Zephyr 14.7 “Byzantium”
I JUMP THE fence, literally, brazen in my shiny new jacket as I approach the gigantic factory complex-cum-industrial crypt.
I am relieved at the same time as unnerved to sense a weird, distorted, hair-raising hum that seems to be emanating from deeper within the ruins, whispering dark sweet nothings to my underlying senses. Within the cavernous space, the day finally dies, leaving me to my thoughts as I tread carefully over a landscape of broken plate glass and shattered tiles, the collective output of the old factory, it seems, buried in the dust ever since its workers must’ve fled in mad terror at the Kirlians’ approach.
The tinkling stutter of my footfalls echo inside the cathedral-like space. Scurrying as if to answer, rats and other feral creatures invisible to the naked eye make their presences known.
Following my sixth sense, I track the source of the electrical output merrily disrupting air particles down into the underground part of the labyrinth, the odd glimmer of winsome daylight streaking through broken sections of the floor above. I raise a hand, strobing light bulb flashes where I need to, descending steel then concrete staircases into the bowels, a cavernous space contemporaneous with the river outside, industrial waste, the vast carcasses of rusting metal hulks whose purpose and identities I’m unable to fathom left to history in their sunken berths, an estuarine grave site, the river seeping incontinently between the concrete piers, the ceiling dangling with hooks and chains and ferrous museum piece contraptions lost to detail in the murky damp dark up above.
One of the big ledges looks like a berth for submarines, and in the wan light I can see ginormous sea doors closed forever on the river outside. With a quick power-assisted jump I am up and standing in review of the source of the subtle disturbance, some manner of steampunk contraption, the panels softly glowing pale blue, a creation of some futuristic Byzantium I hope to God to never witness, yet nothing more sinister than the power source for these rebels’ home away from home. Up on the concrete shelf there are scores of individual huddled middens, bedrolls and scattered food containers, a treasure trove for the vermin creeping through everything like nature’s ninja. The pent-up breath I’ve been holding for the past minutes slowly leaks from my chest as I take in the dispiriting enormity of what the scene reveals.
“Shit.”
“Thou soundest disappointed, Ariel’s son.”
The voice rings out behind me and to the right, but I don’t want to lose my tough guy mystique, so my reaction is a slow-burning swivel of the hips as I flick a dismissive gaze over the Titan who emerges into the pale iridescence. I have to fight my lids from widening as I take in his scarred form, his footsteps, or one of them, heavy and oppressive from the cybernetic leg matching the arm adorning his right-hand side. He is the same as the others in every regard except this Titan, from whichever world he originates, bears scars his kin otherwise lack, his stoic visage strangely withered, not with age or disease or exposure to the elements or injury, but some strange mix of perhaps all of the above. There’s a streak of grey in his black coif that gives him a more dignified and somehow more threatening air, and the heavy gait courtesy of the robot boot only adds to the gravid air.
“Ariel’s son? Cause my name’s Zephyr.”
“From your lips to my ear,” the Titan replies in that mildly infuriating way of talking many of them seem to share.
I gesture at him up and down. “Who’re you? The janitor? You’re not doing much of a job,” I say, now motioning towards the trash everywhere.
“Nay, o’ermuch you presume, groundling. Overseer, betwixt various roles.”
“So you’re the one who got left behind,” I note, droll, eyes on his artificial limbs, the steel a mimicry of the muscled ultra-dense flesh it has replaced.
My barb scores a hit, the slight narrowing “betwixt” this motherfucker’s eyes. He scans me as I’ve scanned him and when he moves, I’m right there’s a slight lag in his leg that tells me either the robotics are faulty or there’s some other problem troubling our newest mystery interloper.
“You should speak your truth before facing judgement of the gods, stranger,” Titan says. “I am a man of little patience and endless means. Be forthcoming.”
“Screw you,” I reply. “I’m looking for the Prime. Clearly you’re not him, you . . . junk shop reject.”
“Reject? Nay, you speak to a child ofOlympus. However scarred the mighty who have fallen, we rise again, our powers redoubled.”
“That what you tell yourself to sleep at night?” I plainly indicate the leg. “Keep you awake much? Phantom limb and all that?”
Not sure why I’m pushing his buttons. I want answers, not action, but it’s too late. Titan’s patience evaporates in time to his eyes lighting up red and I ditch aside just as the eyebeams open up on where I was last standing.
