The Wyrms of &alon

There was a great deal of rage at first, then pain, then sorrow. Geoffrey took it the hardest. He’d given everything he had to the Resistance—and why wouldn’t he, for he had nothing left to lose.

But it seemed it was all for nothing. All the death. All the guilt.

All for nothing.

They spent a while in silence, each finding their own ways of using their consoles to pass the time. But the silence did not last. Geoffrey tore through the stillness with violent bellow.

“Damn it all!” he yelled. “Damn it all to Hell!”

Karl flinched at the outburst. He didn’t like seeing Geoffrey upset.

Pushing himself off his bed, Count Athelmarch began to pace. He made tight circles around the room, like a lion awaiting the gallows. He wept quietly, though, now and then, strange, harsh coughs interrupted his grief, leaving him wheezing and short of breath.

Karl looked up from his console. “Geoffrey… what’s wrong?”

Geoffrey marched over to his bed and picked up his console. “Listen to this,” he said, “it’s from the Flying Cloud.” He read aloud. “In autumn of 1625, Athelmarch was reported missing and presumed dead following the Battle of Fortton. With the stain of his family name ever looming in the background, Athelmarch’s early death cemented his place in the Trenton imagination as a ravaging beast of the Third Crusade, and all the controversies pursuant of his infamous battle tactics. As historian Richard Knowles writes, ‘Had Geoffrey Athelmarch survived the war, the life of a statesman of the Second Empire might have enabled him to redeem his infamous lineage through dutiful service to the ship of state. Instead, his early death only further complicated his family’s already problematic legacy.’”

Geoffrey plopped down on the bedside, utterly defeated.

“Infamous tactics?” Karl asked.

The accusation made no sense to him. There was more honor and decency in one of Geoffrey’s fingers than in the entire Mewnee army. If Geoffrey was guilty of any indiscretion, it was attacking the Mewnee when they were stricken by darkpox. But that was just the nature of war.

Geoffrey glanced at him. “It’s… complicated, Karl,” he replied.

“This Flying Cloud might be a fabrication, Gof,” Bever suggested.

“If only.” Count Athelmarch stopped and turned to face the axeman. “Do you know what a meme is, Bever?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, Eadric’s one,” Geoffrey replied. “The people of this era use images of his depiction in the Lightsbreath Tapestry when they want to convey a sense of total failure.” Geoffrey shook his head. “My name is cursed. Not even four hundred years has softened the stain on my House.”

“I’m sorry, Geoffrey,” Karl said. “It’s my fault.”

The only way Karl could have brought his head closer to the floor is if he’d prostrated himself like a cowering Mewnee.

Unfortunately, Geoffrey Athelmarch was not a man to let anything rest.

“Don’t blame yourself, Karl,” Bever said.

“It’s my fault for asking you to look in the first place,” Geoffrey added.

But Karl blamed himself, all the same.

With a shake of his head, Geoffrey cut his arm through the air. “It’s all ashes, now,” he said. “Geese and ashes.”

“My father is dead,” Morgan said, flatly. “My mother is dead,” he added, listing out the names, “Martha is dead, Engelbert is dead, Engelbert’s cow is dead. Our lives are dust in the wind.” He chuckled bitterly. “Well, at least Sakuragi is dead.”

Coughing, Geoffrey sat down at the edge of his bed. “I am undone,” he said. He turned to the others. “We all are.”

The silence returned after that.

Karl had always found it difficult to wrap his head around the enormity of the burdens that Geoffrey shouldered. He wondered if being an Athelmarch had had a hand in putting all that steel into his spine. As a direct descendant of the loathsome Lassedite, Geoffrey and his family were reviled by all. For Karl, it was a struggle just to prove his own worth. He couldn’t begin to imagine the labors required to redeem an entire lineage.

The sound of coughing grew more frequent with the passage of time. After a while, even Karl began to feel out of sorts.

Is this it? he thought. Is this how the Green Death begins?

“Gah!” Geoffrey yelled, startling Karl out of his thoughts. “I can’t bear this anymore!” Geoffrey slammed his console onto his bedding. “I can’t look at it!”

“What’s wrong?” Karl asked.

“This DAISHU,” he cried, “it’s everywhere! Trenton fell into ruin, and the Mewnees came in like vultures to feast and sow. They rule everything, and are still as faithless as ever, besotted with their ‘Great Sage!” Geoffrey ran his hands through his black hair. “Schools teach their language to Trenton children. Mewnees and their descendants sit in our houses of government. We are their vassals.” He pointed at Bever’s console. “All those grand structures we saw? Mewnees own them! They even meddle with our soldiers.” He shook his head. “What was it for, our struggle? What was the point? They ravaged our land. They defiled our women. They killed priests in cold blood, torturing them like animals at the slaughter. We stain ourselves with the blood of millions to win back our freedom, and then we invite them back in? We might as well be kissing Sakuragi’s feet.” Coughing, Geoffrey picked up his console and walked over to Karl. He shoved the screen in his face. “These are the men that lead DAISHU, Karl,” he said. “Look at them. These Mewnees control two-thirds of the world.”

