Smoke rose up high in every sector of Mirage the morning after Lucifer’s attack. Fires which had burned out hours ago still coughed up stalks of ash gray polluted air in the smoldering ruins of their wake. The sun was as bright and unforgiving as ever as it hung over the Wastes and the shimmering barrier which kept Mirage coolly aerated and illusioned from the rest of the world could do nothing to hide the billowing dark clouds that could be seen for miles in every direction.
Wailing had replaced screaming in the streets in these early hours. Homes had been devastated. Families broken or lost by the dozen. Still as the desert city was in comparison to the night before, people ambled around in numb disbelief of what had occurred to them all collectively. A city traumatized for a second time was not as prepared as they thought they might be for something like this to happen again. It was as if all of the wanton fear, violence, and confusion which had bled out over the course of months those years back had revisited them all at once over the course of a little over a single hour of a single night. The chaos was impossible to quantify.
In total, eighty-two residences or buildings had been either severely damaged or utterly demolished all over Mirage. Of those eighty-two, it was later discovered that twenty of them had been origin points for explosions of which the oleum were the direct cause. This was deduced, and subsequently covered up, by the remnants of carcasses found in various piles of rubble, the broken bodies blown to bits. One such building, which had survived largely still standing, had pieces of an oleum clinging to walls and ceiling where the blast had not destroyed walls and supporting structures. It would later be theorized that the oleum had explosives placed within their bodies and had been lead, or directed, into specific homes and buildings strategically placed over the entirety of Mirage in order to cause as much damage as possible.
The remaining sixty-two buildings’ demolitions were determined to be a result of flaming refuse colliding with other near by buildings, or were otherwise the result of further oleum carnage after the fact.
It would be theorized that the attack was planned and carefully executed with precision due to the high number of casualties which occurred underground beneath the origins of these explosions by both city official and civilian alike. The coincidence of it was simply too staggering to believe, that so many would be harmed by sheer chance in the places that people were meant to be safest. In the days that followed, paranoia, anger, outrage, and despair fueled hysteria would spread across the city like a virus as ningen and bloodling alike sought answers as to a cause or reason for this heinous night. None could find a definitive answer, which only fueled unease and unrest.
The total casualty count would tally up to three hundred and thirty-seven when all was said and done. The most common cause of death was trampling or mauling, with exposure to fire following behind as a close second, crushed beneath rubble following after. Forty-one of the recorded deaths would be officially listed as ‘other’ in an attempt to cover up the hard facts that followed.
Of these forty-one listed under ‘other’ were three city guards who, finding themselves contaminated by oleum blood, self quarantined and were found to have committed suicide shortly after going into hiding. The remaining thirty-eight individuals, when confronted with the truth of what would happen to them, opted to willingly allow themselves to be terminated for the good of the rest of Mirage. The individuals who went through with this would either move to the mainland sometime after the event, or commit suicide themselves.
Fifteen individuals were officially listed as “MIA” when no body could be found. Their remains would never be found.
In the wake of this event, news going to and from the Imperial mainland about the ongoing civil war ceased and would not resume until well after reconstruction had begun. This was due to a combination of the Elder Council attempting to contain the situation from Imperial knowledge for as long as possible and damaged infrastructure in radio wave communications. Many would misinterpret these reasonings as cowardice. In truth, the logistics of such a catastrophic event in the hands of seven, effectively six, when one discounted council member Boma who was unable to offer any meaningful wisdom on this matter, individuals was simply staggering, regardless of any wish to maintain secrecy about the existence of the oleum.
A return to law and order was a slow process. Many simply took the opportunity to commit as much petty crime as they could in the confusion. Others were justifiably outraged and rioted, which needed to be suppressed. Resentment grew and mistrust reigned supreme for weeks after the fact. It seemed that, long after the smoke had cleared, most people were still blinded by the smog of anarchy that Lucifer had caused.
