Part XVIII: Barge of the Dead

Beneath the Palomar is a body, but it’s not the one it was supposed to be, but the answers are still there. Trapped inside the coffin is a man trapped, in turn, inside his own head, forever reliving his greatest failure, the moment that was his most curious murder, that of Balthazar Romero, whom he would in time discover to be the psychotic representation of a far more dangerous man, Cotton Colinaude, the Eidolon. Balthazar had been an identity established to process some of the Eidolon’s trickier business, to infiltrate where Cotton couldn’t go, and where the Eidolon meant merely to observe. He married a Solomon in this guise, the only human connection of the kind he was ever able to manage, to discover that his original purposes were easily lost. When he had lost his mind as Cotton, he took on the preexisting life of Balthazar, until Lotus came and meant to murder this man, as he had done countless others without any difficulty or consequences.

But this time, Lotus reawakened a dormant mind, and brought the two identities back into focus, until they were able to fold once more into a common mold. Two souls became one again, except a portion of both split off, and became a part of Lotus. In this way, he opened a window into this new mind, until it threatened to overtake him, too. That moment arrived when Xenon made his stand. In the waking dream-state, Lotus became Cotton himself, and he had no ability to fight it. All he could do was watch, and watch is what he did as this life propelled him from one disaster to another, until he found an end to this, too, beneath the Palomar.

And yet, in all this, he was not alone. There was a third mind, not within him but aware of all his thoughts, controlling the actions of his new alter ego, and Lotus was aware of this the whole time, and it was another element he could do nothing about. He was aware of thoughts that dominated his body, even as he continued in his own thoughts, powerless to act on them, and powerless to block out all the torment of reliving, again and again, that accursed moment when his world had been turned upside down. The thoughts, he knew, belonged to the true Cotton Colinaude.

And what was this man up to in all this time? What was he doing, if the Eidolon running about, and eventually trapped beneath the Palomar, were not the original Cotton, but Lotus? Lotus had the answer for that. He was about the city, operating through the war, in another identity, another name with another purpose, yet the same one he had always had. Lotus grew to understand all the ways he had been wrong in his unnaturally extended life, his vampiric existence in which he gained life through the life-forces of others. How he loathes that power now. He sees all the ways he has misused his gifts, even as another assumed the same burden without the benefits Lotus has always had, how this mere human sacrificed himself to achieve one of the greatest victories in history. Cotton Colinaude had willed the fictional Clayton Neville to life, and as Barracuda, won a lasting peace that he could have never won otherwise. And he did it because of that chance blunder on the part of Lotus, the misguided Viper, and all who would, as he knew, fall into their places within the city he had adopted.

Lotus hasn’t been an ordinary man in centuries, and in a way, that has been a sacrifice, too. He hasn’t known family, and has been a slave to his impulses, rather than a guiding hand, for longer than he can remember. What has been the price of the life he assumed so long ago? The loss of the self. He can even remember his own name anymore. Now it is more irrelevant than ever before. He is Lotus, and he is Cotton Colinaude, and he is the Eidolon, condemned to a watery grave that will cease supporting him in time, ending the dream only to end his life as well. He will welcome it, and he will miss the world he has left behind, for the first time in ages.

This war leaves it in a different place. There will be changes; already, a century of conflict has been put aside, as the Solomon clan, so long bent on its own method of control, makes peace with a city it no longer claims; three generations of the Alarmist’s descendents are dead, Benjamin, his sons Malcolm and Odin, and Malcolm’s son Lincoln, and with them are gone another form of inherited entitlement; Godsend, the living embodiment of the public trust, has been slain; the Eidolon is finally laid to rest, no matter in what form, in what will be left behind. There will be no more fighting, no more plotting, in Traverse, and in turn around the world. Ulysses Kincaid, who held Godsend as his hated foe, has recently embraced his son, Catalyst, as friend. The city, and the world, view their heroes, their champions with greater suspicion than before. Their days are coming to an end, their need. That is what Cotton Colinaude wanted, to end the need. He called out the prejudices, the pretensions, and the prowess of heroes, and of villains, and witnessed, and took part in, the final war between them, so that all could see what there had been all these years in the age of heroes. He called down the lightning and struck them down, because that was the judgment, that was the kingdom come, for the world to see what all these divisions had come to. In the end, he fought the final battles, between children who would have been friends if not for all they had set between them, what their parents had done to warp their perspectives, and what he had done to try and set them back on sturdier paths.

This victory, for which neither side of the conflict can claim, for so much was claimed to achieve it, is by no means a final one, and it is by no means the only why Cotton could have done it. Lotus sees this. He sees how Cotton truly had given up, how all the elements he would use to accomplish this had existed in their own right, as their own threats and portents, and how they would have led to this anyway. He did not make his friend betray him, he did not create the government agents who feared heroes as much as villains, and he did not set out to gain and lose, gain and lose, countless allies and foes through the years, so that he knew more about this life than anyone could have ever been cursed with. Lotus sees, and he knows. It has been such a burden on Cotton, and what he has done with it can be seen as evil, and it can be seen as good. Will future days, in which Cotton will have no part, finally taking on a retirement that so repulsed him, yet he had seen in two epic careers before him, see a permanent solution take hold? Only as much as those previous generations saw them. The Sidewinder, in the nineteenth century, lived through border wars and civil wars, and eventually set up a financial institution that would fund better lives than those it had cost to establish it. The Dread Poet, in the twentieth century, built a fountain of knowledge after leading a life in which the modern age had been thrust upon the world, at cost that still cannot be comprehended. And the Eidolon? What will his legacy be?

There are so many answers for that, and no answers at all, only more questions. Lotus will ask them for the rest of his life, however longer that will be, because that is all he has left, after so many years of assuming whatever it was he wanted, this is all there is left for him. He embarks on one final, grand voyage, among the houses of the dead, as the living linger and accept for themselves what truths there are, what opportunities there are to seize, no matter what they will seem. He sees his life now for what it was. He had become a villain, just as the Eidolon will forever be known as a hero. And what is a hero? A hero is, simply, someone who makes a journey despite whatever cost it may require, because the destination will justify and reward all great toils.

There is great power in the Palomar, and great mystery. Who were these warriors whose name honors these waters now? William Tekamthi, the Dread Poet, is said to have been the last of them. What will be remembered of Lotus? Will this body, which will outlast, in some form, whatever souls inhabit it now, persist, will this coffin be opened, and will those who peer in know what they find? Will they understand? He always thought that someone would eventually come, before it was too late, before the end came. Would any of the fallen have come? Or had Cotton slain them to prevent it? Did he fear what they would say? Lotus, who has shared the mind of this man, can’t answer this, and it is the most damning question of all. He wants to know this most of all, to know the man known as Cotton Colinaude. He wants to set out once more. He wants to know if even one life he has come across has been affected in any meaningful and positive way, as he now knows is all Cotton has ever wanted. He wants to know that in all the harm he brought, all the chaos, if he has helped forge the links of order, if in all the confusing journeys there has ever been clarity brought to them, a sense of purpose.

He imagines that he sees cracks in his grave, but he knows that this is impossible. He has been blinded. He could never have seen light, nor the costume he has found himself believing in, even while it has become a matter of antiquity, a notion of the every-consuming past. And yet he believes in the light, in the thought that someone has come. He can feel the pressure relieving, even though he has felt no motion to indicate his freedom from the Palomar. He breathes a precious lungful of air, and it is sweet, so sweet that he coughs, as much from embarrassment as from necessity. And he laughs, because he can’t help himself, Lotus laughs. He can’t remember when he last laughed, but in this moment, he feels enveloped in it. He’s rolling, even as he tries to get up. It’s no use. He falls back down, and it feels as if its an enormous distance, back to the bottom of his coffin. He feels its welcome embrace, and breathes a sigh of relief. He’s home.

And somewhere, an old lady is crossing the street, passing a stop sign that gleams in the morning’s bright rays. She pauses for a moment to appreciate a dandelion, which a little girl has taken into her hand, ready to pluck its petals. There are no cars on the road today. Everyone seems consumed by some other activity. She watches as her shadow elongates on the road, and can’t help but wave at her familiar friend.


