XXXII.
That afternoon they broke camp in silence, a weary quiet that hung over them both like a funeral shroud. BP had listened intently to the story he had told her, the tale of Edward Valentino – the man he used to be. Vagari hadn’t known what to expect from her as far as reactions went, but he knew how he would react – with distain and mistrust. After all, how was he any different than Xu, a man willing to sacrifice anything and everything to reach his goals? As he clutched the tome tight to his chest, tears trailing down his cheeks, he retold his story, how he became Vagari – the man he was today from the monster he used to be. BP said nothing. She just listened until he was through. As Vagari’s words faded he waited for her to react – to shout, call him a liar, call him a monster. But, she didn’t. In true BP fashion, she cried with him. She wrapped her stubby arms around him and buried her muzzle into the nook of his arm. “It must have been so hard for you,” she said warmly, “carrying on. But, I’m glad you did. I would never have met you otherwise.”
Still, after all his admitted sins, she thought so kindly of him. Vagari squeezed his eyes shut and choked back a sob. How? How could she think of him, of his wellbeing after that? After he told her how he ended the world? How many countless people suffered because of him? How many died? And still, she sought to comfort him. As if having heard the confusion in his tears, she offered an answer. “You’re making things right,” BP told him. “You didn’t run away. You awoke in a strange world changed, and instead of running away, you spent every day since trying to make things right. For over a hundred years! Wow, I can’t even… I wonder if I’ll even live that long.”
“It isn’t like I didn’t want to,” Vagari uttered weakly. “I wanted to run away, I want to now… But that’s what he would do.”
“And you’re not him,” BP reaffirmed. “You’re you – Vagari, my friend. You’ve been you far longer than you ever were him. He’s just… leftover data – or a burn in the screen.”
A ghost in the machine – Vagari hadn’t really thought about it like that before, that he was always Vagari, and Val and his memories and guilt was just the ashes left behind when all else was burned. He wasn’t sure if it was a comforting thought or not. If that was so, then who really was he? What was he? Those memories, that guilt, they were what propelled him towards that future he desired. Would it be right to discard them as someone else’s? What would be left? Did it matter at all? Vagari decided, at least in that moment, it didn’t. All the mattered to him then was the small creature tucked into his arm. It was her dream too now, that better future. Vagari didn’t own it, and neither did Val. No matter the root of it, her dream was worth sifting through the ashes.
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The valley of giants was a cold and frigid wasteland of glassed earth, that seemed to stretch out endlessly for miles and miles, long before the dreadnaught even peaked upon the horizon. The pair walked in pensive silence as they marched between the frozen colossi at either side of them; the only sounds in the world being lashing winds, the hearts in their chests, and the crunch of glass underfoot. Like them, the giants walked along the shattered plains, heading in one direction – towards the ship, the Tevat – their hands outstretched against the force that stilled them. “What happened here?” BP whispered, her tone so hushed Vagari nearly hadn’t heard her at all. Vagari stared up at the frozen angels. Each one further in seemed newer than the last, but all were encrusted with age, caked in dirt and weathered by the elements. Some even looked to be reclaimed by the earth with how it crawled up their sinking bodies, entombing them in stone and ice – but never nature. There was no sign of life; no plants, no wildlife, earthbound or not. Vagari doubted there were even germs left. Nature in any of its endless forms didn’t dare step foot into that frigid place. It was nothing but coldness and death – the void on earth. Thankfully, whatever happened there seemed to have happened a long time ago. “Do your best not to touch anything,” Vagari cautioned his companion. “We don’t know what it is that… stopped them. The last thing we need is for any of them to wake up.”
BP remembered the angel in the lake and it’s dogged persistence, and how, despite being irreparably damaged, the undying thing singlehandedly brought the leviathan Esh to his timely end. “Yeah, definitely…” BP muttered with a shiver as she tucked her prodding fingers into her vest lest they feel tempted otherwise. “Though, I wonder if we could explore them, you know? No one ever has, right? It’s too dangerous with the radiation, no one can get near them. Maybe… we take a peek?”
