The last part of Chapter 10, finally. Things should calm down after this... Although I doubt I'll be able to get another chapter up for quite a while.
By the way, I know all Rayman fans have their own ideas about the relationships of the characters and some might not like what they see in this chapter. I'm sorry, kinda, but, well, I have my ideas too. Bear with me!
Rayman, Ly © UbiSoft Entertainment
The rest © me, who else.
Chapter 10: The Descent
Part 4: Hell
He opened the door of his cabin. It was empty. Thank the gods for one small mercy. The faint greenish lighting by the bathroom was visible, and without turning on any other light he trudged across the floor towards the bed. On the way there, unthinkingly, like a snake tearing out of an old skin he threw off his hat, boots, sword, gun, jacket, vest, even his shirt, leaving on only the black bodysuit that covered his trunk. At which point he reached the bed and flung himself onto it face down. For a time he lay still, hardly breathing, his eyes open. Then his eyes closed.
In darkness, held on his back, held motionless, white fire running through him, suffocating- He plunges through the night forest into the shadows between the trees, gasping for breath, low-hanging branches like more shadows turned solid to strike his face, even his home territory turning against him. The heavy clumping footsteps too close behind, converging on both sides, growling mechanical voices - he tears through the underbrush, the darkness seared now and again by ugly light as weapons fire, he sprints ahead, making for the edge of the forest, the cliff, they can't follow him over the cliff. A red beam explodes in a massive tree ahead, the way it tore into the two friends beside him - the tree groans, topples burning across his path - he leaps over it, somersaulting through the flames, runs -
They've dared to gather at last, a surreptitious meeting in the mountains in a small clearing sheltered by big rocks, the few who are left, leaders of the resistance, speaking in low voices, wary. There's little of help to say, but it heartens them to see each other, to know who is still alive - along with the despair of seeing who isn't.
He speaks to them all soothingly, smiling, they embrace each other, they exchange what information they have, none of it is good. Which villages the damnable robots have overwhelmed, what they've plundered, who they've captured. Who haven't they captured?
Ly... they've captured Ly. They look at him apprehensively as he hears this for the first time. He's quiet for a moment. Then brushes it aside.
Yes, that's bad news, just when you thought the news couldn't get any worse.
The energy beams when they hit are like enormous fists, bigger than his body, as if swung by a team of giants; they smash the breath out of him, hit him again before he can take another, knock him halfway down, slam him back as he starts up again, hit him again, pound him back against the rocky face of the cliff, there's nowhere to go, he's flailing, suffocating, he lunges again into that wall of red fire -
In the mountains, as night falls, the meeting is ambushed - without warning, a barrage of energy shots, two friends smashed instantly, the screams of others wounded -
He, firing back with his own energy shots, leaps up and flees, shooting, yelling, drawing the pursuit -
Scrambling through the rocks, splashing through a shallow stream into the forest, the sight of his friends' deaths still before his eyes, hearing the heavy feet after him, seeing the blasts striking around him - the desperation, the weariness, the fury.
Flinging himself over the edge of the vertical cliff, first in free fall, then he catches himself with the helicopter and descends slowly. Looking down, he sees converging lights on the ground far below, the enemy, fifty or more of them, it's a trap, they're going to pin him against the mountain. They've finally managed to organize... A white net of spotlights closes round him as he descends. He struggles to move further out, to land beyond the pincer closing in on him, but he's moving too slowly and the circle is too wide, and even turning off the helicopter briefly and dropping irregularly, he can't get out of their sight for more than a moment. The strong lights dazzle his eyes; blasts erupt out of the whiteness, jolting him, he fires blindly back as he descends, blue and red and gold and green energy shots sizzling in both directions. Into the glare he shoots; his lips draw back in a dark grin at a spectacular explosion below. Too many of them, far too many... but there will be less by the time they get him, there'll be a lot less of them. The unyielding metal hand strokes his chin, caressing the back of his head, forcing his face upward to meet yellow eyes that glow out of a black face - a touch like acid, like fire - his eyesight darkens -
Fixed in place as if by a hundred metal hands, he can't twitch, he can't breathe, he can only open his eyes and see nothing... utterly disoriented, no way to know which way he faces, what is touching him, he has no sensation anymore, no idea where his extremities are or if he even still has them... his body defined only by the fire running through it.
And it swells, it swells up as if he were transformed into a blazing ghost, invisible but huge, cramming up against the inside of the box, bursting out into infinity, into an endless, featureless, airless black void made of searing white pain -
His eyes opened with a start. He choked in a breath. Then lay still, staring into the darkness, listening to himself breathe.
The room was quiet, soundless except for his own hard breaths. He turned his head a little.
