalt asked, shimmering into visibility next to him causing him to jump in his seat. It seemed ever since the Sect fell she had been getting more into the habit of using her camouflage. Perhaps it gave her a sense of safety, or perhaps she had always used it that much and he was not close enough to notice it.
“I am fine, just thinking.” He assured her. “So, now that things have calmed down a bit, you have a new mutation?”
“Not entirely, I focused my energy into my brain during the fight. Manifested my desire to counter the psychic attack they hit me with, and developed an incomplete mutation.” She explained. “With more time and focus this will become a full Step, but as it stands it is a bit of a rush job. Advancing in Steps is normally a feat achieved over time after all, I have never heard of someone evolving so rapidly in the midst of battle until, well, you.”
“Guess that just makes me special huh? Even got a prophecy, my tale will be sung high and wide throughout the Empire.” He said with a deliberately annoying smirk.
Cobalt rolled her eyes and smacked him gently… for her standards. It still smacked hard enough he jolted forwards with the impact. “Don’t get ahead of yourself Rat boy.”
“Never dream of it Col.” He laughed.
Taking his head back to the present, he focused on what Gorekin and Faith were up to. As thanks for healing her, now that whatever the Prince did allowed her to reach the Mutant Realm, the Captainina insisted on repaying them, at least, according to her ability. The Toro Rojo was lacking in much of anything spare really, hence why he and Cobalt had declined any offers for recompense for the aid they attempted to give (no matter how much it really mattered in the end, he privately thought). Following their example Faith and the bear-man tried to decline too…
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
But the Captainina was a different beast entirely, that was for sure. And having dragged both a slightly befuddled Gorekin and a strangely brown Faith after her, it was clear they were accepting no compromises.
“This amazing! It real?” Gorekin asked, holding up a long rifle. A flintlock of a sort he hadn’t seen before, probably of a style common across the border.
“It’s real alright!” The Capitainina laughed as Gorekin viewed the weapon with wonder. She then walked over to Faith who kept staring with what looked to be awe at her new layer of bronze skin. It was impressive how fast she regenerated from the Curse, though he supposed he was nobody to talk, but Faith’s expression was different. Not quite intimidation…
“Looks like our little preacher has a crush.” Cobalt snickered by his side.
Oh, so that’s what it was. It certainly explained her violent shift in colouration as she was gifted a cross. The significance of that symbol was frankly lost on him, but it meant something to Faith at least as she stared at it with a blank expression, closing her fist around the simple wooden edifice so hard she might have drawn blood had she been Mortal. It looked pretty imp at least, judging by the magnetic lines he could feel emanating from it the thing was layered with a small amount of decorative metal too, but compared to what Gorekin got it almost seemed disappointing.
What did he know though?
“So, we are going to your mother’s Sect right?’ John decided to ask Cobalt. “You never much talked about your mother, what’s she like?”
Cobalt froze at his words, shifting into the hues of the background as though to hide away. “I- I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He asked.
“She- she was never much a part of my life. I met her a couple of times I think… but for the woman who birthed me I don’t know anything about her.” She sighed. “Sorry, I know that you expected more- and it would be reasonable to feel like-”
“Hey, Col, who gives a shit?” He assured her. “We’ll figure it out together. And worst comes to worst, Rats stick together.”
A small smile appeared on her fanged smile, seemingly carving its way into reality as her camouflaged lips peeled away. “Yes… Rats stick together.”
[Rats…] ARTOS trailed off.
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Goodbyes went by quickly. There wasn’t really enough for a proper celebratory feast, especially with talk of conserving resources for trade, nor did any of them want to push the issue. With what they had learned from the Prince’s prophecies they were at the centre of something rather important, and all of them felt like following that fate was more important than perhaps anything else here. So they said their goodbyes, graciously accepted a basic resupply, and started wandering their separate ways as the Toro Rojo drove back to its original site to reclaim the tents left behind.
The plants here were starting to grow, streaks of healthy green poking through masses of sickly yellow and brown. The Si here was growing thin, depleted. As much of a sign as any to signal for any Cultivators to move on, to fresh wastelands as Aunt Cinnabar used to say.
“Ready?” John asked the other two.
Gorekin, still polishing his new rifles, gave a wide toothy grimace/grin exposing rows of sharp ursine teeth. “Never more!”
Faith gripped her cross tightly, her hood removed to bask in the rays of afternoon sunlight. “We must be ready regardless.”
“Alright, try and keep up.” Cobalt warned the others. She would slow down her pace of course, but she knew physically she was well beyond the likes of anyone besides maybe Gorekin. And it wouldn’t take much for her to get lost in her thoughts and risk losing the others given the… circumstances.
She thought back on the last time she saw her blood mother, immediately recognisable by the scent of her blood even across the room, but she had not the time to actually go up and speak with her. At that time she was the image of serpentine grace, a limbless lower half shimmering with porcelain scales, totally hairless and lithe. An image of grace and beauty compared to the blood she inherited from her father.
What would she even say to her? While she understood why she was left in the care of the Lead Cave, inevitably the distance between them was a yawning chasm. She was family, but the woman could never be anything like the family she had lost. Perhaps they could grow to be something close… but she never knew her.
“Hey, we won’t dream of leaving you behind.” John laughed, brushing aside his hair and exposing his distinctive cracked eyes like orbs of shattered glass to match the scars tracing his skin. He didn’t mean much by it, she was sure, but it granted her no small amount of warmth to hear nonetheless.
As long as that simple promise held true, she supposed she would never truly be alone.
“Of course.” She said simply.
Their hands fiddled around the formation sigil the Prince had gifted them, no matter where this journey truly led them perhaps it wasn’t so bad.