II.

Vagari made his way to the city’s edge in a daze. He knew what he had seen, knew it was real, but it felt otherworldly, as if he were only watching some dark fantasy play out. He knew searching for the book would be dangerous, they all did, but never did he think that that danger would follow them home. The West Gate was a blur of souls, a thousand people coming and going, either trying to pry their way into the Megacity or escape it’s deathly clutches. This was where the caravans staged and where Vagari would find his passage west. Only a fool tried to make it on foot. If the weather of the wastes didn’t kill you, the aberrants and bandits surely would. Not even with a caravan was safety guaranteed. It was a journey Vagari had made a hundred times, a hundred rolls of the dice in his favor. He’d roll again and hope for the best, betting on fast over secure.

“Are yoush gonna take the sheat or not?” slurred the caravan head disgruntledly, pulling Vagari away from his thoughts. “You shkills would be mosht valuable… But I’ve got a handful of others wanting a shpot.”

“You’re leaving immediately?” asked Vagari, digging in his pockets for the cash.

“As shoon as the trucks are filled,” Answered the caravan head. He was a hideously scarred man named Packard that was more tumor than man. He’d throw a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a series of trucks and buses all cobbled together with scrap and ruin. They weren’t the best looking caravan, that was for sure, but due to that Packard had promised haste, a notion that Vagari had no qualms about paying extra for. “No stops, not unless we have to,” Vagari replied, stuffing the mans hand with a wad of cash.

Packard grinned the best his disfigured features would allow and quickly pocketed the money. “Welcome aboard!” he declared with a curt bow. “Find any shpot to fit your shtuff. Better chanshes further back you go. The rear is full of vagrants, however… Barely able to afford their sheats. Not at all like the discerning cushtomer you are!”

“The rear is fine,” Vagari stated with a dismissive wave of his hand. “All I care about is that we get moving and quick.”

“Very well,” Packard said with a careless shrug. “We’ll move fasht, but don’t go blaming me if you get fleas.”

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The Eastern Wastes

Beyond the cold confines of the Outer-City the world had turned to dust. Vast deserts stretched for miles in every direction into lost and forbidden lands that only the foolish or suicidal dared to venture. Some forgotten places were known to Vagari, but most beyond the treacherous dunes of the wastelands not even he dared to go in his travels. Since the rise of the Megacity, some semblance of expansion had been carved into the scorched earth – namely the serpentine caravan route that connected it to the frontier town of Eastend and the valuable resources found there. That road would take them through the Eastern Wastes, a land where every step and turn of the wheel was a roll of ever-spiteful dice.

Being the only true road through the desert and far from what passed as law in the Megacity, bandits and vicious aberrancies frequently made the middle way their hunting grounds. Misfortune lurked around every dune and hillside, haunting the lands in wait for the bold and foolish. It wasn’t a matter of if they would get attacked, but when. Packard had been true to his word, or maybe he was simply conscious of the state of his caravan, but they didn’t stop for three days, not until bestial exhaustion and a busted engine forced them to. Circling the trucks, they settled in for an uneasy night as the engineers made their repairs.

The sun was steadily descending towards dusk when the struggled slurring of a preacherman rung out for all to hear. “It is divine fate that has brought us here,” he bellowed from the ruined cavern of a melted face, as he limped out into the middle of the makeshift vehicles, “to this most holy of places! To remind us of our folly and arrogance! To remind us that two-hundred years ago we let the demons in,” the ragged man cried out, waving a tattered and homemade bible like a conductor’s wand. He limped this way and that behind a campfire, pointing the book accusingly at every poor soul whose attention he had grabbed. “With all their corruption and mutation, it was our faithlessness and depravity that drew them in and gave them form – gave us form! Oh yes, my children, they’re GOD’s divine justice brought upon us – our sins reflected upon us, given form, given life! Our wretched forms mirror our souls – a righteous punishment! Seventy-two years GOD punished us, and for seventy-two years we sought – no, begged for his forgiveness… Our prayers were heard upon the seventy-third year and GOD forgave us! He sent down his angels to rid us of our demons with fiery sword and holy light! But… they didn’t want to go…”

Far behind the preacher, miles away and yet seemingly close enough to reach out and crush the caravan at any moment, was one of those angels. It was a colossus in the truest sense of the word, an immense automaton of gold and alabaster, an alien recreation of Talos of old. Its vaguely humanoid form sat frozen and unrotting. Seemingly unaffected by the passage of time, it clutched still at the infernal jaws of the archdemon that had brought the terror of it to an end.

