Act II

[https://i.imgur.com/ZaYSdEX.png]

Madelief's eyes could barely focus under the veil of pain — every step they took up the steep track to the ranch, she leaned a little more on Florian. A cacophony of alarm bells rang out in her head, and only under their insistence did she manage to keep driving her knees forward, scuffing them on the incline. Her heart thrummed faster and faster, manifesting as a tightness in her chest.

"We must," she whispered. "We must!"

Florian ran a hand along the orange rock wall, and it came back dusty. "They carved this road out of the cliff. What do you say we take a rest? You're wounded, Maddie, and my legs are... ahem, stiff."

Abruptly he stopped, and for a moment she kept walking, tumbling to the ground without his support — then, activating her magic, she inverted the direction of her fall, guiding her body back upright. Carrying her own weight.

"Why do we have to keep having this conversation?" she snap-whispered.

The stable loomed over the ridge — so close, just a few more steps now. Much like her, its support beams were leaning inwards, ready to collapse, and the only thing holding it up were some towers of scaffolding. From its depths came a low hum of malice, a rumbling of dread. The bike was waiting.

"We have to be in this together," she said, bare arms screaming as she dragged herself along the wall. "We can't just stop for anything. Are you with me or not?"

Florian sighed, fiddling with his jerkin. He looked uncomfortable, like a diver in a school of sharks, and couldn't meet her gaze.

"The truth is," he said. "I'm worried about you. Why say we can't stop for anything? From what are you running? What exactly is so pressing, that we can't even stop to gather our strength?"

GO, screamed the alarm bells. GO! GO GO GO GO GO

Madelief raked herself up the last of the cliff at the side of the road and staggered into 'Joost's Rainbow Ranch', a set of spaces interrupted by a broken fence, with the stable in the middle. In the twilight of dusk, all was tinted blood orange.

Florian came up behind to steady her before she fell into a pile of oil-stained buckets. She cried out at his touch, so raw was her skin.

He said, "I see this word floating around you, Maddie: 'GO'. Could it be that you're harbouring some unhelpful beliefs about what it means to be a —"

"I musn't die," she whisper-cried. "Not here. Not now. Look — there's the bike! If you care about me, about us, about the fate of the world, which need I remind you, is on OUR shoulders... then help me!"

The bike turned on its headlights, catching them in a blinding beam all the way from the back of the stable, easily thrusting away the glare of the sun. It made a noise that sounded very much like vroom, and then it made it again, roaring as it revved, shaking the very building apart with its tremors — its wheels ground in place against the rock, chucking up a whirlwind of dust, while behind it the exhaust belched out fumes and fire.

"Come," whisper-shouted Madelief. Her moth's fluffy hair bristled, standing on jagged edges. "I must tame you!"

She could literally feel her heart pushing against her ribcage; literally feel the blood rushing behind her eyes. Was this it? Was she dying?

Defiant, the bike opened up its engine to the max, a deafening whinny, holding itself in place with its brakes, and Madelief did her best to stop hyperventilating — when it released itself, it was going to fly at her like a bullet.

"I've noticed something that may be trouble," said Florian, scanning the smouldering ruins about them. "This is a bike ranch, but there aren't any bikes in the rubble... uh, Maddie?"

He took a slight step away from her.

Madelief stiffened, barely hearing him. Ignoring him. Her vision tunneled only to that distant point in the stable. She held her breath, and everything seemed to quieten. This was it. This was the moment.

The bike came. With magic she flipped it away, but it turned back at such a speed that she had only half a second to deflect it again. By the time she laid eyes on it, it had moved on. Within seconds it was over — she wrestled against its force like a kid trying to plug a dam with a finger, then all at once, the pressure burst, and the bike scored a blow.

It knocked her down inches from the sheer cliff, where she lay crumpled up, broken, helpless, her mind tumbling in freefall. Her moth screeched, flapping around her, trying to push her to her feet.

"Get up, Maddie," cried Florian. "You have to get up!"

The bike came round again. If it rammed her off the edge, would the prophetic armour cushion the fall, or would it just slap her bones back together in a way that technically kept her alive, trapping her in a cage of pain? Then she’d be of no use to anyone! She had to get up!

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Her arms trembled as she heaved against the ground, and it hurt so much, and for one heroic moment she was truly rising, lifting her head up, but then they slipped out from under her and her chin slammed back down against the rock, hard. The crack ran through her brain. From the ground, in slow motion, she saw death barreling towards her.

Then a beautiful tone from a flute filled the air, dancing about like mayflies in sunbeams, arpeggiating up and down and painting swathes of emotion over her heart. Around them, the ranch cobbled itself back together — again fence posts held each other's hands, again the stable stood proud and tall, fresh lacquer gleaming in the last of the evening sun, and again red-hot wheels glowed on anvils beside the forge.

Florian shut his eyes tight as he played, his cricket rubbing its legs together as images poured out of his head.

The bike's tires wailed as it slammed on the brakes inches from Madelief's scalp. Up close it stank of rubber, and its steady vibration made her hair stand on end, all tingly. She froze, terrified. She couldn't breathe.