“Don’t touch anything!” urged Vagari firmly. “Nothing at all! By all means, I should probably just carry you.”
“Carry me? You’re the one misfortune follows,” Insisted BP a-matter-of-factly. “I haven’t had trouble once this entire journey! And how many times have I bailed you out of trouble? Hmm?!”
“Fair enough… But still, nothing,” Vagari admitted with a wag of a sharp finger. “Not that I’m not interested as well, mind you. The temptation is almost irresistible, if I’m being honest. No one’s ever been this close before, not for long anyways. Look at them, I never knew there were so many before – thousands, and all different kinds as well. At most they only ever attacked in pairs, and that was nearly unheard of. Just one of these… monsters was enough to level cities. They burned the world for ten years straight, killing everything: people, plants, animals… However, they fought the Archdemons first. Old-Gods, some liked to call them, and maybe they were. Great mythical things, larger than anything that had ever lived before.”
“Like Esh, in the lake?” BP asked in awe, staring up at the mechanical horror of muddied gold and alabaster – it’s once burning red eye dulled and lifeless. “I can hardly imagine something so big, even having seen it…”
“Maybe even bigger,” answered Vagari, following her eyes up the humanoid things’ form. “As far away as she was, I’m still willing to bet your sire back in New-Houston has – or had, rather – a head or two on Esh. Simply massive… Impossibly so. And like her, most didn’t even acknowledge people. They just existed in some form or another. But, they all reshaped the world around them, it seemed… For better or worse. That is, until they came.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever get that big…” BP pondered idly.
“If you keep eating your algae,” Vagari suggested with a laugh, “who knows! Maybe I’ll be asking you to reach the top shelf snacks soon enough.”
All of the angels Vagari had seen before had shared a similar shape, a vaguely humanoid form more akin to his own than truly human, but now he could see there were others of vastly different design mixed within their ranks. For every twenty that were bipedal, one or two were more beastly in its makeup – sporting a set of digitigrade legs, or even four, creating something of a centaur or minotaur in its form. A few had four arms instead of two, and one even had what looked like vestigial or ornamental wings upon the curve of its back. Instead of robotic drones, now Vagari was seeing an entire race, or multitude of races perhaps, all as variable as his own. More for the mystery of it, he thought – answers he would probably never know, if he truly wanted to.
Mile by mile the pair walked, until at long last they could see it – the Tevat, a crude blackness on the horizon, towering like a skyscraper of old against the dusking sun. What had been but a pinprick before grew in shape and form more and more with each advancing step. The glass-bottled earth crunched loudly under those steps as they strode boldly towards it. Opposition hadn’t yet presented itself, but it was only a matter of time, especially after the mental intrusion the night before. Tehom, Xu, they knew they were coming – so, either they would come out to meet them head on, or refortify their position in defense. In either case, Vagari had BP reaching out with her mind ever so often in the case her ill-fated siblings drew near.
With each step Vagari found himself regretting not having brought any of the looted equipment from the attack on his home, not that any of it would have come of use. He hadn’t the time to dismantle and reverse-engineer any of it, and most of it seemed bio-locked or rendered moot by some other means. However, he wasn’t entirely weaponless. His claws would do just fine against the enemy, his magics too, and, for once on the miserable journey, he had eggs to spare otherwise. Those corroding-bronze colored orbs that grew at the hump of his spine weren’t solely for utility purposes, for healing, or for tracking, no. They, as shape given to the will he instilled in them, could become something truly horrible, if he wished it. They weren’t defenseless, and their foe would soon come to realize that.
