Spaces Designed For Violence
The August and the cloaked girl arrive at a lobby with a black and white checkered floor. There is no visible door but rectangular lights around the height one might find a window in one. They flicker, but the opposite end of the sealed chamber is so brightly lit their faltering is barely noticeable. The girl pauses and gazes into the blinding gleam off the tiles like scrying sunspots for the future. She blinks—
Spots dash a momentary defining line to my field of view as I reopen my eyes.
I'm going to need to get moving soon. But I would rather sit and freeze.
The tiles fit the box perfectly. I can tell this isn't going to go as intended. Someone you trust is gonna leave you to die. I pray it. Don't take me with you. Let me stay here and see what will happen.
She silently follows the red-robed figure into the murky depths of the lobby, under the gateway flanked by sneeringly sweeping staircases—both all set in mahogany and lined in velvet. Sconces on the wall starved for lamps, and the balcony was a stubborn outline the color of skyscrapers on the city night. The girl in the cape hurried through the lower arch on reflex, all the while running through what she could covertly discern about the upper floor. The wallpaper behind was almost glowingly pale, and the baseboard could have been a cut-out of the wall to vacuum-black blankness. This pattern bisected with a hazy gray door with indeterminate shadow shapes indicating furniture residing in the hallway beyond. As her footsteps and the shuffling August disappeared from earshot, only one sound could be heard in the lobby.
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Past two ajar doors to vacant rooms lay a space of horrific design. It could not be called a "room". Even the most spartan accommodations—the ascetic quarters of an August's Agent—contained more touches of humanity.
If the word "room" were ceded to this place, its purpose, something of humanity in all its dwellings would be lost. Certainly, the word "home" would become slightly more profaned, if the "rooms" within shared a name with... here.
In other words, it was more like a simple delineation of "bound space".
The air clacked with claws on stone.
In the center of the "bound space" there was a golden statue, vaguely humanoid, but with the head of a wolfish dog. It seemed to ring brightly as it glowered down to the black marble floor, the halos of salt at its feet. As is glared at the wounded and starving beast running in circles. Its gaze was a perfect attack. Sinew churned under the creature's skin like a perfect diagram. Mountainous vertebrae ridged its sunken hunchneck, shrinkwrapped in skin; its distended jaw would scrape the floor with each desperate and labored step. It looked like the blurry nighttime pictures of coyotes with mange, eyes startled to a glow by the camera flash. But these eyes were fathomless, black, holes in a tattered hide, locked down to the floor. It navigated the salt circles without ever looking up.
The salt itself was less "rings" and more lines with varying topography, arranged in irregular slices of circles, staggered slightly, like the circuits on computer chips around the statue. Ultimately, they would taper off to a perfect circle drawn in the negative space of the floor around the statuebase.
All the maze-like passages to that final circle would be blocked by an invisible, inaudible, colorless beam that will be nonetheless, undeniably ringing, sent down from the head of the statue.
That beast was only going to wear itself down to death, trying to reach the shape at the center of everything it knew.
And no one saw this. There was not an eye in the bound space, not a witness. The deep red-brown door barely standing out from the wall and the paneling in the gloom of the hallway was locked with an absolute certainty. The lock would not give even slightly, the doorknob may as well have been a carved feature of the mahogany. It was heavy, too, a thick slab of wood that could muffle any sound, especially muffled cries of a last breath for hours.
That door...
It was innocuous enough in the... mansion? The hallways spread about more like a hive or an anthill than anything. Each was tiled severely in checkerboard, and cold; lined with doors and panels that blended together in the dark. That cloaked girl walked behind the August, and tried not to drown when the murky doors swelled the wainscoting like lake water. It pulled her past door after door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
That door.
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The August slackens its tug on her wrist in front of each door, as if stopping, but never so much as slowing.
Each mahogany slab could have concealed anything, or every one could open to a brick wall.
