XXV.
Vagari couldn’t remember the rescue, or the four days that followed. All he could remember was the line cast and him being pulled up into the light. He had to have been at least somewhat conscious, he figured, finding upon the fifth day that he had affixed a drone to himself. He let it continue its work; whatever will he instilled into it seemed to be helping. Everything hurt, but not as much as it probably would otherwise. From there his memory became spotty again as he drifted in and out of consciousness. A sixth day passed, and one more, making it a week before the full weight of the waking world was cast upon him.
The sun bore down hotly upon the relic of a boat. Vagari found himself laid out at the rear of the ship, on a mat beside the engine. The sunlight hurt his eyes but felt good upon his skin. He rubbed the strain away, pleasantly surprised to be alive and in minimal pain. BP stood before him, back turned as she faced the wheel, balancing upon a stack of boxes. Vagari couldn’t help but chuckle at the realization that it indeed took two of them for her to reach the wheel. At the sound of it she glanced over her shoulder. “So what’s our heading?” Vagari asked as he pushed himself up from his spot at the back of the wheelhouse. He hissed in pain. His back still ached, but with the regeneration came a level of numbness that he was grateful for. “You’re awake!” BP exclaimed chipperly before adding, “And using full sentences today instead of curse words. You’re really mean when you’re hurt…”
“I… I’m sorry,” Vagari stammered with a curt laugh. “I don’t remember anything since you pulled me up. You saved me again, thank you.”
“What?! Not even my daring tale of rescue?!” she asked in disappointment. “You nodded and everything… Oh well… What are friends for?”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Vagari again. “I’d definitely like to hear it again though. Why don’t you bring me up to speed?”
BP spared little time in locking the steering wheel in place as she shuffled down her stair of boxes to his bedside to regale him – once more – of their escape. Vagari smiled broadly, surprised to see fire in her eyes instead of tears. This time he would be sure to remember every detail. They had been thrown apart, she reminded him, but by some stroke of luck, she had been thrown opposite of him – towards their moored vessel rather than away from it as he had. BP had to think and act fast though, knowing she wouldn’t be safe until she reached their pontoon, and only maybe then. As the storm exploded around her, ignited by the dueling giants, she inched her way from ship to ship using a set of discarded teeth as pitons. Somehow, in spite of all that was transpiring around her, she managed to creep her way all the way back without harm.
Once she reached the boat, she was ashamed to admit, she hid. BP apologized profusely, but Vagari told her it was the right thing to do. “That’s what you said last time too,” She told him with a sheepish shrug. “I still feel awful though… But, then I heard something. A voice I think. I couldn’t make out what it was saying, but it drew me to the edge. I felt cold all of a sudden, and the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life seemed to explode within me! It was truly terrible… All I could think about was getting away from that spot – following where the voice drew me… So I started the boat and tried to get away. That’s when I saw you jumping in! And as soon as I saw you that feeling went away.”
Vagari stared at her, his brows knit tight together. Before only he had ever felt that feeling – a feeling he was half convinced was in his head, a delirious invention. To hear her mention it as well brought him no great sense of comfort. Part of him wished he truly was mad in lieu of the alternative – that something really was watching him from the dark corner of his eye. “Well,” Vagari said, forcing a smile upon his face, “that truly is a daring tale, my friend. Have… Have you felt that feeling before?”
“Absolute terror?” BP asked with a huff. “All the time! I’m just glad I didn’t pee myself… Cause I wanted to, I really did. I mean, did you see those things?! I mean, I didn’t know anything could get so big – even after seeing Her back in the city! Of course I was terrified!”
“She was bigger by far,” Vagari suggested idly. “We just had the luxury of seeing her from a great distance, unlike in this case. But, what I mean is… Did you feel anything… wrong about it? That feeling. Like maybe it wasn’t coming from you?”
BP cocked her head at the question. “Do you mean like from the psychic feedback?” She asked him. “That was terrible. I felt like my brains got scrambled…”
“I’m sorry for the questions. I’m glad you’re okay,” Vagari told her, replacing the forced smile with a genuine one, deciding not to press the issue further. “How is your head?”
“Better than before, that’s for sure,” BP answered with a huff. “OH – but to answer your first question: I’ve just been following the sun. The compass is well and truly d-e-a-d, so I figured that was our best bet. I mean, if it’s rising that-a way, that way’s east. Adjust for the angle and we should hit land eventually… right?”
“Right,” Vagari replied, struggling to his feet. He reached behind his back and felt around. No eggs – probably absorbed to speed up the regeneration – but his wings were well on their way. A few more days and flight might be an option again. He groaned as he pushed his way over to the wheel, saying while scooting the boxes to the side with his foot, “My turn. You’ve done great, BP… Thank you again. I’m feeling well enough to take it from here. So, you get some rest, alright?”
