Overlooking the Ruins

Callan stood at the top of the cliff facing the desolation of his home. It was such a disgrace to see in it in this state, broken and devoid of the sparkle that had once glittered so powerfully it was possible to see from an hour away. Now, its dark towers broke the horizon like the fingers of a great monster digging its way back to the surface.

He remembered staring down from his balcony at the top of Melokon’s Spire to the streets below where his people milled about and got to live their lives in a new era of peace and unity. Those same streets he knew were quiet now, and empty.

Is she alright? Callan squinted fruitlessly in the direction where he knew Halari and her team were trying to scale the wall. His eyesight was almost perfect, but it wasn’t that good. He shook himself out of his worry and turned back to the Quarry, eager to attend to the distraction he had planned for himself.

“My lord?” Kelot the Melokide priest stood at his side, tapping his foot impatiently while Callan brooded “Are you ready? We have quite the impressive report for you.”

“I’m sure,” Callan said. “Lead they way, priest. It’s best I learn more about this Kalia before fully trusting her word and moving on the people forward on it.”

As they moved past it, the statue of his likeness haunted the corner of his vision, and no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, the weight of it in his mind pulled his attention right to it.

“These statues, my lord, I can have them removed if they so offend you,” Kelot said, bowing slightly.

“No, leave them for now,” Callan said. He gazed sullenly at his statue, recalling the truth of its sad posture. “The pose for my depiction, do you know its true context?”

“The writings of James served to tell that it is the very image of your defeat,” Kelot said plainly.

Callan scoffed and shook his head. “It’s the last blow I struck on a great enemy. There is truth in the fact that I was exhausted, but by no means was I defeated.”

“Shall we add this to the new writings of your great words?” Kelot asked. He pulled a thin pad and stylus from the cavernous depths of his robe and scratched something onto the surface.

“New writings?” Callan pressed.

“Yes, my lord,” Kelot said, finishing whatever scribble he was making. “We of the Melokide Sect have been transcribing new words of worship for the people based off what you tell us. We’ll have a draft ready for your divine scrutiny soon.”

“Don’t embellish too much priest,” Callan said. “The people have been force fed enough lies as is.”

“Of course, Great Flame,” Kelot said, bowing again. “Now, this way. We’ve set up the histories of Kalia in your office, as requested.”

Three black-robed Melokide priests, goons as Halari called them, bowed deeply at the waist as soon as Callan entered his office and took a seat at his desk. They’d placed a wide flatscreen television, a relic by the standards of the average Quarrymen, in front of him. It was paused on a screen showing what had to be a child Kalia standing between her parents, looking up at both of them. This likeness of James was one Callan remembered all too well; his old friend’s devious mind always leaked out of his eyes like blood from a cut.

Callan leaned back into his office chair and clasped his hands together. “So tell me, how long is this presentation?”

“Old Queen Kalia generated a substantial amount of history, my lord.” Kelot brandished a little remote, one thin finger extended on a button, clearly ready to proceed. “She was at the center of many dramatic events during her time, even before she took the Northern Dominion to reign. So, we humbly petition for a few hours of your precious time.”

A curse of immortality, Callan thought. I can never give the excuse that I have no time. “Very well, let’s begin.”

“Great Flame Kalia was born to King Ja—”

“No no no.” Callan waved his hand dismissively and tried not to roll his eyes; Halari did that enough for the both of them. “Unless there was a grand war that she miraculously won as a toddler, skip to the important moments. For example, how did she come to power?”

The priest deflated with a heavy sigh, then proceeded to scroll through a few dozen slides for the next two minutes before stopping on one where Kalia was now fully grown. In the image, she stood proudly with her hand stretched out to a man before a tall pair of gates set into a wall. The picture seemed to be taken at an angle behind her and to the left; it was also slightly askew as if this capture wasn’t planned but taken on a whim.

“As we mentioned some weeks ago,” Kelot said, grinning tightly, “your Northern Dominion was abandoned by King James and fractured over the course of roughly five years. By ten years from your ‘death,’ what remained was a feudalistic gallery of city-states. Each with their own laws and alliances and what not. The greatest of these was Atlanta, but after what James did, they were resistant to any influence by the Blessed Flames.

“Kalia, age twenty-five in this capture,” the priest continued, “arrived to the city of Austin- shown here- with a contingent of the Obsidian Legion, which, from all known information, she more-or-less stole from her father.” He gestured to the image, emphasizing the intimidating, black-clad soldiers visible in the shot.

“The Legionnaires were quite the force,” Callan recalled, smiling softly as he reminisced. “I’m sure it was easy for her to conquer the city despite its fortifications.”

“She found Austin in a sorry state,” Kelot said. “The governor signed it over to her without any conflict. However…” The priest flicked to the next slide, showing a torn-up plot of land strewn with bodies.

A battlefield. Callan grimaced and sat up straight, planting both elbows on the desktop.

