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“Speak and they will listen,” she urges. “It is that bloody simple. All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.”
“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death.
“It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”
“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak. “Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.”
We, you and I”—he touches my chest with the back of his index finger—“are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the dreams of the pure hearts would never be built.”
He disagrees with the rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change them.
“They want visionaries. Leaders of men. Not reapers of them. There are limits,” she continues. I snap. “There are no goddamned limits.”
“That is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.”
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
Even when I am ruining their Society at the vanguard of a billion screaming Reds, they will tell their children that Darrow of Mars once clapped them on the shoulder and paid them a compliment.
“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?”
“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,”
“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”
“Nothing binds like pain shared.”
The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.
The Proctors have played their games. They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation.
Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.
“This is a blood feud,” he hisses in highLingo. “If ever again we meet, you are mine or I am yours. If ever again we draw breath in the same room, one breath shall cease. Hear me now, you wretched worm. We are devils to one another till one rots in hell.”
My slingBlade looks like the L of Lambda. My clan. The place where my brother, my sister, my uncle, my mother, my friends, still toil. They feel a world apart, yet their symbol, a symbol of our rebellion—a working tool made into a weapon for war—flies over all the Houses of the Aureate except one. Pluto.
I am a Red Helldiver of Lykos. I am Gold Primus of House Mars. And I am going to my last battle in this bloodydamn valley. After that the real war begins.
Augustus and Bellona. The blood feud between the families runs deep, and I feel its riptide pulling at my legs.
Yet the question remains, is Mustang her father’s daughter? Or is she the girl who hums Eo’s song? I think I know the answer. She is what Golds can be, should be. Yet her father and brother are what Golds are. Eo never would have guessed it could be this complicated. There is goodness in Golds, because in many ways, they are the best humanity can offer. But they’re also the worst. What does that do to her dream? Only time will tell.
“The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women. And that is something you have. Power. Strength.” He leans closer, and in his pupils I see Eo dying. “I have enemies. They are strong. They are many.” “They are Bellona.”
“Boy, allegiances crumble as soon as we board that shuttle. Some of your friends will be spirited away to the Moon Lords. Others will go to the Governors of the Gas Giants. Even a few to Luna. They will remember you as a legend of their youth, but that is it. And that legend will brook no loyalty. I’ve stood where you stand. I won my year, but loyalty isn’t found in these halls. It is the way things are.” “It is the way things were,” I say harshly, surprising him.
“I am something different. I freed the enslaved and let the broken mend themselves. I gave them something you older generations can’t understand.”
I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.
Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don’t need him to tell me the power of words.
I will attend the Academy. I will learn to lead fleets. I will win. I will sharpen myself into a sword. I will give my soul. I will dive to hell in hopes of one day rising to freedom. I will sacrifice. And I will grow my legend and spread it amongst the peoples of all the worlds until I am fit to lead the armies that will break the chains of bondage, because I am not simply an agent of the Sons of Ares. I am not simply a tactic or a device in Ares’s schemes. I am the hope of my people. Of all people in bondage.
