"Say I don't run you through where you stand. What use are you to me?"
"I can show you the way-out." Out, as if this was a tour. Out, as if I'd let these infidels live.
"The only exit I see is dead Rebels. Help me or watch, I don't care which." Maddened, hushed sniggers bleated from his mask.
"To help, I must beseech you." An ugly sound, chopping springs, popping composite. He was holding a rifle. "To help"--a long pause-"an Almat of my age must submit themselves to weakness."
"Embarassing-How could you use such things?" His bushel body beat into a kneel. Breath hit the ground; only grass looked upon him with any reverence.
"Exile has tainted me. O, how I've transgressed. O, how I will. This blight, it grants me the curse of their weapons."
Rebels approached. He managed a stand, readying some contraption which hissed and reeled. Only, he brought the function to latch my plate with a hook. Before I could protest, we flew upward. He said, "Thousand pardons" against our velocity. A thousand too little. Blackness overcame me completely, true blindness when we scoured the maximum of the wire.
"What-have you done to me?" A branch thwacked my face.
"Helped."
He smiled in the way his rotten breath twisted. It was only then I noted a whiff of him; this jungle has contorted his musk, mystified his Almat blood. He lost the feramones of his kin, forever disconnected from House Cren. I couldn't help but pity the old thing. Casted out, yet still he continued to live out his exile protecting Tenoch.
I allowed him to guide me onto the trunk of a mighty tree which tapered into a small cable-like walk. Beneath lied several famished demons hungering for my fall. Crestfallen, as the tales went. Warriors who broke the code of Almat's great Houses. Mulch's eminence twisted then. He and I knew he would become one in time.
I wondered then, would Helford be somewhere down there? Did speaking of the Final Purge condemn him once he scoured the Great Apparatus?
Would you be there, too?
I hoped to not find out either as we crossed. Mulch slowed, guided down. The bramble plucking at my tuft of hair told me the tree line was beginning to tunnel. "First of many infidels, my Lordess." And a shot cracked the sky. I know little of these accursed firearms, but I know enough of my tours to tag the roar of a sniper.
Scurried steps out of line. Mulch was winding functions in blasphemy, surely chasing down these steps with deadly sway as if he assumed authority of the red silk death.
"You hunt like a wild hog, Mulch. Have you no tact? They will know we're coming!
He had the gall to hush me again. "Fret not. You may not be keen as I but I've the trees to mask me. All they hear are faceless, directionless things." After a stilled breath, another shot came. "Two. The fathers gifted me only five shots." And he was keen to load the third as he muttered to hide his voice from the jungle itself: "Thoust wise. There is no honor to what I do here."
But limbs hitting the ground, that was an unmistakable sound. An intoxicating smell. Ghosts of flying rounds lingered in our air, and I could practically taste panic below.
Tremor kits began to hit the trees the next time we shifted. Strange, I believed I saw something pass by gun smoke. An eminence below. "So, you have eyes after all." Mulch's remark cadenced with shifting bush arms. No wonder he evaded me-he sounded no different from leaves. "Remarkable."
"There is nothing remarkable about it."
"I-beg to differ." He turned then to the bramble below. "I saw you see so. How many?"
"One at least."
"Try again. This time, wait for the tremors." I tapped to the rhythm, apprehended their footsteps crossing the quakes. One, two-
"Four? They wouldn't spare the rest of their forces."
"But. They would. My shots brought forth the rest of their cell to investigate-least, the ones capable of fighting still. They are weary, hungry, and cold; Rebels hope with numbers, and not many come to Tenoch at all unless they intend to score a high-value target."
Apparently, exiles are a wealth of information. "You know too much about infidels."
A brush of leaves; his aim must've destabilized when he cackled. "I do. What does the Railroad mean to you?"
Only total annihilation. The railroad has been a thorn in our palms for weeks now; Rebels stealing proper Fleshlings for their own gain. What nerve. "Show me."
"Eager. I'd expect nothing less for House Helford's legacy." Those four Rebels, they crossed as a diamond asynchronously, cutting, mounting over overwrought roots. "There," said Mulch just as one of the four splashed through a puddle of acid rain. "A clearing in the trees. They'll be-easy."
I knelt, drew my glassblade. "Good." The steps halted; rifles adjusted in three of their hands, but the fourth. The fourth sounded different. "Mulch?"
"So you see it. Marvelous. The one they call Drako holds something called a rotary grenade thrower. I've seen them taint their honor, I do. They bring this, the Brimstone, out for when they expunge all other options. They burn House Cren's jungles, House Sol. House Tetra." I caught whiff of dead fangs decomposing; I wish he wouldn't face me when he spat. "How should we proceed, Omnix?"
In my mind's eye I saw a colosseum erupt from the ground, and these four were mine to slaughter before a crowd. "With a warning."
Mulch racked his shot. "I will-spare you the insult of this firearm any further." But much as I despised it, I needed his curse.