BP eyed him suspiciously for a moment, doubt as clear in her eyes as the exhaustion was. “Alright,” she uttered softly, tiredness overthrowing worry. “BUT if anything happens, let me know and I’ll take over! When you get tired wake me up, okay?!”
“Yes ma,” Vagari confirmed with a laugh, “will do. Get some rest. You’ve already done more than your fair share.”
“You better,” BP said, narrowing her bulbous eyes as she shuffled over to her bed. “Be sure to drink and eat! It was nearly impossible to feed you… I had to use a hose!”
“Go to sleep,” Vagari ordered, not unkindly. “I’ve got this.”
BP’s only reply was snoring, having fallen asleep as soon as she hit the mat. Vagari watched her for a moment, thinking how however long ago now, before he met her, he would never have imagined such a creature would be such a valuable companion. In the short amount of time that they’d known each other she had already saved his life a handful of times – repaying her debt at least four times over. Her infernal lineage notwithstanding, she truly seemed to be his guardian angel. ‘What was the old saying?’ Vagari wondered. ‘Big things in small packages? A mouse with a lion’s heart… and an alligator’s maw.’
The sun rose up high and fell twice more, and they still hadn’t sighted land. Vagari began to wonder if they were simply going in circles, but that wasn’t possible as they kept the sun and moon in sight at all times. They took shifts to drive and shifts to sleep, except when they needed to let the batteries charge, and yet seemingly no progress had been made. On the fourth day however, they finally spotted something in the distance. Like before, it began as a thin dark line on the horizon, causing the thought to cross their minds that perhaps they really had gone in a circle, looping back to that dreaded graveyard of ships and giants. But, as they drew near, they watched in awe and relief as the line remained solid, growing tall as well as wide. “The wall…” Croaked BP softly in her avian voice. “Vagari, it’s the wall!”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Like a mountain range, the dam stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions, and even at their distance they couldn’t easily see the top. It was a feat of desperate engineering that still impressed in their ruined world. White plasteel brick, printed and fused together by an army of drones and welders, stood bright against the setting sun at their backs, shining like the last bastion of purity left in the world – a wall of light that held the shadowed abyss at bay. Vagari could see where the rumors of a golden city beyond that befouled inland sea came from, realizing as he stared up in awe that they were probably the first people in two-hundred years to see it outside the realms of imagination and legend. Thanks to the demon Esh, no one had been able to travel so far east in all that long while, so the memory trickled down, becoming fantasy.
Whatever lay beyond, however, still dwelled in that mysterious world of wonder and possibility. The first thing lost in the End was contact with the outside world. They fought still, for sure, but they had fought alone, and one by one the lights went out. Now the known world was a thin strip from there to the Calivada coast – what remained of it. Vagari couldn’t help but wonder idly about what may have happened in lands foreign, to Europe, Asia, and everywhere in between. Had they suffered the same fate as they had? Worse even? Were they affected at all? And what of the places beyond the confines of their atmosphere? He had heard that Mars had sent relief ships for awhile, but then abruptly stopped. No one knew why, and it was doubtable that they ever would.
When Vagari awoke from his transformative slumber the world had already ended. The war for the world they knew had been lost, and the sky had gone dark. They had lost, but that loss was just beginning. There was a twenty year gap in his memory, one he presumed was in the memories of all the men like him, those beings twisted and reforged by the alien goddess. Esh had cast some doubt upon that presumption, however. Now, he couldn’t help but wonder what the dead demon meant in that he was ‘broken’. Had something gone wrong in his transformation? Had something gone right? The grain of salt tasted bitter in Vagari’s mouth. Perhaps he could find the others and ask them? It was a wonderment that lasted only a fraction of a second before he banished it entirely. They may be like him, but if his encounter with Esh had taught him anything, they weren’t like him. Esh had reveled in this foul new world, and even in its dying breath told him to do the same – to make due living in the ruins of his own making instead of striving to undue it. Vagari tightened his grip upon the wheel and swallowed the bitterness, deciding the demon had only sought to test his resolve, to weaken it. Esh, Tehom, Tzalmavet: none of them mattered. They, and any scrap of information they may have, were only obstacles – roadblocks set between him and the Being of Light, between him and salvation.
It took them the better part of the night to fully reach the dam. Even as near as they were, they couldn’t begin to see the top of it. With that in mind, they would err on the side of caution and keep some distance from it, lest the tales of violent natives prove to be true. Morning came and gone as they coasted along the cloud-scraping structure’s length some few hundred feet out. “I wonder what’s on the other side,” BP wondered vocally from her perch in the crow’s nest.
