Aleks

What other choice is there but to carry on?

When the Devotee no longer hung over Aleks’ shoulders, denying him his rightful Gift, the field prison became the center of a deathly storm. He embraced it, embraced the chaos that he embodied with every fiber of his being. He sensed – through the many tendrils of mist – that beyond the field prison, further into the Invictan lines, the Emperor was approaching. He was the nexus of everything, He was the eye of it all, and He was the thing – the thing clothed in clotted, necrotic, pocked human skin – being protected by the field prison itself. He had no concern for the deaths of his own soldiers any more than he feared for the skin of those he held prisoner as a buffer against the weapons of the city firing their shells out into the field.

And fire they did, once things began in earnest.

Aleks paid little mind to the deaths he brought about, surrounded as he was by a shell of cloth, Cultivated and torn into strips. After the first two dozens soldiers fell with their necks snapped or the oxygen cut off to their brains until they collapsed and did not get back up, the others all fled, seeing the cloth storm as the harbinger of death it was. One of the Invictan air vehicles launched and attempted to bomb Aleks, only for him to catch the bombs in cloth and bring them into his reach, disarming them from the inside and using their metal to reinforce the hundred strips of canvas he now held sway over. Tendrils of mist extended out from Aleks’s fingers into the ground and into the cloth and into the air and into the frantically racing minds and hearts of fleeing Invcictan soldiers, even as the one piloting the air vehicle panicked to see the guns of Kivv pointing up from the watchtower right toward her. She died quickly – and flipping through the deck Aleks found Catia Severo as well, running from the storm she knew she couldn’t stop anymore. She wasn’t close enough. He let her run. He Knew her then, and she knew the tide was turning. She was smart enough, he Knew, that she would not be back.

It takes some measure of wisdom, even the kind of wisdom that has looked unto and past one’s own death, to realize when it is best to simply fold, give up, move on. Find another life to live, instead of throwing it all away for something that is already lost.

He watched through gaps in the storm of overlapping scarves. On the walls he spotted Kamila – and then she leapt from the wall and rolled when she hit the ground, breaking into a run.

Aleks began to walk toward them –

And then the landscape shifted around him, and the earth under his feet became sheer cold glass. He was covered in mist up to his shoulders. He turned, whirling, raising his hands and calling metal to him, forming a shield in front of himself from the blades he’d created at the edges of the scarves. Before him he saw a thousand rows of Invictan soldiers, all in dress uniforms, spears and rifles in their hands, slamming the ground with their weapons. The sound echoed louder than gunshots in Aleks’ skull. He felt faint. Towering above them all, an unassuming man in appearance. Had Aleks seen this man on the street he would not have felt anything in particular for him. But seeing him now, he could not look away. He felt that if he continued to watch the man, his eyes would burn out. He felt that if he looked away, he would be impaled.

From two hundred feet up in the air the man whispered over Aleks’ shoulder, “I knew I’d see you again, little boy. How long ago did you sneak onto my stage?”

“That wasn’t real,” Aleks whispered, pulling the Sower’s Gift tighter around himself. “And neither is this.”

“Does it matter what is real and what is false? Here at the end of all things?”

“It isn’t the end. You’re just a man with delusions of grandeur.”

“I am older than flesh itself, boy.” The whisper grew angry. “And I have been trapped for so long. Do you know when a rat is at its most dangerous?” The voice chuckled, and Aleks reshaped the shield, turning, raising his hands into clenched fists, trying to get a direct look at the Emperor. And yet when he turned, He was no longer there. He was always precisely where Aleks did not look.

