XVII.
“Wretched ungrateful thing,” the Tall-Man seethed; surprise scrawled across Xu’s side of the face. “You presume to make demands of me? Of ME?! For the sake of synchronicity, I spared your life in that bog, but my generosity has its limits. Xu gave you your life, little cambion, I suggest you be silent before I take it.”
“Being alive isn’t the same thing as having a life,” spat BP, her eyes red from anger and tears. “Y-you left me… You died and… and you left me there to die! What kind of life is that?!”
“More than you deserve,” replied the Tall-Man harshly, spitting the words through clenched teeth. “You’re a mistake! A fool’s misbegotten attempt, playing with powers far beyond their kith! You’re nothing but a homunculus – a byproduct. Let him go?” he spat out mockingly. “OR what, creature? You’ll bite me? Do it. Like your friend here, you’ll find that I am more than you could ever hope to chew. Now I will say this just once – because my host’s misguided attachment for you – do as I command. Step back. Join your pathetic siblings and stay out of my way. Or I’ll have them gun you down.”
“NO!” Shouted BP, stamping her foot upon the dirt before growling, “Not a chance… I won’t! I knew what they were… I knew the moment I saw them – saw you. I could feel it; the same as Her! I could feel it… You didn’t leave to find help. You left to start over. You replaced me. I – I didn’t want to believe it… I loved you.”
“Love?” the Tall-Man echoed, the word sounding foreign on his lips. He shook his head and sneered. “What exactly does a cambion know of love? Do you even know what that means? You don’t even have a soul. You’re nothing. Nothing but an ear grown on a rat’s back – and in my way,” the parasite snapped before motioning to the remaining guards. “Shoot her and collect the corpse for study. We’re done here – fire!”
Vagari could hear the weapons charge and see the lights flare as they fired. He struggled against his captor with all his might but even still, he couldn’t break free. He couldn’t save her. Just like Alto and Soprano, just like the Three-Eyed Girl that haunted him still, he couldn’t save her; BP would die, just like the others. For the first time in a very long time, Vagari prayed for a miracle. Whether it was GOD or the Devil himself – someone had heard him, and fate had intervened. In that instance, Vagari found himself falling harshly to the ground as Xu dropped him, the tendrils of his parasitic half fallen slack to his side. For a moment, The Tall-Man just stared at the arm, at the large hole burned through it, up the length of it and out the shoulder. He stumbled back as if to distance himself from it. “You… You shot me…?” he uttered, his voice no longer the commanding tone of his vicious other half, but the mewling whimper of its host. “I don’t… understand. You shot me!”
The guards just stood there, staring mindlessly; their beam-rifles shaking in their hands to the point their exoskeletons could hardly compensate for the tremors. Vagari quickly realized it wasn’t fear of the Tall-Man’s temper, or fear at all, but the small toothy creature that stood besides them. It was BP, doubtlessly in the same fashion her progenitor had with its simpler scions, she had taken control of them. Xu stared in disbelief, realizing what happened. “That’s impossible…” He stammered out through bloodied teeth. “How?! You’re a byproduct, you have no soul! You’re just soma, flesh!” Xu let out a ghastly wail as he staggered back, struggling desperately to keep his dormant other half together. Chunks of the octopoid arm were now falling dead to the ground, sloshing off before withering away to nothing more than a black sick. He stumbled back and without further word began to flee. Xu only got as far as the end of the courtyard before his left leg gave out beneath him, throwing him face first into the dirt.
Vagari staggered to his feet, unwilling to let the miracle chance go to waste – unwilling to let him go. He spat out a mouthful of blood and began the slow march towards him. Even if it killed him, Vagari would accomplish this one thing – Xu would die by his hands. The wounded doctor was in an absolute panic as he struggled to crawl away, muttering incoherently, praying, crying out pathetically to his mother, all while leaving a trail of death behind him. “After all you’ve done…” Vagari growled through clenched teeth. “After all you’ve destroyed, there’s no way in Hell I’m letting you get away. I’m going to enjoy this, you rotten bastard… I really am.” Vagari raised his clawed hand on high. “This is for Alto and Soprano, for the caravan, for all those who suffered thanks to you! BP – look away!”
Xu laughed, he actually laughed as he rolled about to face the end to come. “Frightening words,” he spat as he drew something from the bloodied folds of his robe, “if it were up to you. Khelb Ħeme per sogwhembh, Tehom – soPeth gwedh Ħeme!”
“GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES MAPPED; LOCATION CONFIRMED,” the device blared. “EMERGENCY RECALL ACTIVATED.” Vagari’s eyes widened at the words, words so distant but still so fresh in memory – Words of Power. “NO!” he shouted striking down with all the fury born might he could muster. Vagari had been fast, but once again he had been too late. With a explosive burst of pneumatic lightning, Xu was gone. Vagari stared at the spot with wide eyes, watching a string of the plasmatic energies linger on for a breath before fading to nothingness before him.
He grit his teeth and shouted agony through them. Xu had escaped and took his vengeance with him. He had his life, but that was all he escaped with, Vagari realized. Xu hadn’t won, he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, what he was willing to kill for – he hadn’t gotten the book. As much as it pained Vagari to search for victory in tragedy, Soprano hadn’t died for nothing. It was still here, somewhere, and all he had to do was find it. Vagari looked back on the ruins of his home and BP standing in front of it, besides the trio of Xu’s guards. They still had them to deal with. He took a staggered breath and started their way, but before he got half way, they suddenly crumpled, collapsing into heaps where they stood. “What happened?” He asked in shock, staring down at them. “BP?”
“I… There was nothing inside them,” She began, eyes wide as ever and reddened from tears. “It was… was like he said… They had no soul… Their minds… I could see into their minds, Vagari, and they had… nothing.” Now she began crying again. “They were just husks… shells… I felt like I was there again, back in that room, watching the world through Aan’s eyes… I’m not, am I? I’m really here?”
Vagari made his way to her side and fell to his knees. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight to his chest in a hug – maybe the first genuine hug of her life. “You’re here, BP, right here,” he said softly. “You’re here because I’m here, and I wouldn’t be without your help. You saved us both.”
“Ok-ok-ok…” BP repeated in a mantric sob. With her forehead against his chest she stared down at their lifeless bodies. “They would have kept going, if I released them… All they can do is follow orders – do as he told them! I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t hold them forever… so I… I…”
“You freed them,” Vagari said for her in much kinder words than she had for herself. “You freed them from being a monsters pawns, BP. It’s a kindness, as painful as it is.”
“What now?” BP asked, her voice hardly a whisper. “What do we do now? We… we can’t just leave them here.”
Vagari thought on it for a moment, looking down at her. Her compassion, it knew no bounds, he thought with a weak smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Well, they may have just been shells,” Vagari began, forcing the smile into reality, “but that’s no reason not to give them a proper burials, right? They were just more of his victims in the end, so let’s do right by them.”
“Right,” BP replied, pushing away gently to look up with a smile. “I’d like that, I think…”
“Me too,” Vagari told her, becoming hyperaware of the ash still staining his hands. “I think that’s the least we could do.”
They were shallow and barely more than a pile of stones, but it was the best Vagari could do in the state he was in. All the same, BP was appreciative when she returned. Vagari had sent her out for supplies as he dealt with the dead, and it was somewhere near sundown when she returned. “I took the bars to the man you mentioned,” BP told him as they stood at the graveside. “He gave you more than you were asking. Apparently he and this Packard guy were business rivals? I don’t know what that means – but he was really happy… And I got everything else on your list too.”
“Thank you, BP,” Vagari said solemnly, slumping down next to the lastly dug grave. “I was hesitant to send you out alone…”
“Of course,” she said in a chirp, trying to hold onto a smile in spite of things. “I had no trouble at all. Though, most of it will be delivered tomorrow, the medicine is here. They gave me this nifty little bag too! Vagari… are you sure you’re okay?”
“I will be,” he said with a forced smile. “I’m a lot sturdier than most ha-ha – and the drugs will help.”
Vagari didn’t know how much of that were true, or if he’d go to bed that night and simply not wake up the morning after. He didn’t know which to hope for either. He couldn’t feel the breaks or tears, but he knew his body was in shambles – the worst off he’d ever been. All he could do was hope his tormented form could heal as it always had before. Vagari let out a struggled sigh. His job wasn’t done yet. There was one more left to burry. Before heading in for the night, the two took the time to make Soprano a cairn of her own despite the lack of remains to put in it; just something to let the world know she existed and she was loved. Vagari stayed there for awhile, long into the night, even after BP made her way inside. He didn’t know what else to say, he had apologized and pleaded for forgiveness a thousand times already, and so he just sat there trying to pull the light of better times out of the morose darkness. He couldn’t. Despite how much he wanted to remember the best of days when they all were together – even the worst of days when they were together – he couldn’t sort them out from the pain of them not being there anymore. So, alone in the ruins of his courtyard, Vagari sobbed, his face pressed to stone, until he had no more tears to shed.
