12. Fireside Chat
The walls of the chute skidded past on either side, details like ladders and maintenance hatches disappearing just as fast as they appeared. Kyon had seldom felt the strange sensation of being tugged upwards by air resistance, and it was not one that he wished to repeat any time soon. The further down they went, the warmer (and more noisome) the surrounding atmosphere became, as if they were diving into the stomach of some huge, alien creature – and given the peculiar architecture that the gods favoured, that might not have been all that far off the mark.
An enormous explosion sounded far behind them, causing the walls to shake and backlighting them with a dull orange glow.
"Pferde!" Graf Eisen announced once more, and Vita accelerated, the chute becoming an indistinct blur around them.
"What just happened?" Kyon asked, having to force his mouth open against the roaring wind.
"Left them a present," Vita gasped. "Good news is, should block off their pursuit. Bad news – we've likely got a whole lot of rubble coming after us. Oh, and I really hope you had that titchy gun of yours insured."
He looked back, and immediately wished he hadn't. A wall of dust and assorted debris bore down on them, boiling along the tunnel like steam. Trying to take his mind off it, he turned back to Vita – well, the back of her head, anyway.
"Incidentally, what does 'pferde' mean, exactly? Just curious."
"... 'Horse Speed'," she replied grudgingly. "If you wish to make some smartass remark about it, go right ahead. I might even keep holding onto you afterwards."
"Who, me? Wouldn't dream of it."
They emerged into the drainage system's sump, a huge chamber whose vaulted walls and ceiling had an odd, fleshy appearance to them. Vita veered upwards just in time to avoid both the unhealthy-looking sludge that half-filled the room and the prophesied rubble that had followed them all the way down. Droplets of liquid splattered them as the debris hit the pool, leaving an unpleasant itching, burning sensation where they contacted skin.
The diminutive mage came to a halt near the roof, looking around at the mass of pipes and chutes that fed into the sump. "Which way now, kid?"
"Whichever one looks like it has the least of that gunk flowing through it, I say," Kyon replied from below, desperately trying not to look up for fear of receiving a hammer-based enema.
"Smart choice. How about... this one?"
The indicated tunnel was cracked and age-worn, bearing little evidence of the strange corruption that had infested the rest of the sewer system – or, at least, not the same kind of evidence. As they flew into it, he saw pallid vegetation that coated significant parts of the walls and seemed to move without the assistance of the wind.
After a few dozen metres, the sewer levelled out to a comfortable walking gradient, which Vita duly took advantage of. Kyon was ready this time, and managed to land mostly on his feet. Pleasingly, the sewer water here was merely foul-smelling rather than actively harmful like the stuff in the main sump, though he didn't like the brownish stains it left on the knees of his trousers.
"Looks like another room up ahead," Vita observed.
Said room turned out to be a maintenance station, a brutally functional concrete affair lined with various crude-looking gauges and control systems. There was an enclosed area to one side that apparently contained living quarters for extended stays, whilst the strange-looking runes etched on the floor presumably acted as wards to keep the corruption away. For some reason, said runes reminded Kyon rather of the decoration that had adorned Tzintchi's clothing when he came to visit. The air was cool, especially when compared to the rest of the sewers.
Beside him, Vita rapped the floor with Eisen's pommel in a satisfied manner. "Think we just hit the jackpot. We can hold out here, wait until things die down upstairs, and then make a break for it. Easy."
"Think we might want to check those quarters out, though," the student replied. "This place seems a little too good to be true – I wouldn't be surprised if it had a few nasty surprises lying around."
"Fair point." A sidelong grin. "I'll go in first – may not have the shirt for it anymore, but the hair's about the right colour."
"You're a sci-fi fan, then?" he asked as he followed her in.
She shrugged. "Hayate was a good host, but she was still a ten-year-old to start out with, and not a healthy one at that. Sometimes, we had to provide our own entertainment. You would not believe the size of the DVD library I collected."
They looked around. The little room was dingy, but not uninhabitable. Four folding beds were arranged around the walls, and there was even a primitive-looking radio on one of the raised surfaces. The stove was clearly broken, but there were still a couple of spare tanks of fuel for it. All in all, the place gave the impression of being abandoned, but not too long ago. Perhaps it had been adopted by the new ownership in the earliest days of their stay, before they created their own version to better suit their needs. That would certainly explain the runes.
They opened one of the cupboards, and stared at the food. The food stared back.
It was some time before Kyon spoke. "First order of business, we steal some provisions."
"Agreed," Vita responded, sounding shaken. "Before that, though, we need to settle in. You get the beds ready, I'll secure the site."
She wandered off, leaving him with the daunting challenge of freeing the bunks from a daunting array of catches and straps. He took a quick inventory – everything ached, his clothes were ruined, his arms were wobbling with exhaustion, and on top of it all, he seemed to have the beginnings of a cold.
He set to work, almost losing a few fingers in the process, and soon the beds were, if not pristine, certainly usable. What do you know – that camping trip Haruhi dragged me along for paid off after all.
