Murder the Heroes

Chapter Two; Section Four

“What happened here?” It was a strange voice. Maybe that was because it wasn’t formed by a larynx; perhaps it was because it bypassed the eardrum completely. Coil wasn’t certain, but it sure made him uncomfortable. Absentmindedly he rubbed at the stumps of his two lost fingers.

“All magic was leeched from the land. All life went with it.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Sorry?”

“Last time I was here the lands were very different. Not dead at all; alive, teeming.” He still didn’t know what to call her – though somehow he did know that she was a she. He had no idea how. Her body – little more than bones and wrappings – certainly didn’t offer any clues. Nor was it to be read in her eyes. They were but two pinpricks of light, which had been red and malevolent when she’d dealt with the creature, but now were closer to a melancholic blue. Neither colour indicated gender. The only thing they suggested was ‘inhuman’.  

Not that that was strange. She was undead. He didn’t much like the undead. They’d only ever caused him misery, pain and suffering. Coil suspected it was their malformed personalities – the way they only consisted of two dimensions, like caricatures of the living. Central to each type was an all-consuming emotion; as through death and reanimation had cost them an aspect of themselves, as if somebody hadn’t wanted to go through the trouble of creating a fully rounded being. The dominant emotion differed per species – if that was the right word for them – but the end result was much the same.

There was the Krull, who were motivated by their lust for power, the Restless King had been consumed by revenge, and then the Infected of course, with their fervid hunger. He shuddered at the thought of them.

But she wasn’t like that. She seemed to possess the full range of human emotions. He’d sensed anger, melancholy, interest and even humour there. She remembered too. And not in the way of the Restless King, whose memories had been twisted into something dark and corrupted – no, her memories were intricate and, for lack of a better word, human.

“The empire that stripped these sands of magic,” he told her, “is so long past that we don’t even remember its name. And you’re saying you were here before its fall? How many millennia were you down there?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything. I have no idea. What iteration are we on?”

“Iteration?”

“How many Games of the Gods have there been?”

“Oh, I was told this is the twenty second. When were you put down there?”

“In the thirteenth.”

Coil whistled, “That’s several thousand years ago!”

“Who won that game? Was it Sideon?”

Coil turned towards her, “Sideon the Ghoul?”

“You know of him?”

He shrugged, “Of course. Who doesn’t? He’s part of the Pantheon.”

“So then he won. Why do they call him the Ghoul?”

“I’m not sure. Because of what he did, I think. I’ve never been the religious type.”

They returned to their silence, staring out over the wasteland of black hills under a nigh time sky. The moon had just risen. Unbidden Coil recalled the legends of the Carn’Sid, those who inhabited the moon, those who’d attacked all of the known world with their airships. Of course, now that he knew what had really happened the legends weren’t that magical anymore. They hadn’t been heroic, nor epic. It had all only been entertainment. That’s how it always was – their kind at the helm and his kind as the dead left in history’s wake.