“Most of the other city-states weren’t so agreeable,” Kelot finished. He clicked through a few more slides all showing similar displays of violence and war. “Atlanta and its supporters led an armed resistance against Kalia. For ten years of backstabbing politics and heated conflict, the North knew no peace.”

Callan didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, he appreciated that his old home fought bravely for their own sovereignty, but what Kalia did in conquering the land was the essence of worship to Melokon.

“Eventually…” Kelot’s voice brought him back to focus on the presentation. “Through many battles and other such tribulations, Queen Kalia took the city of Atlanta in the Scorching Siege. She proved to be an insightful ruler and many accountings of her reign often use the word ‘foresight’ in association with her decisions.”

“She’s clearly a long-term thinker,” Callan agreed. “That video was made over a thousand years in advance. Did she have the trust of her people?”

“Yes, as far as we can tell,” Kelot said with an enthusiastic nod. “Under her rule, the reunified North returned to a state of prosperity like you left it, then took the lead in technological advancement over the next couple of centuries. By most standards, she can be considered a good queen, opposite to her father.”

“Give me your honest input,” Callan commanded. “Can we take what her message said as valid? I already put Halari on a scouting mission, but I need more if we’re going to devote real resources into this.”

“If descriptions of her accurate, then yes,” Kelot said. “We can expect those contingencies and their protections to be in place exactly as she told us.”

Callan nodded softly, agreeing. He’d need to wait for Halari’s full report of the state of the city center, but with this information reinforcing that the Rains of Melokon were truly on the line, he was half a mind to storm the place himself.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

No. He sat back and massaged his temples. They didn’t actually hurt; his divinely-forged body didn’t actually process mundane stress like that, but it was an old habit to help him think. No, it has to be the whole Quarry if we’re gonna get everything out of there.

“Speaking of which, my lord,” the priest prompted, a meek look on his face, “has your brilliance… solved the riddle of the Spire’s codeword?”

“No,” Callan said. “It escapes me for the time being.”

‘Liar,’ the skull whispered, glaring at him from the dark.

“Shut up,” Callan whispered. He smothered the voice under more weight, pushing it down further into the caverns of his mind. It was quickly becoming quite the skilled climber, unfortunately for his waking nightmares.

“My lord?” Kelot asked. “Did you say something?”

“Please, continue,” Callan commanded, gesturing to the screen. “Is there any information on Kalia’s battle tactics? A lot can be learned from how a commander moves their troops.”

Kelot perked up, brightening at the chance to show off his presentation work. He’d clearly directed a lot of effort into this display of history.

“Ah yes, of course my lord,” the clergyman said, flicking to a new screen showing a rudimentary map of Atlanta with little icons representing Kalia’s troops in an array around the city. “During the Scorching Siege…”

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Two hours later, Callan stepped out into the bland, gray daylight and exhaled for a long three seconds.

That man sure loves to talk, he thought, stretching his non-sore muscles. Kelot was right about one thing though, despite his over-enthusiastic rambling: Queen Kalia did generate a lot of interesting history for the duration of her time on Earth. Her battle strategy was quite impressive and equally familiar.

She was smart to constrict them like that. Callan moved up to his podium to go over some requests from various departments. However, she definitely shouldn’t ha—

The gunshot was faint. So faint that he knew only he heard it. His head snapped up and toward the direction it came from past the top of the cliff.

Another went off. Then another.

And Callan ran.

He bolted for the cliff face, drawing on the power of the Talons to form over his hands like a gauntlet. With a lunge, Callan buried them in the rock wall and pulled, throwing himself upwards before repeating the motions all the way to the top. Chunks of rock scattered from where he pulled and fell to a clatter below.

The gildgrown, it has to be them. Callan pulled his body over the lip of the cliff, panting from the exertion of his power, but he steeled himself and ran for the source of the gunfire. Two-hundred feet from the drop off, he picked out Captain Dalvo and his squad laying in prone position with their boltshots to the horizon.

They were aiming at men in yellow who kept peeking out from behind cover. One of them went down in a spray of blood, catching a stray round from his men.

Callan sprinted for his soldiers and slid on his knees next to Dalvo, coming to a stop in a spray of gravel.

“How many, captain?” he asked, taking a kneel to watch the enemy. Dalvo fired his rifle, gouging a piece of black stone off a boulder where a taller gildgrown tried to hide.

“Four now,” Dalvo said, chambering another round. “We’d move in, but they all have those smoke guns.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Callan stood up and pushed in towards the remaining gildgrown. One saw him and shouted something intelligible to its companions, then pointed to the distant horizon at the same time. Another yellow-clothed figure sprinted off in a golden flurry of rags.

I’ll have to chase that one down, he thought. Then, he was on them. The first gildgrown shot uselessly with one of those powder-blasting blunderbusses. Callan pushed through the cloud of yellow particles face first and cut down on the figure with the Talons. They carved through its rags and flesh like soft butter, spraying blood onto the stone in a velvet splash.

