XVI.
Fire had struck his home, and everything he had worked for, had lived for, had been burned to ash. The walls were pocked with embers, scars of day-old flame that Vagari painfully recognized as the beam weapons of Xu’s men. A lifetime of effort and a thousand years of reclaimed history laid scattered around the room broken, torn, and burned. Books he had transcribed himself from terminals and electronic libraries now lost were but collateral damage in a battle he’d taken no part in. No, not a battle. An assassination. “Soprano!” Vagari shouted frantically, rushing into the still smoldering destruction. “Soprano, where are you?! Please – please be here… Say something! Soprano, say something! I’m here – I’m here, please! I got your message – I came as fast as I could! I’m here… please say something!”
Vagari wailed in devastation as he pushed through the ruins of his life, turning over smoking and cinder-marked furniture in search of any sign of her. But all he could find were more ashes. Maybe she hid, he thought, maybe she found a way to escape again – some hidden tunnel not even he knew about. Maybe, just maybe she hadn’t arrived yet? Maybe Soprano would barge through the doorway at any moment, just as shocked and surprised as they were – but okay. Maybe she was okay. BP had joined in his desperate search without hesitation, and without knowing rightly what to look for – but all the same, she found it. “Vagari!” She shouted from the blackened back of the garage door. “Over here! O-over here… I found her…”
Vagari darted forward, a rush that faded into a staggered lurch once he saw exactly what BP found – bones as black as the wall they were huddled up against. He fell to his knees before them, hands outstretched shaking with despair and trepidation. She had been there, alive, and well, only days before, waiting for him. She was supposed to be safe there; he was supposed to keep her safe! The bones crumbled in his hands, even with the tenderest touch, breaking just like the heart in his chest. Vagari gasped as Soprano and all the love and hope for the new world she represented slipped through his fingers. His struggled breath freed itself in the form of a mournful wail. Vagari buried his face in his palms and sobbed in the ashes of that dreamed future. He cried for her, for Alto, himself, and for all of mankind. It was over now, his mission for redemption, for that better future – it was over. If they had gotten to her, to Soprano, they must have gotten the book as well, his only clue at undoing the wrongs he had done. They had taken everything from him, every good thing he had managed to do in his twisted new life. It was over.
BP sunk down beside him and laid her head on his arm. It was a small comfort he didn’t deny himself – to not be truly as alone as he felt. Vagari couldn’t tell how long they sat together there in mournful silence; it felt like eternity, and eternity was exactly what he deserved. “I swore that they’d be safe here,” Vagari uttered from a raw throat. “I promised them… But it was a lie. I failed her, her father, the world. I failed them all.” He balled his fists against reddened eyes. “How long did she wait, believing I would be the one to open that door? But he knew, somehow, he knew and found her. When? How long ago? A day? An hour? Moments before I woke up? Was he at my bedside while it burned? While she burned?! Offering aid in one hand while strangling her with the other?!”
The rage overtook him so suddenly BP pushed away in alarm. Vagari’s anger propelled him to his feet. He began pacing through the wreckage hissing curses through clenched teeth. BP simply stared in a mix of fear and sympathy, unsure what to do or say. “No – no! I won’t let him get away with this,” Vagari seethed, kicking up motes of soot and embers with every leaden step. “If he thinks this is the end then he’s in for a rude fucking awakening! I won’t let him get away again – not again! He… he has no idea what’s coming for him.” Vagari slammed a fist into the wall, cracking the plaster and the steel beam behind it, causing BP the yelp in shock. “Stay here!” he directed her sharply as he made an abrupt turn towards the door. “He can’t have left the city yet… He’s still here and so is the book! I may not have saved you… either of you… But I’ll sure in hell make sure he pays for what he did!”
“V-Vagari wait!” BP cried out; her words soundless compared to the roaring fire of his rage. She felt something, something familiar in the truest sense. “Please, wait! I think someone’s out there!”