Karl saw an image—a photograph—of Mewnee men seated behind a desk. They wore the same kinds of clothes as the modern Trentoners: black suits, with “neckties” around their throats. The things looked like nooses. Most of them were middle aged or older. Yet, however alien the image was, Karl recognized the looks on the men’s faces. He’d recognize it anywhere. He’d seen the tight-lipped, austere expressions on their faces on the face of Magistrate Nishioka, as he gazed out from his carriage on his ride through town on the way back to his estate up on the hillside. The detachment, the self-assuredness.

Mewnee pride, now and forever.

Then, as now, it made Karl angry, though nowhere near as much as it angered Geoffrey and the others.

“There are whispers, you know,” Morgan said, softly. “Among the people of this era, there are many who believe the Green Death is DAISHU’s doing. Might it be the Mewnees’ revenge, this plague? I would not put it past them to make a pact with the Norms.”

Geoffrey stared at the pikeman. Karl could almost picture the wheels turning in his mind.

“You saw the videos, Morgan,” he said, “their… they’re being devastated by this p-pestilence.”

“Don’t you see?” Geoffrey said, stiffening, his eyes going wide. “That’s it. These Mewnees are in league with the Norms. They might as well be Archlords of Hell in human skin.” He lifted up the console. “There are places on this Internet of theirs where people have the courage to talk about this openly.”

Karl tensed with fear. “W-What?”

“They’re in league with Hell,” Geoffrey said. “DAISHU is the first wave of the armies of darkness. It conquered the world to clear the way for the Last Days.”

“Why would they do that?” Karl asked.

“Revenge, I’ll bet,” Bever said, with a nod. “The Mewnees don’t know how to accept defeat. You know how it is, Karl: on return from a failed mission, their warriors sehpookoo themselves. To atone for their delusion of lost honor, they slit their guts open, like lambs to the slaughter. When confronted by impossible odds, where a Trentoner would surrender, a Mewnee would rather blow himself up with a powder barrel.”

“They do not understand the value of a life,” Geoffrey said.

“Sakuragi would accept demonhood if it meant he could keep his status and power,” Duncan added.

“Maybe… maybe the leaders of DAISHU went to Cranter Pit,” Karl said. “Could they make a deal with the Norms,” Karl said, softly.

Geoffrey shook his head bitterly. “Face it boys, as long as even one of those slant-eyed heathens dwells on Trenton land, the Third Crusade has not yet ended. These monsters are not just a threat to us and our motherland, they’re a threat to all the nations.”

“But what can we do?” Bever asked.

Geoffrey nodded. “We can show our future countrymen that there is still a cause worth fighting for. And if these truly are the Last Days, I will not rest until the Mewnee tyrants receive their place in Hell.”

“But they took our weapons,” Duncan said. “They took our comrade, Eylon.”

“And they killed Fink,” Karl added.

Geoffrey nodded. “And Fink.”

“Poor animal,” Bever said. “A horse in a hospital.”

“And in the far future,” Duncan added. “Fink has gone where no horse has gone before.”

“Green didn’t get to live to see it,” Morgan said. “He died on arrival, his mutilated body merged with another’s.”

“What are we supposed to do here?” Geoffrey asked. “Sit and rot while the world rots and burns?”

“What could we do, Geoffrey?” Karl asked. “You saw… you saw their weapons. What can we do against that?”

Bever crossed his arms. “There has to be something…”

— — —

I was definitely on-edge. There was a lot on my plate, and I was worried I wasn’t cut out to deal with it. Worse, my guilt wouldn’t let me wash my hands of all this. I had to do something, even if it got me killed, or worse, exposed. I knew it wasn’t healthy to feel like I was responsible for the military’s heinous experiments. But, thanks to the magic of guilt and a childhood spent getting “sin, sin, sin,” yelled at my face at Sessions School every weekend, I did feel like I was responsible for Alon’s death and so many others’, and that meant I had an obligation to fix it. Only a monster would stand by while people were being tortured.

But what happened if I screwed up, or worse, died? Then the one thing keeping the zombies at bay—i.e., me—would be gone.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the dwarfing mounds of guilt I’d feel then, assuming I still had the capacity to feel said guilt.

Being nervous, uncomfortable, and apprehensive, I fell back on an old standby: putting the problem off to the side. I left a doppelgenneth in charge of my body, choosing to recenter my consciousness within my mind, if only for a change of scenery. Wanting to make myself feel as confident and useful as I could, I decided to get started working on a project I knew I would enjoy: helping Yuta make peace with his lingering regrets.