Only half-aware of the physical grass and the trampled, rapid-wilting flowers under his feet, Aleks Cultivated the flesh of every Invictan who walked into his way. A soldier with a massive sword, chainsaw-spikes menacing from its edges, stepped into Aleks’s path, and unseeing, Aleks turned him to a mass of each constituent part. Bone reinforced steel and formed his shield and spear. Water, extracted, flowed into the ground and gave it vitality, vitality to fight back against the Emperor’s presence, the sheer anathema toward life that the Emperor fundamentally was with every step He took on the physical earth. Dessicated flesh and skin became dust and burst through the air in cones like the expulsion of pollen. It choked the throats and teared up the eyes of Invictan soldiers. Canvas and cloth obscured Aleks’ path toward the city. Shells from the defensive weapons, now firing full-tilt, sailed over him and toward the army. A roar went up from the gathered army behind Aleks, and never stopped. Members of Kivv’s militia remained on the walls, huddled behind ramparts – except those who thought themselves brave and strong enough to face the Invictans head-on. Wypsie Battle-Clans, emboldened by the words of Oscar of Graoungers, leapt over the wall. They began to vanish as they fell, streaking across the field, their experimental gear making them like unpredictable Monsters on the field. Adma sprung up from the woods and rushed in from the sides of the army’s front. Mirshalites came one by one, each a nexus of desperation itself, the soul of war.

The army of the Invictan Empire was not ready to attack – neither the Gaurl regulars, the heartblood of the Core, nor the tributes culled from the provinces. They were not prepared for this charge, but the confusion of Aleks’ escape, the strange storm of an Aether-Touched in Kivv’s walls, and the ensuing scramble would not allow for anything else. Their Emperor had spoken – in rage, without a care anymore for their bodies or for His own. For all that His voice might whisper in Aleks’ ear from behind, he could hear Him beyond what he said aloud – for Aleks’ gift of Scrying was as active as it had ever been, for he held the Gift tighter than ever before, knowing it was the vice and the addiction that would undo him in the end and not caring at all. Aleks kept his mind shut off from the pain – he heard the screams of those he cut down, and he did not allow himself to care, and he told himself that he would never let the Gift go – he knew that was a lie too, that it would eventually have to become a lie.

I cannot care. I will not care.

Get out of my head, He cried to Aleks, the same five words so many had cried to Him before. Aleks saw many, their hands to their temples, crying those five words. Get out of my head. Only He was not merciful. Aleks saw Zoe Bari, a young Zoe Bari, thinner, unmuscled, unarmed, crying out to the Emperor – get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head.

Aleks let the Gift slip a little, letting himself feel a little – and he felt no pity for Him.

Then Hilda was standing in front of Aleks, shouting at him. He shifted his focus and slowly began to understand her. “Aleks!” Hilda said, struggling to get closer to him. She threw her arms around him when he relaxed for just a moment – though not so much as to take focus off the storm of blades behind him, keeping Invictan special forces at bay. Aleks stared numbly into Hilda’s eyes. “Aleks!” Hilda shouted again. “You need to get into the city. We need to get everyone into the city. They’re going to overrun us!”

“No,” Aleks said, staring blankly at Hilda. “Read, Hilda. They won’t overrun us. They’ll crash against us.”

Hilda’s eyes flickered for a moment, as though she were looking through Aleks at something far behind him. Her mouth became a thin line, determination showing through on her face, and then she was holding her glaive. Lucian was beside her – Aleks realized he’d been standing there for more than a few seconds, as his mind began to separate the real from the false world that the Emperor was trying to force on him – and to see the fraying lines between truth and fiction that were cracking earth and air itself all around him.

“I’m sorry this happened,” Hilda said, hugging Aleks tighter. “I’m sorry all of this has happened. You didn’t deserve this.”

“Neither did you,” Aleks said coldly. “We are here.” He gestured to the Invictan army. “They came to die fighting. Let them. We came here to carry on living.” Aleks finally hugged Hilda back – though the motion was stiff, and even he felt as though he were faking something. “So let’s carry on living.”

Lucian called out to Hilda and raised his knives, and the two broke away. Before she went out into the crowd, Hilda gave Aleks one more pained look. She knew, Aleks sensed easily even through the guarded walls she’d put up these past years, that Aleks had the Gift tighter around him than ever, stopping his every thought short of developing past the mechanical. That did not make it any less painful to see. She raised her glaive and

Aleks had not taken another ten steps toward Kivv before a silently crying Kamila, bloody sword in hand, stepped into the narrow range of his physical awareness.