An hour passed and with it more change came to the giants besides them. Now their numbers lessened, but their designs became more and more intricate, and their frames larger. These were no longer the foot soldiers now behind them, but archangels – like the ruined one that brought low the demon Esh, or the felled one outside the Megacity. Some held weapons now, great lances a hundred feet long, bows of crackling energy that sizzles still despite their wielder’s paralysis, or even cannons of sorts that bore more than a passing resemblance to the light-rifle’s Xu’s minions carried. Seeing this, Vagari realized his suspicions had been correct, Xu or his master were outfitting their creatures with weapons of angelic design. Making their base within the Tevat had offered them a previously unimaginable opportunity – the chance to reverse-engineer the biomechanical horrors. It was painting a terrifying picture; they were building an army of drones, equipping them with fantastic armors and weaponry, beyond anything mankind was capable of. Why though? For what possible reason could they have? All the armies of the world were already gone, defeated ages ago, and it definitely wasn’t for his benefit.
Vagari didn’t like to ponder the implications the question presented. They were getting close now, too close to be distracted by maybes and what-ifs. The why of their actions didn’t matter in the least, only the blood they left in their wake. That was all that mattered, ending their murderous reign, so that kids like BP, Trois, Soprano, Jeremy, and Brenin wouldn’t have to suffer their cruelties ever again. His path was clear, defeat Xu, Tehom, and their minions, rescue the Godhead and her followers, and together they would bring about that promised future. The path forward, for once, seemed so perfectly clear. They were nearly there now, at long road’s end, his goals finally within reach as the rear of the ship grew near in the distance. The feeling, despite the chilled world around him, felt warm in his chest.
The stern of the impossibly large ship now rivaled the great dam in height. How such a thing managed to stay intact after it fell was beyond him. The crater it had left in its wake had been miles long, and doubtlessly comparably wide. By all means the devastation of its falling probably should have doomed them all in a cretaceous-tertiary manner, but, for some reason, it hadn’t. By some unknown means, the destruction had been isolated to the surrounding area – and nearly negated from the ship itself and its former passengers.
All of a sudden, Vagari felt a urgent tugging at his side. It was BP, looking up with eyes as wide as saucers. “Vagari, something’s coming,” she informed in a harsh whisper, “something big!”
“Alright… okay, was going to be sooner than later,” he uttered in reply before saying while motioning her to follow him, “Can you tell what it is? Is it a demon?”
“Um – yeah,” BP admitted, hot on his tail, “I can feel it, I mean. It’s not a demon – I don’t think. It feels like… Her, and them… Xu’s guards. But, it’s different! It feels like… a lot of them, but just one.”
“Like the creature back at Site-B?” Vagari asked with a hiss. “Great…”
The pair ducked behind one of the titans, hiding in its shadow. Suddenly Vagari found himself remembering Brenin’s tale of the attack on their home. He had told him that it hadn’t been a man that led the assault, but instead a ‘monster’. They had shot it, burned it, and even tried to blow it up, but there was no stopping it. It had been a robed figure, one twice as tall as the rest. Looming and dressed like a necromancer, Vagari had thought it had been Xu, perhaps fantastically colored in the event by the mind of a frightened child, but now… Now, he was wondering if perhaps it truly had been a monster – just another one of Xu’s design. He got his confirmation as the husk came into view. It rode in on some kind of hovercraft, as large as the average caravan, but made solely for it. The tales, Vagari soon discovered, weren’t colored in the least. It was at least twice as big as the others, a great towering height of around 10 to 12 feet. Brenin had the right of it, it seemed, at least mostly. It wasn’t a robe it wore, nor any cloak Vagari might, but instead a cape of some kind of ballistic weave that draped heavily upon its shoulders, not lifting the slightest in the wind. Otherwise, it looked similar to its smaller brethren: mechanical in form, and covered head to toe in an exoskeletal suit of cybernetic armor.
