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Chapter 3 – Virtue
My name is Terry Gilchrist and, right now, I'm alive.
In a few weeks... Well, let's just say no one's making any promises, but I'm here now and I'm not out of tomorrows quite yet.
I haven't thought much about where 'here' is. Maybe I would, if it stayed the same long enough for me to pay attention, but every time it's something new. It was just the smell at first, and when I asked they told me it's just something we do, 'the brain conjures a familiar scent to put itself at ease', but next time I went under I closed my eyes and I was there on the field. All I saw were faceless shapes kicking a ball around but the smell, fresh-cut grass and sweat, I'd know that anywhere. It was my life, once.
It's so much more than that now.
I've rescued slaves and freed damsels in distress, toppled evil kings and played poker with dragons, danced under the stars and ran away from angry mobs and sometimes I just ran. I'd gone without running for so long it felt like part of me died, but it all came rushing back.
Here is where I'm whole. Here is where I matter, where I never falter, where there's always something over the next hill and I'm always strong enough to face it. Here's where I can be me when it hurts too much to think or when I need to see something besides pity in a face, when I need a place that's mine.
Here's where I go when I'm not, and it's better every time.
Today was a good day. I'm having more good days than bad, lately. More time here, less time... it's just been flashes, of light and pain. But today was a good day. I was here, the trees were tall and smelled like trees, not like the other place. The smells aren't right in dreams, you ever notice that? That's how I know this is real.
Today there was a girl. A cute little thing, I'd have liked her back when I went to school. Maybe she'd have liked me, too, but then he came along and tried to take her from me. He didn't understand. He didn't get that all of this was mine.
What, you think I'd come here this much and not pick up a few things?
It's easy to make the world do what you want. You just have to let it know and keep pushing, keep staring it down until it gives in. Even the tricky things. It always does when it's me asking.
So when that kid made me look like an idiot in front of the only girl in the world, I changed. I pulled in the fabric of the world around me into wings, an exoskeleton, slashing chitinous scythes. The air fills with a harsh buzz and I'm something else, something hungry and loud and large and I'm coming for him.
He tries to be a hero, to send us off (because of course I'm still there, leaving an echo of me is nothing when all the world is mine), and they run, her and 'me', and I, I'm not anymore, a stumbling cloud of compound eyes and thoracic plates, all slaver and need, and, damn it, I—damn it—I lunge.
The look in his eyes. He didn't know. He didn't know what he had done as I went for his throat and there was nothing in his eyes but fear. No guilt, no shame, no resignation, no spark of anything but terror.
He hasn't moved.
I can't move.
I don't think my heart's ever beat this fast before. My body's primed to do something, anything, surging with whatever chemicals bodies save for times like this, but I can't move and I don't know what to do.
Why is it waiting? Doesn't it know there's nothing up my sleeve? Am I just so fucking amusing as I stand here and squirm that it—
Oh.
It's coming.
I throw myself to the side but not fast enough, not far enough, it's there before I can even blink, slashing and hungry but there's something in the air. It's a flash of cold and I'm looking through fog and then there are teeth clamped down and frost writes itself across the blade in elaborate cursive curlicues and I am not dead.
I am not dead. I am alive, in fact, and running, though I keep turning my head to make sure I didn't lose my mind. The wolf, the one from before, it just came together from the air and it's fighting that thing... For me? Its fur swirls with blue and grey. Ice forms on whatever it touches. It's fighting for me.
Hell, it's actually winning.
The thing's still alive, though it's moving slower and full of scars. My wolf is faster but tiring; its ears perk up and nostrils flare just as the thing pulls back for one last swing. My wolf looks at me, no, above me, and sublimates into a cloud that the scythe passes through harmlessly before he disappears completely. I'm alone again now and it sees me, it's still hungry, but I hear something else on the wind.
And then the sky is alive. They drop like stones but land feather-softly; one, three, ten, until they fill the space between the trees. They're all the same but I don't want to look at them, I don't want to be here, I want to be gone.
They are still. The wind rustles quills and tiny gripping hairs, brushes across membranous wings, but there is no other sound until they move and then only the rapid thrumming of their flight.
I try to look away but there is no away, everywhere I look is more of them, more monsters the shape of men, so I look down and think about stopping the bile from bubbling up out of my throat instead of what their eyes looked like or the way their limbs bent, what they had instead of mouths.
I stare at the ground, open-mouthed and slack-jawed, because it is the only thing that fits into my mind. My wolf, or, or whatever it was is gone, and I'm here and trapped and I don't—what can I—Something cracks and my gaze snaps upwards. My wolf is gone, yes, but the thing it fought is still fighting. It was hurt, frost still crawled across its wounds, but I could see its eyes: it didn't give a shit. Quickly, far faster than it had moved before, it snapped two of them from the sky in gouts of yellow-white ichor. Parts of one dripped to the ground. Stray legs vanished between its fangs.
It's fast but they're faster, and there are more of them. For every one it takes down, there are three behind it, two above, another coming in from the side. It only has so many limbs, and as it swings again, they swarm it, the scythe deadened in a swarm of buzzing wings, they pull and...
It's gone. It's just gone. They're holding the blade but the rest of it shattered into the air and that blond boy is left stumbling in its place. I'm sure I felt something, shouted something, but I was beyond surprise. I remember feeling like I wasn't even there, that it was unreal, dreaming, out of my hands.
I felt one. It rubbed against me and before I could even think I was shoving the knife I didn't even remember I had into its—I don't know, chest? Thorax? Heart?—again and again, it cracked and oozed and cut into my hand but I didn't stop until it fell backward on its first set of knees, my own blood dripping down after it.
They had all stopped. They were all staring. I was the center and everything was still. In a story I'd have said something clever, offered some witty retort and brandished my blade, made like a typical action hero and took them all on with nothing but spunk and bravery.
I didn't. I stood still and kept silent, even as the blond boy shouted at me, called me a coward and far fouler things. I was frozen. He was right.
They left.
In the warm heart of the cliff, the drones massed, bearing a gift for their master. The walls beat with their hearts, pulsed with their mind, and as long as they were there they felt... were made to feel... a sense of togetherness, parts close to being whole.
Something green gleamed in the chamber's far wall. Responding to some unseeable signal, one moved, gripping an outcropping with its talons and pulling it apart. The naked torso of a boy flopped forward, pale from lack of sun. It—he—hung from the wall by his arms, his elbows vanishing into it. His red hair hung long and limp around his face, but his green eyes were bright.
"Bring it here," he half-whispered, his voice rusty with disuse.
It took two of three of them to lift it, the blade they had severed from the beast they fought, still scarred with bite-marks and pockmarked from cold. They held it before him, turning it as he took it all in, standing faithfully by as his eyes welled with tears, as his throat thickened with grief.
"Matt...?"
A/N: So I think I'm just going to pretend this didn't take me over a year to get right, if that's alright with you. Plans for this remain ridiculously massive and I have no intention of stopping. Going very slow... perhaps. Oh, and I'm very sorry for the mid-chapter POV change. Hopefully it isn't too confusing. While POVs will be changing all over the place, I'll try to stop it from happening mid-chapter in the future, but no guarantees.
More to come soon probably maybe hopefully. As always, I'll answer questions unless they're spoilerrific.
~01/24/13