Just hours after the attack, William staggered through the streets, dragging his sword at his side. He was exhausted but couldn’t rest. He was nearly nude with one boot and a pair of dirty tan pants. The remains of his white robe had been repurposed as a bandage around his midsection. Dry blood colored his pale skin in dark rust on his left side that ruined the hip of his pants. Someone had found him and patched him up as best as they could. They’d tried to tell him he needed stitches in Mirage-Tongue. He’d stared on silently with puffy red eyes and dry lips. He was thirsty by the time he was getting patched up.
He was on his way to find Ode and the rest of the Elder Council. They needed to talk.
***
Joscur dug through the rubble like a demon. Daniellex tried to match his pace.
The two of them were not alone in working on getting the rubble away. All those who could help were in their multitudes. There in that darkened portion of the chute that should have lead them to safety, they passed broken pieces of sandstone and concrete to each other one by one in a line, depositing them elsewhere as they worked to get into the shelter and search for survivors.
Joscur’s dark hands were scraped and bleeding from the several injuries he’d received frantically clutching at jagged and crunchy stone. He felt nothing. Nothing but the desire to see his children. Hysterical strength had given way to adrenaline fueled desperation hours ago. Any time anyone tried to stop him or get him to slow down he had lashed out, grunting angrily like an animal. His lip was swollen, dried blood scabbed over the broken skin. Daniellex had had to punch him in order to get him to see that there were others there to help him and not keeping him from his children.
In the hours that they’d been digging away much progress had been made, but it had all been slow by necessity. Careful selection of what was and wasn’t moved and when was the key to preventing another collapse and potentially killing any survivors. Another team was on the other side of the large shelter doors and had been coordinating with Joscur’s side to work as fast as possible. And yet, the going was agonizingly slow…
Daniellex hadn’t spoken for hours. His throat was dry and felt constricted. He tried not to think about the possibility of what might be found any minute now. Sweat caked his bare torso. His muscles ached from the strain. He didn’t dare stop so long as Joscur was still working. The tyranny of uncertainty left the both of them in a perpetual agony, a little slice of Hell, as the task before them seemed Sisyphean. Truth be told, the stout ningen was on the verge of needing to take a break. At least for a little bit. His hands weren’t quite as rough as his friend’s were, but his hands and wrists were growing numb from the constant effort. Just a few minutes, and he could -
“I see a way down!” Joscur croaked!
Daniellex’s heart jumped in his chest as his head bolted up. Instantly he was alert, aches and pains forgotten, as he watched Joscur climb over the slope he’d been hauling stone from and descending down, calling out, “MARISIA! VAMO! ARE YOU THERE!? CAN YOU HEAR ME!?”
“Joscur, wait! You should not be the one!” Daniellex cried, scrambling up after his friend who recklessly rushed ahead down into the dusty dark. He had to remind himself to be careful and not to move too quickly or heedlessly. The wrong shifting of his weight could trap Joscur down there with anyone who had survived. Word traveled back quickly through the grapevine of Joscur’s progress.
Joscur hunched down low underneath a wedge in the rubble that allowed for movement in. The way was precarious, claustrophobic, cavelike, and he pushed down into it feet first without any hesitation. “BOLARA! MARISIA!” he echoed desperately, coughing through the dust.
“Help us…!” came a weak reply close by. Joscur squinted in the dark to his left. He saw no one, but he could see another small opening in the rubble. “Help! We are trapped!” came the cry of the stranger again.
“Who was that?” Daniellex called down to his friend from the top of the slope, his shadow eclipsing the already dark space.
“There are survivors down here!” Joscur cried back, whipping his head around and looking up at his friend. “To the left!” was all the direction he gave as he turned back into the dark and searched desperately for a way forward. Daniellex called back to others that survivors had been found as Joscur descended further on.
The way forward was incredibly cramped. He had to crouch down into almost a ball, his backside on the floor with his knees hugging his chest, neck craned and head hooked to the side with one hand on the rubble above him. He scooted forward in the dark, calling out, “Vamenco! Marisia! Are you there!? Is anyone there!?” His voice was lower now. Having gotten an answer from someone else revived his desperate hopes that his children might be alive down there, made him remember that there were other people at stake. A small part of him recalled how to be considerate of others, if minuscule.