I’ve gotta be honest, it was difficult staying focused on the apocalypse when I had a time traveler in my head, filled to the brim with memories of the world of yesterday.

It was a history nerd’s wet dream.

“Yuta, quick,” I said, after materializing in my Main Men and summoning his spirit to me. “Imagine a place you want to go.”

“What?” he asked.

“Please,” I said, “just do it.”

“Alright,” he said. Lowering his head slightly, he closed his eyes in thought.

Almost instantly, I sensed the memories as they bubbled to the surface of his mind. I changed our surroundings with a wave of my hand, plunging us into the—as of yet, unmade—afterlife set aside for him within his soul crystal. Our surroundings spun about in a blur of blue. The colors shifted as the mind-world rearranged, filling the confines of Yuta’s little corner of Paradise with pieces of memory. The spinning soon slowed, and as things settled, we found ourselves in Vaneppo once more—though not the Vaneppo I’d nuked. Instead, we saw the Vaneppo of the Munine colonial era.

And how it had changed!

The Soran Empire had a habit of rebuilding its conquests in its own image. Though pieces of the old Vaneppo remained—above all, the world-famous tiled streets—the city had been remade in the Soran style: neatness, order, and modularity. The tall streets crisscrossed by clotheslines and hand-woven awnings had been replaced by low lying Munine buildings. Their white walls and their curved, blue-tiled rooftops stretched as far as the eye could see. Futons hung on the balconies of their upper floors, left out to dry. Instead of the catwalks and walkways, the only tall structures that remained were pagodas—be they many-tiered temples, dedicated to tutelary gods or barashai, or the palaces and manor-houses of the rich and the powerful. Remnants of the vernacular architecture popped up like weeds in the pagodas’ shadows. In the alleyways, you might see the colorful splendor of Costranak storyquilts, woven with tales of families’ histories.

And there wasn’t an elephant in sight. It left the streets strangely quiet, bereft of their honks and snorts.

I stepped forward, slack-jawed and awed. “Is this…?”

Yuta stepped up beside me. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “This is Vaneppo as it was in my time; in my youth, before…” he shook his head, “well, before.”

I figured I could ask him later.

Andalon looked around, as awestruck as I was.

“Mr. Genneth, where are the fellatanties?”

Angel, I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

“They… they’ve gone away, into the jungle,” I said, pointing at the tree line.

Yuta glanced back at us. “That’s not entirely wrong,” he said. “For many years, you could find the elephants hiding away in the jungle. I… I found one, once, as a child, but only once.” The samurai sighed, only to raise his head, filled with some sudden realization. “Wait,” he said. “If this really is my era, then…”

Suddenly, Yuta started down the street. His sandals clopped on the tile, and his sheathed katana swished against his gray hakama.

Andalon and I followed him.

Part of my fascination with the sights was because I’d seen them in person, though not in this era. Pel and I had gone to Vaneppo on our honeymoon. I found the city was a lot like traditional Costranak cuisine: lots of different pieces and colors, hurled together with rice and spice. It was noisy, and pungent, bursting with flavor and charm. Not even the ponderous, modern high-rises could cast shade on your day when you were scrounging around the street markets down below, munching on fried bread-wraps or having staring contests with all the lobsters. The Vaneppo I knew was the world’s fun weird uncle who wasn’t really our uncle, but who we still loved being with, all the same. And for someone like me, who wasn’t even six feet tall, walking Vaneppo’s streets made me feel like a giant compared to its brown-skinned crowds, barely five foot five.

Yet I hardly recognized the Vaneppo I saw as we followed Yuta down the streets. It was like the city was a Daiist garden, eerily orderly. No one ran down the streets. Many of the people we passed were little more than kimonoed flâneurs, strutting about with their parasols, wanting only to be seen. The actual business of city life was playing out quietly, off to the side. The commoners’ broad, cone-shaped straw hats cast shadows on the streets, as did the fronds of the canopy trees. The people kept their gazes low, and not because they were worried about the brightness of the tropical Sun.

Even though this Vaneppo wasn’t as alien to me than the one I’d nuked, it was still uncanny to walk its streets. Within a year of Simon Ruskin’s ascension to the throne as Emperor Simon I—the first emperor of our Second Empire—we were sending ships over to the Costranaks to free the natives from the state of not being in our clutches. The streets in Yuta’s memories would be demolished all over again, this time to make way for a Trentonized vision of Costranak life. The natives were only marginally less unhappy with the Trenton occupation than the Munine one, which explains the revolution that happened a couple centuries down the line.

Finally, after turning down the side street of a side street, Yuta stopped. “Here,” he said.