That someone was exactly who Vagari wanted to see – Dr. Xu – just all too soon. He stood at the gateway to the courtyard with four of his guards, all lined up with him in the middle, awaiting – expecting. Vagari had stormed out of the ruins of his home, his rage boiling over, but as soon as he saw what awaited him, it all froze in his chest. “Hoy there,” Dr. Xu called out cheerily. “When I returned to check on you, you weren’t there! So, I came looking.”
“You bastard…” Hissed Vagari, starting forward with heavy steps. “She was only a girl! A little girl, and you murdered her!”
“Oh-ho-ho, hold up there,” cautioned the doctor, motioning to his guards. Two more appeared on the rooftops on either side of them. “We both know these can hurt you – perhaps even kill you. I recognized the burns, so don’t tell me otherwise.”
Vagari eyed the armored guards across the courtyard. Seeing them in broad daylight, he could truly see what he was up against. He had suspected before that they were somehow using angel-tech, but now he could see the truth of it, and it was much worse. They weren’t just wearing any armor, but battle-suit exoskeletons – mechanized suits that essentially transformed their wearers into walking tanks. And, with the angelic alabaster on top – impervious to nearly all known weaponry – Vagari was starting to see how very real the threat before him was. They held their light-rifles trained on him, their burning red eyes scanning every little movement he made. Xu wasn’t taking any chances it seemed.
“And I do apologize for your little friend,” Xu continued with a wave of his hand. “My other half can be quite overzealous at times… It was regrettable, but the interrogation gave suggestion that she had a benefactor. There was no way she or her father would ever have simply discovered the artifact existence. A lowlife merchant scraping out a living in the ghettos? Pfft – unlikely. So, someone must have told them of it, and what to look for. There are no records of it – none – so that person must already have intimate knowledge of it. Curious and curiouser, I say. At first, I thought maybe you were a fellow First Seed, but ho boy was I wrong. I was not expecting… whatever you are! You are fascinating.”
“Fascinating?” Vagari growled through clenched teeth. “Come closer and I’ll show you how fascinating I can be. I’ll show you all the bells and whistles as I rip you apart!”
Xu huffed and rolled his eye. “I detest violence… I am a doctor after all,” Xu said solemnly. “But I won’t shy from it if you insist. You’ll be just as fascinating to me dead, maybe more. I’d rather not get dragged into a drawn-out firefight; you’re obviously more capable than your companions, having survived New Houston and all. So, for time’s sake, why don’t we just talk this out?”
“Talk this out?” Vagari echoed with a hiss. “Is that what you called it when you murdered an entire caravan of defenseless people? When you threw Packard into the fire to watch him burn and die?! Why keep up this charade? You’re a murderer plain and simple. You’re a monster – the true monster that escaped from that damnable lab!”
“Caravan?” Xu questioned before exclaiming, “Oh – yes, in the desert! Ah, what was that? A week or so ago? I recall now. We followed the artifacts signature there thinking the girl had taken up with them, but it was a ghost signature. However, we couldn’t risk any of them having come in contact with it. Who knows if they read it, or wrote parts down?”
“You and I both know that’s impossible,” Vagari snapped. “They couldn’t read Adamic if they wanted to. You killed them in cold blood!”
“Intimate knowledge of many things, I see,” uttered Dr. Xu wonderingly. “You were there, weren’t you?” Xu sucked on his teeth. “It wasn’t a ghost signature at all, was it? It was you we found. Fascinating! Confirm this,” he demanded himself as he waved a hand in the air – no doubt interacting with a bionic HUD of some kind. “You do emit a similar enough signature to the artifact… Really, that could mean only one thing… Ah – wow! You’re not an aberrant at all; you’re not even human anymore – if ever. You’re a Weħǵhekw, aren’t you?”
Weħǵhekw, it meant ‘Watcher’ in adamic, but Xu’s meaning behind the word meant nothing to Vagari. “For you, I’m Death,” Vagari hissed through clenched teeth, his anger rising again as he glowered from the doorway. “You ask a lot of questions for a dead man.” The doctor’s half-smile wavered at the words, though he looked more disappointed than afraid. Xu reached up and removed his cowl, exposing the hidden side of his face. Instead of human features, there was a gastropodous growth encompassing the left side of his face. It pulsed and contorted, it’s cilia and eyes writhing with irritation. Whether it was some kind of parasite or a gross mutation, Vagari couldn’t tell, but he found it a fitting face for a man as monstrous as he was.