FIN

Part XVII: Apocalypse Rising

Every action we make is a crime against nature. It demands nothing but our will for survival. We were only ever meant to be primitive, to exist at a basic level in which food and sustenance, food and sustenance kept us. The first of these, food, was always easy enough to define; it is a thing we eat, a thing we drink, and the methods we employ to gain them are matters of instinct, where habits are made from, desires. Of sustenance, that is where we found ourselves in the basic trouble. Sustenance is not merely what we consume, but what we need to motivate ourselves. Why continue to live if all we are meant for is to eat and rink? Sustenance is a question, the question we have asked a million variations of. Families are built around it, civilizations, philosophies, religions. Every story is the same, it is the story of sustenance. Each story is about a farmer who reaps what they sow. Farming is a form of sustenance because it is a construct we’ve devised, which we don’t need, but we’ve found useful. In our modern world, we don’t even think about it anymore except as an abstract source. It is sort of like a new religion. It is passed from family to family, who adopt working philosophies, which feed civilizations. You can link anything, because everything is linked. During the Great Depression, the dust bowls devastated farms, which in themselves were not related to stock market crashes that ruined banking institutions, but they were, all the same, linked. Was a second world war linked in the same way? Of course it was. There were revolutions all over the world two centuries ago. They were all linked. There was a Dark Age all over the world a millennium ago, all caused by the same basic cataclysm. Do you believe in the story of Noah? Gilgamesh does. And yet, mention the two names to two people, and they won’t understand the link. Mention Troy, and they won’t understand what it has to do with Rome, or Agincourt, and they won’t see America. Every action is linked, and it is all a crime against nature, which does its best to make us understand. The consequences are always inevitable, and there’s no stopping them once they’ve started. We live in an alarmist culture, and yet we still don’t understand. We say that we’re ruining the planet, and yet we are content to be as greedy as we have always been, because we allow the system to hide our hypocrisy, because saying what appears to be good has become just as good as the real thing, maybe even better than the real thing. We don’t learn.

Which is okay, because that’s what we’ve been doing, and we will never understand that, either, because we prefer our history to match our message, rather than our message to match history. There are two young combatants in the war at Traverse who are pursuing the deadliest agent left on the field. One is seeking a father, the other running from a past that has already doomed him, and his whole city. Cockeye, Lincoln Mather, has assumed the idea that once crippled him, because he was fortunate enough to stumble into a well of information, some of which revealed for him that his legacy does not belong with the man who shamed his early life, but another who abandoned him as an infant. In the neighborhood, the only home he has ever known, he has claimed as his own, he is prepared to take on the greatest challenge possible, and that is to put aside his own petty concerns and begin looking out for those of others, who do not yet understand that the power of destiny has always been within themselves. He has assumed a burden that has crushed many others, including the hero who started him on this path. All he has ever had he has taken for himself; the man he knew as father left him to fend for himself, and even so, he was only ever yearning for that approval, and the things he did to win it were always the result of the wrong choices he had no guidance to steer from. As a street thug, he ruined countless lives before he was given that very lesson himself, by the Eidolon, who made him realize what he’d become, and why. He turned on this father in that moment, and turned on himself, fell into utter destitution. He was lost.

At the bar he would one day inherit, when everyone else had abandoned it, Lincoln discovered that it was easier to find himself when he allowed others to come to him. Amidst the clamor of the clinking bottles and the hustling at the pool table, he found that in this confusion he was able to arrange order within his own mind. In the utter honesty of this environment, he could finally learn what it was that drove men’s hearts. It was in this way that he first heard the rumors of the Dread Poet, a forgotten icon of a bygone era, who nonetheless was said to possess the fountain of all knowledge, which he dedicated his life to unearthing. The men who spoke of the Poet knew him only as a legend, a figure who blessed the history of the city, and in turn its people, both from the past and in its present. They offered him blessings, and this was their sanctuary to perform the ritual, because it was the only place that would accept such arcane gestures. But Lincoln found word of the man elsewhere, too. On the subway, where travelers in the city were only concerned about destinations, he learned that the Poet had another name, too, and still other names. He was Tekamthi, he was Siddhartha, he was Sun Tzu, and he was Hammurabi. He was all of these, and he was none of these. He was no legend, but a man, who kept a library, one which would, in time, be lost, and become that legend after all. His time was drawing near, and Lincoln had only one decision left. He would seek this man, and discover his secrets.

When he had done this, he found the Poet’s lair abandoned, and the library ripe, and with its revelations, he discovered that the secrets were kept here for a reason, kept away, the sum of a lifetime left to rot because of what their librarian had discovered. The Dread Poet had learned that the world destroys what it cannot handle. His work was useless, but his legacy was not. Passed on, as he knew it would be, if not by his own disciples, and surely there were, then by those who would discovery this treasure hidden beneath the earth, interpreted, maybe, for new meaning, but treasured all the same. And once he had learned all he could, Lincoln burned the lair hollow, as he knew the Poet would have wanted. He vowed that day that he would carry on the work in the only way he knew how.

Once born, Cockeye took on the world with his skewed perspective as another vigilante on the streets of Traverse, in time for a war to engulf it as the Dread Poet’s lair had been, in fire, which was destined to consume it. He had his own goals, of course, but his only objective was to perform the deeds of a selfless martyr, who would sacrifice himself for the cause of others. And now that goal becomes one of self-preservation, because the war demands it toll be paid until it has been quenched. Barracuda, who has taken his share of flesh, has become the last lightning rod in the city, and he will be struck.

Unity, meanwhile, Odin Roy, who stole the heart of Elizabeth Mueller and in doing so led the final chain of events that only the Staged Man was able to untangle, has put his sights on the same villain, Barracuda, who fights for the same reasons as Unity and his brethren, but without honor, without integrity. Unity opposes the sheer presumption of telling someone who operates within the system that they’re wrong, even though the system supports them. He opposes those who believe they are better than the system, who believe it is their right to rewrite that system, or operate outside of it because they don’t believe in it, even though they claim they have only its values in mind, its best interests. He doesn’t believe that, he doesn’t believe that they have the right. He believes that people must be punished when they break rules within the system, but by the system itself, so that the order that is being maintained might be seen to be working. He believes that the system is imperfect because it is meant to be broken, but from within, and not from without. That is what his family has been doing. That is what he has been doing. He has bent, perhaps, even broken the rules, when he has claimed things that are not his, or withheld when it is wrong. That is what happened to his cousin, the one who was there that day when the Eidolon thought he killed Odin himself. He had been there to reason with his cousin, because he thought, in that moment, that was the easiest way to resolve the issues that had come between them, not relenting, as he should have, but to help his cousin see terms that would benefit both of them.

As Unity, that is what Odin represents, terms of agreement, and Barracuda has been excluded. He watched as his brother Malcolm turned away from those terms, saw the toll it took on him, and maybe for the first time began to understand that he might have been wrong, especially when Malcolm took the final steps toward his sacrifice. They all knew it was going to end like that for Malcolm, and they all saw that it was not fair. He had never done anything to bring that fate upon himself. All this had been brought to him, so that he had no other choice. He was an example of the honor they had, each of them, turned away from, and because he couldn’t, he had his life taken from him. A little of Unity died the same day. Odin no longer believes as strongly in the cause he champions, but there is that final task ahead of him, the confrontation with Barracuda. What to make of it? What to make of the life he finds himself in?

Does he admit that he has been wrong all this time? No, and he doesn’t arrive at this response because he refuses to admit failure. He regards the role he represents as misguidance, not as wrong. He believes in the cause as much as before, when his brother still lived. There were things that should never have happened, should never have been allowed, and yet, he already sees how far he traveled before his brother’s death. He wanted Barracuda eliminated long ago. Barracuda, the agent who would do others’ bidding without question, was a maverick element who targeted not out of real threat but out of fear. What was Xenon but a sign for a more hopeful future? With him gone, that future was thrown into doubt again. All youth is a new instance of promise, of atonement, another chance to start over again. Is that what Odin has been doing? Is that what his father has been doing?

In the environment Malcolm created before his death, as the mayor of the city, Barracuda lost any reason to hide. Anyone caring to find him knew instantly where to find him, just as they knew where everyone else was. That was why it was so easy for Agog to find Malcolm, and for Godsend to after him. Everyone and everything became accounted for, because in the chaos, order was enforced in such a rigid sense that it was seen as a barrier protecting chaos more than order. The boundary was broken in its creation. Barracuda made no effort to conceal his locations nonetheless. Where he went, destruction followed, crushing down upon his victims like the mighty power of the sea. He spared few; his foes, the invaders, the heroes, they fell before him, and anyone, even his allies, who could not live up to his standards. In this way, he invited Unity to fight him. He saw Odin’s wavering as weakness, even though there was real cause for his pain. They met in a park at city’s center, where all things converged. It became another moment that could not unstuck itself from time. They have been staring at each other for hours now. Unity’s main interest lies in a form not far from Barracuda, a form he seems to think he should recognize. It is clad, not surprisingly, in a costume, a blue tracksuit that would stand out even at a gym or a field. There is red staining it, but the blue still overwhelms this hue, as if by authority. Unity sees that this person is his own age, and in his face, he sees more to identify with, a defiance, even though it has known circumstances vastly different from his own. This person has had to scrap for everything it has ever gotten, whereas he, Odin, has only ever had the luxury of choice. He chose to confront Barracuda. This figure probably didn’t, not in the sense he did. Barracuda himself is impatient, and yet in his own eyes, there is a serenity that is entirely out of place. What is he so at peace about? In all this bloodshed, where has he found tranquility? He is not a killer, and yet he has murdered untold numbers. He has untold conviction, and yet he has never been certain a day of his life. The fate of that figure is meant for Unity, too, but there is already regret. All this can be found in Barracuda’s eyes.