Both fallen horrors, forever locked in their deathly embrace, wore upon their shoulders’ thick blankets of ivy, moss, and gnarled roots – a forbidden forest that sprung forth from the colossus’s shed blood. Like the Garden of Eden, mankind was forbidden forever more to reach such places. That holy ichor poisoned the land in strengths that would kill even the most adapted of GOD’s rejected children. And though it was long since slain and its killer turned to bone, the ‘angel’s’ blood spilled still, spreading that poisonous lie further and further every year. They weren’t angels, not really, Vagari thought bitterly, not guardian ones anyways. They weren’t redeemers sent to bring light back to a darkened world. No, they had burned everything, everyone, monster and simply monstrous alike. They had fallen from the sky and set the world ablaze, turning an already hellish place into the Inferno of legend. If anything, he thought, they were angels of death sent to finish the job.

Vagari must have worn his thoughts plain to see upon his face, as a reply to them came without any verbal prompt. “If you think this is bad,” chimed a blunt voice from the end of the caravan’s flatbed, “we’ve been traveling with him since the coast – a whole month more than you have. Honestly, I think he’s why Packard doesn’t like stopping – ‘cause we had a whole lot more breaks then. Every time we stop, this guy comes crawling out of the rear cart to remind us all how damn sinful we are.”

Vagari’s obsidian eyes followed the voice to a youth who couldn’t have been older than fifteen. She dressed like a boy might and tried her best to sound like one too – or maybe that was the cigarette smoke she was breathing in. Vagari could tell otherwise but her secret was safe with him – he’d play along. “Boy, didn’t your parents ever tell you smoking is bad for your health?” the cloaked man asked with an unseen smile. “Cancer, asthma, who knows what else.”

“Yeah, because cancer is the biggest of my worries,” she replied dryly with a roll of her eyes. Undeterred by his comment or perhaps purely in spite of it she took a deep drag of the cigarette before offering it to him. “Right next to sinning and forgiveness, I imagine.”

Vagari eyed her for a moment. At first glance the girl was entirely unchanged – an impossibility that took him by surprise – but upon closer inspection he realized that she was simply just one in a million. The effects of the world showed little upon her surface, taking form in a third eye just below her left one. It was sealed and unusable, but the mutation was there. Vagari partook, delicately pinching the thing between his fingertips before pressing it against his lips. “What do you think then, boy?” He asked through a cloud of smoke before passing the cigarette back. “Of that thing, I mean… You don’t seem to put much stock in his rantings.”

The girl sat and seemed to give her answer some genuine thought before answering with a hapless shrug. “Well, I’m no preacher…” she began, her working eyes locked onto the fallen giant. She let the words trail off for a breath. “I don’t know none of the words of GOD. He never once gave me any to know. But… with the way the sun sets down behind its head, it kinda looks like an angel.”

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“Yeah,” Vagari admitted as they watched the dusking horizon. The sun was set just behind the dead titan’s head, blossoming around it like celestial glory. “I suppose it does…” Vagari knew better, however, knew that it wasn’t a halo that bloomed, but a crown of fire.

For a long while they watched in silence – a much needed moment of peace that ended far too soon and with a deathly cry. A beam of light as bright as the fallen sun cut through the twilit veil and the preacherman’s chest, striking him dead. In that instant Vagari feared for a moment that the dread colossus had returned to life; awakening once more to burn the world to dust, starting with the man who had just preached its glory. His fear unsubsiding, he quickly realized the truth of it, that they were under attack. “Get down!” Vagari shouted as he pushed the triclopean girl over the backside of the flatbed. “Keep your head down!”