And realized abruptly that he was on his back, his head pulled stiffly up, his hands and feet frozen in the position they'd been held in, in the -
He moaned, his body jerked, he rolled over, involuntarily his hands grabbed onto the sheet and blanket to hold him in place, on his front, on his front, as if those feeble bits of cloth could resist that massive force turning him back.
The light blue eyes in that battered human face that had fixed on him, uncomprehending. Too stunned, too overwhelmed even to accuse. The grey eyes in a child's face. The delicate little black statue. The white flower... The huddled, faceless, colourless shapes, clinging together: prisoners, still in shock from seeing friends and family die, not knowing what came next, not knowing how long this torment of waiting would last. Women, children... the timeless fate of women and children, so seldom a quick clean death for them.
He shut his eyes. A heavy wave of sleep towed him back under. Asleep, from time to time he still moaned.
The door creaked open and she slipped into the cabin. There was only the faint greenish emergency lighting, and she waited while her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
There he was sprawled on the bed on his stomach, not covered against the chill, motionless. For him not to have woken when she came in, he must have been far past exhaustion. No wonder - he had hardly slept for days now. And the first day of an invasion, so much hard work...
Elly moved softly across the room towards the bed. Picking up his things that were strewn over the floor, as though they'd run off him like water as he went towards the bed. She laid his clothes and weapons on a chair. Yes, he must have been very tired, it wasn't like him to be so careless.
As she approached him, she could dimly make out his face. The springy yellow hair, moving faintly with his breathing, the weak light playing on it. The large, tightly closed eyes, the tense, battered face. It was like seeing him for the first time all over again, he had looked just like that. He was wearing only the black bodysuit that covered his trunk, but she could almost see that old pink bathrobe swathed around him.
So much like the way he'd been. The palpable, nearly physical anguish that clung around him, that permeated the room, the sorrow that went through her bones like radiation. She was startled, seeing for the first time how much she herself had changed. Back then, it had taken hold of her without her awareness. She'd responded automatically to a state, a sensation, that she couldn't name, couldn't understand, and couldn't distinguish from her own.
Now she could look at him and perceive the sorrow in him, quite separate from what she felt. And she could understand that she felt, on her own account, for her own reasons, sorrow... How sharply, suddenly, she did feel it. How forcefully the sight of him moved her. How much she ... how much she missed him.
He shifted a little on the bed, not waking, he made a slight sound. The anguish gripped her by the throat. Was he hurt? There was so much pain in his motion, in the sound. He looked so defeated.
Almost without volition, like the first time, she stretched out a hand to touch him, his outstretched hand. "Rayman," she murmured.
He shot off the bed like a rocket, slamming her to the floor. Then froze, his hands gripping her shoulder and neck. She hadn't even managed to cry out. She lay still, the side of her face pressed to the floor, her pale eye on him like a trapped animal's. A tremor went through him, visibly.
He got up. He picked up her limp body - despite her momentary resistive jerk. He put her on the bed. Then he went to the galley and got a wet cloth. He returned and laid it on her temple over the bruise that was already starting to form.
Her eyes were still on him. Sitting down on the bed beside her, he averted his own gaze; he pressed the cold cloth gently against her head.
After a moment, she brushed the cloth and his hand away and sat up. She swayed a little, putting a hand to her head. Then she got off the bed. She took a few steps, bent to pick up her fallen cloak. Silently she wrapped it around herself.
He was still sitting on the bed, his head lowered.
"I'm not supposed to be here," she said. "I came to see if you needed anything."
He raised his head a little but didn't quite look at her. "Elly," he said, in a low, hoarse voice. "Elly ... Please... That name. You mustn't use that name."
Her sombre eyes on him. "Use that name?" she said quietly. "Never again." She went out the door.
He remained where he was for some time, eyes still lowered. Then he sank onto the bed, pulled a blanket over himself. He lay for a while blinking in the darkness. Then gradually, he was pulled back under, dragged down again into the black.
She's gone, she's gone, each soft footstep another knife into his paralyzed frame. If he could run after her, bring her back... but he's frozen, he can't move. A fierce grip holding him ...
He stirs. His head and body throbbing with the aftereffects of the energy blasts ... those final few minutes when he had been downed, when the pincer had closed in on him, all of them firing, firing, firing... when he had finally crumbled into that enveloping hell of red and gold flame, when he'd known that he was dead.
And with a jolt, he grasps he's alive. Lying face down in the dirt, blind ... big metal feet clumping past nearby, the sounds of prisoners' voices, captors'... he can't more than twitch ... his cheek pressed into the dust ... something covering his eyes ... his feet strapped uncomfortably, awkwardly against his body... his hands - somewhere ... Inconceivably, they've taken him alive. For the first time since the start of that long, ghastly war, panic lurches in him. Why would they take him alive?