The figure stirs. He isn’t dead after all, not yet at least. Barracuda’s crude iron jaw gauntlets gleam beside him, but in the face of his looming mortality, the figure isn’t through. “You coward,” he says.

“It is better to be a coward than dead,” Barracuda says, lulled away from his stalemate.

“Your kind will always say that,” Unity says. “Now are you ready to fight, or would you like a few more moments of life?”

“You have not earned that hubris,” Barracuda says. “Do you want to know what it costs? You will never know. You don’t want to earn it. You want to assume it. That is never enough. It has never been enough.”

He swipes one of his claws at Unity then, and connects. Where there was orange before, there is red, a gash Unity feels every inch of. Just like that, he sees his life forfeiting. “You can’t win that easily,” he says. “That has been your biggest fault. You think you’ll win? You’ve already lost. You see that man you’ve already beaten? His name is Cockeye, and he is my enemy as well as yours. And yet he is my ally. And he is my cousin.”

“Then die with your blood,” Barracuda says with another lunge of his weapon, which connects again. Unity has never been prepared for this. He feels it connect again, plunge into his flesh. It is unlike anything he has experienced before, even the bullet that to all witnesses looked fatal. He barely felt it, even as a ghost when it had been taken out. He had recovered with little ceremony. He could never understand how that could have meant so much to another soul when it had meant so little to him. Will his death solve anything now? He will not be here to find out.

***

Catalyst comes, bearing the body of Malcolm Bidd. Benjamin does very little these days, even as his kingdom crumbles around him. He is an old man, and there is little he can do, but he still has the heart of a thriving desire, and that has, for days now, been longing for the recovery of his son. He does not want to live and see it defiled, as the life had been. “Should an old man live to see such days?” he muses, without particular aim, an old thought many have shared before him.

“I am sorry you have had to,” Catalyst says. “I have shared your pain, too. Your son was an honorable man, and I will only show him the honor that he has earned. My father receives a memorial, your son deserves a funeral, and I have only made sure that he gets it.”

“You have come for more,” Benjamin says.

“Are you surprised?” Catalyst says.

“Relieved,” Benjamin says. “An old man does not wish to see these days befall his work. He deserves more, too. Has he truly wasted his efforts, that they come to this? Have I been so foolish?”

“I have heard much about you,” Catalyst says. “I have heard of what you have done, and what you had to do to accomplish it, what you had to make of yourself first, and why that defined the legacy you would leave behind. I will tell you, none of this matters. You may be remembered as a failure, but you will be remembered, and honored, for the man you were. You deserve that much, as your son deserves this honor. If I am to be the one to give it, then so be it. I will cherish this moment for the rest of my days.”

With these words, Benjamin Russ’s days come to an end, a mercy killing to mark the end of a war before the final plunder tallies itself, to render a final verdict on them all. It is a strange moment to behold, an act of forgiveness between two men too closely connected yet too far apart for it to be believed. And yet, it is not the most unbelievable moment in these final days of the war. The strangest elements are yet to be revealed, and the final tragedies. Below the power of the Palomar rests one whose life impacts the whole field, whose life is about to be called into judgment. He is about to rise from his grave.

Part XVI: The Widening Gyre

“He’s a maverick.”

“He’s a champion among these people, some of them.”

“He is, in the end, doing what he sees is right.”

“Even if that means murdering someone over a personal vendetta?”

“Even so.”

“That is how you see it.”

***

If there is a rational mind at work here, if there is to be termed a decisive stance on war, then it is not to be found in the coming moments. There will be nothing rational here. La Femme has seen enough. She will not act out of any favor to one side or the other, though she has been finding more and more respect for those she once fought than those she once fought alongside. The longer the war lasts, the less she’s interested in its continued devastation, no matter how it’s brought about, or why. She wants it to end, and she’s just seen her opportunity to do so.

***

Godsend realizes what he’s just done. He realizes that he has killed a man, without mercy. Is that the code he’s lived by, the heroic ideal? Is there any possible justification to this act, even considering his grief over Agog, his uncontrollable fury, and what Malcolm Bidd has come to symbolize? What has led him to that moment? Has he brought all of this on himself? Does it help to end to war?

***

The Staged Man has discovered a way in. He’s been hard at work for a long time now, employing the only weapon that has granted him any modicum of respect on the battlefield. He is not a warrior, though he is able to account for himself. His is the ability to conjure stratagems, to peer through the looking glass and interpret what he sees, as few others are able. He believes he’s done that now, and he believes the timing could not have been better. But there’s regret, as there always is, that it has come to this, that so much fighting, so much death, has been necessary to achieve this moment. At times he feels cursed.

***

The war is drawing to a close. Events have come into motion to confirm this, even though it is evident to all, like a feeling drifting about on the wind, which everyone comes to feel in time. The storm is passing, yet it still has its power, now more dangerous because of desperation, because there are a few things left that must be done. Godsend has never felt more powerful, too, and yet never more vulnerable, more frail. He knows there is something coming for him, just as he has come for others in these passing days. His might is about to be checked. How does he account for himself? Much of his behavior may be seen as those of a villain, in these days and those past, a mania born of a will imbued with a sense of divine right. And yet, in all this time, he has been beloved for what he has done, the good he has done, as has been his basic nature, as a hero. He has been the embodiment of the unconscious goodwill, the symbol of the universal call for salvation. Might he be condemned for the measures he has taken at times to fulfill the need he has sated? He has been a bringer of order. Order cannot be created without the acknowledgement of chaos, and if there is chaos, and the need for order, then the creation of order must be accomplished with chaos, so that it is embraced and not merely wished into oblivion. Things must be done. This is without question. If things must be done, and chaos is already established, then to claim ignorance of it in the face of the illusion of order, the illusion of control in the creation of order, then it must be said without question that we must accept that good cannot be created outside the shadow of evil. Good is the opposite of evil, yet good cannot exist without evil, because the two are by definition linked. Good cannot be accomplished without evil present, and in its presence and by its definition include evil, just as evil cannot be pure, cannot exclude good. This is the grey area that is life that is our constant refuse of conversation, which we nonetheless can never accept. We believe in good, but we don’t believe it exists. We believe that good is something that will come. Good has no present tense in our language. It is something we are capable of doing, but not of being, unless we bow down before it and refuse to take it within our own realm, which we know is imperfect, is evil, is good, is the grey area.

It is a difficult philosophy, and to say that a war can illustrate it is to slap the face of those who believe in good, because they refuse to see it where it is. They believe in evil more readily than good. Are these people themselves evil? What is a tyrant but evil? What is a democracy but evil? What is communism but evil? What is chaos but evil? What is order but evil? All these are evil, but they are good, too. Are you able to comprehend a tyrant as good? Godsend is a tyrant, and yet he is a hero. Can he be both? When he has put himself aside, he is neither good nor evil, but an agent of the grey area, who fights neither for good nor for evil, nor fights at all. His motivations a re selfish; his ego prevents him from seeing that his reasoning is flawed, that he would be better off continuing his fight, better off for his own sake, for his cause’s, for his allies’, for his friend’s. We call this a war, and yet it has not always meant that one side produces one person who kills someone from another side. That is not what ten years have produced. These are heroes and villains, mind you, the heroes who come to Traverse to wrest control from the villains who seek to retain their grip on the waking city. Godsend has been portrayed as a heroic villain, Malcolm Bidd as a villainous hero. Does that make either remarkable as one more than the other, more than the roles they are cast in? Have you found more sympathy for the villains, that a figure such as Benjamin Russ, who previously has been depicted as a merciless, vile and inhumane figure who wouldn’t think twice to kill a man without any rational reason, to build walls around a city while he breeds offspring who will only showcase the glory he wishes to portray, or Viper, who is never illustrated in his vitriol, or Barracuda, who has not orchestrated a single successful kill outside anecdotes? There have been two notable deaths depicted, both of them revolving around Godsend’s madness, and his inevitable confrontation with Malcolm Bidd. What are we left to conclude?

Are we, as does La Femme, to conclude that he should be the next victim, not from a warrior on the field but from an observer who feels in her blood the same petty motivations on which she scoffs? Is that what he deserves? No amount of dissuasion will prevent this act. Godsend dies from La Femme’s hand. His weakness, which only the cunning Ulysses Kincaid knew of beforehand? Would you believe a kiss of death from his countryman? Would you believe that Godsend has so literal an origin for his name? Does it seem too simple? It takes courage for La Femme to deliver it. It is as if she is killing her own brother, for in a sense, she is, but she will no longer watch as he misbehaves. She has seen enough. Is he aware, when it happens, what has happened, how this has happened? You may look into his eyes and see for yourself. In the middle of this city, in the middle of the end of this war, he has been struck down with a kiss. Godsend, the Alabama Lamb, the savior among men and the greatest of living heroes, has passed on. Such are the cruel fates. Gone without a fight?