Bandits? He wondered, watching as the swords of light cut through the air, but rejected the thought on the grounds that the weaponry was far too advanced. They were beams of plasma, lances of fire that cut through flesh and bone like it was nothing but tissue paper. No one had tech like that anymore, not even in the Uppercity. Then who? Or what? A demon? An Anomaly perhaps? “Keep your head down…” Vagari repeated in a whisper as he held the girl in his arms, hidden away under his cloak. She was breathing heavily and staring up in wide-eyed terror as the screams erupted around them, ignited by the fire the beams left at their touch. “Stay down and keep quiet… I’ll keep you safe, so don’t worry. If they think what they have burns, just wait until they see what I have in store for them…”

“It’s so pretty…” the girl uttered distantly as she reached up to the scouring beams above. “Just like… like shooting stars…”

She had been hit, Vagari realized, feeling the fatal hole in her chest, the scent of charred flesh rising out of it. He had been fast, faster than any of the poor souls beyond could have hoped to be, but not faster than light. The three-eyed girl was dead in a breath, a breath that seemed to last for days as he held her there in his arms. Vagari slid her from his lap as gently as he could and grit his teeth – that fear rising to anger within him. “I’m sorry,” Vagari uttered, “I didn’t even ask your name… or where you were going. I don’t know you, but I know you didn’t deserve this…”

All Vagari had now were questions, questions for her, questions for them – the question of who? Who’s attacking? And why? The question raced through his mind. Where these the same villains who had murdered Alto? Were they attacking every caravan to find Soprano and the book, or had he led them here? Vagari grit his teeth at the agonizing thought, that perhaps they had followed him from the city, that the attack was his fault. A few moments longer and he had some semblance of an answer.

The screaming died down to one with the caravanners falling to their last living soul – their leader, Packard. Vagari watched with grim vigilance from the shadows of the caravan’s undercarriage as their assaulters dragged the tumorous man out of his armored wagon. Their weapon’s beams made short work of his bastion, melting through the layers of steel as easy as it had the bodies of his patrons. Packard shrieked as they dragged him past the piles of bodies he had locked out when the firing started, when he had run and hid himself away. Letting people in wouldn’t have saved them, but the notion alone kept Vagari from answering his cries for help.

Packard was scrambling franticly, grabbing at anything and everything he could to stay off his execution a second longer. His grip on life was tight, but their grip on him was stronger. They weren’t bandits, that was beyond obvious now. They weren’t like any group Vagari had ever seen, not since before, over two-hundred years ago. Their assailants didn’t wear patches or scraps, whatever they could find and string together, no. They wore armor reminiscent of the exoskeletons of the Last War – powered shells of carbon fiber muscle and plasteel – but different. Like their devastating weapons, their shells were all too familiar to the dead giant in the distance – alabaster plates with gold between.

Packard, bulky and almost fishlike in his deformities, raised his hands to defend himself. They were pocked and calloused things that were fused in places, making them look like gnarled flippers. He hollered pathetically as the shadowed invaders stood over him. “Pleash… pleash!” he slurred in fear. “I’ve got money – hidden, stashed away! If you let me live, I – I’ll take you to it!”

His final attempt to keep his grip on life only got him the butt of a gun cracking his jaw as an immediate answer. Packard crumpled back into the dirt clutching his face and sobbing uncontrollably as he waited to die. But his executioners didn’t fire. Instead, they parted, opening a path between them. For a breath Vagari almost thought they wanted him to run, but then another figure made an appearance, blocking the way.

The figure, taller than all the others, strode forward down the path, sheathed head to toe in shadow: a heavy black cloak and robe that seemed to writhe as if it were made of worms. “Your money isn’t what I want from you,” the cloaked man stated in a tone that suggested he found the very idea disgusting. “But perhaps you can buy your life another way – hmm? Answer me one question, truthfully, and I’ll let you go. You’ll be alive and well, as right as rain.”

“Y-yesh, I will, I shware it!” the caravan master hastily agreed, doing his best to smile through bloodied teeth. “Anyshing – anyshing you want to know! Ask me!”