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The giant thing slowed to a halt some 50 yards from them. It knew they were there, just not where, it seemed. However Xu managed to track Vagari and the book, thankfully, seemed to be areal instead exact. The fires of the caravan grew fresh in Vagari’s mind as he watched with a hateful glare as the horrid thing dismounted the craft with a lurching hop. The ground shook with its landing, knocking free clouds of dust from the surrounding frozen forms. Turning its back towards them, abet briefly, the husk pulled from the hovercraft a large emitter device. Bringing it several feet forward, it then tossed it upright on the ground. The device whined loudly before a series of lights flickered on, spawning a lifelike image of Xu before them. “I thought the lesson before was we stay off each other’s home turf?” Xu said with a chuckle, somehow finding humor in his previous defeat. The echoing speakers let out another sharp whine as his laugh died to a more serious tone. “You really are foolish to have come here,” Xu told them bluntly. “You should have listened to Tehom. You should have left, taken BP 2-8-57 back to Eastend, and live your lives – whatever lives those would be. Or life, really – hers. You’re just too dangerous to let live, even monitored. And, shame really, because I’d have really liked to study you alive.” Xu paused for a long moment, as if waiting for a reply before continuing with a huff. “We really are the good guys, you know? Not you. What you’re trying to do, its… nothing short of cataclysmic. You cannot free the Godhead. This world has grown hideous, but it’s not entirely lost yet. Freeing the Godhead will set the end in stone. But, talking to you is useless, isn’t it? She’s already in your head. Feels warm, doesn’t it? Vision’s narrow, but you feel like you can do anything if you just keep looking ahead. Well, set your eyes on this. My latest and greatest simulacrum: Synbio Unit 6-12-70. It’s almost perfect, if I do say so my self. Almost. Still need to really stress-test it though. So, give us a show, alright? 6-12-70, kill them both and retrieve all assets.”
The image faded instantly and the immense homunculus set out to begin its grim work. From the bike it pulled out a lance, a great jagged spear that ignited with a pulse of light and plasmatic hellfire. “Well, that sounded welcoming,” BP whispered as she peeked out around the dirt encrusted giant’s legs at the one now hunting them. “I’m starting to think maybe he wasn’t ever very nice, and that I just thought as much because he wasn’t abusive…” Vagari shot her a look that clearly said, ‘You think?’ before actually saying, “Well, at very least it doesn’t know exactly where we are… Think you can paralyze it? What does reaching out with your mind tell you?”
With a flash of fiery light, the spear shot between them and stuck firm in the hip of an angel behind them. “That he knows exactly where we are!” shouted BP, ducking down with her hands clasped above her head. In one swift motion, Vagari tossed her a couple of eggs and ordered firmly, “Stay low and watch these. They’ll need a few minutes to cook, I’ll try to get you that.”
“Where are you going?” BP asked, pulling the pair of eggs up to her chest. They were warm and bubbling inside – his will already infused into them. “You’re not going out there, are you?”
“Xu wanted a show, didn’t he?” Vagari mused as he stood up and presented himself. “I say, lets give him one.” Vagari strode out into the path between angels as bold as could be, at least on the outside. On the inside he was as cautious as ever, dread and apprehension boiling in him like a witch’s brew – but often enough, there was nothing more distracting than audacity. All he had to do was keep the giant away from BP for a few minutes. He had the feeling he’d need all the edge he could get. “Looks like you lost your pig-sticker,” Vagari said nonchalantly as he pulled his long raven hair out of his face and into a bun. “You don’t seem to have one of those light-rifles on you… Was that all you had?”
The synbio said nothing. Instead, it just reached out to the side, palm open as if beckoning the lance to return. Much to Vagari’s surprise, the spear began vibrating in the ancient armor it was lodged in, and a second later simply blinked out of existence before reappearing in the husk’s hand. “Well, fuck me…” Vagari uttered astonishedly before bolting to the opposite side and back to cover. “BP, how’re we looking?!” he called out as a shower of glassy dirt erupted behind him as the lance fell like a thunderbolt from heaven.
“Th-they’re fusing!” she called back. “Is that good?!”
“Any progress is good at this point,” he shouted back in return before diving over to the earth lodged spear. Hastily Vagari took hold of it, pulling it forth before brandishing it at his enemy. Once more the husk held its hand out, and once more the spear began to shiver. No matter how tight Vagari held it, in that instance it was gone, pulled back to its thrower. “Fuck!” he shouted, staggering back to cover. “I’m really starting to hate this angelic tech!”