They come to a different door. The August slows its pace, but is it another mind game ? This door swallows all sound, even (the cloaked girl notes) her clacking boots and the August's already-muffled footfalls. The air deepens in chill
The pair stop,
turn,
and the August opens the door to its left.
Golden light spills from inside. The static darkness washes clean from the hallway, and what had looked like so many doors were just giant black keyholes painted out of a cream wall. The hall stretches down as far as the two had come in each direction, and light can be seen at neither end.
"Do you see that basin there?"
She nods assent.
"Kneel before it. Before anything else, you need to wash your hair. I'll help you."
She does, as ever, what she is told.
The world's a scary place. Even then, the smallest kindness would paralyze me in fear. For some reason, it's different with the August. Everything it tells me never makes me freeze. It's the only person who–
The cold water shocks the train of thought right out of her.
"What's the matter?"
The girl shakes her head, and the August laughs.
"It has to be that cold. Everything, past the roots, to the breath in your lungs, is filthy. This [shock] is the only way anything within you will change."
"What's wrong..."
"Hm?"
She winces as drops of icy water fall from her hair to a face burned red with cold exposure. "What's wrong with the way I am now?"
"Nothing. But you don't stand a chance," the August sighs. "Look at you. You called me for help, originally, to make it past a Strange Fate. Do you remember the emptiness before? You would have definitely become a Wraith, or been consumed into the Clot Mud, or met some other horrific end."
"Like Myk–"
"Do not invoke traitors and pretenders in this place. Mykhailo is rotting with the worms as penance for their betrayal. You alone are–"
"Benedict. And his Searchers."
"–Are doing a wonderful job scouring the Trench. Do not interrupt me."
You told me the Trench is a shark-pit. No one makes it out alive.
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Orchid City had several distinctive landmarks like nothing of this earth. No matter where you stood, upon looking up, the great gold Wrab'abb Obelisk could be seen, reaching up as if to scratch the cosmos. It was often simply called "the Tower." It had a single door on each of the four faces, almost always locked. Each Halloween, someone left a basket of candy by the East-facing door. Officially, only the fifth floor existed. It was the meeting place of the mysterious Heirophant Sky Society, said to have a black granite floor with gold accents inlaid, and each pointing to an obsidian slab up on a dais like a speaker's lectern. The charters of each meeting remain a complete mystery.
To the West of the city lay a massive canyon set in a yet-unidentified black rock. It stretched down at least half a mile, though often no wider than four or five feet at the top, with the base of the canyon almost entirely obscured. On either side of the canyon, rainwater (which is plentiful in Orchid City, hence the name–rare blossoms sprout in place of dandelions in cracks in the sidewalk, encouraged by the downpours–) had carved out a pair of welcoming entrances to the tunnel. Small gift shops and expedition outfitters clustered around each end. Most of their customer base would turn back after a few hundred yards. Those who did not were rarely seen again. And if they did, they showed up scattered through the city, in seemingly random locations. No one had ever been recorded to make it from one end of the canyon to the other. It was like a break in physical space itself filled with emptiness. Hence its nickname, "the Trench." It was a depth unknown.
The Eastern edge of the city was demarcated by a body of water known as the Akasa Stream. Despite its name, it was a fairly normal river for a city to spring up around. Wide, coursing, murky with sediment and life. Compared to the Tower and the Trench, no one thought much about it.
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The August smiled absently as it plunged Caela's head into the basin again, holding her in the palpable frigidity for too long. Draining her. Her diligent acceptance turned limp as sensation sparked the once-unfeeling hand which held her down. Its owner's face cracked into a smile at the shock of cold to newly warm flesh. The cold, the numb prickling, gave way to pain. Caela's tugged hair went slack. Consciousness just began fading from the girl's body when she slid from the water, released from her knees to a fetal position on the floor.
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I kneel and stroke her hair as she lay there, reclaiming air with sobs choked and labored. My newly "living" hand tenses at the remaining icy water dripping from her bangs like stalactites.
"Very good," I coo, soothing her.
"It–" Caela chokes.
"Shhhh. It's okay."
"It burns," she continues weakly.
