Deep Echoes

  ~~

  The Militia, thousands of them, could not match six Disciples: without their Weakness, the golden monsters were untenable; without their stupidity, they were untouchable; and without their clumsiness, they were inescapable. Scores died, screaming and bloodied, metallic fingertips scouring their bodies. Contegons, Shields and the volunteered, it made no difference; they all died.

  Aureu had no ballistic defences because no one had ever thought the Front could be so annihilated, so ineffectual. So an order came down from the War Council to pull the Mariners back across the Journey, force the Disciples to cross the risen waters and pray the Artificers could create catapults before the creatures learned to swim. They were cutting off any possible access to Aureu that the Disciples might have.

  It was a sensible plan. Chain would have approved of it. But it also meant that she and her Militiamen had been left to die.

  But Chain still fought on, cutting away at useless, unprotected parts of the Disciple and pulling her Militiamen away from its devastating attacks. Sometimes she saved them, earning a vicious scrape or bruise for her efforts. Other times she found herself holding a corpse. Nothing could incite the creature to attack her instead, nothing, and each death forced her more and more to acknowledge that they would die.

  After most of her Militiamen had been cut down, she cracked. Sol would still save them, but she had a duty to these men and women. “Get out of here, everyone!” she roared. “Run! Get to the Journey. Dive in if you have to. Save yourselves, for the love of Sol, save yourselves!”

  Released of their duty, her cadre fled. The Disciple chased them at a pace Chain couldn't match and killed the slowest, the weakest, first. Boys younger than her were decapitated, elderly people at the very edge of efficacy died in pieces or as smeared stains in the Journey's displaced waters. From two hundred men, she now had thirteen, the fastest runners, the most agile or the lucky.

  In this fight, luck was a greater virtue than any other.

  The Militiamen didn't dive into the Journey as she'd ordered. They stood on the banks. They waited.

  Chain soon reached the huddle at the Journey and took in the whole massacre, took in the Disciples slaughtering the faithful. This was horrific, Lun's will incarnate. Destruction, death, and hopelessness littered the lost forest. Chain wanted to cry, wanted to go mad, wanted to take her axes to her neck and end her life.

  But she wouldn't. Every time these instincts came she thought of the Heretic and fought on, struggled through powered by the force of her hatred. It became a comfort to her, a shield, a dark feeling she could wrap herself in to match her faith. Her mind was scattered though, and she couldn't formulate plans or consider a counter-strategy. All she could do was try to save lives.

  Chain decided she would die here, would not flee, so that some of her men could live.

  A jagged thought pierced her confusion: most of the Militiamen weren't swimming in the Journey. Some had jumped in, but they were in the minority. Why? She was about to scream at them when she noticed absolute silence had fallen over the battlefield, that the screams and rending and mayhem stopped.

  She turned. Aureu's disparate forces were lined up across the Journey, clumps of shivering fear. The Disciples stood before them, waiting.

  Chain looked at her Militia again and swore when she realised why they hadn't retreated further: the weight of their armour would drown them if they jumped into the Journey, especially after fighting so hard. Some had already chanced it and their corpses were slowly pulled past her vision by the undertow.

  They were all trapped: it would take too long to remove their armour. Here, they too would die.

  The Disciple which had hounded Chain jumped forward. Everyone flinched, ready to run and leave whoever it had chosen to die. But it did not attack. It straightened and slowly looked at them. It was toying with them.

  Chain glared at it, the fucking monster. She hated it with every part of her being, more so than she had ever hated anything. Anything. Her teeth itched to sink into some exposed part of its body. The axes in her hands longed to tear it to pieces. But it was whole now. No matter how many times she looked over its form, there were no exposed wires and no mechanisms to target. In one final attempt, she examined it.

  No. It was still perfect.

  Or was it? Her eyes fell to its feet, where three inches of water sloshed around its toes now they were so close to the swollen Journey. She listened and heard a slight buzzing and a small crackle coming from the Disciples. A wooden bucket floated to her side. Something struck her, a scrap of knowledge from her time in the Academy. It presented a small chance, but one which she couldn't help but entertain.

  “Men... I have an idea.”

  Her remaining men looked at her. Half had probably gone mad, and the others must be most of the way there. Only a Contegon could be unscathed by such a battle. She felt immense sympathy for them but also gratitude... You'd have to be mad to try this. Mad or a Contegon.

  She could not order them directly – the fucking monsters might be able to understand her – so Chain decided to quote scripture and hope her Militiamen were devout. “Sol Lexic, passage four-hundred and one. You may never defeat evil, even within yourself...”

  “... but you can push it down to wallow in the shallow waters of your heart, where depth will never give rise to it breeding,” the quote finished.

  That was her plan. They would all soak the Disciple in the hope its systems would break down. Most traps at the Fronts involved tipping the creatures into pools of water, so such a drenching may work. The Journey had provided plenty of water for them and a good number of men could absolutely soak the thing.

  It could work. It had to work.

  Seven out of the thirteen remaining nodded. Then the Disciple jumped forward again, making everyone take a step back, panicked. The monster looked at them, trying to intimidate.