Vagari took a few rapid deep breaths before charging forth, darting left and right with each step. If the spear could cut into an angel’s armor, it could cut through his, he figured – not willing to test the theory by running straight into it. The husk raised the spear high and swept it forward in a wide arch at him. Vagari ducked and lurched forward, slashing wildly at the giant’s guts. His claws left trenches in the thick armor, but couldn’t penetrate it. He quickly rolled to the side, trying to find a weak spot, some chink in the dense alabaster plate, but only would get a boot to the chest for his troubles. Xu’s homunculus was strong and hit just as heavy as it looked, having knocked the wind out of him while sending him tumbling several feet onto his back. Vagari had only managed half a breath before having to roll out of the way of a flurry of downward strikes, each one striking so close he could feel the burn of the plasmatic energy on his skin.
Vagari let out a sharp hiss as he expanded his wings, launching himself off the ground and into the air, and then a yelp as he felt the giant snatch his leg in the ascent. The husk whipped him over its shoulders before slamming him into the ground, effectively taking the half-breath he had managed to grasp. With horror, BP watched from the shadows, clutching the enlarging egg between her hands and knees. She stared intensely, trying to project her thoughts into the giant assailants mind as she had its lesser brethren. It worked, but only for a moment. The husk had raised its spear high, readying for the kill, but froze solid instead, if only just long enough for Vagari to regain his footing and put some distance between them. “Vagari!” BP hollered to him. “Something… Something is keeping me out! I can’t take control!”
“Looks like Xu did learn from our last encounter,” Vagari spat, heaving as he paced a few feet away, thankful for whatever time she could give him. “All the same, that’s how many I owe you?”
The massive husk towered above him like Goliath over David and Vagari sorely wished he had a sling to strike the creature dead with. The ‘Synbio’, as Xu had called it, shook off the paralysis with a curt shake of its head before beginning its assault anew, tossing the spear with such strength Vagari could hear the air around it burst. Luckily for Vagari, the husk’s accuracy didn’t match its strength, and once more it narrowly missed. This time however, before it could recall the spear, Vagari shot forth, launching forward with a wing-enhanced leap. “Hengnis!” Vagari bellowed, a burst of flame igniting from his palm. The homunculus didn’t try to dodge the eldritch fire, instead it chose to block, shielding itself with the ballistic cloak at its shoulders. Xu, as irredeemable as he was, was by no means a dull man, Vagari had to admit. If he had thought to shield his creation from BP’s psychic intrusions, there was no doubt he did the same for Vagari’s fire. The cloak it wore did just that, but it also blinded it, giving Vagari the opening he was hoping for.
Vagari landed practically on top of it, and promptly began clawing and digging at whatever he thought he could. Step one, he figured, was to get rid of or find a gap in the armor. There – he thought as he found the seam to the giant’s helmet. Vagari dug his claws in, desperately trying to tear the thing off, but before he could, however, two metal-clad hands gripped him around the waist and wrenched him free. Vagari cracked it along the head one last time before being tossed away, shouting as he did, “Nēhw-stenh!” No sooner did he strike the ground did the homunculus begin clutching at its head, tugging wildly at the helmet itself. The word of power was taking effect. A small bulb of crackling light stuck fast to the side of the mechanized helmet, pulsing faster and faster as it sunk into the alabaster. Suddenly it burst with a blinding flash and a crack of thunder, and as the light faded, the husk stood shaking violently, still clawing at what little was left of its head.
There for a very brief moment, Vagari thought the battle was over. However, things were never that simple, and Xu seemed to have made it from much sturdier stock than the others. Ropes of lashing flesh immediately began knitting back together, spewing noxious fumes and liquids out as it did so. The homunculus’s regeneration was just as explosive as the damage dealt to it, but wholly without flaw. Before Vagari could mutter a curse, all the damage he had dealt with the spell was gone, replaced by the glare of dead-looking eyes at the forefront of a raw, mottled, and soulless face. Vagari didn’t find the husks features half as charming as BP’s own, he found. They weren’t bestial in the least, but instead carried the shape and form of a lump of cancerous flesh – dimpled and pinched with blotches of hair and teeth where there shouldn’t be. Though, Vagari doubted highly Xu had been trying for anything in the ballpark of looks when he created the abomination before him. No, it was clear to him that the creature was made with one thing in mind – acting out his violent designs, no matter the cost. And, with its ability to regenerate almost instantly, Vagari feared, that was a design Xu might see through.
