Ch 17
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Chapter 18
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The glow in my eyes faded out once more as four thousand eyes glowed in response. They strained into the darkness, no longer awed by the incredible display of lights dazzling below, but searching for the slightest amount of movement in the void.
There. All the eyes turned to meet the object, which would have been invisible had not so many perspectives been viewing it at the same time. Indescribably tiny, it hurtled from that mass of seas and cities through the darkness of the night, making its journey up towards where I stood.
At the speed it traveled, it would arrive in only a few minutes. The time on Earth would be hours. There was no way out now. Whatever fate had in store for me, I would face it with no reservation.
The eyes faded as mine returned, taking in the situation before me. Renner had returned - in spiffy new armor, nice getup - and had resurrected Jethro as well as recruiting SON∩S to his side. I have to admit, he made very good use of his time, and arrived at the exact moment my plans could have been foiled.
Of course, I always have a backup of some kind, if only to ultimately secure myself. Even as Renner examined the motionless Ghid, light sprung into his eyes and he shoved the anodize airhead to the floor, kicking away and bolting towards the elevator shaft. Those in Renner’s party panicked as Ghid dove through the hole Diero had made and fell like a rock to the city below.
My eyes faded once more so I could prioritize my focus. The wind whipped past my face, the flaming ball of fire above me trying to figure out what everyone was so upset about. Good. He’s the only one who could’ve reached me in time.
My feet slowly dug into the glass as I fell, splintering it in a shower of shrapnel above me as I slowed my fall the best that I could. Flipping over at the last second, my static figure crashed upright through the roof of the police station and almost through the top floor, leaving two very deep triangle-shaped holes in the tile which compressed the piping beneath them. Diero stood beside me, in the middle of both arguing with the police who had arrived to apprehend him and straightening the massive crease his hat now had. Seeing me seemed to change his attitude, but I kicked him through the blockade of officers trying to stop him.
Picking up a piece of the tile I had broken, I scratched the smallest handwriting possible into its surface, and when Diero had recovered and shaken off the officers trying to pin him down, I shoved the tile into his mouth as he bolted at me. Blue flames licked from his eyes and he threw a card at me, which I caught between my fingers.
I watched him bolt back up the side of the tower as if the laws of physics meant nothing to him. It seemed only hours ago he had carried me up the face of a tower much like this one. As the blue flames engulfed my form, my eyes faded once more and returned their full attention to the body known as Tott.
“telling you. The One To Trust and Tott - GHID and Tott - are one and the same.” Renner insisted to a sea of mostly unwilling ears. “Jethryn is here, he can vouch for me.”
“You have a pirate ship and the sun.” Pakari choked out, his voice weary from having been hung by the neck for so long, only now freed with a misshapen ceiling collar still around his neck. “Bird, how long do the Tears effects last?”
“As long as the user or recipient is willing them to, I suppose.” Bird shrugged. “Never experienced it. I’m not an addict like so many people. Didn’t really want the opportunity to become one, either.”
“Well I want off the crazy train.” Pakari walked to the hole in the wall and looked down. “Think this fall will wake me up?”
Renner rubbed the bridge of his nose as Jethryn and Bird forcibly dragged Pakari away from the window. “I’m not sure what else to tell you people, but he is Ghid. Would I have skewered him to the wall if I seriously doubted that fact?”
Oh, that’s why the whole room was upside down and I had the strangest falling sensation. It’s why my body was starting to shake again. I hate Renner so much, but I- yes, I had decided to undecide to tell the truth of the matter, but now I had UN-undecided to tell the truth of the matter. In short, I was going back to my initial decision, for better or for worse.
“I am Ghid.”
The whole room turned to look at Tott, me, as my body remained stuck in place, affixed by the poker to the wall through the hole which ran through my side, caused by that giant so long… No, it was last night. Goodness, my sense of time is all messed up with everything happening constantly.