***

The news strikes around faster than before. For the second time within days, Godsend has been felled. This time it rings more authentically, even the more absurd it sounds. Who defeated him but a woman who should have been his ally? The Staged Man no longer waits. Dust is with him at the moment, encouraging him, recalling how he brought Godsend into this war in the first place, how he found him. He recounts how he has already summoned Godsend’s unknown son, Catalyst, the offspring of La Femme herself, as a final agent of war, discovered in his mother’s mourned land. And yet Staged Man needs none of this to motivate him. He has always had exactly what he needed. He has had the Solomons inside this city, already welcomed as a poisonous gift, all this time. He has only to play his final card, which is marked with a name, Charles Solomon. His own.

The family that for more than a century has claimed the city as its own, and yet has chosen to sit it out at its own discretion, despite a personal tie that has already drawn the Solomons in. The kind of power they’ve held is not the kind that can be easily threatened, unless you know how to motivate it. Staged Man motivates the Solomons by making them realize that the martial law, the chaos, that was introduced, is exactly what they’ve always wanted, what separated them from their hated rivals through the years, from the Dread Poet to the Alarmist to Benjamin Russ, a descending catalogue of integrity, though a clear line of opposition, always a continuing reason to keep their guard up. What is there to protect now? The Staged Man introduces himself to the patriarch, Darius Solomon, as a brother, both in blood and in honor. He presents a theory that suggests there’s nothing left to fight, that if they give in now, they destroy Russ’s grip forever. Without someone to fight, he has no real power, because he will have nothing to show for himself. What will this war produce but a barren land? The Solomons have no choice: accept the gift of peace and receive what they’ve always wanted. They bless themselves, at last. That will be their victory.

“One could call you a serpent,” Darius says. Ten years ago, he read in the newspaper how his brother was found dead in his home, slumped over a desk, and he came home immediately. Who killed Truett “Cutty” Solomon? It was a hero. “You say that we all benefit, but I see your side gaining more, and our side less.”

“You see what you want to see,” the Staged Man says. “You’ve had this conclusion told to you from the beginning, and yet you refused to act. Now we’re making sure that it ends like this, because my truth is your truth, my kith your kin. We’ve all suffered in this war, and all that preceded it. Why not find a way to make its conclusion work for all of us? Even you, who sat on the sidelines, had your part in it, as well as losses. Take your stand now. You see this as a trap, and maybe it is, because we’ve all be ensnared, and this is the first time we’ve seen it. It’s a trap, and you’re going to spring it. What do you think you’ll find? The destruction of your city, and your salvation. You will still stand when all this ends. The war brings destruction, but it is not mindless. Relax, you’re being rewarded.”

“Another cursed gift,” Darius says. “But one I’m willing to live with. Too long has my family allowed this to continue. I see the wisdom in your plan now. We’ve allowed it to continue because we have been as much a cause of the conflict as we have been the builders of the walls that have sustained it. What were they fighting over other than walls? It’s time to bring about the destruction of these divisions.”

“I’m glad that you accept platitudes along with good advice,” the Staged Man says. “You have a vital mind, and for that, I am pleased to call you a brother, if for nothing else.”

“Families have gotten us into this mess,” Darius says, “mine, and others. I sometimes wonder what they’re worth.”

“As a patriarch,” the Staged Man says, “that’s a funny thing for you to say.”

“For a survivor,” Darius says, “it’s perfectly natural. Disaster cuts both ways. It makes you cherish, and it makes you wonder. Why do we have so much to lose?”

“That’s what life means to us,” the Staged Man says. “There is much to gain and much to lose. How much has been and will be lost in this war, so that something can be gained?”

“I hesitate to say,” Darius says.

“Then what is it that you would say?” the Staged Man says.

“Too much,” Darius says. “I hesitate because I know what that sounds like. Someone says that, and then the natural reply is, How do you decide that?”

“By what you are willing to give up,” the Staged Man says. “My identity has only ever been my own, because Charles Solomon has a family he does not want to give up, a wife, a son. He has another family that has allowed him to have these things, and infinite more. I am a virtual lord, and when I return, I will be treated as such. That is all I long for, my return to the comfort of my home. What is lost? Comfort. We make comfort as easily as we destroy it, and yet when we lose it, the labor always seems greater than the effort we put forth in making it in the first place. I have now surrendered an aspect of my comfort. How am I to know that I haven’t damned myself, if not by your hands, surely not yours, than by some other bastard’s? Some would say that I risked more than you have. I may have maimed my future.”

“That’s the chance you have to take,” Darius says. This conversation takes place in a bar, of all places, the gateway through which all are welcome, where all are made equal. The bar is called Tin Can and it is run by a man named Lincoln Mather. The two patrons sit around chilled glasses of a beer named the Old VM, a dying vintage soon to expire. No man living knows the origin of the beer’s name, not even the man who first ordered it, who now rests in his fate below the Palomar. In truth, unlike Godsend, there is no clever back-story that would seem almost too perfect in hindsight, an ironic tale best left for a conversation over…beer. There is no meaning behind it, just someone’s aimless creation on such a night, during such a conversation, when matters are spun so that they seem to make sense, so that there seems to be meaning in all the randomness that is life. The Old VM will fade away like a memory, just as the mark that pool hustler Marty Jennings, who became so famous here and yet who long ago faded into obscurity, except for those who remember him, for whom he means the world, who cherish the memory for what it still means for them, long after he’s gone. There will be reminders in the unlikeliest of places, the taste of the Old VM in other drinks, but it will cease to exist before long, forever. How has it lasted this long? Pure force of will. In a drink? Will is not a living thing. Will lives in the ether. It is what destiny always hopes to become.

The Staged Man knows that he won’t see his family again, not for a long time. The price for this success has been to reveal his own hubris, just as this war has done in so many others before him. He will be struck down, brought back to earth, to see it and appreciate it as few others have, through turmoil and toil. He begins a journey now that will last as long as the war, because that is the price he must pay. For this, he savors this beer more than most would, even given its vintage, its own fate. Will his family be there when he arrives, will his wife be true to him, will he be true to her? He watches as Darius Solomon leaves, paying the tab for the both of them, and takes another long sip, extending a moment he knows isn‘t worth what he’s paid, what he still has to. He has accomplished what he came for, what was expected of him, in the face of a terrible defeat, the death of a dear friend and cherished ally, the strongest hope beside himself for a resolution to this war. And yet, as he knew he always would, the Staged Man accomplished a pact that would see the victory through regardless. The Solomons, of whose clan he descends, will profit from the entanglements that have created the fabric of the war, and in doing so, will eliminate the spirit of the fight. There is ugly business left to accomplish, final acts of vengeance, warriors to bury and mourn, but there will finally be a peace at the end of this. Will there be a victor? In a shallow sense, the Staged Man gave his side that claim. But things are never that easy.

Part XV: Excitable Boy

If you’re inclined to begin feeling sympathy for Malcolm Bidd to know his death is imminent, just know this: he has been anticipating it himself. The moment he recognizes what he’s done, even then, he’s already known. This clash with Agog was his first official fight in the war, but he has been much at work throughout it, and not just in his capacity as mayor of the city. Before he was felled by Barren Blood along with his brother, Field had stumbled upon Malcolm, and in all his pride, believed he was to be the one to claim the glory, just as Agog after him. Field was an interesting figure. He manipulated a field; such was how he gained his name. This field allowed him to levitate, which is not exactly to say fly, and in his early years, Field became quite familiar with the difference, yet as he matured, he grew in his ability so that it was no longer quite so obvious. He was able to rest on air pockets, and not just himself, but any one object he concentrated on, so that, in time, he was able to use these objects as weapons, too. Before he’d mastered this, he was mostly set-up for his twin Pitch, and together, they would find themselves in plenty of mischief. As heroes, they proved to be formidable.

Due to the gradual nature of his development, Field was more likely than not to be the withdrawn member of his twin assault, the one who would sit back and allow his brother to do most of the talking, as well as the fighting. In the back of his mind, he always knew that his power could be used for greater things than simple distraction and volleys (Volley, in fact, being an early codename, to his brother’s Spike), and he was often impatient to see it become as such, so much so that he probably impaired his own maturity, so that he was overly-developed in his mind, and yet less so in any tangible sense. To most extents, he was the dormant half of this blood pack. This persisted for years, and he spent a lot of this time steeling away so that he could work on his power in privacy, almost as if ashamed, or aware that he would best use it alone, and not with anyone else, even his brother, his twin, who seemed to know what was going on all along. Pitch would confront Field, and Field would have nothing to say in his defense, because he refused to talk about it, believing that no one else could understand. As far as he could ever tell, his power was unique, even though it was so similar to what was so common within the heroic community. But levitation wasn’t flight.

