Omnix

Chapter Four

Written by Rhys M. Nolan

There is a saying shared among our people: the Almat Ultimatum. The strong shall inherit while the weak shall perish. Omnix Helford told us this, but he failed to mention what dictated what weakness was. As two Fleshlings fastened a red cloth around the vacant caverns where my eyes once were, I believed to know then what weakness is not. Weakness is not the Almat way.

My world would now and forever be a kaleidoscope of black. But I still saw you, sister. Traitor. I saw again the tungsten dagger chomp through my retinas. I saw defeat have its way and morph your face into something rotten by the act.

This day, I regained our family's honor. With Zale and the infidels' deaths, my place as Omnix would be absolute.

Something surely rotten came over me then as well, and the rot was coming from across the command port. Drums like waves beating against the beaches of New Ungoi rattled the misty air which dewed my cheeks and diluted my bloodied complexion. This world of black blotched with pounding, pounding white rings exploding in the ghost of my periphery. Yes, I very much saw it still: two rows of eight Fleshlings tucked into either side of this command port. A Composer eyeing from the tip of the ship's blade leading in chants, his hand a wand to the drums. They bellied the words in their skeletal frame: "ere vode suni ran."The forsaken chant ran cold down my ears, and I, forced to endure upon a dais, was his audience. He pitied me; he spoke-pleaded for mourning, the sun shall rise again for the Almat as he surely saw my state as defeat. I obliged, rising from my knees and wiped the inky puss forming underneath my blindfold. The Fleshlings jittered before a proper Legionite warrior. Good.

The ship was no more hassle to navigate. The walls remain obedient; the charts, the feel of hide drums. Yes, just as I left it. I trusted their curves to guide me closer to the Composer who had surely taken notice. Flaws grovel in the noise closer I approached.. These walls talked like never before. The Composer was falling out of key, until he and I shared breaths and he silenced completely. "Legionite Tetra," he spoke, apologies underneath his tongue. Tense knuckles cracking. Pale skin certainly getting more so. "It fulfills me to see you alive."

His choir agreed, pounded drums and heralded my return: "Hail, Legionite!"

I hoped then my missing fang did little to sully my bite. "How dare you mourn me."

"Yes, well, please accept my humblest apologies, Legionite. Only you could prove the scanners wrong once we retrieved you." The Conductor did not lie. My retrieval team had been on return from the beach. These drummers were our wounded Fleshlings given a chance to regain their honor. They scrapped together surely wickers, ceremonial black wraps over their Urik suits: a sendoff to The Great Apparatus, the final sleep wrapped over in a silky red wrap which would ferment my body as soil. I attended my own funeral. What worse honor to be bestowed.

I grabbed the Conductor's robes then. He reignited the ship in song which only tightened my grip. "How far did you arrange this ceremony in advance?" I saw the silky fibers draping down. They grazed my back and I swear it pulled taut at my knees.

"My Lordess, please understand retrieval teams are always prepared to ascend." He backed away as a phantom rush tangled in my heart. Gripping at my back, I felt nothing. So why then, did I feel his intention was to bury me still? Why did I still see the red fabric tangle me? The silence humbled him as well as my steps forward. His breathing became practice much as sacred text. A faint, putting "p." Please. I wouldn't allow it to cross his mind one more time. I pulled my glassblade, the i'qod sizzling from my back scabbard to slice through the silky red death around me. The room was frayed ends; cuts of red bled down and littered the dais. The Conductor wailed; I could hear one hand clamp the other. He's missing fingers. He's missing his choir as well, the only sound left being a corrosive bubbling the tip of my glassblade. Human and Almat blood must never mix. Omnix Helford told this to me alone before his final ascension. I remembered then the ashen coal flecking the blacks of his stare; he concerned himself with you. He died because of you, every drip.

"Fools!" I said. You never forget when frightened Fleshlings convene to you. Their trembling, tainted hearts beyond jet-black oval helms. The whites of their imperfect eyes veiled. I knew then these walls belonged to me, so I graced them. "Mourn a Legionite at the final sleep alone! Otherwise, be silent!" And they were, because they knew it, too. The Conductor took a risk he won't forget.

Festering wounds. The choir's miasma took my nasal passages by storm. I faced then an oily shadow. You. Traitor. You took the other side of the room, peeking from the remaining flares of the red death. You both shared that in common, you've yet to kill me. What you've taken from me I would never forgive, for our family in which I've worked so hard to reclaim. I collected the somber in my throat. "We course to House Helford. In that time, I want you all to repent for what you've done." I shot daggers through you and whiffed miasma. "You will remember today." Silence took hostage of the ship. Right, I thought. Victory was the only thing these Fleshlings were trained to answer to. I raised my glassblade running with many bloods. Most of all, your infidel mate and Cada. "Long live House Helford!"

The Conductor lumped back from his recoil. Against everything his body wanted, he reignited the drums and a feeble chant arose from his belly. Iaga, iaga!" Rejoice, Rejoice.

Bruises chafed my neck. My armored collar caused the dark of my pale skin to rash. Aching. Sweet, liberating aching. We traveled through an unspoken velocity. A rush pricked my body full of bumps and I could almost taste the pungent jungle trailing underneath us. We began to slow; what I knew to be the ship then peeled back in sheets to show me House Helford reaching through golden rain clouds. Statue divides upon columns upon pier doors primed to grab our ship and feed us to the interior's maw.

The Conductor then sanctioned the ship to cross in prayer. "Do hear me, Almat fathers, mothers and kin. Allow this vessel safe passage in the whirlpool." Functions were sleeping; metal panging, curled blades. The Conductor's prayers were still worth something. After some time, teeth crunched into the hull. We've arrived.

The ship carried my legs onward as the vessel was then anchored one by one, port and starboard and again on the bow hilt. Strange, my ship's threshold never seemed so far away. I reached only to find air. Then, a door erupted open just out of reach, out of my mind's sight. But that stink, I knew it anywhere. My hands needed reminding, catching the serrations upon his jaw and running along his field of scars. He's without his mask. I could still picture his crest of Aegis beasts. Legionite Taurus.

"Maiming a Conductor, Legionite Tetra?" he asked in a stern tone. His voice might have boomed louder than any drum, but Taurus was always a bad liar; I could see that frown of his unravel into a jesting smirk. "I don't think the lady appreciates your songs." He laughed. When I failed to reciprocate, he grew weary and wished to encompass me by both of my pauldrons. He spoke away from me then: "What have you done to upset your captain?"

The Conductor found two revelations too many. His voice was a mess of stumbling syllables. "Legionite Taurus-my lord-" That was enough breath for Taurus. He intervened.

"Best count your blossoms! Tetra would have you dead were it not a proud dawn."

"Yes, my lord. This be a day for victory." Drums again.

"For victory!" his choir reprised.

I had nothing to say to Taurus, least not before my ship. And he could read me; he gathered me to exit into the bathing light of House Helford. Strange, however was the black where this blessed place once resided. Marching jitters looped through each of my ears. Whistling tower operations forced my head to bob up-a nasty habit I'll have to shake. Troughs of Fleshlings were ready to be one with Almat. I would never see it again.