The Sound of the Furies

In dubio, et scient quia ego Dominus.

Darkness. All he could see was darkness.

It was a retching, reaching demon, stretching it's gnarled and clawed hands towards his heart with a hunger, a will that was not human. He felt it wrapping itself around him. He didn't know what he could do, how he could fight it off. Steel had failed him, the darkness gave no care for it's strength. His weapons had failed him, laser and bullet were one and the same to the darkness. His own body had failed him, it was vessel for the darkness. Each breath he took he let it in; each thought he made more of it's insipid thirst infused itself into his very being. His bones were darkening, his muscles were waning, turning cold and dead within him. His blood froze in his veins when the darkness touched them, he could feel his body dying. Then it found his heart, still beating, still pumping hard and fast and strong—it was all it knew, all it could do. That was enough for the darkness. It reached an inky tendril gently towards it, quivering with anticipation, its vile sickness spread as it made its inching way towards death. A gentle touch, an agonizing pain.

He awoke chocking off a scream.

He was alone in his chambers. It was dark and cold from the predawn chill. He flipped on a light, was greeted by his power armor looming over him. Its hunched, empty figure The eyes seemed to be staring at him. He threw the blanket over it.

His body felt weak as he made his slow way towards the water basin. Cracks and pops heralding each movement of his joints. He splashed water on his face. Drank. His throat was dry and burning. Outside a bird was taking off, slashing the air with its blades and stirring the world into motion. He had become accustomed to the sound—he heard it most every night and all day. The Brotherhood never sleeps. Only rests. Someone had told him that once, he could no longer say who. On his night stand there was a stack of battle reports and assignments. He took them up, sat back down on his bed and read through them.

They were all much the same as always. Squads pushing in from the east and west had encountered raider resistance, Gunners and other such nuisances. There was a purge headed by Paladin Hortense going on somewhere nearer the Jersey Coast. And of course there was the request.

It came each week almost without fail to every paladin in the order. It was a simple thing, a letter wrapped in protective leather with the seal of the holy sword. He read it, as he always did. It was the same, nearly to the letter.

Most honored Paladin, it read in a flowing script that he knew must have been a scribe's. It has been thirty nine years since Knight Caladan and his noble retinue first made their journey into the wastes in search for the son of the Angel Arthur Maxson, blessed be His name. As of yet there has been little sign of the Lost Son, save rumors and here say by the locals. We are low on spirits and low on supplies. The voyage across the blasted lands has taken its toll on our men. Knight Caladan wishes resupply and aide from you, his noble brothers and sisters. He calls for this in the name of Arthur and all His fathers.

It was signed Knight Commander Caladan of the Citadel. He balled it up, threw it in a corner.

"Why did you do that?" a voice inside him asked.

"Because there's no point." he told it, and went back to reading.

He had long forgotten the search for the Lost Son. After thirty years Hugh was either dead or wanted nothing to do with the Brotherhood. Caladan doesn't think so, apparently.

"What do you think, Costain?" the voice nagged.

He shook his head.

Battle reports, casualties and death tolls on both sides flew by his eyes faster than he could read them. It didn't seem to matter. He put them back on the night stand, started to clean his weaponry. Sleep wasn't going to come back to him, he knew that, so he might as well ready himself.

Already he could hear the canticle rising up out of the old statue. He wondered who was singing. It was low and tired, as if to echo the slow coming of the sun. Benedictus Maxson, quem ostendit viam ferro. He heard it, almost uttered it himself.

"Do you like my song, Costain?"

"Shut up."

"I think it's rather nice. If only it wasn't about me. I could actually enjoy it. Are you listening Costain? Look at me when I'm speaking to you!"

Suddenly he was back at the Airport, his drill master barking orders at him in his gruff, tortured voice. "You will look at me when I'm talking to you, soldier!" he shrieked.

"Yes, commander!"

The smack came as a shock, even though he was expecting it. A servo augmented prosthetic hand whacked him across the face and he lost his feet. Coughing and writhing in the dirt, the drill master leaned an inch from his face. His terrible breath overwhelming him. "You pitiful sack of shit! I want nothing to do with you waster piece of crap! You are nothing to me, do you understand that?" he kicked him hard in the stomach. "Do you?"

"Yes, sir." he said between coughs. His fellow trainees trying not to watch. Hoping they weren't next.

"You're all scum to me! Everyone of you! Fuck! Why did they give me green waster idiots when I asked for brothers of steel! None of you are worthy of the honor of knight, most of you will be lancers—and I pity the men that have to fly in that damn virtibird!" he spat a bloody of gobbet of phlegm in Costain's face. "Get up, swine."

He struggled to his feet, a steady line of blood trickling out of his mouth. He saluted his commander. "Thank you, sir." blood spat out of him with each word. But he was smiling.