That part of him grew tinier by the second for each that passed without a reply from his son or daughter. In the hours he’d been digging he’d did all that he could to keep the wall of the collapsed shelter to his right, digging his way at an angle towards the corner where he had left his children. The air was so hot and stale here, packed into such a small space that it was choking. Joscur coughed more as he wedged himself in deeper, calling out for his children.
“Marisia? Marisia?” His voice was subdued, he was unable to get enough air to be louder this deep in.
“Baba…?” came a weak reply.
Joscur’s heart jumped in his chest.
“Marisia!” he cried, his voice cracking as he hurried his pace to scoot closer to his daughter’s voice. “Marisia, keep talking to me, tell me where you are!”
“Here, baba, here…” she replied weakly. Joscur could hear his daughter’s voice coming from further below and he was regretting going down here feet first. There came a point where he could advance no further. He had to resist the urge to kick at the rubble and clear a path.
“Marisia, my sweet, I am here! I am coming to get you! We are getting the rubble off! Your brother, is he alright?”
“Baba…” Marisia called back weakly. Fire ignited in Joscur’s breast. He looked back the way he’d come, tried to mentally measure the distance, turned back to the direction of his daughter.
“Marisia listen, I have to back up so I can get you and your brother out. You are going to be fine. I am here for you. Stay still! I will be back soon! Alright?” he instructed, his tone unintentionally shifting to one of paternal authority as if he were clearly explaining a simple concept to his daughter like she was Vamenco’s age again. He pushed himself in reverse through the crevice and made his way back up to Daniellex who was waiting to help pull him out.
“They are alive down there!” he said. Joscur didn’t smile. Not yet. Not yet. “Come, we have to move this stone off of them.”
Daniellex immediately jumped into action, barking orders at those who were helping him. People were quickly whipped into a frenzy, galvanized by the desperate hope to save as many as possible, the simple humanitarian desire to help others breaking through any exhaustion or fear they collectively felt. Together, they carefully cleared away rubble for another couple of hours. Every foot that they cleared away allowed for more people from without to come within and clear out more. Progress went by faster. Ways were opened. Survivors extracted from the rubble, dirty, hurt, tired, thankful to be alive.
Joscur kept to the front of the group, heading directly for his children and only his children.
Fatigue was starting to outweigh his physical capabilities. His nails were broken and his back screamed, but he could hear Marisia! She was just beyond this last hunk of stone as big as his torso, keeping still as instructed, still talking to him when he asked. Hysterical, the way cleared enough for him to be able to properly stand with other survivors still emerging from the wreckage further behind him and his children’s godfather at his back, Joscur embraced the huge rock with all of his might, breathed so hard that his veins bulged and spittle flew out of his mouth as he raged against his own limitations for the sake of his son and daughter. They were so close! He wasn’t going to give up now!
The instant that Joscur began to lift the rock Daniellex was there to help him, forcing his hands underneath the opened way and helping lift the burden with just as much hysterical strength as his friend. Together, they lifted the piece of fallen ceiling slowly.
“I see a body!” Daniellex said, looking back as they turned their bodies to place the boulder behind them.
“PUSH!” Joscur roared. A blood vessel in his left eye had popped from the strain!
The hunk of ceiling was sat down just behind them in the first place that it would safely settle. Daniellex made sure that it was secure while Joscur whipped back around and looked at the body. Dust covered it like a blanket. Their back was turned upwards towards him. He reached down with steady hands and pulled the broken, limp body up. It was Bolara, dead.
“Baba!” came the weak call of Marisia from underneath.
“Marisia!” Joscur cried, ecstatic to see his daughter alive! He deduced instantly that, in the moment of the collapse, Bolara must have thrown himself over the children and Marisia to protect them! Brave boy! Wonderful boy! The father pulled Bolara’s body up and held it there, looking down and seeing his daughter beneath. She was huddled, curled up like an egg, dust and blood in his ginger hair. She turned her face up to look at him with tears in her eyes.
“Baba…!” she wept.
“Dani! Help me!” Joscur cried out. He was right there, accepting the body of Bolara and helping to pull it out, set it aside, so that Joscur could reach down and grab his daughter’s arms, pull her up into an embrace! The feeling of her warm body against his was the best thing he’d felt in such a long, long time!
