The day was hot and long. They all were, since the burning. The man who was not a man, who had been an unwilling component in the machine that burned the world, was following the road. He had been following the rail before, but he had felt people several horizons distant, and had left it in order to avoid them.
The man had difficulty with other people. He did not look as other men did. When the sun fell upon him he flickered, and parts of him were difficult to perceive. His colour had the habit of thickening, taking on the appearance of an incorrectly developed photograph, and whatever clothes he wore soon became dull and grey. Much of him had been Spent, and very little of him remained.
He had occupied most of the day by sitting on a rock and watching the sun traverse the sky. He did not pass rocks often, and it seemed fitting to mark the occasion in this manner. He did not experience hunger or thirst, nor did he have any need for sleep. These things, like so many others, had been burned from him. He missed them, in a vague sort of way.
When he became aware of the girl, she was already sitting beside him. That was remarkable, for he was aware of his surroundings for several miles, and he had not felt her approach. She was young, dressed in a tattered dress and flat heeled boots, and she bore neither water nor equipment. She turned to look at the man, and he felt his mind begin to crackle and peel open.
It had been a long time since he had encountered another of his kind. At times he had suspected that he was the only one left. Hoped, almost, that their chapter of history would die with him. Here she was, though, impossibly young and undeniably touched by the Skyfall. She might not even have been born during the burning. That would explain her bright eyes and the way that her mind reached out to him, so clear and enthusiastic and unafraid.
They sat like that for a long time, saying nothing. They were linking together, a thousand tiny connections bursting into life between them. They did not choose for this to happen; when two of their kind came together, there was no other choice. In the years before the burning the man had been through this every day, vast groups of their kind drawn together by a compulsion to merge and build more powerful than any of them. They had swarmed from place to place, shaping and reshaping, building vast and wonderful machines whose purposes even they could not understand, but whose grim and seductive beauty was undeniable. When two packs met they would circle warily, exchanging members and connections, pushing one another to even greater heights of frenzy. Sometimes they would merge and sometimes they would fight, but above all they would build.
The merging taking place between himself and the girl was quicker than that and more gentle, but it was powerful nevertheless. He could feel the drive that pulled her across the desert, the antithesis of his own lost wanderings, drawing her towards the dark smudge on the eastern horizon that would likely resolve into a cliff face. He already knew that he would follow. Towards what, or to what end, he did not know. They were children of the Skyfall, and that left no room for questions or explanations. What was, was.
They were halfway across the tract of sand between rock and cliff when the man stopped. He could feel the cliffs ahead, feel the cave towards which the girl led him, and the tunnels which extended beneath it. There was something down there, something that belonged in his previous life. It was what had called the girl across the desert, and now that he stood with her he could hear it too. It was a vast machine, built by their kind in the glory days, still running and still hungry for their service. It lurked deep beneath the earth. He could not feel the shape of it, nor gauge its power. It was there, though, waiting for them. It was large, and had doubtless consumed many lives in its birthing. At one time he would have run towards it, given his life and his labour willingly in its service. Much of him still yearned to do so. That was another life, though, a life that he had tried to escape for a very long time.
The
girl, several paces ahead, turned and looked back at him. He could
feel her drive, her need. It radiated from her. She had no fear, no
doubt, no trauma. He was afraid of her. She would lead him, and he
could do nothing but follow. He wanted to go with her, wanted to so
much that it frightened him. He wanted to build and Spend himself
and burn. With a effort of will, he could wrench himself away from
her, away from it, turn and walk back into the desert. He took one
step backwards, and then another, before coming to a halt. He could
not go. She was young, and she was like him. He could not leave
her.
They reached the cave, and as they passed through the rough hewn archway the girl collapsed, her legs folding under her and her backside striking hard against the dirt. The force which had pulled them in seemed to have drawn her as close as it desired for now, and had tired of her. The man entered and crouched beside her. Now it was his turn to study her, to watch her at rest and try to understand. They were bonded, it was true, but still he did not know her. More importantly, he did not know how well she knew herself, or what she truly was.
There
was a depression in the earth here, and by crouching down and sifting
through it the man confirmed his suspicions. Previous travellers had
rested in this cave, perhaps stirred by the same longings as
themselves and perhaps not, and at some point they had made a fire.
