A day before his group planned on leaving for the Spire, Ryu met with Lucius in a small safehouse. They sat in a small living room, a wooden table with two mugs placed between them. Lucius picked his mug and sipped it quietly, shaking it slightly and looking around the barren room.
“Oh, Ryu, it’s been ages. Why, I thought you were dead,” he said. He had assumed the first identity Ryu had met him in, a blond man with full, handsome features.
“Unfortunately alive.”
“Ever the conversationalist.” A sip. “I was… surprised you ignored my offer.”
“Offer?” Ryu asked.
“Yes, I guess you wouldn’t know.” He waved a hand in front of his face, and it changed, morphing into that of an overweight bald man. “My name is Bruce Weathers, one of the business heads of the Enchanters’ Guild.” He waved his hand again. It revealed a smiling blonde man again.
“So you wanted to kill Keira?”
“No, no,” he said. “I wanted to pay you to kill Keira. I feared doing it previously because it turns out she is quite clever. Her organization is set up in such a way that as soon as she dies, another zealot of her own approval will step into place and continue her work. Purifying humanity. I mean, what sort of goal is that, anyways? I’d like to see some variety in our evil masterminds.”
“So what’s changed?” Ryu ran a hand through his dark hair. The dead did not whisper. They did not murmur. They did not sing. They roared with the single-minded determination of the wronged.
“I’m in a stronger position than ever. I have spies in all of the major organizations, and I have a finger on all their pulses. After throwing their weight about at the moot, the Lord’s Flock is… less than liked. Detested, in fact. It is only their sway on the public that has kept them above water. Yet what choice do we have but to let her consolidate power among the masses? The Bugs have us trapped. It’s quite the conundrum.” He sighed. “So you kill her. I use my position to smear her name and organization with all the things she’s done to prevent her martyrdom. I mean, she sent you to the damned Bugs to be an experiment. All for revenge! And she was working with the Bugs even before that.”
“Why not just have her assassinated yourself, then?”
He shook his head. “It’s an option, of course. I have the people. Hells, I could do it myself, though it’d be no easy feat. Ender is a figure that can be blamed. A demon in the night. A murderer. More importantly, he’s only killed the guilty. I’m not sure how much you’ve thought about it, but she crafted your reputation. Molded it. You would kill a murderer, and the next day, the Lord’s Flock would preach of the moral wrongness of killing another human being. Ender is the unseen blade of the Lord, they say. Of course, I could just fake that, too. It’s not as though anyone knows the Enchanters’ Guild captured Ender. I made sure of that.”
“Then fake it. I’m not interested.” His hands tightened, but he forcibly loosened them. Might made right, sure, but Keira was only doing the same things he wanted. She wanted to make a better world, though her version was flawed. Hells, she deserved revenge.
The past months had given him much to think about. A better world. A better man. Power. His hollowness. His family. He had learned to accept some hard truths. He was not a good man, and pursuing power would only make him worse. A quiet, peaceful life was not in the cards either whether he wanted one or not. Family? The best he could do was stay away from them. No, Ryu had his goals, and they were honorable ones, he believed. It was only his means of achieving them that were despicable. The world had to be rid of its monsters no matter what shape they took. He was still making his peace with that, however.
Lucius tittered. “Well, I can’t deny you that. However, I strongly recommend you to reconsider.”
The dead screamed, wailed, and roared, drowning his mind with their pleas. He clenched his teeth. “Are you threatening me?”
A boom rattled the ground beneath them, and Ryu shot to his feet. Another came after that, followed by the unmistakable cries of the wounded. More sounds followed. He recognized them. War. A familiar aura found his own from many kilometers away.
The door to the safehouse busted open. “Sir, the Bugs,” a page said, his face flushed red. He heaved in a breath. “They’ve attacked. They’re attacking. They’ve-”
Ryu shoved past the kid and jumped to the roof above. In the distance, smoke filled the air. Where a district of shops, homes, and cathedrals had stood, ash ruled.
Lucius leapt to his side. “My gods,” he said. “They’ve pushed this far? Without us knowing?” He was breathless, and his eyes seemed to glisten with tears. His lip quivered. “She never said this would happen.”
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“She?”
Before him, Lucius melted. His skin sloughed off, leaving only the emaciated, ugly face Ryu knew to be his true one. Dead eyes met his own. “She never said this would happen.”
She. His boss. The oracle. “She doesn’t exist, does she?” Ryu asked.
Lucius took a step towards him. “Don’t you say that.” He was snarling. Crying. Shaking. “She is real. This must be a mistake, must be a…” He drew in a shuddering breath, and his skin rippled into the blonde man he had first met him as. “Right,” he said. “Right. Tell me, Ryu, is revenge still on the table? Kiera must die.”