With that done, all that remained was leaning back on his own bed, sipping brackish tapwater from a cracked mug, and watching as Vita attempted to start a fire using an empty ration tin, assorted vegetation, a generous helping of stove fuel, and, of course, her hammer. Judging by the steady litany of inventive pseudo-Germanic cursing, it wasn't going well.
Eventually, through the simple expedient of banging the first and last components together, she managed to generate sufficient sparks to create a small, smoky, and noxious yet nevertheless welcome blaze. Job done, she walked a short way from their makeshift camp and extended Graf Eisen in front of her.
"Barrier Field, expand," she commanded.
"Gefängnis der Magie," the hammer responded, and a dark sphere pulsed out, giving everything within eyesight a greyish, washed-out tone like an overcast sky minus the sky.
She turned back to Kyon, who had sidled over to the fire and was regarding her with a quizzical look.
"Should keep the little beasties out, and the big ones will make enough noise coming in that we'll know they're coming. Always helps to take a few extra precautions."
She sat next to him, and he passed her a second mug. The light was dim, but he could see that she was trembling ever so slightly.
"Are you all right?"
A rueful smile. "Just remembering, is all. That stuff I said to you, back then... it wasn't something they put in my head. It came from inside, deep within me. There was a part of me that wanted everything they offered, that wanted to kill for the sake of killing, to take Hayate and..."
She trailed off. Instinctively, Kyon put an arm around her shoulders, and wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disconcerted that it was not torn off immediately afterwards.
"Look, I know there's some pretty dark stuff in there. I've done some bad, bad things in my time – and when you've lived as long as I have, that's saying something. It's just that... well, having it all shoved in my face again isn't the most pleasant of experiences. Especially when I thought I'd put it behind me years ago. Was that all a lie? Pretending to be human, being a good little girl, denying my true nature... have I just been delaying the inevitable?"
Amateur psychology, don't fail me now... "Look, Vita, you're not alone with this. Everyone has these dark thoughts – that's why the gods are so fond of turning people with them. They almost got me that way, too. Several times, in fact. Frankly, I'm surprised that that's as bad as it got, given what you've told me about yourself. They're just that, though – thoughts. They're no more your 'true nature' than your fondness for dodgy Sixties shows, your memories of your time with Hayate, or, hell, even your habit of verbally abusing poor, blameless high-schoolers. It's what you act on that matters. That's what makes you who you are. The fact that you're so upset about it should be proof that you're not some sort of monster – I'd be far more worried if you were revelling in the evildoing and complaining about how you had to play nice all the time."
She looked up at him and smiled. He could see tears glistening on her cheeks, and she suddenly looked very little like the living engine of destruction that had broken them out of the Palace's prison wing.
"Thanks, Kyon. I don't know, it's something I'm going to have to think about, but... thanks."
After a brief silence, he retracted his arm. Welcome or not, really seven hundred years old or not, he couldn't help but find something vaguely uncomfortable about hugging an eight-year-old who wasn't a family member for an extended period of time.
"It was weird, though," she said eventually. "Despite all the horrible stuff they did, despite what they tried to get me to do... they were almost being, well, kind to me. It was as if they thought-"
"-they were doing you a favour?" Kyon finished for her. "Yeah, I heard that one before. Guess she wasn't lying about everything, then."
"Who?"
"Maria Vargas. I'd be surprised if you'd heard of her. Nice lady, right until she tried to decapitate me."
Another contemplative pause, which Kyon finally decided to break.
"So who's this Hayate person you keep talking about, then?"
"Long answer or short answer?"
"Short answer."
"She's the girl who made me a person."
"OK, poetic but uninformative. Long answer?"
"Well, you know I mentioned I was a sentient magical program, right?"
"Obliquely, yeah. Hence the centuries-spanning lifespan."
"Bingo. Thing is, I'm not an independent being – well, not entirely, anyway. I'm a defence subroutine of an extremely powerful artefact called the 'Tome of the Night Sky'. Think your basic stereotypical magical grimoire, only it operates more like a technosorcerous computer."
"With you so far."
"Well, the Tome, like most sophisticated artefacts, is pretty much a living being, and like most creatures, it has a distinct life-cycle. It appears somewhere, binds itself to a master, and sends out its guardian programs, the Wolkenritter – that's 'Cloud Knights', in case you were wondering – to harvest magical energy and fill its pages. Once it's complete, it tanks its master up to the gills with power, and they get to play around with it until either they die or the link is otherwise severed. Usually the former, though."
"And Hayate was one of these masters, yes?" Kyon surmised. "Mistresses, I mean."
"It's 'master', technically. The term's gender-neutral, though we mostly just ignore that – even Signum, these days."
"Ah, I see."
"Anyway, yeah, she was. Still is, in fact. Thing was, though, she was a bit different to most of our masters. Usually we get scholars, aspiring warlords, downtrodden wage-slaves... people with something to gain, basically, who wouldn't object to having a magical superweapon at their disposal. This time, though, we ended up with a lonely ten-year-old-orphan. She didn't want us, the Wolkenritter, as spies, bodyguards, or assassins – she just wanted a family. For that matter, so did we. I might say we adopted her, but really it was the other way round. Life was good – for once in our long, long lives, we were happy."