He locates his hands, bound behind him, pressed hard together and crushed against his back. A solid, tight constriction around his body, the distasteful twang of metal, his hands compressed under it somehow.
He can't tell how strong the bonds are. Weak as he is, he lets off a small experimental shot from one hand - and chokes. Strangling on a scream, trembling, in shock. The energy not only lacerated his hands, their palms pressed tightly together, but seared through the metal band around his waist like a laser cutting him in half.
He's failed, he's failed so utterly... His people with no one to turn to now. They'll go on fighting, bravely, heartbreakingly, and one by one they will be taken, all of them, all. What's the use to say he did everything he could? It wasn't enough.
He clenches his teeth. Gathering what's left of his strength, he begins to build up in each hand an energy charge, the strongest he can muster. The two charges repel each other, vibrating his trapped hands hard in their bonds, shaking his whole body, tightening like a knot of fire the band around him, and raking his back with whitehot discharges like sheet lightning. Either he'll blast himself free, forcing the guards to cut him down, or the blast itself will kill him. Either way. What does he face otherwise? And what will he have to see done to others because of his failure, all because he failed them, he failed.
His teeth clattering now with the vibration of his body, the charges burning, flaring, slipping in his hands, he can't hold them, the metal around his hands is searing hot, his body is a leaf in a vortex of fire, he can't hold on, a flash of terror, this will kill him, he can't hold on -
It snatched his small trunk up in its massive claws, plunged the two long fiery blades of its thumbs together through the white circle on his black body, ripped him apart
as he spat into its sulfurous face, "They're still free! They're still free! They're still free!"
and fell headlong into the inferno
The meadow was brilliant green, scattered with tufts of shimmering, gemlike flowers. At the edge of the woods he stood on the grass, looking up into the soft white and blue of the sky, pearl and opal and aquamarine. The suns clasped him in their golden hands, caressing him with such a joy, such a relief of gentle warmth that he closed his eyes and lowered his head, almost in tears.
Then thump, he was felled by a startling force, pinned to the ground. He flailed with his hands and feet, his head muffled by a unseen weight. But though half-choked, he laughed; he heard a light, tumbling, echoey laughter caroming along with his.
He got hold of her tail and yanked. A protesting squeal, he felt momentary claws in his hand. Ouch! He laughed again.
With a rush he flung his feet and lower body upwards, somersaulted backwards, bowling her off his head, and he had hold of her now, a writhing sinuous bundle he could scarcely keep a grip on. They tumbled over and over on the grassy hill. Then she broke free, bolted off on all fours into the woods, flexible as a squirrel, bushy tail bouncing behind her. He surged after.
They chased back and forth through the tree trunks, the foliage and fallen branches, doubling back on one another, reversing the direction of pursuit, one bursting out from behind a tree and startling the other one into the air, one launching a kamikaze leap from a low branch and barely missing, both lunging at once from concealment, smacking into each other and rolling away stunned and laughing deliriously. At last, he tackled her at the edge of the forest, made a flying pounce, missed, ran her down in the meadow, caught hold of her - seizing a powerfully kicking foot as she leaped away. He dragged her back, snatched her up, staggered to his feet with her struggling body clamped in his hands.
She stopped struggling. They looked at each other. Then she began to laugh at him - she was so much taller that, as he held her on her back against his chest, he could scarcely keep her feet from touching the ground. He grinned at her wickedly and tossed her into the air. She shrieked. He caught her as she fell, in a strong grip. Her eyes flared, she clawed at him again, and then yelped; his hands had flashed momentarily with stinging heat. She raised a hand, a spark of energy forming in it. Then her gaze softened. She smacked his face instead.
He drew her closer, smiling; gently nuzzled her cheek. And she held still, pressing her cheek a little against him.
For a time they didn't move, only hung there, suspended, eyes closed, the suns' hands enfolding them both.
Then he was running over the grass with her in his hands, her body jouncing with his short rapid steps while she clung frantically to his head. He ran to the other side of the meadow, where there was another patch of forest and the cliffs arose. There was a little overhang of rock, shaded by small trees and bushes, a place where he often slept when tramping alone through the woods at night. He laid her down there on the soft loam. She didn't let go of him until she had dragged him down to lie at her side.
He put a hand to her hair, softly brushed away a few caught twigs and leaves. Her large green almond-shaped eyes sunlike shone into him, lighting up every corner of his soul with bright, dappled, living radiance... The shifting shadows, translucent green leaves, the forests and lakes, the sky and clouds, the grasses and flowers and young dancing things of his world were all contained within those eyes, and the suns; the two suns, the twin moons, every glittering star.
He stroked her pointed ear just lightly with his finger. She closed her eyes, rubbing her head catlike against his hand; a deep, soft purring pulsating in her chest.