Ryu met his eyes. Madness gazed back at him, and he realized the man in front of him was a shell more hollow than himself. He needed a role to play in order to quell his madness. Strange. Ryu preferred a different coping mechanism. He accepted the dead’s pleas. “Revenge,” he said, leaning forward like a starving wolf, “is always on the table.”
Black smoke flared, and Ryu’s dagger plunged into Lucius’s eye. Then again. The blade mangled his face, ruined his handsome features, and turned his cry into a gurgle. Ryu kicked him to the ground and stomped his head again and again until it was paste. Aye, he was a bad man. A selfish one, even. But when it came to his word, Ryu had always delivered. Lucius had signed his own death warrant in a dungeon two years ago. This part was merely business.
A screen appeared in front of his face. The dark length of the Spire rose in the distance. Destiny was ever a funny thing.
---
Ryu sprinted through the streets, shoving past people. He had to make sure they were safe. He had to. Then he could ascend. Finally.
The Aristocracy’s district was far from the attack, and Ryu bypassed its security measures fairly easily. He raced to the Red Sun Faction’s quarter and looked around. Empty. Vacant buildings greeted him, not a soul in sight.
He sagged in relief against a door. They had read his letters. Listened to his warnings. Accepted him. He only wished he could summon the tears to weep for it.
Onward. Always onward. He needed to find Ash.
She found him first. “Ryu,” she said, dropping from a roof near the safehouse they’d been staying in. “Where have you been?”
“Meeting a friend.”
She grabbed him. His hand clenched. “The Lord’s Flock’s district has fallen. They buckled. Hardly defended the place. We have to go. I’ve contacted the other members of the team. The Spire-”
“Go.”
She looked at him. “Alright.”
They met the others on a rooftop some distance. With Ash and Ryu, they numbered five. Horde’s had pulled her hood back, revealing a tan, plain face framed by reddish hair. A length of interlocking metal plates swirled about her body like a snake. Beside her was Nil. The white-haired boy wore thick steel armor that covered his small body, his dark, pitted blade leaned over one shoulder. Hiro completed the party, wrapped in golden armor. A large golden shield filled his right hand.
Ryu ignored them. His gaze remained on the Spire, but it was not the great tower he was seeing. It was the chance for revenge. For redemption. At its base was Thirty-Seven. He knew it. The Bug’s aura had found his over an incredible distance, roaring a challenge he could not ignore.
They had captured him. Forced him to fight- to kill- other humans to survive. The Bugs had broken him, shattering him like a dropped vase. He had picked the pieces up, but the cracks remained. Hells, their body-snatching clone had merged with his own Shard Twin, and its hollowness had reforged his mind, hammering it into a pale, uncaring shadow of what it had once been.
The truth was, Ryu had never been a man for grand declarations of revenge. He’d found it too… well, too grand. No, that was not true. It was more that he had stumbled from mistake to mistake, from foe to foe, and eventually, his hate had turned inward. After all, if a man found only enemies wherever he went, he need only look in the mirror to find the root of his issues. Still, he would enjoy killing Thirty-Seven. It was the only satisfaction left for him in this disappointing life.
“What’s the plan?” Nil asked.
Ash shrugged. “The Bugs have been diligent about warding off our scouts, but they couldn’t have left many forces there.” She waved towards the burning buildings in the distance, the crash and boom of battle faintly rattling in the air. “So I say we go in all offense. None of us are built for anything than to hit hard, save for Horde. So we go and don’t stop till we’ve made it through the Gate. No protracted battles or slowing.”
Hiro lifted his shield. “Sounds good to me.”
“And me,” Horde said, her voice near to a whisper.
---
On a rooftop in the Sixth Ring, a dark-haired boy in the uniform of a page kneeled over a limp, smashed body. The skull was caved in several places, staining its blonde hair pink. It smelled of shit, having voided its bowels in the throes of death.
The boy ran a finger along the base of the corpse’s twisted neck. It was still warm. What a fool, the spymaster was. If only he had allowed the boy to follow him, this might not have happened. He wished the One would allow him to put the Wayward down, but it was not yet time.
He pulled a scalpel from his storage ring, slicing a small incision in the base of the corpse’s neck. After that came the vial concealed in the pocket of his jacket. A wriggling, pale larvae rested in its center. The vial’s cork read twelve.
He popped the cork free and removed the larvae, placing it in the incision. It crawled in. The boy waited, sweeping the brown hair from his face.
After some time, the body twitched. A finger. Then a hand. Then an arm. Sharp, wet cracks emerged from the body as its neck twisted back into place. The dents in its head healed, and what was merely paste on the ground a moment before became a smiling, handsome face.
The former number Five of the Lower Eight greeted the Bug that inhabited the body of Lucius.