“Aleks,” she whispered, burying her head against his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” he murmured, monotone. He turned another Invictan soldier, a sniper hundreds of paces behind him, into fingerling pillars of bone and water and salt and skin that danced about the landscape. Kamila sobbed into his neck.

“All of this is my fault,” she said. “You, Hilda, everything. It’s all because of me. I couldn’t keep you safe, and then when I couldn’t, I freaked out, and then –“ She stopped. Cleaned her sword against Aleks’ shirt, already drenched in blood. He flicked the blood away with a thought. “I hurt you, I hurt Hilda, I let my own pain make me hurt people. And I do it again and again, and now here I am, seeking forgiveness I don’t deserve, so I can make myself smaller and smaller before you.”

“I don’t think forgiveness is what you want,” Aleks said. “But you don’t need it from me. We’ve both just been doing what we had to do, what was necessary, to –“

“- make our lives possible,” Kamila finished, eyes closed, teeth clenched. “She was right. She was always right. There is no peace. There is no resolution.” She shook her head. “Aleks, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. And I’m sorry we ever came here at all. We should have fled or fought. Could have saved Etyslund if we had, could have saved mom –“

“Don’t be stupid,” Aleks said. “We did fight, and we lost. We fought, and we lost, so we ran – and ran and ran – until we found ourselves here. Let’s not fall apart feeling sorry for ourselves.”

“How do you –“ Kamila started to say, before she fully realized the depth of unfeeling coldness in her brother’s eyes. When she pulled back a little she could practically feel the weight of the Gift on his shoulders. Now that she knew it was there, the smell of it was acrid in the back of her throat. It made her want to gag.

Kamila put her free hand over her head, palm gripping the crown of her own skull. “I’ve always believed that if I just fought a little harder, then maybe the people I cared about wouldn’t have to go through any more pain. Even if I had to make them hate me to do it, even if I had to leave open wounds to fester, even if I could never look them in the face or say an honest word to them without wanting to die.” She gave a single, bitter laugh without an ounce of humor or mirth. “I thought I could save Hilda by sacrificing my relationship with her. I thought I could save you by forgetting about who we were as children, by denying ourselves the right to grow together. I thought I could save this city by being its lone sword, except that no one knows which way to point the sword, no one knows when to swing it. Having a sword doesn’t make you a victor. Having a million swords doesn’t make you a victor.” She gestured behind Aleks at the Invictan army, at its vain attempts to reach the walls of Kivv. Already some parts of the army were starting to break – though the dense core around the Emperor, and his Warpriests, stayed resolute. The Battle-Clans were repelled each time they tried to penetrate that core, and each time their fight-wail went up a little louder, with a little more of the thrilling joyous shout of defeat, the elation they felt at meeting an enemy that could best them.

It meant, Kamila understood, that more of them lay dead, and the core unpenetrated. Despite all the death, and despite the blood-soaked field where crops would not grow again for years until all the death had rotted away and made new fresh soil, to the Wypsies this was still a game. Indeed, it was the only game worth playing.

Kamila tightened her grip on her sword. All games have objectives. Aleks, sensing her resolve, gestured toward the Emperor. “His line will break soon. I do not think He very much cares – He, you must understand, wants nothing at all other than to go home. I think He believes he must break this world in order to return to his own.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Kamila said. “But then what He wants doesn’t matter. What’s going on inside His head? It doesn’t matter. I’ll make Him suffer before I kill Him.”

“I know,” Aleks said quietly, although he did not understand, but knew he would understand later, when he could let go of the Gift and fragment his mind into pieces to escape the pain he’d caused, and the pain Kamila had caused. Aleks knew, with a mind that could think only in rational, linear paths, that as soon as he opened the gate he would break. And he knew that he would do it anyway, because he could not live like this forever. He resolved this in his own mind even as he ripped armor and body alike to pieces – and walked the battlefield, the center of a storm, the Sower of Kivv sowing nothing but death, the inheritance of the Machine Angel coursing through his mind and his spine, setting the earth alight with the impulse of each living and dying thing across the Wanderer’s Vale.

He smiled, even through the Gift, a sad smile.