“Where is the girl?” The robed figure asked, his voice cold and commanding. “An ugly thing that looks like a toad,” he continued, more than a hint of disgust seeping into his voice. “You couldn’t forget such a face. Could you?”

Vagari grit his teeth with rising fury. That confirmed it, they were the ones who murdered Alto, and now… Now, they were on the hunt for Soprano as well. However, they hadn’t found her yet – a silver lining in a very dark cloud. Vagari seethed from the shadows, looking for the right moment to make his fury felt.

“I- I sheen no girl,” Packard blubbered with fatal honesty, “not even an ugly one! A-and if shesh here, I’d… I’d give her to you – I swear it!”

The Tall-Man let out a sigh, sounding almost as disgusted as before, and then said, “You really would, wouldn’t you? But… she’s not here to give. A ghost, I think… Perhaps the Artifact traveled this way to the city? Tut – annoying…”

The realization of what his honesty would bring him bloomed in Packard’s eyes. He instantly began pleading, blubbering out excuses and compromises – whatever he thought could potentially save his life. All fell upon deaf ears. The Tall-Man waved a robed hand as he took a few paces in retreat, and with it the caravan leader’s warrant was signed. One of his armed men struck Packard again with the butt of his gun and then kicked him screaming into the fire. The cloaked figure watched for a minute, seemingly lost in the flame as the caravanner burned to death. “Check for any survivors,” the Tall-Man said darkly, “and kill them. Don’t bother tidying up; we’ve wasted enough time here and the sands will take it all by morning.”

And there Vagari saw his chance to strike, his chance to end the hunt before they ever got near their quarry. He saw and watched as the mysterious villain turned and walked away, back into the darkness from whence he came. He didn’t know what, whether it was fear or something else entirely, but that something froze him to that spot just as it had before at Alto’s shop. Vagari cursed at himself as he turned his gaze back down to the girl dead beside him. He closed her eyes and sighed the anger away. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, my friend…” he uttered softly, “but there are others who need my help.”

Vagari stood at a crouch and began stepping away to make his escape. No sooner than he did, a croak froze him in his tracks. It was guttural and pained like a death rattle, but obviously something more. The cloaked man turned his back and found nothing but the girl’s body dead in the sand. No – not dead… Her limbs began to jerk violently, twisting back and forth before falling still again at her sides. Then, much to his horror, she began to rise, lifting up as if the hand of some unseen giant had taken hold of her at the core.

The fires spread throughout the camp, casting their hellish light through the gaping hole in her abdomen. Her mirrored eyes stayed shut but the lids of that sealed third began to part. It was black as night, an all-encompassing abyss, lit only by distant stars swirling in its voidic depths. By no true sign, Vagari knew it was staring right at him, a weighty gaze that crawled over him like a thousand prodding spiders.“Seħ…gai… no…” the girl croaked in a distorted voice. “Hrohweħ…”

Those words, they weren’t words any girl would know – words that froze the very heart of him as solid as stone. Vagari stared in wide-eyed bewilderment, shock, and fear. “W-what did you say?” Vagari uttered breathily as his eyes suddenly grew heavy and his limbs weak. “Who… Who are you?”

The weight of those words and her voidic stare forced Vagari to his knees and he crumpled down upon the sands, all the life seemingly drained from him. The last thing he saw before the already dark world grew even darker was the colossi, the fallen ‘angel.’ Somehow, even there still as death in the sand beneath the wagon he could see it clearly, as if the world beyond and all its blasphemous obstacles had been wiped away. The sun burned behind its head still but offered no reprieve from the all-consuming night.

A sound began to emanate from it, a sound like cracking glaciers and crumbling earth. The angel turned its head slowly before locking the single great hollow of its cyclopean gaze upon Vagari. The distortion, that mind-numbing static grew louder and louder the longer he met that horrible gaze, now the burning red glare of nightmares and memories. Vagari couldn’t look away – no matter how much every fiber of his being demanded it, it wouldn’t let him look away. He tried to scream, but like his limbs, Vagari’s breath was dead in his lungs. The angel’s crown of fire erupted and cast the world once more into divine flame as he fell further into darkness.