Field often found himself in trouble because he tried so hard to hide his practice. He would often be caught, and when prodded, he would still refuse to betray himself, producing outright lies, misdirection, half-truths, and simplifications, for each of these, he believed, would be more easily swallowed. But in all of this, he was improving. He would participate, outside of his usual circles, away from his brother, in exercises, in heroic demonstrations, few noticing because that was the purpose, at least that was what he began telling himself. The first time he had intended to reestablishment himself in his independence, and he had failed. The villain got away and he got to think of himself as a failure. It was a full year, a full year of thinking of other things, before he tried again, more modestly. He placed an ad in the paper, offering his services. To the day he died, Field never understood why he did that, why after leaving it behind for so long he suddenly thought himself capable of the thing he had already failed at, and to tell complete strangers, to mislead, that the truth was anything but. It didn’t matter; in the end of that, when he’d received a few offers for his services, none of which he ever replied to, he gave up on the venture once again. This time, however, he did not completely abandon his quest. The paper to which he’d sent the ad, from which he had received interest, he took on its city as a sort of home, to work on his power in an actual, practical sense and not just in theoretical. He began taking on small jobs, achieving small heroic victories such as preventing muggings and breaking up loiterers and skateboarding parties in front of shops. By the time he sought out villains again, he was ready. Field began to think of himself as a success again. And nobody noticed.

In all the time he had been toiling, he had never become embraced by the residents of that city, and it was at least a year he’d been there. A year can produce a lot of things, but recognition wasn’t one of them, at least not there. During this time, he did not entirely abandon his brother, though. Pitch and Field began to receive wider acclaim, and Pitch immediately recognized to what this could be attributed, how his brother had been improving. Such was their status when they entered the confines of Traverse, when their hour of doom loomed before them in the form of Barren Blood. And yet, Field was not finished yet in his solo ambitions.

The twins were gaining a reputation as two of the greatest warriors on their side of the conflict, and this more than enough inspiration for Field to venture still further unto the breach. He began looking for fights, before this was a prevalent method, and the first fight he found was with Malcolm Bidd, in all his majesty in the cloak of shrouded men, before he had found a use for it. It was in the dead of night. Field, who preferred anonymity when he could find it and when he wasn’t seeking glory, had gone off on his own again, testing his power still further. There were distances in the sky he hadn’t never been to, points to which he would become, if spotted from the ground, little more than a speck, his winged cape, if visible at all, perhaps flared out as he soared from one pocket to another, leaping in his confidence (to know the origin of his levitation was to bring about a momentary consideration of shame when he thought about it, though Field knew that no one else would likely guess it, and that there really was no shame to magic).

On this night, he pushed himself, pushed so far that he could feel the physical as well as mental strain. The night sky was a perfect one, filled with the brilliant points of the stars, and even below, immaculate silence, as if the whole world stood in awe of this spectacle, of Field’s achievement, and the rest in the war, when men took to their beds and forgot their heavy arms. Even in Traverse this was necessary. For as much as the combatants were eager for war, ready to see the decisive elements align and one side claim victory over the other, each always believing this right to be theirs, they knew that to persist in the face of weariness would be detrimental to their cause, would harm their chances and weaken them, which, in this late hour, they could no longer afford. The war had become more heated in this tenth year, but its warriors smarter, more calculated, more ready than ever to see their aims met. This was when they could most expect to make mistakes.

Field made one now. He came upon the figure of the shrouded man to complete alarm for them both, and for a moment, neither knew what to do. There was nothing for Field to summon, no object here capable of aiding him, just his own wits and whatever skill he had acquired. He knew this figure was a threat even though he could not identify it. He called to it, and the figure stirred, turning toward him, wordless. This was how Field knew it was a man. He allowed himself to believe he could achieve what had always been impossible for him, moving a living object. He concentrated while the figure remained dormant, before he had the courage to peer beneath the hood. On this cloak he could see, almost as if trophies of victories recorded for posterity, past struggles well-known among men depicted in vivid, life-like form. He saw Godsend and the Eidolon battle Rancor, in all his demonic glory, the gore of previous victims still dripping on his talons. Field could not resist shuddering, which broke his concentration.

The figure moved again, the hood shifted. Field looked into the eyes of Malcolm Bidd, and knew at once what fate would befall him, even though Malcolm himself did not assault him. Field escaped, defeated without a fight, back below the air pockets, hiding himself away in the locker he employed when his power overwhelmed him, which was often. He told no one, least of all his brother, what he had seen, and not long after, he lost the opportunity forever.

For his part, Malcolm handled the exposing well. With Field soon eliminated, at Malcolm’s own request, he was able to continue on as usual for a quite a while afterward, though he knew it was only a matter of time now, before he was forced into battle, as the champion he knew he was expected to be. How had it all come to this? He had called for Field’s death, and for what? for the simple fact that his nightly wandering had been discovered, or for the fact that he had one of those costumes and that he wore it around? It should have been nothing but embarrassing, but it was, in the end, nothing but asking for trouble, because that it what he had wanted. He wanted an end to the war, the war that had brought so much destruction to his city, which he had only ever wanted to protect, to preserve. If he had to be a champion to do so, then he would be one. What troubled him, in every waking moment, was the thought that he was fighting the wrong cause. What did he see around him but every reason for this war, his own brother, his own father? What did he see in his own actions?

He saw nothing but regret, and the knowledge that it was not over. He had known from the start that he would become a martyr. The reason he had run for office was so he could begin to undo the wrongs he had seen around him, the spreading corruption, the harm that was coming from the misguided good. All he saw was misguided good, men who believed they were doing the right thing by becoming tyrants because they saw the power they could wield from seizing control of situations they wanted corrected, situations they thought they understood, and they alone. He saw that the only chance for redemption was to fall into this trap himself, so that he could correct its course, assume control so that he could bring about a definitive end, at last.

Do you feel sympathy for this man? Malcolm Bidd took the reigns of power within his own hands, his own fate, and the fate of his beloved city, knowing that a destructive fire would be the only result. He did this because he believed the destruction was exactly what was needed. He put all the cogs in motion, so that he and he alone dictated the course of the war, at least for his side, but so that he could manipulate the other as well. For every victory he allowed his warriors to believe in, they were bringing about their own downfall. Viper, who had made all of this possible, was the easiest of all; no, strangely, Barracuda was, Barracuda the wild card, Barracuda the unknown element who fell into every trap, as if he were colluding with Malcolm, even though Malcolm knew it was impossible. Still, Malcolm’s victories were engineered as defeats.

Thus was his confrontation with Agog accomplished, this last visible element, the victory the city would embrace. All who had seen it were convinced of its authenticity, believed that in the clash of the war, Malcolm Bidd had slain Godsend. The effect was to bring boldness into the heart of every resident, who believed their city to now be preserved at last, and distraught to every invader, who now presumed their cause to be lost, though they would stay and fight all the same, to the last. What more could they do?

He had known all along, had he not, whom he had been fighting, whom he knew he was going to defeat, so easily? He would have anyway; he was Malcolm Bidd, on whom so many had trusted, almost without reason, except he had planted it in their hearts for so long. He was their champion, their greatest defender. And yet there had been doubt, not just in the identity of this Godsend, but in Malcolm’s own prowess, not in the hearts of Traverse, never, but in his own. He doubted himself for the first time, because he grew afraid, frightened at the implication for the first time, because he was looking at knowledge for the first time. He knew, not just in the abstract sense anymore, that he was going to die. He had set himself up for a fall, and now that the fall was imminent, Malcolm feared it. He took as refuge to his sanctuary in the sky. He had not removed his cloak since the fight.

Do you feel sympathy for him? Malcolm has reached this moment without having to know anymore of what has happened since that victory. He has claimed Godsend’s raiment as his own, has in fact put it on himself. Godsend will have new clothing, more brilliant than before, and he will be here at any moment, filled with all the rage the loss of a dear one will evoke. He will be filled with uncontrollable, insatiable fury. Malcolm brought about his retirement, not out of fear, from the battlefield, and now his return. When Godsend had been a torment in every heart, Malcolm had only wanted a respite, and a means to bring about a final burst, a final flame. He had orchestrated the means to elicit great jealousy, great resentment in him, and so he goaded the champion into murdering Viper, knowing what would result from that. Eliminating Viper, Malcolm’s own chief rival, the man who had been the most misguided of all, was the sweetest moment in all the war. That moment was dulled, as so many others were, by the cost which only added to the mounting toll, which Malcolm found he could no longer live with.

Do you feel sympathy for him? Malcolm sees this moment as a relief, because he has been waiting for it, placing so much into it that he has been depending on it, dreading it, needing it, for so long. The great clash is not much of a contest. In his anger, Godsend cannot contain himself. He taunts Malcolm like he is a little boy unworthy of this fight, much less the war, or any responsibility, for look at what he has done with it. Was it worth it, Godsend says, worth all the pain this moment is delivering? The mighty blows are coming. Godsend brings about the summation of all his will, the determination of a lifetime devoted so a single-minded cause, and the glory of his calling, so that he might avenge himself. This moment isn’t about Agog, and is not even about the war, or what Godsend thinks of Malcolm himself.