They cried together. Tears of joy, of salvation! In that instant, everything was okay! They were together again, he had saved them! He hadn’t lost the one thing left in the world that he cared for as dearly as one could care for anything! The embrace was short lived, though, Joscur, so full of relief and happiness, knowing that they weren’t completely safe yet and needed to go further to be so. He pulled back from his daughter and looked at her. “Okay, you are alright. Are you hurt? Can you move?”
“I… Baba, I…” Marisia mumbled as her father looked her over. She didn’t appear to be injured at all. She’d hunched down and kept from being pinned by debris because of Bolara’s sacrifice, bless him and his family for all of their days!
“Come, we must get you out of there,” he said, delicately lifting his daughter up by her armpits while she held onto his shoulders. Daniellex wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her out and sat her down beside them, knelt down and double checked her for any wounds. “Vamenco! Baba is here, come up!”
“Baba!” Marisia cried out, her voice strangled by something greater than fear.
Her raised voice made Joscur turn to look at her reflexively. For an instant there was utter silence between the three of them that was only broken by the voices of other survivors further up. She shuddered and sobbed. Joscur’s heart suddenly sank.
“Baba… Vamo… he…”
Joscur hadn’t once heard his son’s voice while he was working to get to them, he only just now realized. His face fell. Happiness left him, sucked out of his being like it was being jettisoned into the void of space. He looked down into the hole his daughter had been pulled from, crawled over it.
Vamenco and his friend, Bolara’s brother, who he did not know the name of, were there. Whole, uninjured from the looks of it, pressed tight together like they were huddling for warmth.
“Vamo...?” he whispered. His boy did not stir.
Frantically, numbly, Joscur reached down and touched his son’s face, his arm retracting immediately as though jolted by an electric shock. His cheek was cold.
“No. No, no, no, no, no,” Joscur repeated defiantly to himself, reaching down again and grabbing his son to pull him out of that awful hole. Daniellex was speaking, standing right behind him. Joscur didn’t hear. He felt how cold his son was in his arms as he pulled him into his lap. He would have collapsed to his knees if he wasn’t already sitting on them. He cradled his son in his arms, rocked back and forth like he used to when Vamenco would cry for hours into the night after his mother was taken from them. He kept repeating “No, no, no,” his voice growing weaker and fainter.
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The father took a sharp breath in, suddenly on the verge of tears. He brushed the dust off of his son’s cold face, pushed his bright hair back. Vamenco’s dark skin was palid.
“Vamo? Vamo can you hear me?” he begged as tears welled up in his eyes. He was trying so, so very hard to be strong in that moment. Strong enough to defy what had happened. His mouth was turning into a horrid grimace that mimicked a smile, as if Joscur had forgotten how and was learning again. His brow furrowed, eyebrows turned upwards. He rocked his five year old in his arms.
“Vamo wake up. Vamo please wake up! It is baba. I am here! I got you out! I saved you Vamo, now come, wake up. Wake up. Wake up, please! Vamo, please! Please wake up!” Joscur pleaded, patting his son’s icy cheek desperately. Daniellex was speaking again, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
The touch broke Joscur.
He broke down, curling forward while pulling his boy to his breast. He let out a wail of anguish more horrific and sorrowful than anything that Daniellex had ever heard from his friend. Marisia was weeping into her hands.
Joscur threw his head back and howled exquisite suffering for all to hear. A father’s lament for the loss of his child. Worse of all was the immediate conclusion he came to.
“I killed Vamo! Oh, Syla! I killed baby!!”
Daniellex pulled his goddaughter into an embrace and wept, his sturdy body shuddering quietly as Marisia did the same.
***
Ode, Eira, Kieran, Niamh, Thrain, and Mernavira all stood together in stunned silence at the base of Natator Tower. They were watching the smoke rise over their city and, each of them in their own way, trying to grapple with what came next. What to do after a tragedy of this magnitude? That was the question on their minds. There was no covering this up. No quick, temporary detentions of witnesses, no coordinated capturing of monsters in the streets to be brought and studied. No preventing what had already happened. None of them were entirely prepared for this level of destruction.