Without any further pause, the giant husk reinstated its advance, calling the lance to its side once more. It thrust it out and swept again, twirling the destructive weapon over its head before bringing the burning blade back down to the ground. Vagari could feel the heat burning the tips of his wings as he shot into the sky above and, hopefully, out of the monsters reach. “Dheht-hengnis!” he shouted, drawing forth pneumatic energies into his hands. The bolt of fire ignited the husk wholly this time, but even with it striking true, it did nothing to halt its advance. Whatever damage the consuming flame was inflicting was near instantly undone by the creature’s infernal ability to heal. It didn’t even seem to be in any pain as it stomped forward aflame, raising its spear to strike him from the sky. Vagari’s grasp on magic, as meager as it was, simply wasn’t enough to overcome their assailant. “BP!” Vagari shouted. “Where’re we at with that damned thing?!”
Before she could answer he felt a surge of burning pain course through him as the lance shot past his face and through one of his wings – incinerating it entirely. Vagari screamed as he plummeted to the ground, falling harshly onto a bed of frozen glass. The sharp edges of the blasted earth grated against his face as he tried to will himself to stand. He could feel the giant near, looming, the shadow of imminent death cast over him. As he pushed himself over, turning to face it, he could see it standing there, readied for the kill, its spear a mere inch from his chest – frozen once more. “BP?” Vagari called softly, not daring to take his eyes off the spearhead. “Did… did you take control?”
“It… hatched…” Answered BP, shock plain in her voice as she stared at the shell of an egg as tall as she was. “What… what is that?”
A shadow crawled upon the giant’s back, the silhouette of some great insectoid thing. It appeared to be a locust of sorts, but the size of a large dog, and to truly describe it was to describe a nightmare. Large serrated scythes dug deep into the charred thing’s shoulders, as a long scorpion’s tail stuck at it repeatedly, putting deep gouges into its exposed face. It’s face was all too human, bordered as it was with long silken hair – not unlike Vagari’s own. As weak as the illusion was, it was totally shattered by the beastly maw that gnawed relentlessly into the husks neck; a sneering mouth of tusk and fang. “It’s the meridian of my ability,” Vagari uttered in response, his voice almost a whisper and plainly soaked with dread. Even as he kicked himself away and staggered to his feet, he stared in hardly contained horror at what he had released upon the giant. Under the effects of the venom, the giant couldn’t so much as blink. It was still alive, but effectively dead thanks to corrosive toxins now coursing through its body. The horrific drone’s venom was highly acidic and was already breaking down the regenerative homunculus’s body at a cellular level. Maybe at a slower rate than in other cases, eventually it would collapse under its own weight, and then seep out of the armor as a festering ooze. It was a ghastly death that Vagari wished upon no one, not even Xu – but it was no time to pull punches. The world was at stake, and like Solomon, he would drag forth the demons of Hell to protect it.
BP looked away from the grotesque display as Vagari drew near. He barely had the stomach to look upon it, and not for very long. “Come on. Lets get out of here,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve still a ways to go, and who knows what else lies ahead.”
“Yeah, lets…” BP agreed with a nod and a start forward, wanting to get as far away from the otherworldly drone as possible. “Lets go. I don’t like the way that thing feels. It feels… different than anything else. Cold, and not at all like you… It feels wrong.”
“I know, but we don’t have the luxury of patience or mercy with lives in the balance,” Vagari told her, glancing back over his shoulder as they left. The drone watched from its perch atop the dead husk’s corpse, it’s eyes glimmering in the darkling sky. They were predators eyes, they were hers, the demon, the Mother.