For a moment, Xu just stared in contemplative silence before speaking out once more. “You talk big, but I think that’s all there is to it, talk,” Xu said dryly. “Otherwise you would have done something already, maybe save those caravanners you claim to care about. But you didn’t. So, lets stop the theatrics and cut to the chase. Where is the artifact?” Vagari stared blankly for a second before the true implications of the mans words caught up to him. They didn’t have it – the book, the artifact, the Libro ex Portarum – they didn’t have it! Vagari tried to hide his surprise behind a veil of vainglory, spitting out with a pang of hurt fresh in his heart, “You couldn’t torture that out of a little girl, so what makes you think you can get it out of me?”
“You’ll last longer,” Dr. Xu growled with a sharp twitch that almost seemed to knock him off balance. It was something he appeared to be struggling against, a strange seizing madness that drew out his own ire. “Stop! I can handle this… STOP!” The twitch came again, nearly throwing him off his feet this time. Vagari stared with knitted brows as the vile man seized and convulsed, hissing obscenities at himself for a few bated breaths before suddenly standing firm once more. With the way his eye fell upon him now, Vagari knew without so much as a word that Dr. Xu, as quickly as he had come into his life, had been since removed from it. Xu was gone in an instant, and though the creature that stood before him looked identical to the doctor, Vagari could tell he was anything but. As Jekyll became Hyde, Dr. Xu had become the Tall-Man of that fateful night in the wasteland.
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A wave of that all too familiar feeling came crashing over Vagari, dousing the rekindled fire of his temper in icy anxiety. It writhed in his guts like the lashing tendrils of Xu’s hideous other half, but the feeling didn’t seem to emanate from him but instead something unseen just beyond. Vagari ground his teeth and did his best to focus on the terror at hand instead of the one haunting him. “So that’s what you are,” Vagari spat with a sneer, “a parasite… You’re nothing but a demonic leech piloting a corpse, now come out to play.”
“A leech? A parasite?!” Hissed the Tall-Man through Xu’s clenched teeth. “Bhaskwrengh thing, you know not the powers you toy with! I am herald to the Blessed Mother! Find peace in the knowledge that you die for humanity, for HER glorious return! Return what you’ve stolen, and I will make your death quicker than the others.”
“You’re never getting that book,” Vagari uttered flatly, his eyes locked upon Xu from across the courtyard. “Not now, not ever. In fact, you’re not leaving this place alive. Because you’re wrong – I do know something about that power. Dheht-hengnis!”
In an instant eldritch power coursed within him, bursting forth from his very soul – his rage made manifest as lashing tongues of hellfire. It cut across the courtyard like an asteroid from the heavens, and in that instant the battle ignited. “Magics?! Fire! Fire you wretched damned things!” Wailed the Tall-Man furiously, cutting the air in front of him with his arm, swinging it like a sword. “Kill it now! Don’t just stand there, kill it!” Vagari rushed to the side, leaping over the railing before diving behind the half-tank pond, hoping it’s metallic frame would provide adequate protection against their devastating weapons. He cursed through clenched teeth. His aim had been off – Xu had survived – but his call of death had struck true in the chest of the guard next to him. The ghastly thing didn’t even make a sound as it cooked within its own shell. The Tall-Man stood firm, his back to the flame, shooting a murderous glare through the plasteel tank. “Tehom warned me you were a diabolist,” The Tall-Man shouted with a sneer, “but I hadn’t expected you to know perdngħwehs. You’re much more than a demon-bound warlock, aren’t you? Who taught you the Blessed Mother’s tongue, wretch?!” Perdngħwehs – it meant ‘First Tongue’ in Adamic, though Vagari had never heard it referred to as such before. The reference could only mean one thing, that Xu or perhaps just the creature itself was part of the exceedingly exclusive group of people who spoke the language. Vagari had to be especially careful now, in the case the vile thing could use it to the same devastating effects as he could.