They had been ushered away from the oleum chamber and into a shelter just as William had instructed. When word reached them that the creatures above on the streets were retreating, they had accompanied a detachment of guards back to the chamber to assess the stability of it. None of the corpse carrying vats had been disturbed, save for the inky clouds of vile blood that each body now floated in. No more animated tendrils. No reanimated corpses.
Afterwards they had briefly deliberated on what to do and agreed they should head up to the streets to assess the damage and coordinate relief efforts themselves. Niamh had temporarily broken away from the group to travel up the tower and see what the ornithopter technicians could tell him. He would be the first one to get an estimation of the scale of the damage done to Mirage. The others had gone outside with their accompanying guards and did what they could to direct search and rescue efforts. They quickly found that matters were simply out of their hands for the time being, and so had chosen to wait. Mernavira had sent a single guard to attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of council member Boma. In the flurry of numb confusion, none of the others had thought to do that.
Hours later, Ode and Eira leaned against each other after just standing up and joining the others. William was approaching them slowly and they stood and they waited. When he came within ear shot of them he stopped, visibly slumping on the spot. They stared each other down for a moment. Each of the Elder Council were afraid to be the one to break the silence first.
“We should talk,” William croaked hoarsely. They looked at each other and nodded in wordless agreement.
“Should we wait for Boma?” Eira asked quietly as they began to turn to walk into Natator Tower.
“This only concerns the children of Mirage on a grand scale, not a personal one,” William said bluntly as he trudged up the steps and walked past the council members who followed behind him.
Together they rode up to the top of Natator Tower and entered the Elder Council’s chamber with William in the lead. He slammed the door with the city’s accursed motto on it and rose up to find fully suited workers minding their monitors dutifully, doubtlessly trying to use the ornithopters to search for survivors or otherwise help the wounded city.
“Out,” William ordered, quiet, but firmly.
“William…” Kieran tried to interject, wanting to stress the importance of their work for Mirage – now, of all times, more than ever!
“OOOOOOOOOOUT!” William howled with such vitriol as he spun around to address each and every one of the individuals hooked up to their machina that they all stopped what they were doing and looked first at him, then to the other council members.
“Do as he says,” Ode confirmed. The workers unplugged themselves as quickly as they could and left the room while William paced in front of the chairs on which the council were supposed to sit and watch over this city. They were alone after only a couple of minutes, and William turned his wild eyes on the six of them gathered there.
“You said you wanted to talk. Talk,” Thrain spoke up, his deep voice seeming feeble in the face of William’s rage. A rage which he acted upon as he paced.
“Yeah, I am going to talk, and you’re all going to listen – and do nothing but listen,” he said, raising his blade and pointing it at them as he stalked in front of them. The six of them chose to say nothing and listen.
“You people,” William continued. “You FUCKING people have no fucking idea what it is you’ve meddled with! And you know what the scary part is? Neither do I! Not completely! You have no fucking idea how terrifying that is and I am not going to explain it to you. We’re going to go over everything we know about these oleum right here, right now, and set the record as straight as it can be! Then, and only then, am I going to give you people a choice on how we handle this! Because this… this is bigger than anything you’ve ever been concerned about. Bigger than some war on a continent half a world away!
William huffed, slapped the flat of his blade against one of the column seats and the metal sang out as he paced and tried to clear his head. His left hand curled up to just under his back wound. “Six years ago, Lucifer discovered something washed up on the southern shore of this continent that nothing in the Wastes would scavenge. He brought it here to study, found out that it’s blood could infect people somehow. Turn them into monsters. Intelligent monsters who could escape captivity and put themselves back in to cause more chaos. Whatever Lucifer was testing, he ended up infected as well and fled. That’s who lead the attack last night – Lucifer. He was here. I saw him. I fought him…” He spat on the floor. “You have no comprehension of how fucked up that is.”
The council members looked at themselves at this revelation, worried and frightened while William hissed in pain. He powered through it and kept going.