"It didn't last, though, I take it?"
Another sad smile. "Nothing that nice ever does. By that point, you see, the Tome's programming was corrupted. Even its name had changed – we knew it as the Book of Darkness. Instead of empowering Hayate, it slowly drained away her life, manifesting itself as a creeping paralysis of the legs. We grew desperate – we knew she wouldn't want it, but we saw no choice other than to fill the Book, hoping that the power it would grant her might stave off the corruption that was slowly killing her. So we went harvesting."
"Harvesting?"
"Stealing the Linker Cores – the magical energy sources – of other living beings. Mostly, it didn't do permanent damage, just put them in hospital for a bit, but accidents happened. We got careless, attracted the attention of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. They're this big, nebulous organisation, somewhere between an interdimensional police force, a democratic government, and a technosorcerous military academy, though that makes them sound a bit more sinister than they are. Than most of them are, anyway."
"Magical Men in Black, gotcha."
"Something like that. Anyway, they started sending enforcers after us, including a couple of irritating kids called Nanoha Takamachi and Fate Testarossa. We didn't want to listen at first, but they told us more about the Book. As part of it, we were corrupted too, particularly our memories. Not only had we forgotten the Book of Darkness's original name, but we didn't know what it did these days when it was completed. Its secondary self-defence programs had gone into overdrive – once they were fully powered up, they killed our masters, turning them into unstoppable monstrosities that could ravage entire worlds. Even if someone did manage to bring them down, the Book'd just reappear somewhere else, starting the cycle all over again."
Kyon winced. "Ouch. Can't imagine you took that well."
"You can say that again. Anyway, things got complicated. One of the Bureau's top brass had got it into his head that he'd found a way to stop the Book once and for all, and deliberately triggered its activation to put his plan into action. Luckily for us, their ground crew, particularly the two little punks I mentioned earlier, weren't exactly sold on the idea. They dealt with the physical aspect, while Hayate – get this – managed to talk the Book down. I'll repeat that in case you missed it; little orphan girl gets absorbed by centuries-old cosmic horror and persuades it to stop." Her face glowed with remembered pride.
"So long story short, we and the TSAB detachment managed to excise the corrupted code, restoring Hayate to full health and granting her the full power of the Tome of the Night Sky. It wasn't easy, and the Tome's central personality had to sacrifice herself in order to keep the damned thing from respawning, but it was pretty much a happy ending to the whole mess. Hayate joined the Bureau's military branch a few years later, and started accruing promotions like nobody's business. We, of course, were with her every step of the way. Matter of fact, she was running the operation when I got captured. That's why I need to escape – I know she'll be coming back for me, and I don't want these devious bastards luring her into a trap."
She glanced at Kyon.
"What about you, kid? Got anyone waiting for you back home?"
"Several people, actually," he replied. "It's a long story, though, and I'm not really the narrator-type. Tell you what – I'll give you the whole thing tomorrow."
"I'll hold you to that," she replied mock-seriously. "Come on, then – let's see what sort of mess you made of the beds."
"Can't be any worse than your fire."
"Hey, I got it lit in the end, didn't I?"
"If by 'got it lit' you mean 'created the single most reliable source of lung cancer in the hemisphere', then I'd have to say yes, yes you did. Seriously, what did you put in that thing?"
"Oh, so you think you could do any better?"
"Vita, I think there are species of insect that could do better."
"Look, do you want this hammer rammed up your ass?"
"Pff, that's your solution to everything. Indicates deeply-rooted Freudian issues, I'm sure."
"Oh, shut it."
They continued bickering amiably all the way back to the living quarters, where no sooner had Vita gone through the door than she dived onto the nearest bed and fell asleep, not even bothering with the sheets.
Kyon studied her a moment. Sleeping, she really did look like a child. He took off his jacket and pulled it over her, creating a makeshift blanket. That done, he returned to his own bed, got in, and closed his eyes. Soon he too was asleep.
The nightmares returned, but he'd been expecting them.
***
Outside the quarters, a slight gust of wind whispered through the maintenance section. It seemed to pause over the runes on the floor, creating an almost-imperceptible flicker of light that left them superficially unchanged, but a hypothetical observer who had been there to watch the transition would have noticed that something was missing from the contorted inscriptions afterwards.
One by one, the wards against entropy and disease were deactivated. The wind departed, carrying the faint echoes of a god's laughter.
Author's Notes: Well, I'm afraid that's the last we'll be seeing of Kyon and Vita for a little while. Make no mistake, I (and the rest of the cast) haven't forgotten them, and they will be making a reappearance, but for now, their part in this story is done.
So this chapter was a bit of a change in pace. How am I doing on the various characters and their interactions with each other so far, would you say? Again, feedback always welcome.
See you next week, when we will be encountering hikers, assassins, and blowfish alternatives as the dimensional crisis escalates yet further.