Running his hands through the ash the man was able to draw out
several pieces of coal, which he dusted off and carried back to the
girl. Crouching before her, he held them out in his cupped hands
until he was sure that he had her attention. Then, focusing himself
upon them, Spending a little of himself, he caused a gentle flame to
flicker across them. He laid them on the ground, blowing gently,
spreading the flame across the tiny pile.
Looking up at the girl, he sensed neither shock nor fear in her. Her eyes were wider, more animated somehow, like those of a sleeper freshly wakened. She reached down, scooping up a pile of dirt, and began to pour it slowly from one hand to the other. Her brow was furrowed, as though she were examining the sand, learning it. She funneled it between her fingers, pouring it down onto the ground, and as she did he felt her Spend. Where it fell it formed the shape of a tiny man, first the long irregular legs, then stumps in place of arms, and finally an overlarge and misshapen head. It took a few unsteady steps forwards and then fell forwards, collapsing into sand once more. She looked up at him, something that might have been triumph in her eyes. He nodded, impressed. Animation of dead matter in such a fashion was a difficult task, and had never been among his skills. She was as good as any that he had ever seen, at half the age of most.
They sat there, side by side, for some time. Neither spoke, but the bonds between them grew. He looked at her, and the memories he had sought so long to repress poured out. She shifted her shoulders and he saw Casey, who had climbed with him to the top of the tallest building in the city to build a machine which twisted and pounded and exhilarated all those who looked upon it. In the twitch of her lips he saw Kate, who had broken into a factory in the dead of night and reshaped the machines to build upon one another until the entire mechanism tore through the walls and clanked unsteadily into the night. When she ran one hand over the other he saw Charlie, who had kept making tiny men out of matchsticks even as they hid beneath the floorboard, boots treading heavily above them. He saw Amanda, who had squeezed his hand as soldiers pulled them apart for the last time, he to the men's barracks and she to the women's.
The man stood, suddenly, feeling the girl fall back as he turned and stalked to the corner of the cave. He stood there for a time, tracing across the surface of the rock with one hand. If he followed her down into the caves the visions would become worse. The ghosts of the past would crowd around him, tearing at him, demanding that he remember them. He could not face that. He had not the strength. Fully half of his years had been occupied with trying to escape them, and still they had such power over him. He would not go. He could not.
He felt her hand resting gently between his shoulder blades. Her fingers ran down the back of his shirt, clenched briefly at the material, and then fell away. He turned to face her. Her mouth was still, but her eyes were big and hungry and lost. She needed to take this course, needed it as much as he needed to flee. She needed him to go with her, to guide her. He did not need anything from any living person. She turned, glancing back only once, and began to walk towards the tunnel. He looked down at his hands, focused on them until they ceased to shake. Then he followed her down.
The tunnel was dark and cool. The light dwindled behind them, and the man began to wonder if she could see in the dark, as he could. He had his answer momentarily as she began to glow softly, giving off a gentle light that illuminated their path clearly a few meters ahead. The man had heard of such phenomena, but had never witnessed it for himself. She turned back once, flashing a smile at him, teeth pale in the shimmering surface of her face, descending into darkness like a falling star.
The walls around them began to change. Where originally there was only bare rock, metal began to appear, piping and cables running alongside their path. The man traced his fingers along them, feeling the power that had gone into them, the force required to form them out of the rock. They went deep, and they thrummed with power still. He felt some of that power flow into him, and he liked it more than he wanted to. Tracing his fingers along the rock now he tested himself, Spending a little and reshaping it, smoothing out the rough surface. It came easily, the pattern traced by his fingers sinking into the solid rock as easily as if it were sand. He shivered, pulling back his hand, and hurried to catch up with the girl.
The tunnel tapered, becoming so narrow that it was difficult for them to walk alongside one another without touching. Where they touched, tiny bursts of energy bloomed and died. Just as the man was about to fall back, to try and limit the amount of power they were expending, the tunnel came to a halt. Ahead was only rubble, as though from a collapse, sealing the tunnel neatly. A wave of mixed emotions broke over him, for though he was relieved that he would not have to go deeper after all, he still wanted very much to see what awaited them. To plunge into the darkness.