“Lucifer brought more of those things with him, but they weren’t people. At least I didn’t see any that were people. Just animals. Twisted, deformed animals, but definitely infected. So it’s not a disease and it never was. From what I could tell, Lucifer was attacking specific locations. A coordinated attack, but he didn’t attack this tower. Probably because of the oleum underneath it. They were reaching out to him! Calling to one another! Searching...”
He paused in his stepping. Turned on the spot, looking down at the floor. “What did he say?” he wondered aloud, pulling his left hand up and snapping his fingers. “What did Dandy Man say…” A final, resounding snap as he lifted his head up, turned to the council members and pointed at them. “An island! An island to the southeast! An island with walls so high and so thick, nothing is supposed to be able to escape them. What do you know about this island? Go,” William said, turning his finger towards Eira who looked to the others present with a disturbed expression on her face. All of their faces were disturbed because, try as they might, they had had no choice but to let William ramble through his thoughts, and now Eira had no choice but to tell him about the island.
“An island with walls? That sounds like the Black Isle,” she said meekly. “It was made centuries ago. Thousands of years, even! I do not understand, what is a ‘dandy man’? And what does the Black Isle have to -”
“None of you have to understand a thing,” William interrupted harshly. “You just need to answer my questions! Oleum One came from the Black Isle, that’s all you need to understand.”
The council members looked to each other in disbelief, but mostly confusion. No fear registered at this revelation, and why would it have? The Black Isle was a mark on the map that denoted ancient history to them. Something they each learned about long ago and nearly forgot.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mernavira spoke up, her tone unusually even, the fingers of her left hand pressed to her forehead. “The Black Isle is meant to be a prison for… for some, dark, radical fanatics or some such nonsense. Nothing I’ve ever heard suggests that something like Oleum One could have possibly -”
“Do you think Time stands still and is inactive?” William again interrupted. Mernavira didn’t appreciate the discourtesy, her lips pursing together in annoyance. “Something has changed on the Black Isle since those walls went up, and these oleum creatures are the result! Not that any of that really matters right this very instant, because we all have a much, much bigger issue to deal with at present; Lucifer.”
“William,” Ode spoke up, stepping forward, his green eyes sternly planted on the wounded eidolon. “Help us to understand. We are a council, a collective; we can only work with what information we have to go on. You withholding -”
“I am not withholding information from you,” William aggressively corrected, slumping his back against the central seat and sliding down to the floor. “I’m telling you that you can’t comprehend the full picture, and am giving you what I know you can.”
“Then uphold your end of the deal,” Ode replied stonily. William looked up at him. “We told you about Oleum One. It is high time that you told us about you.”
William knew this was coming, but that didn’t mean he had been looking forward to it. He twisted the blade between his legs idly, trying to think of where to begin. He was silent for several moments save for the quiet grinding of metal on stone and the council gave him that space.
“Lucifer and I are… different, from you, and from each other, but the same as one another as well,” he said quietly, skirting around the issue at hand as best as he could. He ran a hand through his long hair and sighed. “You won’t understand… We’re not ningen like you are. Not bloodlings either. We’re eidolons,” he admitted.
“And what is an eidolon?” Ode questioned.
“It’s like…” William trailed off, turning his head towards the ceiling where the light of day streamed into the otherwise darkened room. “An avatar. A representation. A figurehead. We are… representatives, of sorts, of the Ultimatums.”
“The Ultimatums?” asked the eldest.
“That’s not important right now,” William said dismissively, waving his hand and looking back up at Ode. “Less important than the fact that I’m not from this time but three thousand years in the past, that I fell from the sky because of another eidolon, Mr. Wink, and that I’ve known something was wrong with Mirage since the instant I arrived. Sure was right about that, wasn’t I?”
“Now is not the time for jest…” Kieran spoke up hesitantly after a moment of silence.
“Do I look like I’m joking with you?” William glared at Kieran. “I was born three thousand years ago and was sent to the future, along with Cornello, by Mr. Wink, who separated us, who wanted me here in Mirage, following Lucifer’s trail and investigating the oleum – presumably so that I could put a stop to it all. That’s the sort of thing you’ve unintentionally gotten mixed up in. That’s the forces you’re dealing with, Mr. Wink, Lucifer, and I… and these oleum are a far greater threat than any of you know because of what they did to Lucifer.”