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He might have stayed there all night, maybe forever, if BP hadn’t returned to pick him up off the floor. She coaxed him in under the lie that she couldn’t sleep alone in the dark after their time together – so maybe he could do her this one last favor and keep watch. Vagari knew it was a lie, but one he was thankful for. Much to his surprise she had been busy while he was at Soprano’s graveside. All the while she had been steadily working on cleaning up the temple of destruction and despair his living room had become. BP had managed to clear the main floor to an extent, sorting the ruined items to one side and the possibly salvageable to the other. Vagari was twice surprised to see that anything remained, and much more so how much. With the blanket of char and embers covering everything, it all looked so final. But now it seemed that at least a third of his collection had been spared from the fire. “You’ve been busy…” Vagari said softly as he slid a hand over the salvaged fractions of his life. “Thank you, BP… for all you’ve done.”
“You’re welcome,” BP croaked reservedly, reaching out to brush his hand consolingly before her restraint broke and she leaned in for a hug. “It’s the least I could do… I know how much pain you’re in. Even though I don’t have a soul, I can feel it. I feel it too.”
Vagari knelt down and pulled her in. “You have a soul,” he told her firmly. “Maybe the purest one I’ve ever seen. I cannot say how it came to you and not your siblings, but I can say that, BP, with confidence. You have a soul.”
“How do you know?” she asked genuinely.
“Because you can feel my pain,” Vagari answered softly. “Empathy comes from the soul, and if you feel it, that’s our souls connecting – reaching out.”
“I have… a soul,” BP told herself in a whisper, falling fully into the embrace. “Thank you…” There they would say for what felt like the better part of an hour, but neither minded and neither cared to be anywhere else. It felt as if the entirety of their journey had led up to that moment and both wanted to live there in that moment, if only for a little while.
After they parted, they did so for the night with Vagari bringing out what was left of his bedspread for her to sleep on. BP fell asleep as soon as her toothy maw hit the pillows, while Vagari, on the other hand, though exhausted, felt as if he had slept enough. Instead he would look for the book, wherever Soprano had managed to hide it, and prepare himself for the next step of his crusade. He took a handful of the concoction of drugs he had BP pick up and ventured back to his room. Hopefully they would keep death and fever dreams at bay until his body could repair itself – if it could that is.
There in the doorway he stared down at his bed, now stripped bare. The frame was crushed and pushed up against the wall, thrown from across the room. There was a smear of blood that spread from that spot, from one end of the room to the other, ending abruptly at a heavily dented dresser. Vagari ground his teeth, picturing the scene. They had caught her while she slept – Soprano. Like a fool, she believed him; she believed that she would be safe there. Vagari reached out to touch the blood, to see if it was still wet, but shrunk away. Instead he made to strike the wall. For a moment he held his fist up but only found the rage to complete the task had drained out of him with the tears. He let his fist fall with a sigh and then turned away.
First place he would look was the dresser. The dented metal screamed angrily as he drew out the drawer on ruined tracks. Clothes, a spare cloak, a set of glasses, and the five-hundred year old timepiece that had belonged to his father, but no book. He took the chance to trade out the tattered rags his former attire had become with something fresh. Despite very nearly growing accustomed to strutting it in the rough, it was nice to feel civilized again. He felt civilized, but confined. It was a nice confined, Vagari decided; a shell to hide out the horrors of the world, or hide within from it the horror he had become.
From there he turned towards his mirror: a tall standing thing, covered in dust, having never gotten much use before. Vagari never cared to see the creature it showed – his inner self become his truest self. There was a clear spot about waist high, wiped away by small hands – Sopranos. Vagari cleared away the rest, starting there. Afterwards he stared into the mirror, hoping to see Soprano’s reflection captured within. But, all he could see was the shambled and broken thing he had become. His long black hair was a mess, ratty and wild, and his pallid skin had an unnatural umber tone to it: dirt, blood, and God knows what else.
Vagari sighed defeatedly and stared into the whole blackness of his own eyes; arachnoid hand pressed up against the glass weakly before falling away. “I have a soul,” Vagari uttered softly, repeating BP’s own declaration. He wasn’t sure if he believed it, if he ever had – even in his other life. If empathy comes from the soul, Edward Valentino had truly been soulless. He had cared for so little beyond achieving his goal – something that he as Vagari fought so hard against. But what now? Now that his goal was all he had left? Who was he now? And what if he couldn’t find it? Who would he be then?
Vagari cursed and, grabbing the top of the mirror, spun it. He stood staring at the revolving reflection, at his flashing image, hoping desperately with each lazing turn that it would be of someone else. It turned and turned: him… him… him… Her… His prayer was answered cruelly in the form of his haunting specter, the three-eyed girl. She gazed back at him, staring silently through the looking glass with her piercing blue eye. Vagari stared back for a moment before sliding down to the floor to sit in an exhausted heap. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “but I don’t have any tears left for you. I tried to keep my promise… I tried. But I lost… I’m lost. I don’t know where to go from here. He doesn’t have it – Xu… but neither do I and I don’t know if I have it in me to keep looking.”