"Ly," he breathed. "Ly."
Her eyes turned towards him. Her lips parted, smiling -
And he was aflame with terror. In her innocence she was going to say it, that word, that name that would sear through his body like a blazing sword. Those eyes on him, they would reach down though his eyes, see what he'd become, understand, know -
He covered his face, the blow struck like a giant fist, shattered him into shards of burning ice.
He was face down on the floor, beside the bed, on the hard, freezing cold wood. For a moment he stared around wildly, completely unable to grasp where he was. Where he'd been. How -
Her eyes. Those green eyes turning towards him, immense as the forest, the sea. He moaned silently, squeezed shut his own eyes, buried them behind his fists. The eyes kept gazing at him, they wouldn't close, he couldn't stop seeing them, and no matter how he writhed away, their steady, silent regard never left him.
He could only repeat over and over like a magic incantation, a prayer, He's dead. He's dead. There's nothing there, he's gone, you can't find him, he's dead. Even so, it was a long while before those quiet green eyes finally lowered, finally looked sadly away, finally shut their warm light and abandoned him to the dark.
Where he still lay on the floor, shaking a little with cold. With more than cold.
As if he could forget. Still Guardian of his planet, still. The last person anybody who'd known him as a child or youth would have thought of. Imagine, that clown, that dreamer, that infuriating practical joker, the guy who never let a serious word out of his mouth if he could help it - Guardian? And true enough, if it had been up to him he'd rather have spent his life snoozing in a hammock, playing frivolous games, roaming through the shadow-filled, shifting embrace of the forests.
The green jewelled planet, Ly's world. Whatever, whoever he was now, he was still all the guardian it had. There was never more than one in a generation. The duty he'd taken on with so much reluctance.
He'd always known in his depths he had the capacity, however hidden, to be Guardian. That he was capable of that utter stubbornness, that tenacity, that refusal to do anything but win. As well as far too large a share of the impulsiveness and recklessness that went with it... he was just wayward Rayman, nobody special, and there must be somebody else out there who was the real Guardian, the right person, the person who wanted to do it. Someone worthy, someone without his flaws, someone who'd be good at it. But as he'd watched from the sidelines, waiting with growing unease, that place had persistently stayed empty, the right person refused to turn up.
A Guardian could not be chosen or assigned, he could only choose himself - or herself. Naturally there was always a pack of aspirants eager for that role, that fame, that status; but when they came close to the reality they finally began to get a hazy clue of what he himself had always seen with hard vividness, what he had been born knowing, and one by one they fell away. That the job was impossible, too big for anybody; nobody could do it. In the end, he was the one they all had to settle for, because he was the one who could see the task in all its grim magnitude, flee it in completely sincere horror, and yet in the end accept it because ... well, somebody had to.
And he was still, as best he could, in the midst of all his failures, he was still doing it. But now without the love, the understanding, the help, or the forgiveness of his people. Without even their knowledge.
Oh god. His world. His home. His friends. Ly ... The "natives" of the planet they were on now. The boxes. Elly... Elly. Not for the first time since it had all begun, a scream welled up inside him, he clenched it back.
No scream. Ly would hear. She would find him. Then she would know, and he would - break.
What right did he have to scream? He had the right to lie in the harsh embrace of the freezing floor, he'd earned that much. He had the right to wear Piranha like a metal straitjacket. A cage, a prison, a punishment; a torture device and life support system all in one.
Like a robot, like a substitute for a living being, Piranha could perform the actions to fulfill Rayman's contract. If the suffering of the lost thing inside it gave pleasure to Anaconda... that was part of the bargain, too, wasn't it? Though he hadn't grasped that until today. But of course it was.
He lay still, his cheek on the cold floor, watching impassively the unrolling of his future. He had survived torture before. He could endure.
Endure. For a lifetime? What if - Could he become an Anaconda? Living this life, playing this role, forcing himself into intolerable act after act until at last he could tolerate such acts, while his resentment at his own pain, his rage at all he saw and couldn't change, his fury at his own crimes gradually turned him against all other beings; until the poisonous hatred corroding his spirit ate away what life was left in him - could he at last become another Anaconda?
Quietly he growled. If the little spitfire, the ghost that chained him, the real source of his torture, was snuffed out at last, if the machine was set free ... then may the gods help Anaconda. The Boss would find out what kind of fire he'd been playing with. No god, no demon would be enough to help Anaconda then.
Or anything else in Piranha's path. Nothing would be safe; nothing anywhere. Not even- He took a long breath. Did he really know what kind of fire he was playing with, himself, did he really know?
Lying on the freezing floor, laying his head wearily against the bed's cold metal leg, he shut his eyes and waited.
[End of Chapter 10]