“This… this is all fantastical,” Niamh spoke up, trying to comprehend what he was being told through the exhaustion of the night. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Stop trying to make sense of it. Accept it and move on,” William sighed.
“Let us suppose you are telling the truth,” Thrain proposed. “You say that you, Lucifer, and this ‘Mr. Wink’ are all eidolons, and that the latter… pulled you through time?”
“Threw, more like,” William corrected.
“Are you able to do this yourself?”
“No. Time is Mr. Wink’s. Lucifer and I can’t move through it except the same way you all do; forward, one direction, second by second.”
“But you can do… something?” Thrain pressed. “Something… extraordinary?”
“All eidolons can,” William relented.
“If you are telling the truth, then it should be a simple matter as demonstrating this… ability of yours, and then your credibility will be unquestionable, yes?”
“If I must,” William again sighed, rubbing his sore eyes. He felt more exhausted by this than he cared to admit. “Mernavira, step forward. I’m going to use you to prove myself.”
She did as she was bid, if reluctantly. “Hold out your hands. Keep them closed. I want you to choose one and open it. Don’t say it out loud, just pick one in your mind and open your hand when I tell you to. Ready?”
Mernavira held up her arms, looking to the other council members in confusion. She had the vague feeling of being a little girl again, suspicious that she was about to be made a fool of. She looked to William and waited for his signal. He nodded. She opened up her right hand – immediately she looked down at her hand, bewildered.
“What did you pick in your mind?” William asked her.
“My left hand…” she told him.
“Again.”
They repeated the example. She opened up her left hand. “This time?” he asked.
“Right. What is happening? Why am I opening the opposite of what I picked?”
“I’m happening to you. I’m changing your choice after you make it, and your body is acting accordingly,” William explained. “We can do this for hours. I will always know which hand you choose to open and I will always be able to make you choose the other. I’m a representation of choice itself.”
Everyone silently stared at William as the revelation washed over them. Mernavira looked at her hands and slowly dropped them, suddenly unsure if she was the one who had chosen to do so or not. William closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He hated being in situations where he had to explain himself. It was always so much easier to just go through life and have people be ignorant of him…
“So… this Mr. Wink… is an eidolon of time,” Niamh processed slowly. “You are an eidolon of choice… What is Lucifer…?”
“Lucifer is the eidolon of Darkness and Discovery,” William explained. “He’s every shadow. The absence of light, as well as the metaphysical and metaphorical darkness within an individual. He’s also the drive to discover things and know more, to seek out what’s in the dark and pull it into the light. That’s why he was so adamant about testing on Oleum One. Part of him needed to know, because these things are new… and this time he paid for his curiosity.”
“So… was it Lucifer who made this happen…? Five years ago, and now…?” Niamh continued, hesitantly, a deep anxiety of the implications that Lucifer and William each represented starting to overwhelm him.
“No. Your choices were your own, then. He might have encouraged you to make ones that aligned with his need for discovery. Could have influenced you to give him lead on taking it in, letting him run his experiments, but he can’t make people do anything in that way.”
Niamh took a seat on the floor slowly and bowed his head. Eira stepped forward and walked over towards her seat, pressed some unseen button on the side of the monolithic chair and it began to lower itself down so that she could sit on it, her hands folded in her lap in quiet contemplation.
“What is it you know about the oleum that we do not?” Mernavira asked suspiciously.
“I don’t know anything that you don’t, and that’s the problem,” he said, leaning forward and resting his weapon against his shoulder and clasping his hands together between his legs. “Only this: Whatever that black oil is they have for blood, it can affect eidolons. You know, now, what that means, right? Eidolons are not ningen, not bloodlings. We don’t follow the same rules as the rest of you. We’re cosmic, beyond the constraints of ordinary mortal life – we aren’t affected by sickness, by age, morality. Not like you are. So whatever that stuff is, it’s more dangerous than anything you’ve ever encountered in ways that you can’t possibly fathom.”