"No." I shot a hand out and dared to touch the heat of the barrel, the vines which dangled and wrapped over a spindle at the maw. "You've already sullied your hands. You get one more shot." That stink again; he grimaced.
In order to dispatch a group of this size, I would need their attention turned elsewhere. We took each end of this clearing then; Mulch would signal a perfect diamond, square in the center where I would pounce with an Aezid's bleat. Churning formation, churning stomachs. It wouldn't be long now; one grazed so close, I could sense twigs crack underneath them. Then came time to reel back. And with it came the signal, then the last shot. Then me.
Guns whipping, crying bullets. Mulch was gone, so were the rounds. The one they called Drako soured. "Reina, Roth-visual!" Something bitter, something distinctly like a metal spindle obeyed his order. One of them was scanning with unnatural, heathenous eyes.
"Something just crossed the tremors," one of them answered-couldn't be bothered as to who. But while they conversed, I readied in step to jump, slinking like the serpents.
"Aezids or Almats?" And more wires were crossing.
"Neither, sir." I dropped into the bushes. They were clueless. "Couldn't get a clear read on the fringe." And rage soon claimed this Drako in the presence of the red silk death. He tangled, snapped against its will in one fiery motion. A thunk, followed by explosive fire. Silk burned in ribbons across my sky. It was time to make my move.
I lanced my glassblade through the voices, the burning red; I sliced cleaned through the sternum up. Organs trailed the bonecatcher. Resistance, wild fire as I caught the accursed barrel. The coldness of her face; she was more metal than mortal in the end. Her spindly eyes; I imagined her agony, untainted features well when my blade imploded this one's lungs.
Drako was next. He was enamoured with a fantasy: laying waste to Tenoch single-handedly. But all dreams must face the ultimatum of reality, the do or die of this world we call home. I caught him, galvanized his breathing to stiffen. He followed my leading embrace to my bosom. Poor thing.
"You were a flash in time, infidel. Allow me to save this moment." I never thought it possible for this Drako to drop his gun, but he finally did. All it took was hissing i'qod dragging up the surface of his ribcage. He grunted, wailed when I severed the bond between machine and skin. "In your dying breath, I will allow you one last chance on this day of days." And so there was no mistranslations, I insisted he meet my face at a hair's touch. "What have you done with my Legionite?"
"Wha-what?" Words were spilling out of his chest. "I swear, I don't know what you're talking about. You're the first to pass through since we took this place." He flailed then. Already, he had said too much.
"When? When did your filth mobilize?" Epiphany crawled over my shoulder. "Who let you into Tenoch?"
He hustled away from me, a maddened dog. "I'll never talk!" And unbeknownst to me, he spoke the truth. An arrow bolted over my shoulder and splattered against my plate. Then several more, a volley before the thing plopped. Greaves trodded closer in a pack; the first of their ranks came to me, pheromones distinguishably Almat this time.
"Omnix Tetra." It was Omnix Cren, himself unlocking his bow out of nock position. "I see you've dealt with the rodent problem." Glassblades were sheathing; he carried two Legionites with him, but one moved different from the other. The one on his left was a moving bestiary. Their armor clacked less, meaning pelt-over-net layers, possibly Aezid? Possibly. Their kind are attracted to electromagnetics the force fields produce. I waited for them to come closer.
"You almost scuffed my armor," I said. "Tell your Legionites to aim better next time."
"We've run enough drills," said Cren with insistence; the world was chasing at his back. One of the Legionites took that as a summon to step forward.
"House Sol, at your service. I take it the Blind Fury would do better." I've yet to decide if that was derogatory or not, so I turned back and got a whiff of his musty pelt.
"Since when did we start adopting Sol's mutts?" Yes, I thought then as the Legionite's face twisted, talk more. I implore it. Much as I jested, Cren made no difference in Houses long as they followed his command.
"Legionite Folsom is a gift."
"I'm sure he is quite gifted."
Cren took a deep breath. "He and Taurus are to make the final push against this Rebel cell's attack. I'm afraid this checkpoint was only the beginning."
Finally. Taurus' conquest. I'll make him pay for choosing to fight without his Omnix by his side. I was flustered. Somewhere in my boiling blood, something unraveled my periphery: the end. Blood rivers, the remains of House Cren, the end to all. And just then, Cren managed to my ear and whispered: "Viceroy Dion wishes to collect you from the main tower. She also wishes to speak with you before the Final Purge." He dared closer, our shoulders touching. "It'll be a fine day, for all days."
He parted with an understanding when he let go. For all days, but are we safe from it? For all days, but why celebrate if we are to die with it? I hid these thoughts from the Almat fathers who wore this plate before me.
Bushes shifted slightly; I imagined Mulch, one step out from becoming a Crestfallen ghost watch in awe at his masters. Poor soul. Would I be able to give as much as he did? Could I risk it all like you did?
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