In one fatal blow, Godsend knocks Malcolm from the sky, down to the crumbling earth, into the dust of the battlefield, and drags him through the streets, still breathing. He drags him so that his life will be spent in a protracted moment, by his heels, with which his hands grip like talons, piercing them. Godsend knows no mercy, knows not even when Malcolm finally expires. He continues his journey, as the city watches, mindless of any other thought but his vindication. Malcolm’s body becomes unrecognizable in all this, the physical establishment of his end. Three times Godsend drags him around the entire city, through its winding streets. Where is he going? He is making a statement about Traverse, about Malcolm Bidd. He is making his stand, and declaring that there is nowhere else left to go but here. There is no destination left but the city.

Part XIV: Maneuvers

Agog hasn’t come here to sit on the sidelines. As much as he admires his mentor, as much as he is in constant awe of his prowess, Agog will not wait for Godsend to take on the most obvious menace of this war, the greatest threat, the greatest warrior. Agog wants to take on Malcolm Bidd.

It is Malcolm’s martial law that has made Agog decide this, to turn away from Godsend’s corner, away from his tent, where there is sulking and no glory. The man who calls himself mayor has made his last mistake, threatened once too many times. It was an open act of hostility, even though Malcolm himself has still not physically entered the plain. He has sat well behind it, safely ensconced in his citadel. Agog is going to call him on his blunder. An almost perfect match for Godsend, Agog has comparable abilities to his mentor and is equally feared by his enemies. He has been a welcome figure on the battlefield, and he has welcomed the fight almost as eagerly as the Alabama Lamb, and now, because of Godsend, Agog has retreated from the carnage, all but given up, surrendered. For what? For Godsend’s pride? He is going to take on his fight for Godsend, to rouse him if he can, but to win his glory for him if he must. He will clad himself in Godsend’s own raiment, so that everyone will know who this victory falls to. The purple and the gold that intimidates all, even though who would call this manner of dress outrageous. They all respect it, in the end.

Boldly, Agog ascends from the sheltered lands he and Godsend have been resting in for the past three days, and enters the heart of the city. His heart is pure and true, and he believes in what he is doing, more than anything he has believed before, even in his undying service to his mentor, whom he adores. He is aware of all the eyes that are upon him. They see Godsend, and not Agog, the bucking stallion, who yearns for approval he doesn’t need, though his young heart seeks it. This is an act of rebellion, of revolt, and yet he firmly holds to his own interpretation, and the assurance of its outcome. He sees no cause for concern, no indication that there is any other outcome possible beyond the one he has envisioned. He will do what Godsend refuses to, and thus reaffirm his mentor in all his splendor, prove all the others wrong and show them how easy it really was.

He knows this place, even though he has never been to Traverse before. He slips into it as if it were a second skin. He has a sacred purpose; how could he approach it, experience it, any other way? His enemies tremble around him, knowing their swift doom is about them, and that once he has accomplished his mission, it will soon be upon them all. Does it matter that it is he, Agog, and not Godsend, as all appearances attest, that passes by them? Hardly. This is his moment of truth. The buildings, the people, he recognizes all of them, though he knows them not. He has seen them all before. He knows these streets, how they coil so far that you can reach anywhere in the city from any point, without much effort, without any sweat. These facts are only natural, have been preordained for this moment. Agog is ascendant.

He passes by the museum, by the bank, by a car lot, by the cemetery, past neighborhoods, over an alley, beyond the park. He passes through the city’s many circles, the circles that run around the whole mass of it, the layers, the districts, destinations of the subway that are too many to mention, too pervading to ignore. He passes over the Palomar. He is making sure the whole of Traverse knows he is here, that the day of judgment has arrived for Malcolm Bidd. There is only one purpose left for Godsend, and Agog is going to carry it out. He is going to cut the head from the dragon.

Before long, he sees that this flight has produced its purpose. There on the steps of the municipal building carved in Grecian form stands the man Agog has been waiting for. He is not dressed in one of his designer suits, but one designed for a single purpose, for a single audience, a single man. Malcolm Bidd is dressed in a cloak that displays, recessed in the black that would encompass all eyes, famous figures. There is his grandfather, the Alarmist, in his famous battle against the iniquitous Barber, whose talons are bared as they were in the days he threatened to eradicate the city’s liberties. There is, too, Sidewinder, who ended a drought by luring his hated foe Levy to the city. Its citizens rejoice now as they did then. There is also on this form the Blue Beacon, who battles Machine Gun Solomon. And there are many others, worthy of the public lore. Malcolm is ready to display many things on his cloak, even though his face is obscured by the hood. It is a wonder to see him like this, the man who has pledged his life to honesty, shrouded in this form. Agog is not intimidated.

He is also a stark contrast to Malcolm, in his present appearance, the likeness of his mentor, Godsend. He, too, bears a cloak around him, though it is his golden cape. He wears it as a peacock would its feathers, with infinite pride and prejudice. He believes it has in its effect the ability to render him impervious. Malcolm wastes little time in proving him wrong. In a blur, the two collide as if titans, the spectacle of the war even in its already-glorious history. For a time, Agog appears to be Malcolm’s equal, a worthy challenge despite the ruse that to every eye but Malcolm’s own keen and wise orb is still maintained. Malcolm knew from the moment he saw this figure that it wasn’t Godsend, and that it was in fact his young stead. He approaches this fight as if to teach the boy a lesson, and it is equally clear to all around them that he wields power greater than he is letting this hero know, and it is a surprise to all, who believe this hero to be Godsend. Their surprise, then, when the tide finally turns. They did not want to believe it, but this is no challenge. It is a slaughter, and before long, Malcolm makes it so. He cruelly takes the life from Agog with his two massive hands, wrapped as if twin pythons around the hero’s throat, so that the wind is sapped from within him, and his heart drained of all its life. Agog falls to the earth below, while Malcolm, as if only now just realizing what he’s done, retreats again, as if in horror.

This is the last thing the public knows before they see the titans clash again. They do not understand, but others do, and the resulting rage is great.

Part XIII: A Late Arrival from Camelot

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. My name is Isobel Summers. I’m also known as Manner. I’ve come to fight.

“You may also be wondering where I’ve been all these years, since the death of Danny Grace, whom you knew as Switchblade. I can answer that easily enough. I killed Switchblade myself, and I’ve been feeling awfully terrible about it, and that’s why all I’ve been able to do is bake muffins. I’ve baked thousands of them, and I’ve never been satisfied with a single one.

“How did I kill Danny? Isn’t it well-known that he was pretty much terminal when you last saw him? Well, he was, and I couldn’t bare to see him like that. I looked into his eyes and saw what his heart most desired. Oh, he wanted to die. He knew he was going to die. He just wanted to have control over it, just not in the way you thought it was going to happen. He asked me, he really did. Sometimes you have to ask about those kind of things, whether you want suicide, homicide, or a little of both. We were both trained to save lives, and that was all we ever wanted.

“I don’t know that you ever understood our relationship. You were jealous, and I don’t know whether you were jealous of him, jealous of me, or jealous of the both of us, but you were jealous and that much was obvious enough. The truth of it was of course I’d known him for less time, that we’d spent so much time loathing each other across the hallway already when Danny walked into our lives. He was a dead man walking from the start, wasn’t he? And he wanted to take you under his wing. What wasn’t perverse about that? He was older, more experienced, sure, but he knew less than you, didn’t he? And it killed you to know that I preferred him, because you could never understand why. He was so much less sophisticated. But you know what? I think it’s because he had more class. You always had a problem about being blunt, about being obvious in all the wrong ways. He was a charmer, you were an anvil. Was it really so much a surprise that I chose him?

“I gave him his wish, even though it broke my heart, even though I knew his was already broken, and that I couldn’t fix it. It was his broken heart that I loved the most, don’t you see? I wanted to believe that I could fix it, that I had a chance because I wanted to believe we had a chance, because you and I both knew that we never had a chance ourselves. You pushed me to him at every chance, and you probably never realized it. Or maybe you did and you secretly were happy for Danny and me. Maybe you were happy that I found someone, if you couldn’t have me. I always liked to think that, even though I never believed it.

“I gave him his wish and I killed him. I killed Danny, before the Solomons could, before he could kill himself. I didn’t have a choice, I knew I didn’t, but even when I finally made it, I knew immediately that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My god, what had I done? I’d thrown my own life away, and you let me. You abandoned me. How could you? You left me in pain, and you left me behind. You knew what was going to happen, and you let it.