The room was once again filled with stunned silence. William, despite everything, was pleased with himself at having managed to tell the council enough of the truth that, he believed, they would listen to him while obfuscating the whole truth and its far reaching consequences.
“If this substance is so dangerous, and we are holding several gallons of it underneath the tower…” Thrain postured.
“Destroy it,” William commanded. “Burn it away, bodies and all. Bury anything that remains in a deep pit in the Wastes. Hope that that’s enough.”
Thrain nodded in agreement.
“You said that Lucifer became infected, which was why he left Mirage years ago, that it was he who lead this latest attack on Mirage,” Ode said, putting the pieces of information he had together slowly. “He was attacking specific points, most likely to get to the oleum under the tower -”
“Or to spread chaos and infect as many as possible,” William interjected. “You’ll have to do a sweep of the city and find anyone who got exposed to an oleum’s blood. They’ll need to be dealt with swiftly. It’s the only way.”
Kieran held her hand up to her mouth and started to cry quietly. She never imagined that she would agree with the killing of innocent people for the good of the rest.
“We need to know where Lucifer came from. He has survived outside of the city and has been planning this this whole time. We must find him and put an end to this. It is the only way,” Ode concluded.
“He came from the north,” William said quietly. He was no more thrilled about the prospect of all of this than Kieran or any of the others were and it showed in his tone of voice. “We can start by sending ornithopters to surveil the Wastes, scout for any locations that he might be using as a shelter or base.”
“The ornithopters aren’t able to go far from the city. Their range of activity is -”
“Figure it out! Make it work! They’re the best, safest option we have at finding Lucifer without endangering anyone else’s lives!” William barked at Eira, who’d spoken up, without turning to look at her. “You’re going to have to coordinate efforts here in Mirage as well of course. Help the survivors. Relocate the homeless. Rebuild. You should keep as quiet about the cause of all of this as possible. If you think you’re struggling to comprehend everything I’ve told you, I’m sure you can imagine how a city of thousands of grief stricken, enraged people would take such information.”
“We will see it done,” Thrain said quietly, taking a seat on the floor where he stood.
Ode strode over towards William and stood before the eidolon of Choice and Twilight. “Would you kindly move?” Ode asked. William obliged, pushing himself up onto his feet and stepping over to lean against the council seat to the right of Ode’s. Ode lowered his chair and sat down in it as Eira did. There was a heavy quiet in the room as everyone took a moment to process what needed to be done given all that they now knew. Everyone had silently agreed without knowing it that William’s word should be followed on this matter.
“You control people’s choices,” Mernavira spoke up just after Ode sat down, looking at William. Her arms had been crossed over her stomach, hands at her side so that she didn’t have to look at them. She asked the obvious. “Why did you not control Lucifer’s this night?”
“That’s the most frightening part of all,” William said glumly, resting the back of his head against the chair. He felt his back ooze blood once more. “I tried. I couldn’t. Whatever’s happened to Lucifer, he wasn’t making any choices tonight. None of those creatures were.”
Mernavira sat on the floor and turned her back to William. It was a cold comfort to her that he had at least tried to affect the choices of the corrupt Lucifer. She didn’t have any excuse to blame him for what had happened anymore, though.
Quiet reigned for a few moments more. All of them were exhausted to varying degrees. They each absorbed the truth in their own way and processed what should come next. It was William who broke the silence first. He turned his head up and looked at Ode.
“Did you ever get in contact with Cornello? In Damocles?” William asked softly.
Ode looked down at William with a blank expression. He turned his jade colored eyes up towards the domed ceiling, considered the question for a moment. “No. We tried. No one named Cornello was found in Damocles. We were told that an investigation would be put under way, when we…” He paused. It seemed silly, now, to try and keep things from the eidolon, who, for all he knew, could simply make him choose to tell the truth on a whim. “… When we stressed the importance of finding this individual, as part of our investigation into you. With the civil war going on, however…”
William held up his hand to call for a stop. He understood. He closed his eyes and fell asleep shortly thereafter. ‘Of course Cornello wouldn’t be there,’ were his last thoughts before slumber overtook him.