The girl did not hesitate. She stepped up to the wall of rocks, placing her hands upon them. She began to Spend herself, pouring herself without reserve into it. The man hurried forwards, joining her, reaching around her to place his own hands upon it. He felt, then, what she had simply by standing close to it, and he began to Spend himself. The task they attempted was not for so few people, and if he had allowed her to she would have drained herself dry in attempting it. Slowly, the cracks between the rocks began to illuminate, an orange fire spilling out from the seams. There was a dull rumble around them and the false wall began to roll back, revealing the passageway behind it. It was an old trick, a way of ensuring that only other children of the Skyfall would be able to follow the path, one that the man would have recognised had he not been so distracted by the girl.
She did not even look back at him before scrambling over the rocks and into the next room. Stepping up carefully over them, the man followed. He could make out a light in the next room, flickering and cold, and he found the girl turning on the spot and bathed in grey light. The walls of the room were piled high with machinery, strange and inelegant blocks of technology from years in the past. Seemingly every surface was taken up with a screen, and every one of them showed static. The room was silent, and as the man gazed from one screen to the next he felt that he was gazing into the past.
He saw the camps. He heard the crackle of machinery and the cries of pain. He felt the machinery come down upon him, the casual cruelty of the doctors, the fear in the eyes of the guards. He felt himself strapped to the table, the smooth cold metal of the probes in his body, so different from the imprecise, living creations that he and his kind had sought to populate the world with. He saw them once more chained by the hundred in the desert, spreadeagled and naked, the power draining from his body against his will and lancing into the sky. The first attempt to harness the power of the Skyfall on a large scale was also the last. He had never known what they sought to create, knew only that he had woken many days later in a blasted world, surrounded by the corpses of his kind.
The only exit from this room was a low, arched doorway, and he hurried towards it, the girl trailing behind him. Here the walls were smoother, more tightly banded in cabling and metal and tubes. The descent was steeper, but metal steps had been driven into the rock, making the way relatively smooth. Before them could be seen nothing but rock walls and darkness. As they progressed deeper the girl's glow became stronger, the light casting further ahead, but still it was not enough to illuminate their destination.
The only exit from this room was a low, arched doorway, and he hurried towards it, the girl trailing behind him. Here the walls were smoother, more tightly banded in cabling and metal and tubes. The descent was steeper, but metal steps had been driven into the rock, making the way relatively smooth. Before them could be seen nothing but rock walls and darkness. As they progressed deeper the girl's glow became stronger, the light casting further ahead, but still it was not enough to illuminate their destination.
Along with her aura of light, the girl's mind was become brighter as well. Clearer. The man could still feel her drive, her enthusiasm to press deeper, but there was something else. Something was buried at the core of her mind that he did not recognise, something sharp and strange. As he tried to approach it he felt it pull back, shielding itself behind the powerful walls of her need. Then it was gone, as though it had never been. Though he did not know what it was in her that he had touched, he did not like it. His uneasiness, though, was quickly washed away by his own need, and he said nothing as they continued to make their way down the stairs.
The corridor ended suddenly, first levelling off and then opening out into a massive cavern. The floor dropped away before them, replaced by a metal gantry which stretched out into the darkness. Stepping cautiously out onto it, the man looked around, steadying himself on the handrail as vertigo washed over him. There had been a time, when he was a different man, when he had loved heights, loved to scale to the roof of the world and feel the wind rip through his hair as he built. That was long ago, and that man had died along with many others.
The roof was lost in darkness, as was whatever floor existed below them. They seemed suddenly to be very deep in the earth, as though they had been swallowed by some great beast. For the first time since he had stepped into the cave, true fear washed over him. He sat on the walkway, carefully, and closed his eyes. The sound of gentle steps told him that the girl had joined him. He focused himself inwards, concentrating on controlling himself, on mastering his fear. He had come this far, and he would not be turned away now. Not by this. He pushed outwards with his mind, exploring the space, trying to understand the cavern in which he found himself. There was something below him, something old and large and powerful. Tentatively at first, he brushed its surface with his mind, exploring it. Finally, when he thought that he had the shape of it, he began to push. To Spend himself.
In the dark beneath them, a light appeared. It was an illuminated vacuum tube, tall and thick, tapered to a point and twice the size of a man. Filaments coiled within it, and it pulsed with power. Beside it another burst into light, and another. The light spread across the floor of the cavern, one monstrous tube to the next, until they blazed like a forest of light. Still the man poured power into it, gasping with the effort, realising too late how much he was expending, how heavily he was taxing himself. He did not care. The lust was upon him, the fury and the passion, and he wanted nothing more than to power the great beast beneath him and to burn himself up in it, to dissolve into nothing and be one with the machine.