  Chain thought it pathetic. It was time to make it feel that same fear.

  In one swift movement, she grabbed the bucket, scooped up some water and threw it over the Disciple. Those Militiamen who had understood her plan knelt down and splashed the creature like children playing.

  It was soaked in a matter of moments. The Disciple seemed surprised, took a step back... Then almost fell: there was a sizzle, a pop, and one of its legs refused to move. Four Militiamen fell down dead, twitching and burning, their veins standing out bright red. Chain gasped. The blasphemy which kept the Disciples going could travel through water.

  “Men, fall back, I'll finish it,” she shouted. If anyone was to die, it would be her.

  She scooped more water up with the bucket and threw it at the Disciple, whose innards continued to seethe and burst. With only one working leg, it had to limp after her, but even weighed down with a full bucket, it had no chance of catching her.

  The other Disciples watched gormlessly. Maybe this leader had told them to stay back, that it wanted to kill her personally. Or maybe they were not so smart as people believed. Either way, this was one-on-one, a duel.

  Chain continued to splash the creature, staying out of its range. Then one of its arms exploded, the gun arm. Shrapnel sliced at her, but she did not allow the pain to break her rhythm. She was winning. This thing was dying.

  More sweeps, more water, and the Disciple started shutting down. Its head drooped; its working arm and leg flopped uselessly. Then it fell face first into the water.

  With a final, pathetic fizz, it died.

  Instincts kicked in. “Run!” she shouted to her cadre, who had closed in to witness the thing's death. It was too late: a final surge of the creature's blasphemy shot through the water, ended another three of her Militiamen. Chain was unharmed. Sol had protected her from this final assault, kept her safe as one of His chosen, as one of His Contegons.

  She walked up to the Disciple, now dead and useless, and stamped on its head. The force of the blow hurt her bleeding leg, jarred her bones through her leather boots, but she did it again. And again.
She roared and gave it a final stamp. Then she cheered.

  “Praise Sol! Praise Sol!”

  Those in her cadre who'd survived joined in. “Praise Sol! Praise Sol!” they screamed.

  Her teeth bared, her arms raised, Chain examined the rest of the battlefield. Others now fought the Disciples using the Journey's swollen waters. It seemed, from the creatures' sluggish movements and their apparent hopelessness, that they could not fight so well without their leader. With their morale broken, the Disciples were no challenge: they burst, seared, and died easily.

  She did not order her cadre to join these fights: by the time they'd get there, the Disciples would be dead. Besides, the battles belonged to the other Contegons, not to her. So she watched and bathed in Sol's glory. They, the people of Aureu, were finishing this fight. Not a false 'Acolyte,' but the honest and the faithful.

  When the Disciples were all dead, the survivors flocked to her, drawn to the blood-stained Contegon still standing ready to fight. Chain Justicar would be a name that bought a lot of respect in Aureu, and across all of Geos, from now on. As she had promised herself, she had recovered the name.

  Chain felt such pride: the Contegons here would all appreciate that she had personally driven this battle with her faithfulness; Wasp would know that she, a woman, had been key in saving his life and it would drive him mad; Sol would be proud of her; and that Heretic, wherever she had slunk to, would hear of her bravery and wonder what could have been if only she had been a stronger person.

  “Contegon Justicar, you did it,” someone said finally, breaking the silence. Chain turned. Bleeding, wounded, her arm clearly broken, Contegon Oasis Slice grinned at her, tears rolling down her face. “I told you that you were special.”

  Chain grabbed her, hugged her, in spite of the girl's wounds. “You had more faith than I, Oasis. But you're wrong, I didn't do this: we all did.”

  She broke the embrace and spoke to all the gathered Contegons and Militia. “No, even more than that, Sol did this. The Bureau fled, the Acolytes died, but it was we Contegons and our Militiamen cadres who saved Aureu. Don't place me on a pedestal. Congratulate yourselves, your men, and praise Sol.”

  “Praise Sol!” someone shouted, and the world chorused this sentiment. Aureu had noticed the Disciples were dead, the news passing through the city like medicine, and it roared, cheered, screamed its delight. Mariners leapt back into action, running back to reach them and witness this for themselves... Now that it was safe.

  “I hate to interrupt,” Oasis said. “But we've something to attend to.” She pointed back through the carnage to one corpse in particular: the Acolyte's. “We should get there first. We can't trust the public.”

  Chain nodded. “Militiamen, stay here, keep the Mariners from following. Contegons... let's go see this 'Acolyte.'”

  Not that they would find an Acolyte. Chain collected her axes, thrown aside during the fight, and shook them dry: she'd need them if they found more blasphemy. Looking at the corpse, solitary and small by the Great Road and away from the now-receding waters, she expected to find another Disciple, one from a rebel faction maybe.

  The walk was short, Chain remembered that much. Then... then she saw who the corpse was. At first she was shocked, had just stood frozen as the other Contegons checked for signs of life and found them. Then... well, she didn't remember what happened next.