The soldiers open fired. The blasts of plasmatic light made little sound as they scorched the far side of the pond – dull drones nearly silenced by the flows of water they released as they burned through. Vagari could hear the eels that lived within splash angrily as they made desperate attempts to escape the now steaming waters. Vagari decided he would use the steam as a smokescreen, but not for himself. He reached behind and pulled free a couple eggs from the hump of his back. The Tall-Man was expecting magics, so now he’d toss out something a bit different. Vagari stared into the copper-green surface of the orbs and cursed his luck. Of the two, only one was viable. He had gone without eating for too long and his body had begun repurposing what resources were available to it. One would have to do, Vagari thought, as he focused his will into it. One would be all he needed.
“What? Nothing to say?” called the Tall-Man mockingly. “Or perhaps you are already dead?” There was a moment of confusion when the drone, an engorged tick-like thing, appeared scuttling out from the veil of steam. For that fleeting moment the Tall-Man’s vicious monolog trailed off into a blissful reprieve of silence, but then realization struck all too quickly and his voice rang out again. “S-stop firing!” He began shouting at the top of Xu’s lungs. “Stop you dam-!” It was too late; when the bulbous drone rushed towards them, it leapt right onto the muzzle of a firing gun. The beam cut through it easily, igniting the churning liquids that filled its grotesque body. It exploded with such violence the surrounding walls cracked and the garage door dented in. Vagari shielded his eyes as the heat and light washed over him, burning away the eldritch cold that had invaded his heart. The shockwave that followed was a much less welcome feeling as he soon found himself pinned up against the wall by the now overturned pond, drenched in water and boiled eels.
Vagari coughed weakly as he struggled to move under the weight – but fearlessly, knowing there was no chance any of them could have survived the blast out in the open as they were. It was done, he thought, Xu was dead – dead and gone, and never to get the book. Alto, Soprano, the caravan, and that nameless girl were avenged; they could rest peacefully now in his heart and mind. “Vagari!” came a seemingly distant cry below the ringing in his ears. “Vagari, where are you? What was that sound?! Ah – oh no… What… What happened?”
“BP, you should have stayed inside,” Vagari thought sadly. “Now… Now you’ll have to see him dead, lose him again… I’m sorry.” He pushed against the pond with what little might he had left, lifting it enough to let a cloud of choking dust in and a cry out. “H-here, BP,” Vagari called weakly. “I’m over here!”
He got only silence in reply, but the metal began to shift – she had found him and was trying to help him out. She would have to go for help, he thought; if it was too heavy for him to lift, it was going to be impossible for her. But it wasn’t. The pond lifted almost effortlessly and was tossed away as if it were nothing. Before it even struck the ground Vagari was caught, wrapped in what felt like a thousand constricting vines. And as the dust cleared, he could see his savior – his captor: Dr. Xu, the Tall-Man. His clothes were torn, exposing the horror he had hid underneath the heavy cloak. Raw and writhing, his entire left side was composed of vining flesh, worm-like tendrils that lashed and constricted like a nest of vipers. “I’ve got you now,” the Tall-Man hissed through harsh breaths and Xu’s blooded teeth. “And now… Now you’re going to tell me everything… or die screaming like your friends did!”
Bloodred embers burned through the wall of dust at his back, silent announcements that not only the foul doctor had survived, but at least two of his soldiers as well. Vagari hissed through clenched teeth and tried to claw at his captor, but the tendrils quickly stole the option from him, binding his hands and feet behind his back. The Tall-Man then lifted him high above him before slamming him down into the ground. The blow knocked the wind out of him, replacing the air in his lungs with a mouthful of blood. A step from home, a step from salvation, a step from redemption: Vagari hadn’t imagined that this was how it would end. “Now, I’m going to ask you once more, wretched thing,” his assailant growled. “Where is the artifact?! Where is the seħgaino?!”