“Hellfire, boiling seas, if the preachers have the right of it,” Vagari announced idly from the wheel. “Wastelands, I imagine, like the ones surrounding the Megacity, just as wide and deep as the ocean.”
“You think the water is all gone?” BP asked, sounding surprised. “Where’d it all go, you think?”
“Oh I don’t know, into the ground?” Vagari suggested with a unseen shrug. “It’s just what I imagine. No one knows for sure, really. We’re pioneers here after all.”
“How do you know we’re going the right way?” BP asked genuinely. “Isn’t your head compass messed up?”
“Well, now we just follow the wall,” Vagari announced. “It connects Texico to Georgia, so following it will take us east.”
“Is that what the Being of Light showed you?” pressed BP, craning her head over the crows nest railing.
“East is what I picture, what she showed me,” Vagari answered. “Esh really messed up our heading to put us this far south though… But, if we just follow the wall, we should be alright.”
The vision played out in his mind, images of a vast waste of scorched earth, frozen in time. Countless dead or petrified colossi encroached upon it, all fighting to reach the center, to reach the bones of a ship so immense and grand that it made the giants look like ants swarming around it. Did they struggle to reach the Being of Light as he did, Vagari wondered; or was there something else they fought and died for? The colossi, the ‘angel’s’, their designs on their ruined world had never been clear beyond extermination. Who or what they truly were, beyond that violent intent, the world could only speculate. They didn’t speak, they didn’t reason, and they never showed mercy. No, it seemed to Vagari that they had only one purpose – to burn the world, corrupter and corrupted alike. Their run in with the one held captive by Esh only served to confirm that for him. That had been just one too, Vagari thought pensively, though a particularly imposing one it seemed. Hundreds lied ahead, thousands maybe. He had never seen so many together. He had never imagined there were so many when one had been enough the burn whole cities to the ground.
As suddenly as his thoughts had drifted, his mind snapped to as tumbling debris came crashing down into the water ahead of them. Vagari pulled back on the throttle and turned sharply, just missing what looked to be a water-tank by barely a foot. BP yelped as she was nearly tossed over the edge of her perch. “Are you okay?!” Vagari barked, still trying to keep control of the vessel so not to crash into the bobbing metal.
“Yes… yes… I think so,” BP chirped. “Bit spooked though. What happened?”
“Good, good…” Vagari uttered as he looked out the window, the boat slowing to a stop in the water. “Uh - looks like something fell off the top of the dam.”
“You mean there IS something up there?!” BP exclaimed excitedly, sliding down from the crows nest to join him in the wheel house. “What do you think it is?”
“Definitely not a golden city,” Vagari announced, “but something for sure.”
Just then did he hear voices on the wind, chittering that barely contested the squeaking of mice. Whoever they were, they must have been yelling for him to hear even that much. Vagari tried to focus on the voice – no, voices, two of them – and piece together what they were saying. “There’s someone up there,” He announced, cocking his head, putting his ear to the wind. “I can’t rightly hear what they’re saying… Something about pushing something smaller? They’re arguing.”
“Let me see,” BP said, reaching out with her mind. “I sense… two of them. Small… I think.”
“Careful,” Vagari cautioned, worried for her after the ordeal with the demonic Esh. He could still see her face in his mind, the blood in her eyes and mouth. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“I won’t,” she replied curtly before saying, “I think… I think they’re children, and I don’t think they were trying to hit us. Their minds are loud but… like scribbles. I feel concern, fear… and not just for themselves, but for us as well. I think they were trying to warn us, or maybe get our attention. I think they need our help.”
For a moment Vagari just looked on towards the wall, and then, at moments end, he turned his gaze back down to her. BP looked up at him with sureness in her bulbous eyes – that green-hazel stare he had since come to trust with his life. “Two children on top of the dam?” he uttered with a huff. “Gotta admit, I was not expecting that after what we saw on the ships. This close to the demon’s domain? Must have been a tantalizing target.”
“Maybe he avoided it, like Eastend?” BP suggested with a shrug.
That was true, Vagari thought, never having even heard rumor of a sea serpent his entire stay there. Maybe the dam was far enough away from the center of the lake that people could deign to live there, or very least explore. Vagari sighed as he felt around the hump of his back for his wings. They were almost regenerated, but still bound tight in cylinder cocoons of chitinous shell. There would be no flying up. He let out another groan, stared up at the dam and cursed. They would have to climb. “Alright, alright… Let’s go check it out,” Vagari decided with a sigh. “At least we’ll get to see what’s on the other side of it,” he added as a bribe for himself. “BP, we’re going to need some pitons.”