“I gave everything up, and I started baking muffins. Yeah, I started baking muffins. I didn’t know what else to do. What else was there but muffins now? Danny was gone, the invincible Switchblade, the bold, the daring, the cunning, the lover. My Danny was gone. Can you imagine it? And I was the one who pulled the plug on him, I pulled the plug on the Danny Grace machine. I made the final cut. I was devastated. I quit being Manner. I wasn’t even in that costume when I did it. Do you know that? I wasn’t even Switchblade’s partner anymore. I had dressed up in an evening gown. I was his lover. How pathetic is that? How pathetic could I have become? I stayed in that gown for weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off. Do you know that this story isn’t even original? Is that pathetic? Do you pity me? Have I ever done anything to please you? Do you still believe in me? Well, I’ve come back, and I want a fight. I love to fight. It’s my life, isn’t it? Eventually, I had to accept that.

“Do you know what life in a partnership between Switchblade, the brutal club, and Manner, the elegant blade, was like? It was heaven, it was harmony, it was bliss. It was never going to last. I think maybe I’ve come to accept that. He left me something, too. Have I mentioned that? He left me behind his fortune. I didn’t even know he had one. He left me his legacy. And for the longest time, I didn’t know what to do with it. I think I’ve decided. I’m going to use it to fight, because that’s all that I can think of, the only thing that could be appropriate, for what we had, for what we were, for what I did, and for what he wanted. We never spoke about ourselves. But I always understood.

“I think you could use me again. I think I can provide the kind of perspective you’ve been lacking, the kind I’ve always given you, that you’ve never known that you needed. I give you empathy. I understand you, and I always have. If I judge you, it’s because I think that it is in your own best interest, and that if I didn’t, I would only be hurting you. Do you understand? That’s what I did with Danny. That’s why I killed him, because if I hadn’t, I would have caused him more pain, more pain than he would have ever needed, ad certainly more than he would have ever wanted. They used to call him a masochist. Don’t you know that we knew? They called him a loose-cannon, as if it was a bad thing. Even you did, and you were always worse than him, because you tried to hide it, even if in that process you made it more obvious. Oh, Danny was obvious, but he was comfortable with himself. You never were. You were always uncomfortable. We always said behind your back that we didn’t trust you, because you were always plotting. Did you know that, or has it come as a surprise to you now, to hear that?

“I bet that you’ve always considered Godsend your greatest ally, and your biggest foil. Haven’t you? You can admit it now. I think it’s time. But as much as we respected you, we never trusted you. We trusted you with our lives, and we were disappointed in that, weren’t we? You had plans against us, each of us, contingencies, as you called them. And can you see why that made us angry? Why this city was always left to you? Yes, you proved that you had it under control. But no one else wanted to share in your sandbox.

“We didn’t want to get burned. I think we’ve discovered that we were right, haven’t we? Does that surprise you, that I’m putting all this on you? I don’t blame you, but I do think you’re responsible, that in the end, you’re accountable for all of this. You’ve done your good, and you’ve done your evil. This is the end result, this war.

“I honestly don’t believe that I’ve missed a single step in my absence. I’ve come back just as strong, and with everything I once had. I’m offering to you now, because it’s obvious you still need it, still want it, myself. Is it a selfless act? I don’t think I have the right to call it that anymore. It’s not selfless. I’ve participated in a horrible act. No amount of atonement will make up for that, not in a thousand wars. I think I’ve lost my innocence. Does that sound silly? Can one lose that so late in life? Maybe I just had my eyes opened, or maybe the doubts I always had, but never acknowledged, certainly not to this extent, have now fully manifested themselves. I have looked at them in the mirror, and I did not turn away. I think I have new strength to go with my new vulnerability, and I think I had both all along and I’m only now just realizing them, pushing them to their limits. I’m creating myself for the first time.

“I’ve got all this new power, and yet this war is not going to be my triumph. It is going to be someone else’s, because even with this new power, I know I am not the best, and not even close. I think I’m seeing myself for the first time. Or maybe simply acknowledging something I’ve always known. I was the second name in Switchblade and…

“And yet I’m entering a war, even one I know is coming to an end at last. I am going to be there when the final acts are played out, and maybe it was fated that way. Maybe Manner’s presence alone is going to be enough to turn the tide. This is hubris talking. I think I’ve had a vision. There are going to be many battles to fight, and my hands will be dirty once again, dirtier than I made them when I killed Danny, and I will e okay with that. I think I’ve made my peace with myself. Have I said that already?

“I feel like I’m the last of the cavalry to arrive, even after Godsend’s son. I’ve arrived to see the city burn, to see our final triumph, when it looked as if we were never going to achieve our goal, when it looked like we were going to turn away in defeat, allowing our enemies their hollow triumph. But I’ve come in the end of it, as the last of the cavalry. I’ve arrived on my horse, ready for the final charge.

“I grieved for a very long time. Do you know what saved me? The embrace of those whom I believed had abandoned me, the wounded willow. You finally came back for me. How much I’ve appreciated that. I was made whole again. You gave me my second chance, and for that I will only ever be filled with gratitude. In return, I will ensure your victory, because that is all I’ve ever been meant for. I gave Danny his victory, didn’t I? And, I think, I pushed you along your way. I think we’re all going to be grateful for you, after all this is over. I think we’re going to trust you again.

“In all my modesty, the final link has been forged, and we are ready. I see no further reason for delay. Sound the trumpets, mount the cavalry. It’s time for our final charge.

“What am I doing here? I’m here because you believed in me. I think you always knew, what I did, and you still believed in me. I can never repay you for that, but I’m here to begin my effort, to show you what you’ve meant to me, how much I’ve always believed in you, too, right from the very start, even when I chose Danny ahead of you, even when I gave him the honor of killing him, and grieved him for so long. I never gave up on you, because you never gave up on me. So my name is Manner, and I’m here to fight, on your behalf, on the behalf of the goal we have all believed in for so long, and to see that, once more, as always, the right thing is done, because it is all we really have in the end.”

Part XII: Second Chances

There is more still to learn of what Cotton was up to before he was sealed in his watery tomb. The visit with Dust, his final, is our last element. There was a time when Cotton needed Dust, and that was before they had even met. He had always had the book Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight as a guide, but to know there was another hero like the one he had read and thought about for so long was an entirely obsessive thought for him. There was much to Dust’s career that Cotton believed would be illuminating, from what he had originally set out to accomplish to what he had later took on in his dormant years. The son of the Blue Beacon surely had many things to offer beyond the advice he would later provide the increasingly troubled soul.

“Your son didn’t deserve to die like that,” Cotton says, having crawled back down the tower, resting. He would have gone to the museum, but he doesn’t have the strength. Dust tells him it’s unnecessary. Behind this institution is good enough. In later days, even this won’t be safe; there will be battles here, deaths, and the earth everywhere will know blood. For now, though, a final rest.

“Death doesn’t look for merit,” Dust says. “Maybe an old man, a father, doesn’t deserve this, but for a man at war? He didn’t die in vain, did he? He knew what he was doing. I’ve seen others fall with less dignity, and I have seen their families grieve and lament without shame. I didn’t want that for myself. When my father died, I told myself the same things. I have made a life of it. I still hold no regrets.”

“You are, as always, an inspiration, Nicholas,” Cotton says. “You will probably never know how much you’ve meant to me.”

“The same could be said on my part,” Dust says. When the young Nicolas Sanders discovered what he could do with his body, he was playing in the mud at school. The teachers were telling him to stop, but he was playing with a friend he’d lost, whom he was once told he couldn’t sit with because there were seating assignments to the contrary and damned were the consequences if a six year old and now friendless boy would enter the daunting world on his own again; and in that moment, he couldn’t have cared less how much trouble he could get in. He continued to slap around after every warning, until he looked down and noticed that his left foot wasn’t so much in the mud as a part of it. As he stared at it the final warning came and he was told to go stand against the school for the rest of recess. Once more he was separated from his friend, but he couldn’t notice that now. Oh, he was bitter enough to spite the school for the rest of his tenure there, but he couldn’t help but marvel at his foot, which was covered in mud as he made his way to the building. He pulled the hood of his jacket around him, and the world was reduced to his foot. He didn’t want to clean it, not just because of what he’d seen, but because he was afraid how much would be gone when he was done. And what did it mean?

Nicolas wouldn’t think about it again for months. Then, in the quiet of night, he awoke to find his foot asleep. He couldn’t get the feeling back in it not matter how much he shook it around, and then he lifted his blankets and saw why. It was a pile of sand. He nearly screamed, but he fought the impulse. His father was already gone, and his mother would not be able to handle it. Nicolas kept his terror in his eyes, lay his head back down, and slept for the rest of the night. He had heard that when you sleep, no matter how much you toss and turn, you always end up in the same position you went to sleep in, and this was the thought to which he clutched. There were many nights Nicolas couldn’t sleep, but this wasn’t one of them. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was understanding. At school again, where he had become forsaken because he drew himself away from others, he willed his foot to sand again, and was in the process of attempting more when a ball struck him. The other kids were playing, never noticing him, and only now did they stop to look in his direction. He now had their object of interest a few feet away. Without thinking, unmindful of where it would land, he threw the ball back, someone retrieved it, and he was left alone again. He looked at his foot, and saw that it was solid again.