“W-why do you want it?” wheezed Vagari from compressed lungs. “Don’t you understand… that it… ruined the world?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a dead man,” sneered the Tall-Man viciously. “The artifact is key in saving this damnable world and all your worthless lives. It’s the only thing that can bring the Mother home. The Lamb; Tzalmavet; and you horrid things; I’ve spent countless lifetimes keeping it out of the hands of things like you! But first chance you get – no matter how many times I stomp you back down – like the insects you are, you and your like always crawl out of the woodworks to bring about ruin to us all! Worlds have burned from such ignorance, insect. Worlds far greater than this pathetic place!”
Vagari stared in confusion. From the way the creature spoke, it sounded as if he were claiming to be the tome’s protector, its guardian. Where was he two-hundred years ago when they dug the damned thing up? Maybe then his zealotry could have prevented all this, but now it only served to blind him. In protecting the tome, he was leaving the world to die. Vagari sought to struggle harder, but the sinuous lashes only tightened around him for his efforts. He could feel his ribs popping under the strain. He could remove the pain, turn it off, but the sound of breaking bones still made him sick to his stomach and the fear of death rise within him. He was going to die, Vagari realized. There was no escape. Panic rose within him, feeling like that awful foreign dread but unmistakably from the depths of his own mortal soul. He was terrified, and surprised – surprised he didn’t want to die – at very least not like this.
The world around him began to blur, and his vision darken. But then, there teetering upon the abyss, barely conscious, barely alive, he heard a voice call out to him. It was her again, that nameless three-eyed girl, come to watch him break his promise of vengeance. Despite the veil of dust and fast approaching death that clouded his eyes he could see her as clear as day, sitting above him on the rooftop looking down. She smiled sweetly as the sun shone through the hole in her chest, a burning reminder of his fatal failure twice over. It blinded him wholly to the world around him, to everything but her. Vagari could only stare and sob, his fear replaced by heavy despair under the judging weight of her sapphire gaze. It burned like blue flame, so hot it felt cold upon his soul. Why now, he wondered. Why here did his specter haunt him? Was she here to guide him into hell, truly his Virgil after all? His just deserts. “So, you’ve lost all hope?” she asked casually. “You’ve lost the will to fight?”
“I… can’t,” Vagari cried, his voice returned to him. “I can’t fight… He’s too strong, and I’m too tired. I want to! I want it to end, but he’s just too strong for it to end in my favor.”
“You have been going so hard for so long, haven’t you?” She admitted with the warmest smile he had seen in a very long time – one that said she understood, and that it was okay. “But you’ve had longer nights studying for exams, Val. This is just another test, isn’t it? And those are never easy, are they?”
“I know, but I’m all alone now,” he pleaded mournfully. “I’ve always had others, even when I just started out! Now… Now I’m all alone. I need them, I need help, but they’re gone.”
The apparition laughed but not unkindly. Suddenly she was closer, sitting on the ruins of a planter bed behind his captivator. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you,” she told him with that inspiringly warm smile. “You have this… aura about you, one that draws people in! I noticed it the instant I met you.”
“Yeah, right,” Vagari admitted sourly. “I draw them in like an antlion’s pit, pulled close only to die at its center! Look where it’s gotten them! Look where it’s gotten you… Dead. Everyone that gets close to me dies. It isn’t an aura, it’s a miasma that kills everything I care about.”
“No, they didn’t die because of you,” the ghost said softly. “They didn’t even die for you. They died for what you wish to achieve: a clean world, Val, pure and free from all this pain! Isn’t that worth dying for? When it comes to you yourself, you believe it is.”
Vagari shut his eyes tight, trying to dam off the flood of tears pouring from his eyes. “Is this it?” He asked, trying to steel his quaking voice. “Is this the end? After everything, everyone, do I die for nothing in the end?”
“No,” the three-eyed girl uttered, “you don’t die here, Val. Even though the Abzu’s flow may pull us through the darkest depths of the abyss, know that even there, where no light ever shines, you are never as alone as your heart tells you you are. Look long into the Abyss, Seħgaino, and I see you. You are not alone. So, hear it now, the light… ‘let him go!’” Her voice echoed upon itself with those final words, distantly at first, but louder and louder the more it ricocheted in the darkness. As the specter faded and the wheel of time resumed, the whole world seemed to shake with the resounding of that voice – of BP’s voice.
“I said… Let. Him. Go.”