“I hired Monopoly to go to the cider factory after my first agent went to ensure the complete radio silence was justified.” I tried so hard to keep my voice from trailing off in exasperation, but the feeling of your entire world falling apart isn’t exactly a reinvigorating one. “I only later found out the stupid brute had dragged my son directly into harm’s way, almost housing him in the same nuclear chamber which either killed Pakari or irradiated him so much he died soon after.”
Pakari looked at his hands in disbelief, even more sure this was some kind of absurd high as I continued. “I tried to go find Monopoly and break his arm off, but I was dragged into your search party trying to find Cordax. You found my old tower in the dark wall, which I built as a prototype to this one, and the original Tott design without the artificial lungs I built into this one.”
Reaching up - or I suppose down would be more accurate - I took the mask from my face, revealing the smooth spherical head underneath, with holes bored in the corresponding spaces for the Akaku’s lower holes, as well as two normal eyes and two eyes on the right side, all of which glowed with a deep orange light. “I couldn’t have you take off my mask, Diero. If you did, it would have revealed prematurely that this form was just a wooden puppet, and nothing more.”
Diero, who had climbed back up the tower at this point, advanced to remove the poker, but Renner put a hand in front of him. “Say the word, boss, and I’ll take every bone from his body.” The cadaverous cowpoke hissed, glaring contempt into his former host.
“Unnecessary.” I replied, replacing the wooden Akaku to my rather boring-looking face. “I think we’re done here, Renner.”
“Not remotely.” Renner stalked forward and knelt down, his eyes lining up with my own. “You started this whole series of events against yourself. You orchestrated events so everyone would go after you in this high tower of yours. Why? So you could kill everyone here in some kind of climactic victory?”
“So I could die.” I bit back, my eyes tearing into Renner like- like something that tears into something else look I’m running out of allegories, okay? Just go with me here. “This entire society is built off the premise that Ghid is a monster, for whatever reasons - and everyone has their own. So I played my part, instigating people to throw up the dark wall and think that Ghid was finally trapped and the world safe from him. But some people knew better. You knew better.”
“You used your pet Diero to enter in and out of the dark wall trying to find Monopoly. If you clods could get in and out, what stopped Ghid?” I paused, both for emphasis and to see if I had successfully offended anyone. “Nothing. I chose to sit there and wait while a good friend of mine replicated my Dreamer design based off the ten that came through with Diero.”
“The ten?” Renner questioned, his natural curiosity really killing his trying-to-be-intimidating vibe which he wasn’t any good at regardless. “Are you making stuff up to buy time? Because you don’t have any time left to buy.”
“I don’t have any time left at all.” My eyes never left his. “My entire plan revolved around your group arriving and defeating Ghid once and for all. That backfired when Monopoly began killing members of your party, forcing me to take you out of the scene. I couldn’t have you dying and Diero shutting off for good.”
“Thank you so for thinking of my best interests.” Renner growled. “I’ll remember your kindness when I stick your body in the fireplace.”
“I also- Diero, please.” It was hard for me to talk with this idiot sticking his stupid fleshy nose in my face. Diero hauled him off by the collar and after dumping him in what was formerly the ceiling, sauntered back up and leaned towards me. “The chip.”
Without a word, Diero craned one finger into his eye socket and clumsily drew out a circuit board from inside his cranial cavity. It appeared to be worse for wear, but it was still intact. I pulled the sphere out from my pocket, the lens inside adjusting to the light level. “Leave.” I snapped, causing a greenish gas to emerge from it, which floated in the air for a moment before dissipating.
It was quickly disassembled, with the main chip being ripped out and replaced with the one from Diero. The moment I had closed it back up it sprung from my hands, rolling around on the floor for a moment before slowly lifting into the air and looking around.
“I made sure to save everyone I could.” I continued, gesturing to the floating sphere. “Monopoly had the opportunity to kill Krelikan once before. I had to destroy him in a way that kept him alive and not give Monopoly the opportunity to kill him for real.”