MOVING IN HYPERSPEED, I basically flit in a tight semicircle and come back at my latest foe with a full-body punch that snaps his taut skull away from me at just under the speed of sound. Amazingly, Titan doesn’t move more than a few inches as he repositions himself, big hands, one of ‘em metal, clamp down on my shoulders and I only get a hand under his jaw at the last second to avoid him shearing off my nogging with his eye heaters. The disintegration beams cast wide, hot sparks raining down from the metal-ridden ceiling above as Titan shakes me off, the eyebeams snaking about, me ducking and slamming a huge left uppercut into his jaw before getting his metal arm behind him in a swift jiujitsu move he pulls out of in a way that only a man with no pain receptors in his limb could manage. With said metal limb, he clubs me, a backhander, and I am off and over the concrete shelf in instants, rolling backwards through the river scum and ancient discarded metalwork to come up with both hands spread to hose Titan down with my own electrical current, only the asshole jets into the sky, does a languid cartwheel powered by his flight, and comes down on me with both feet. I roll away again, moving into speed mode, but again somehow not quickly enough as he puts my extended right arm in a clinch as his left fist punches between my shoulder blades, the pain so bright it’s like an epiphany, my vision swimming before me as I somehow pull my captured arm free and deliver a roundhouse punch with the other only to have Titan catch it in a metal fist like a catcher’s mitt.
Up close, time slows, and I take in the sheer animal rage coursing through this guy’s features, the narrowed eyes, nostrils flaring, teeth gritted together like the rictus grin we will all one day achieve, and it’s clear to me I did more than hit the mark with my undermining barbs.
I stop. Just altogether. Titan’s metal hand is crushing mine, but I tilt my head like a quizzical professor and even though the villain’s natural fist is curled back to knock my head off, he freezes a moment too as we lock eyes, his fortunately not spewing hot death right at this very moment as the sound of panicked gulls and pigeons echoes through the vast aquatic barn, and Titan lowers his fist, angry features cracking into what might be a wry grimace if translated in any other language.
“You’ve bested me, Zephyrous,” he says. “In unmastering myself, I show the weakness to which you rightly ken.”
“I don’t know about weakness,” I say as I pull my hand away. “Your people have pretty much taken outNorth America.”
“But can Atlas hold what he lifts?”
“Jeez, if even you guys experience moments of self-doubt, I might have to hang up my metaphoric cape,” I say as I rub my sore hand and eye our unpleasant surroundings.
Titan moves away a short distance as if looking down at himself afresh.
“You are correct the others labelled me unfit, secondary, extraneous,” he says.
“You?”
“Aye. How the mighty have fallen, eh?”
“So say you,” I tell him. “Any chance you’re so bitter you want to help me get revenge? Take your brethren down?”
Titan laughs and shakes his head. “I am fallen low, Zephyrous, but don’t unglamour me. Trammelled I may be, but smirch not my manhood, the dignity of which is all that remains me within these inglorious spheres.”
I squint at the effort to understand what the hell he’s saying, though by tone alone I know my play isn’t going to be as simple as I’d hoped.
“You’re not one of them. You’re a minion. They . . . relegated you, pal.”
“Do not stir again my ardour for battle, wind-warrior. Next time, you will not find my fury lacking, nor my resolve.”
“I hear you,” I tell him, backing up a little more than I really feel’s necessary, the hand language like communicating with dogs that no threat’s posed here.
“But think about it from my position,” I say. “You are the invader, the transgressor. I am the knight. The . . . noble champion.”
“You seek to make mockery of my tongue, Zephyrous?”
“No, shit. I’m just trying to cut through to you,” I say with enough earnest frustration that I sense Titan listens with renewed interest. “I am trying to save my people. You talk like you’re all glorious . . . wonderful fucking guys. You’re not. You’re the bad guys.”
“Villainy is write in –”
“Don’t give me that shit,” I say, huffing even as I cut in. “You can’t tell yourself otherwise. My city is on fire because of your kind.”
Titan rocks out on that a few moments, then gives a begrudging thrust with his desiccated cleft chin. There is a glimmer in his black eyes.
“What would you have me do? I am no kinslayer, nor betrayer.”
“I need the Prime,” I say. “I’m not blurting out my whole plan to you. Hell, you’d probably only laugh. But the Prime has the device.”
“Ah, ‘tis the Moonstone you seek?”
Titan gives an ineluctably fey grin and turns that full expression on me, radiant as a headlight. I can feel my own eyes crinkle with discomfort.
“Call it a wager, if it makes you feel any better,” I say. “Give us ‘groundlings’ a fighting chance. What do you say, Atlas?”
Titan chuckles as he strides away, then looks back to see if I will follow.
Zephyr 14.7 “Byzantium” is a post from: Zephyr - a webcomic in prose