A second rushed him with a hollow, wet bellow and tackled him around the waist, trying to push him off balance. Callan drove an elbow into the small of his opponent’s back, shattering the vertebrae near the waist with a loud crunch! Just as he was about to break its neck next, he realized that it might be worth it to keep one alive. So, instead of forcibly rotating the gildgrown’s head one-hundred, eighty degrees, Callan kicked the enemy off and spun to find the last one already swinging on him with a yellow, jagged machete.

He was prepared to take the blow on his face before retaliating, but the crack of a boltshot went off and a chunk of the gildgrown’s head exploded just above its goggles. Callan turned to see one of Dalvo’s soldiers holding the smoking gun and nodded. The young man lowered his weapon and saluted.

“I need to get that one,” Callan growled, already sparking Melokon’s Fire in his fingers as he focused on the gildgrown running away from the skirmish.

“My lord, allow me,” Dalvo said. He knelt and braced his forward elbow on his knee, then lined up the shot. He took a deep breath, then exhaled, squeezing the trigger as he did so. The shot was loud in the still empty wasteland.

In the distance, the golden figure jerked, then fell. It didn’t move again.

“Good shot, captain,” Callan said, genuinely impressed with the man’s prowess with the firearm. “You’ve taken to Halari’s lessons aptly.”

“She’s a great teacher, sir,” Dalvo said. He looped his rifle over his back and stood. “And it doesn’t hurt that I spend two extra hours at target practice.”

Callan turned back to the only living gildgrown left. It writhed around on the stone, groaning with a sound more beast than human. He approached the figure and pinned it to the ground on with one knee, then grabbed its mask by the mouth tank and pulled it off.

Immediately, the gildgrown panicked and began to flail wildly in a desperate attempt to grab its mask back from him. Its humanoid face was pallid, its irises were a sickly yellow, and its skin was shriveled. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman due its baldness and ambiguous features.

“Can you talk?” Callan asked the pitiful creature. It gasped like a landed fish and its movements began to slow, pupils dilating.

It’s dying, he realized. Does it breathe the spores inside? When they’d cracked open the first canister taken off a dead one, all they’d found inside were the golden spores like fine sand. He placed the mask back on its face and the gildgrown calmed a bit. It still growled in pain from the break in its spine, but it stopped flailing.

“Can you speak?” Callan repeated.

“Ingkala…” came a wet, growling voice from behind the mask. “Dole vir ingkala…”

“I know you speak our language.” He put more pressure down with his knee. “You’re our prisoner now, and we can treat you fairly, or we can treat you like the animal you appear to be.”

“Snake-devil,” the gildgrown gurgled, slapping weakly at his knee. “Curse your vines, snake-devil.”

“So you know what I am,” Callan said. “How?”

“You reject our Giltspore,” it hissed after a moment. “No man alive can turn away from its power. Only the snake-devils can burn its blessing. You. You are supposed to be gone.”

“I remain,” Callan said. “Unfortunately for you.” He stood and gestured for a couple of his soldiers to take the paralyzed gildgrown under its arms. “What do your people want?” he asked once it was upright.

The gildgrown stared at him, and Callan swore he could see it glaring behind the mask.

But it said nothing.

“Very well,” Callan said, sparking Melokon’s Fire in his hand. No use in hiding it now, since it was clear that his nature was not exactly a secret. He held the lightning up to the prisoner's goggles so it saw each little crimson and violet arc flicker over his fingertips. “You will tell me… eventually. Take it away and put it in the stockade. Make sure you search it for hidden weapons first.”

“Yes, Great Flame,” the soldiers said in unison. They began dragging their new prisoner of war back toward the spot where they’d parked their patrol ATVs. He watched them, more than a little amused, hesitate while they considered how to store the limp figure, then unceremoniously sling the gildgrown over the back of one vehicle like a bagged deer.

“So tell me what happened, captain,” Callan said, extinguishing the Fire.

“Rilot here,” Dalvo thumbed to the soldier who’d shot the one enemy in the head, “glimpsed one when it was too slow to hide from us on patrol. We moved in and pinned them down. Seems like they were more of a scouting party since they weren’t big in number or arms.”

“Hmmm.” Callan scratched his chin. “Were they looking for something?”

“Not that we could tell,” Dalvo said. “Although it’s interesting that one tried to run.”

“Indeed.” Callan stared at the body in the distance. “Have your men search that one. I need to get back to the Quarry and inform the people.”

“Yes, my lord.” The captain gave orders to a couple of his men.

“And Captain Dalvo,” Callan added. “You’ve done your home a great service today. Good work.”

Dalvo saluted, smiling proudly. Then, he turned back to his men.

Callan began walking back toward the Quarry’s entry ramp, already chuckling as he imagined the ruckus Halari was going to make when she learned that they had a gildgrown prisoner.

That poor creature was in for one hell of a bad day.