The melody continued: sad, lonely, plodding onwards like a horse in a procession, and figures sprang out of the ground — farmhands draped in denim, shuffling around with weighty iron tools. Behind the fence, ghosts of bikes wheeled around, frolicking, playing together, the herd of which must have been at least a hundred strong. Some lapped up oil from buckets; others jumped around doing wheelies. Amongst the herd walked Joost, his boiler-suit twinkling a million colours of the rainbow, and he lovingly stroked the frames of any bikes that came near him.

The Harley-Davidson, upon seeing the master of the ranch, sped off with a mighty roar, plowing through the afterimage of the fence. Quickly Florian hefted Madelief to his back and made a break for the stable.

The open space was dark inside, and even amongst all the chaos of the rubble there was little to hide behind. Outside the images faded away with the melody on the breeze, and the bike snorted even louder in frustration, thundering back towards them. With only seconds left, Florian threw Madelief up onto a rafter, one of the sagging great beams holding the place up, and then scrambled up after her. But he couldn't quite manage — his legs dangled in plain view. She pulled him up just in time.

They watched the bike hurtle back into the stable and, failing to see them, it jutted out its parking stand and waited in the middle, revving sub-bass.

"Bikes can't look up," said Florian, chomping down on another sandwich from his pack. "I get hungry when I'm scared — what about you? But anyway, I fear we're stuck. We'll have to rest now. Tough luck."

For a while Madelief didn't reply. She was shivering with what — pain, fear? A deep waterfall of adrenaline coursed endlessly down her.

GO, the alarm-bells urged.

She said, "Putting a sentence between your rhymes doesn't make them any less annoying. But... thanks for saving my life."

He passed her a sandwich. It was her favourite filling, salsa and watercress.

She shook her head and said, "We're not stuck. If we climb along the rafters, we can jump down on top of it, and then — and then we can be on our way again. To the Locust Queen."

Wincing, she wrapped her arms around the beam, and pulled herself along, scraping herself on nails and splinters and all sorts. But Florian was on her in an instant, grappling her backwards, and he caught her in a bear hug, holding her tight. He buried her in a gentle warmth.

"Get off," she said, but she collapsed into him all the same. Something about that warmth dulled the alarm bells. Then he teased the sandwich into her mouth, and although she could barely taste the tomato-tang through her anxiety, she felt a little better, a little less like the sky was falling. The pain dimmed. Stilled her limbs.

"Metacognition — the stories we tell ourselves," said Florian, and his words seemed to lilt about the major scale, harmonising as they dragged and blurred together. "Not the sort you'd put on your bookshelves. There's a story in you saying you MUST defeat the Locust Queen. Why MUST, Maddie — what do you believe?"

"If we don't kill the Locust Queen, we'll die," she whispered. "Can't you hear the alarm bells?"

He nodded, and offered her another bite of the sandwich. "And why is it a bad thing to die?"

"...Are you serious?"

"Well, why live? Why do you believe you must live? More to the point, why do you think driving yourself so hard is more likely to keep you alive? And is a life where you focus only on this goal, driving yourself into further suffering, even worth living?"

Something about those words wound up her anxiety, and the clockwork started turning again in her bones, and she struggled to break free of his embrace — but no matter how powerful her drive to act was internally, she could barely press herself to move. As if sensing that, Florian held her firmer, and his warmth and gentleness made the world seem brighter.

"You always end up helping me," she said. "Not just me, everyone. You're always listening."

He smiled.

"You know why I need to live," she said. "That bright light... that's what I want to see again. But if I die before I see it, then I want to have been of service to others. We have to kill the Locust Queen — we're the only ones that can do it. The only ones who can save the world."

"So what's the deeper motivation?" he asked. "Killing the queen, or being the world's salvation?"

She blinked at him, furrowing her eyebrows.

"Fine," he sighed. "World's salvation was a bit of a stretch. What I'm trying to say is, maybe we should change our motivations a bit. This could be a difficult journey where we push ourselves hard, suffering along the way, and for all our efforts we could still die before we get there... or we can do our best to leave a trail of good in our wake. Maddie, when you say 'GO', is there a better story you could tell yourself?"

"I don't know," she said, trembling. “Go is all I’ve ever known.”

Florian's cricket began to glow, and rubbing its legs against its wings it played a long and soothing note.

"Then I give you this story," he said. "Say it with me, in all its glory: 'Maybe we can stop to help'."

"Maybe we can stop to help." She frowned. "Maybe we can stop to help. Maybe we can stop to help. Maybe we can stop to help. Maybe we can stop to help."

She repeated it again and again, like a mantra, and the words spread fire through her tongue.

He beamed. "It sounds good on your lips! Now look down at that bike, not as a tool but as a being of its own, and tell me what you think — of which emotion does it stink?"

She peered down into the musty stable, ignoring the agony racking her body as she shuffled to get a better look, and she looked at the Harley Davidson, and she listened. It was sniffling little bursts of air out of its exhaust; crying oil. It wheeled around itself in donuts, wearing a track into the rock beneath it, and its lights flickered on and off. The bike looked as if it was somehow tugging itself to and fro against its will. It, well, it reminded her of her.

GO, screamed the alarm bells. But... maybe we can stop to help.

She turned back to Florian and wrapped him in a massive hug, the auras around their skin gleaming, and they both spilled over with warmth.

"Okay," she whispered, her heart quivering even now. "I mean it this time... I'm ready to be a hero."