The next six months was a terrible gauntlet of torture. Standard knight training might last more than two years, in that time a group of sixty or eighty trainees might become less then ten or eight. In Costain's there was only four. Most went to lancer training aboard the Prydwen, others were sent out with broken legs or on left on their own power. The four that remained were either the best or most determined. He could remember no names, but the face of each of them was forever etched onto the fabric of his mind. They were his closest friends, his bitterest of rivals, the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

Though his body was bruised and broken each day, and at times he felt that his heart was going to explode in his chest, he saw the honor, the duty that he was going to fulfil—what he was fulfilling with each bloody nose and broken bone. He loved every minute of it. It wasn't till he had learned everything the master could teach him, had set to muscle and instinct the feel of blade and rifle, the love and warmth that battle brought in his soul, was he allowed to wear his armor.

It was a dark day, cold and wet in a light radioactive rain. Winter was slowly making its dark, looming approach over the Glowing Sea, bringing with it the hell storms he had know all his life. The drill master came in his finest. He looked a mountain as he made his slow way into the training yard, his helmet in his hands, a rifle in the other. Behind a group of knights were wheeling out four tall, cloaked figure. He met his meager group with a spit, said, "It has come to this. After months of whipping you waster scum into something resembling a brother and now I have to do this. Know that the only reason you're even going to see these suits is because the elder say's it's time and his word is law. So, saw hello to your power armor."

The knights flew off the sheets, revealing great armored suits, freshly oiled and cleaned. Behind him some of the older knights were laughing at the drill master's dramatics but Costain saw nothing strange in it. He walked towards it, reached out to touch it. The drill master smacked him with the slightest of taps against his check and it took all his strength not to fall to his feet. He spat blood.

"Not yet, you heathen dog!" the master shrieked. "You've yet to earn that, boy."

"You remember that day, don't you, soldier?" Arthur's voice was a brightness in the stillness of the predawn. Costain did all he could to ignore it.

The elder's ghost sat on a bench near the paladin's armor, leaning on his knees and watching his soldier with clear, cold eyes. "Do you fear me, Costain? Is there some reason that 'the Angel' makes you feel shame? Don't ignore me, paladin."

"You're not here." he told himself, not looking back. "You're dead. Been dead for thirty years."

"But gods never die, brother. Or have you forgotten who those people sing to day and night. Whose name knight after knight, brother after brother has held on his lips as he rushed into certain death. In whose name not one but three wars are being waged. Whose son is lost."

"No. This is madness. I'm going mad..."

Arthur laughed, walked to Costain's old armor. He rubbed a dark hand over the scars and patches that covered its body. The steel, though it was old and the paint was old and malfunctioning, it was still strong and powerful. The filtration system was at least three generations obsolete by now, the servos were stiff and strange, the strength augmenters, the sensorium and HUD set into the joints and helm were bound to failing—mostly when he needed them the most. "This suit is unacceptable, soldier. Look at it! You haven't been doing your duty in upkeep here, Costain. Why is that?"

"No reason. It works as it needs to. No more, no less." you should know that, since this is just a hallucination.

"I am not a hallucination." Arthur said with all honesty. The shade was at least convinced of his own being. More so than Costain seemed at that point. "Tell me, are you afraid of the new suits? Do their new technologies scare you? Or is it what they represent that frightens you, paladin?"

"Not at all. There's just no point in changing it. That's it. Now go away."

"You can't get rid of me that easily."

Costain threw a rag behind him. When he looked back he was alone, and someone was knocking on his door. "Paladin! Paladin!" the caller shouted at him, banging loud as he could.

Barnabas. He knew that little voice better than any other. Raising, he tried to ignore the intense pops and cracks that rang out from his joints as he opened the door. Barnabas was sweating in his dirty, wrinkled uniform, panting as he knelt and held up a sealed scroll. "Orders from the elder, Paladin."

Costain sighed at the ceremony. Took the scroll from his young squire's hand, "On your feet, son. And go eat something, you look famished."

Barnabas looked concerned. "Sir?"

"I said go! That's an order, squire!"

"Yes sir, Paladin Sir." he saluted him, hurried off to the cafeteria. He kept looking back at his master, worry in his eyes.

He's smarter than I give him credit for. He sat down at his desk, read the scroll. It was written in the Elder's own hand, an order of summons aboard the Prydwen. He sighed again, glanced at his armor for a moment, then went to throw on his robes.

The old airship was moored at the head of the ancient colossus, overlooking all of the island with benevolent eye. Since the fall of Camelot the day Arthur made his ascent to heaven, the Prydwen taken its accustomed place as the seat of the chapter's power. Now though the war vessel was covered in new insignia and prayers etched into each strut and wall that someone could get their hands on. The command center was a great mosaic of paintings, drawings, and images of Steel and the Angel who had ordered the great craft to be made. It was now a beautiful cathedral of the sky as well as the fortress it had been.

"Paladin, welcome." Elder Harwood sat at a desk in the center of the command deck, a desk lamp illuminated a heap of scattered papers—reports and requests from three whole legions all at once. Costain couldn't handle that much paperwork, and, apparently, neither could the Elder. He was sallow man, bent and slumped of shoulder, his hair was falling off with each day and in its wake came wrinkles and withered skin. His formal robes, greyed by age, hung off his body as if they were meant for a larger man. It was hard to believe that he was once a star-paladin, and a good one at that.