The sphere did not comment, as it did not have a microphone through which to speak. Eilrach must have figured out some other way to speak through it without an outlet to do so. Renner looked down at me with an expression of the utmost disgust from his throne of ruined ceiling while most everyone in the room had something between mixed pity and utter repulsion plastered across their faces.
Except my son. His featureless helmet hid any emotion, forcing me to guess what his train of thought was. Did he feel fury at my having traveled with the group this whole time and never saying a word about my identity, or bothering to crush Cordax with an embrace but not lay even one hand on his shoulder out of pity?
“We’ll find wherever your other body is hidden.” Renner stood up. “I don’t need Diero to accomplish that.”
“You’ll never reach me without him.” I replied. “So here.”
I pulled a book off the shelf behind me and ripped out a page, drawing with the seam of my glove over the words. It was completely invisible and the letters were stacked on top of each other, but Diero’s eyes flamed all the same after shutting off for a brief moment.
“Best of luck.” I gave a two-finger salute to Renner, who replaced his wolf helmet and glanced at Diero, who stood dutifully by his old boss’s side. “You can keep the book, Diero. It may come in handy soon.”
“Volume’s Ghid, and I might just be out of a job.” Pakari rubbed his forehead. “I must ask you all to come down with me for the limited time I’m still employed. Bird, take charge.” Pakari lead himself to the elevator and waited for the party to go.
“Anyone?” Bird said as the party walked to the elevator and, one by one, through the hole and onto the waiting pirate ship. “Okay, so no then? Okay. I don’t get paid enough anyway.” He got into the elevator and went down.
Everyone had boarded the ship, Cordax hesitating for a moment as he tried to interject some kind of comment, but it would have been better spoken alone. Winger was still in the room, and after Cordax walked away he slowly approached, looking down at my upside-down figure pinned to the wall with the fireplace poker. For a long while neither of us said anything, just reflecting on the absurd series of circumstances which led us to this place and time.
“I don’t want to see you again.” Winger mumbled. “But… Don’t die.”
I reached out, but Winger pulled away. “Please. Just once.”
With some hesitation, Winger knelt down and embraced me in a hug, one which I returned with all the strength that I could. It seemed to last both a second and an eternity, time seeming an irrelevant concept in that one brief moment. He let me go, and I felt him shudder as he gripped my arm.
“Don’t go.”
I touched his shoulder. “You know I’m not really gone.”
The moment was ruined by Renner storming back in and grabbing Winger’s collar, dragging him back towards the ship. “Sonus, bring this place to the ground.” Renner boarded and took the wheel. “Leave nothing standing.”
As the ship ascended, I twisted myself around on the poker until I was upright, then slid across it until I fell off. Replacing my hat on my head, I slowly walked to the remaining chair and the numerous glasses of cider which sat by it. Sitting on the floor in front of the fire, I sniffed one of the glasses for a moment before tossing it into the blaze.
It had gotten warm.
There was a terrible groaning of metal as SON∩S flew into the tower further down, carving a massive hole through it as the sides buckled. To control the fall, he swung around and carved another section out of the side, screams becoming audible from below as the massive structure began to descend. The fireplace spat its contents upwards, which exited the chimney and cut off the light from inside the room as it plummeted, eventually forcing the floor to give way and dropping me into unending darkness beneath, with only the occasional sparking of severed wires to light my descent.
And what lies in that dark? What unforeseeable sights and unknowable entities hide in that harrowing gloom, that pit of ruin sunk into the heart of the observer, casting an impenetrable shroud across the innermost parts of the mind? Why does the dark of a silent night and the void of endless despair speak such different words?
In spite of the darkness being a respite for me, the infinite void of nothingness makes for horrible conversation. That can get to you if you let it in, if you let the solemn silence overtake what little you have. It’s a fight which is impossible to win on your own.
I don’t like to be alone.
The Book of Tears.
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Ch 19