Then the girl's hands were upon his shoulders, her power alongside his own, twinning and complimenting his own uncontrollable flow. She poured herself out, and at the same time steadied his own Spending, reigning him in, her touch delicate and precise and irresistible. As though from a great distance the man heard himself groan, a long and strangled sound that seemed to force its way out of him against his will. He fell, the world burning beneath him, and she caught him, her soft hands guiding him to the hard metal ground.
They remained there for a long time, he on his back, her sitting over him. After a time his strength began to return to him, though he could already tell that he would never be the same again. He had never Spent so much in a single action before and he felt empty, hollow, as though everything inside him had spilled out. After a time he raised himself up on his forearms, looking slowly around at the cavern so newly bright. It was enormous, larger even than he had first thought. It swept away on either side of him around a central column, into which the walkway led. The girl was standing, and as he watched she began to move with careful, measured steps towards the column. Even with so much power washing up and over them, she burned like a star. It was difficult for him to look at her.
The man struggled to his feet, hauling himself up by the railing and supporting himself as he watched her go. Her mind was flaring, bursting in all directions, and he could read her intention clearly now. The knife at the core of her was clear now, and he lurched towards her, grasping desperately at the back of her dress. He was too tired and too old, and she slipped effortlessly away from him. She passed through the entrance into the pillar, and he stumbled after her.
In that moment when he touched her, something flared between them. Her saw into her. He saw her several years ago, a man on her arm, laughing and leaning into him. He felt the talent in them both, the terrible pull to shape and create tearing them apart from one another, a powerful competition with the love that held them together. He saw hastily made promises and hurried departures, felt the gentle nag of anxiety at his absence give way to fear and finally despair. He felt the young man's life energy explode outwards, expanding and consuming and finally bursting. He felt the emptiness which had settled in her heart in place of love, saw her long search for the place of his death. For the machine which had consumed him. He felt the rage, the hunger for vengeance, and the urge towards death which had in turn consumed her, an urge which in his haste he had mistaken for joy.
When he reached her she was almost gone. Inside the pillar was a circular opening in the floor, the mouth of a chasm, a pit surrounded by a simple railing. Deep in its heart was fire and death. The walls, above and below, were thick with piping and machinery, great thundering beasts shunting back and forth on tracks like those that the man had followed for so long. This was the heart of the beast, the burning darkness which sustained them, that had drawn them into the dark and into its service.
The girl was flaring, brighter still than he had seen her, heat radiating from her as her power blazed to the surface. She was unlike anything that he had ever seen. Her terrible gift, her burden, was enough. He could not believe it, but it was enough to destroy the machine which groaned and roared beneath their feet. She would flare, she would consume it as it had consumed her life, and it would be destroyed. They both would. For the first time in many years, before he really knew what he was doing, the man acted. He lunged forward, catching her this time, pulling her back and holding her to him.
He pushed into her with his mind. She struggled at first, trying to yank herself away from him, but for all her power she was young and inexperienced, and had no way of countering his tricks. He cracked her open, leeching her power, dragging it out from her and into him. She screamed. The process was painful for her, he knew, though it was twice as painful for him. Her power poured into him, the burning brightness of her, the blazing fury. It seared him, filling him with fire, and when he threw back his head and screamed light poured from his eyes and mouth. He stumbled away, burning with light, feeling as though his clothes and skin must surely burst into flame.
Before she could stop him, before he could weaken, he ran at the railing. He was weakened, and instead of launching himself smoothly over the railing he crashed against it, dragging himself awkwardly over, every part of his body screaming in pain. His eyes met hers briefly as he went over, eyes as big and wide as any he had ever seen. He could not read her expression, but he thought that there was something about her that seemed grateful. Then he fell.
As he fell he burned. He blazed. The walls tore past him and he pushed outwards with his mind, expanding his power, preparing to scorch and still the black heart of the beast. The faces of the dead came to him again, in his final moments, and some of them seemed to smile. Above him, a girl who was suddenly no more than a girl climbed into the light.
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