He saluted his lord. "Elder Harwood. Steel be with you, always."

"And with you." he didn't look at the paladin as spoke. He waved a weak hand at him. "Sit. Sit. Please." Costain moved a chair from a corner and sat facing his elder. "Do you know why I've called you here?"

"I Don't, Elder."

He glanced at him, straining his eyes to make out the paladin's figure. Costain was still a strong man, though he was almost of an age with the elder. Obviously that made him uncomfortable. "Call me John, please." he sighed a weak sigh, rolled his shoulders and called on the intercom for a drink. A team of squires came in a second later with a tray of Old World wine and a few bits of roasted brahmin meat. John Harwood had with zeal, Costain sipped at his wine, wondering who had made it so long ago. "Did you know," the elder said through a mouthful of meat and wine, "That Quenlyn has been pestering me about using an anti-FEV in subway tunnels?"

The paladin was surprised, but not shocked. Head Scribe Quentyn had taken a deep interest in the work of the preeminent Dr Virgil. And though he could see why—the results of the first anti-FEV bombs in the ruins of boston and near the Glowing Sea were a tremendous success, beyond anything they'd expected—he found the scribe's interest...disturbing. Though he wasn't sure why. Was not the Forced Evolutionary Virus the one thing that drove great Roger Maxson, the founder of the Brotherhood, to abandon his former masters and live on into the ages? Was not the eradication of that virus and its spawn a holy thing then? Perhaps it was a personnel thing. What the anti-FEV could do in three seconds would have taken him months or even years of none stop combat to accomplish. Whatever it was, in his heart he knew the device to be wrong.

"Have you called me here to discuss the bomb?" he asked.

The Elder Looked askance at him, "Perhaps I have. Perhaps the bomb has weighed heavily on my shoulder of late. Perhaps the idea of eradicating whole hoards of mutants in a matter of seconds quite appeals to me. What would you say to that, Paladin?"

"I would say that your choice is your own. And no matter the choice—"

"It shall be your command. I know. Trust me, brother, I know." with an effort he raised himself onto his feet, staggered over to a window, looked out at the training yard. "They're so young." he said, as if to himself. To Costain he said, "Did you know that almost half of those fighting in the underground are Iron Legionaries? Militiamen one and all. I think only a few squads of knights patrol alongside them. Did you know that?"

"I had seen some reports on the matter, yes sir."

"And do you know what happens to those not clad in the shining armor of the brotherhood when the bomb breaks its seals? Do you know?"

"I do." he had seen the aftermath of the First Testing, knowing by the residents of the Commonwealth as the Scouring of Boston. People more than thirty miles around the blast sight were also struck dead, their veins bursting into radioactive fire as the virus was purged from their bodies. Internal hemorrhaging, sudden heart attacks and even an expansion of the cerebral cortex, causing the brain to bulge and even burst out of the skull. Yes, he had seen what happens when a waster was hit by the bomb. He could never un-see it. "If a bomb were to detonate in the tunnels hundreds if not thousands of Legiones Ferrum would be dead or wishing for death within seconds." he said. And I didn't think the militias would be very pleased hearing that the only survivors were a handful of brotherhood knights."

"Exactly." Harwood said, draining his glass. "The problem is—"

"The problem, Elder," the paladin interrupted. "Is that if we clear the underground of ghouls and molerats and whatever else slithers in the depths, the mutants would stop ambushing our squadrons as we push further into the city. But, if the lack of ventilation in the tunnels cannot let out the stink of serum then the subways might be closed off to us forever, leaving much of the city out of our reach."

The Elder said nothing, ordered another drink. For a long time there was silence. Then the Elder sighed again, rose and paced the room. He held his hands behind his back. Though he had a goodly amount of respect for Harwood, Costain could only think that the old man was trying to act like Arthur. He wants to be him, perhaps. I pity him that. Stopping before his paladin, the Elder spoke with a clear, flat voice, the voice one would speak to a dying man on his death pallet. "Then there's no other way. Brother Costain, your Elder bids you kneel."

"With honor, Elder Harwood." he rose, stood before him and knelt low at his feet.

Harwood placed a hand on his head, took a moment, said, "I, Elder Jonathon Harwood, by the grace of the Angel and all his fathers I bear the bourdon of three legions upon my shoulders. As I was given this honor from the hands of Arthur Maxson, so I give to you, Robert Costain, the soul command of the first legion and all men therein. Do you accept?"

"Yes, Elder."

"Then rise, High-Paladin Costain."

He rose, looked at his master. He slapped his hands on his shoulders, embraced him, said, "I order you to purge those tunnels for the Brotherhood. For humanity. You have as long as you need, as many men as you need. Vade cum deo, frater."

Costain said nothing. He stared at the image of a dead man, and he stared back with sullen eyes. God sends me to the darkness. And to the darkness I shall come.