I click my tongue in pity. "I know. All magic does. If you've found a painless ritual... well, your lungs will be okay."
Her saucer-sized eyes flick up to meet mine pathetically. "Not–" She coughs. "Not my lungs."
"What's the matter?"
"My brain aches."
My face darkened. I could feel it. But she would never see.
"I really thought you were stronger than that." Ah, was that too hostile? Did I overplay my hand just now?
She just looked up at me pitifully. Her eyes seemed dull; matte, when they should have gleamed.
"I don't want to do this anymore."
"Oh. Well no one does."
"No, I–"
"No." I beamed down. I know so many people like her. So many people who afraid of something better, ready to turn tail and run at the first sign of real power in this world.
"What do you–you can't just–I don't want to do this anymore."
I sighed. "I know. But I'm not going to let you go off to hurt yourself. This is–"
"You're hurting me! At a certain point, you're just like–"
My boot extended from beneath my robes, jabbed her ribcage like a jackhammer to wind her. "Just like what." It flew out again, and she yelped.
"Yeah, just like "what I seek to destroy," right? Because I'm trying to help you?" My foot connected again.
I looked down at her before turning on my heel. "You make me sick. But I'm not gonna leave you to your own devices out here," I informed her on my way out the door.
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The black stone walls of the slot canyon bore down like paralyzed tidal waves. Benedict Clay had walked too many miles down here to be impressed by the sight much. Of course, he'd also walked farther than the Trench appeared to stretch from the surface. He leaned on his battered Lee-Enfield rifle as a walking stick. For all the Scarlet Order's faults, they were pretty clever to try and use this city's mysteries. But exploring the canyon was grueling, dangerous work; more likely than not to be deadly for all who attempted. Hence, the Searchers–determined to be unfit for the brutish, mean and ultimately short job of open armed combat, they were sent to one of several mysterious zones, armed to the teeth, to–
Well, to die. No two ways about it.
But at least there was the possibility of an honorable death. Soldier though he may be, he was an expeditionary first and foremost. Unknown terrain was his home turf.
He heard the Runner before he saw her, and then her bright red-and-green uniform came into view. The cape on her back waved back and forth like a taunting flag. She drew her pistol, a modified Luger requisitioned from a Sun Cult operating base years ago, and fired twice in the air.
Benedict felt his eyes widen. The others aren't with her. Some dead.
They had developed a code for communicating in the tunnels, going back to analog days in the absolute dead zone of the Trench. One if you are the only survivor, two if some may live. And the yet unused: three, if the whole party is returning.
As the runner drew nearer, Benedict began to pick out more of her features in the low blue glow. Dark skin, goggles gleaming in moonlight. Evangeline. Thank everything. His sister returned alive.
She slowed to a jog as she approached the encampment. "Viper nest. They sent me back to call you. Whole brood, in there," she panted, still out of breath.
Benedict nodded. "How far?"
"Couple klicks deep. Lost count."
"How many were killed?"
Evangeline shrugged. "Didn't see any, but point told me to run for you and not ask questions, so I did."
"Fuck. That's not good."
"You're telling me. It seemed worse in person."
"Who was point? Minho?"
"Cal."
Benedict swore again. "And he had all our shells?"
His sister shuffled her feet nervously. "Not the incendiaries..."
"In a snake nest? Eva, they'd be a lot better off with those–"
"Not snakes. Vipers."
"Vipers, okay–"
"And not a nest, either. A pit. Like the Worm–"
"Oh... oh no. Okay. So–"
Evangeline started crying.
Panic shot through Benedict's heart, the heart of a skillful soldier and of a caring brother. Circuits long since closed in this element–the militarized expedition–fired to life. "They're gonna be okay, don't you worry, okay? it's not like the Worm Pit. Nothing like it."
"Mykhailo–"
"Is gone. I've made my peace with their loss. I know you cared for them too but–"
"I won't see them again?"
"Right."
"I heard their voice."
END TRANSMISSION: LAYER 02
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