“Are you giving up on your dream then?” the specter asked, that damnably kind smile plastered across her face. “That dream of a better tomorrow? Free of… all this?”
“I… I don’t know,” Vagari admitted. “I don’t know if it’ll even work! I don’t know… I just know that it caused this, and – and it has to un-cause this! It has to. The device brought it through, so… It has to. What do you want me to say?!” Snapped Vagari, throwing up his hands. “That I have any idea what I’m doing?! I don’t. I’m just trying my best…”
“What do I want you to say?” the ghost said warmly. “That you’ll keep trying.”
The instant her words ended the mirror shot still with the reflection facing away from him. It had stalled so quickly that something attached to its back broke away and fell harshly to the floor before him. Why he hadn’t seen it before, Vagari couldn’t say, but he saw it now – the book, the artifact, the Libro ex Portarum – there, plain as day. The chthonic features carved into its stone cover glowered up in a vicious alabaster sneer. He now recognized the infernal design as the horrid horned creature that passed through the Gate all those years ago, the one that brought all this pain and suffering upon the world. Vagari’s hands shook as he pushed himself to his knees and crawled towards it – shocked to silence by its sudden appearance. He reached out with the tenderness of an abused animal, ready to pull away at a moment’s notice. Just before he touched it, her, his haunting specter, his Virgil, would call out once more. “Just know, if you touch it, Vagari…” she said, the girl with three eyes, “there’s no going back. They’ll know you have it.”
“They?” Vagari asked, not daring to take his eyes off the tome lest it disappear back into the aether. “Xu and his parasite? Tehom, or whoever they work for? Who will know? Who are they?” Vagari balled his fists and seethed. “All you’ve ever said are riddles! Are you really a ghost? Or are you something else? Or are you just me, my madness taken form?” Vagari’s head sunk to the floor between his fists. “I’m scared,” he admitted in a sob, “I’m scared that I’m on the wrong side of things. I’m terrified that I’m not doing the right thing.” He looked up, tears in his eyes. “I didn’t think this world was worth fighting for… and yet, there are people fighting for it, fighting me! What if… What if I’m opening the gates to something far worse?”
Hands slid around his neck and shoulders, closer than he ever thought possible with his monstrous body. The warmth, the affection caused tears he didn’t know he had left to stream from his eyes. They burned and he felt almost human again at their touch. It was cruel, the game they played, making him remember what he had lost, what he’d never truly have again – humanity. Was that the salvation he yearned for? Not to be lifted from perdition, but to feel human amongst the flames? Vagari felt human in that instance, vulnerable, and it disgusted him that the touch of a ghost held such power over him. A hand slid down his arm, weaving their fingers with his own. “Seħgaino,” a soothing voice whispered in his ear, “let me show you…”
Together they reached out. Vagari grasped the book, letting out a stuttered breath caught in his throat as he slid his long fingers around it’s diluvian bindings and brought it tight to his chest. “Show me,” he uttered softly, and no sooner had he, a horn sounded in his mind, the lone horn of Gabriel out of the heart of the void. His sight went to distant lands, a world of glass to the East, a world of the fallen, a necropolis of giants. Scorched lands as far as the eye could see burned into his mind, clearer than reality itself, and at the center of it all was a massive ship. The dreadnought lay in a crater of ice and glass, surrounded on all sides by the dead legions of Heaven. “Find me…” the voice whispered, an ethereal echo that bounced against the walls of his mind.
The vision drew closer now, intimate, inside, to the very heart of the place, to its blinding core. The light of it pulsed like a heart, beating with each struggled breath in Vagari’s chest. Within the light, eyes opened, eyes that seemingly captured the entirety of space within them, with all its galaxies, nebulas, and stars. The innumerous faces of mankind flashed before him, all smiling with the same warmth that invaded his body at her touch. In that instant Vagari knew it wasn’t the ghost of that unfortunate passenger he had been speaking with, that it wasn’t a ghost at all – but this being of light. “Find me,” it echoed, speaking in all the voices of mankind, as if every soul lied within it. And as far as Vagari could tell, they did. He knew now what he had to do, where he had to go: to the East, past the inland sea, to a place long lost to mankind. He had to free this being, free mankind with it. Clutching the tome to his breast, Vagari stared in reverence and awe, that warmth flooding his body with something he hadn’t felt in a long time – hope.