He practiced for years, because he knew immediately what he would do with this power. He had his father as his example. Always at night, after darkness had taken the interest from other souls, Nicolas would slip away and see what he could do, how Silt, the Sand Man, could help. There was never a question of whether he would seek revenge on his classmates. What was there to avenge? His own inability to blend in? it was his own failure, not theirs. That was a matter of resentment, not anger. Anger was a tool of action, not inaction. In later years, there would be other youths too desperate to understand this, who would consume the national interest with their tragedies, but Nicolas had no rage to fuel. All he had was a burning desire to express himself in the way he could be understood. He longed for what his father could never provide, and that was a sense of belonging. The Beacon had never belonged, and the business with the Alarmist never made it easier. As Silt, he found he belonged everywhere. As a soldier, drafted to fight in a war, he lost that feeling again.

Silt in the years leading to that experience, emerged as a hero the city of Traverse could depend on. He wouldn’t merely offer his assistance to the community, but he would help cultivate it as well. He gave speeches, even at his old school, to students, because they were stuck in their own worlds, who didn’t understand words that knew them. This didn’t bother Silt, because he understood these youths, too. He spoke to them not to educate them, but so that they felt included. Merely to be there, that was what they wanted, and even though he had never been a part of the, he had shared this. As Silt, he was there, and he could make a difference. He was the beloved son, even as his father watched from his accustomed distance, having given it up. They never spoke of this, even when the end was approaching.

Once brought to another land, Nicolas left the Sand Man behind, and took on his burden of the war. Did he know what they were fighting for, or whether there was ever a chance of victory? Did he know that there were those perverting the experience? Of course he did. His father had known these things, too, and that was a generation that thought it was okay to win at the cost of leveling entire cities. Were there cities in this war to level? This was a battleground with few boundaries, few limitations. This was a war pitched in a country that had been divided. There was a north and a south. And long after this, there still were, and yet there could not be less connecting them. Why pretend? That was what troubled Nicolas more than anything, even more than the reaction he was hearing about from back home. He was no longer a hero. The world was changing, and leaving him behind again.

When he returned, Nicolas found himself unwanted, derided, and abandoned. He turned to his identity as Silt, and discovered the same was true in this guise as well. The people no longer trusted him. They no longer believed in heroes, not the kind he was, anyway. What was a Sand Man, anyway, but a man who could never be known? He lived in a dream, and that dream was shattered. In the history of wars, there was never one with a more simple goal in mind than the one for which he had fought. His nation had wanted to stop something. And because it was so simple, it was rejected. And what did Silt want? He wanted to, like his father, stop the spread of corruption in his city. He came to understand that things were not as simple as he had once thought, because it was easier to assume they weren’t. It was easier to assume that there were no good or bad people, but victims. And it would have been so much easier if everyone who had ever considered this thought had uttered it, because no one, no matter how much they embraced it, understood it. Instead, they rejected those who did. Nicolas Sanders, Silt, was one of them. He believed that he would die alone, a failure.

He did not, however, give up his efforts. The Sand Man persisted in his adventures, now refocused in his interest in educating the city, but in more concentrated form. Hated though he was, he saw to it that the next generation know that they were not wasting their time, that whatever good they did, however little they saw in their results, they didn’t need vindication to know they were doing the right thing. He was Switchblade’s inspiration in taking on the dangerous path of the bloodsport, in which he would show his enemies that their own merciless ways could be held against them. He would do exactly what they did, take a pound for every pound they did. He was the retaliatory avenger, and for a long time, his every measure was successful, until he realized what price he would have to pay. It was in these moments that Switchblade took on his own apprentice, the Eidolon, and when these moments were over, he made the final, inevitable sacrifice.

Nicolas watched as the Eidolon took wing. Nicolas himself had finally drawn into seclusion, because he had never meant to see a student bring about his own destruction. As powerful as he had been, he gave it all up, because of Switchblade’s death, and because that death had been a warning. All the years Nicolas had spent turning his body into sand, he noticed, had not come without a price. In the jungles, he had felt pain every time he volunteered for reconnaissance, blended into the mud that was everywhere. He couldn’t understand why, at night, when he could find a dry place somewhere above the other men and release himself into a dry state, all he did was hurt. He hurt because he was wearing his body thin. He was on the same road to self-sacrifice he had led Switchblade onto, neither ever understanding, or so he had at first allowed himself to believe. Switchblade had known. He had been a martyr. Nicolas had only understood it after being shown. In a way, the mentor became the apprentice, the father had become the son. Xenon was then old enough to understand, too.

The Eidolon in his own way took on the legacy on the Blue Beacon, of Switchblade, of Silt himself, and yet not for a single day was he able to handle it with any real sense of composure. He hid it with a constant stream of snapping wit for years, but inside, and in his eyes, he couldn’t handle the pressure. On the day he murdered the Cad, he found Nicolas for the first time, discovering that Silt had held the reformed villain Calypso in his trust already. This was like a final straw. Viper killed Calypso in the museum that day, and set Nicolas into liquid for the last time. His body could no longer handle that stress, and the Eidolon was the one who snapped. He left the museum and murdered the Cad, and went into his own retirement. When Nicolas found himself again, he went in search of the Eidolon, and found him in his own mind, trapped for a self of guilt he could never handle, and yet Nicolas couldn’t have been more pleased. His life’s work hadn’t been a failure at all, but a success.

All he had ever wanted was a sense of belonging, and this was what he had given the Eidolon, a place to call home, his own mind. He had given the troubled man a release, and when he had nurtured the Eidolon back to a normal perception, he gave him peace of mind as well, a means to control this need to control reality. Nicolas had never sought this man out, which was what made the accomplishment all the more spectacular. What’s more, his own son was not the troubled man he had expected to find, either, and the Eidolon was the first to congratulate Nicolas, and to, in all gratitude, take Xenon under his wing. The Eidolon never truly returned, but the hero did.

“What do you hope to accomplish now?” Dust asks. He believes that all things that can be done have already been done. He can’t see what more still waits.

“Your son’s killer,” Cotton says. “He’s still out there. I owe you enough so that there’s only one thing left for me to do.”

“This warmongering,” Dust says. “I have always been one to embrace it, but I have never understood it. We sacrifice our own lives for those of others, for ideas. We sacrifice, and hope we are remembered, for the great deeds we are always hoping we can accomplish. I believe I have had my victories, and yet I see even now that I have not always had the lasting impact I believed I would. And I wonder what impact would suffice. Is there any end to this, Cotton?”

“You told me there wasn’t,” Cotton says. “You told me that we would have to find our contentment with that. Ours is to fight, because that is what brave souls do, what the only right thing is to do. What would we be if we didn’t fight? What could we have accomplished, or ever hope to? Achievement comes with sacrifice, because we are always losing something of ourselves. We are dying a little bit every day, aren’t we? Did you tell me that? The moment we are born, we begin the progress of death. To begin is to anticipate a conclusion. Many of us don’t understand that. They don’t understand that when they refuse to fight, or must be roused. You have always made it your business to do the rousing. That is how you’ve become a champion, Dust, in your old age, reclaimed the power in your arms that the advancing years have robbed of you. You and I both have withdrawn ourselves. That is what the truly brave do, I have come to believe. They are not the ones who leap out in the front of the battle and demand their pound in flesh, but the ones who yield in the back and anticipate what the victory will cost. Victory is a cost, because it is the same as defeat. It is another event in an inevitable chain toward another battle, because there is no rest, only other battles. You helped me see that, Dust. You helped me see that pacifism is no victory, but defeat. It will amount to a greater loss in time than the attempt in battle could ever achieve. Your father, the Beacon, do you know what his life meant for me? He was broken down, defeated by a war, and yet when he returned home, he eventually built himself stronger than he ever was, not the same brave warrior he had been, but a smarter, cagier man who knew what the risks meant. I don’t know that you ever understood him, if you will mind my saying so. I don’t think it did you any wrong; in contrary, I think it made you stronger, because you discovered for yourself what it took to take on this challenge, and you approached it accordingly. You have been an inspiration to me, just as your father was, and the Sidewinder a century earlier, who told me retirement wasn’t a failure, wasn’t a retreat, or a concession, but another way to start again. It was his building Viper was thrown from. And I believe the stories that say Elijah Humbert fought at the Alamo, too.

“You once talked to me like this, Dust, and I am returning the favor. You gave me a second chance, and I am giving you one as well. You have lost your son, and you can’t fight in this war. You should, by all rights, consider yourself a miserable failure, and yet, I refuse to believe that even for one day in your life, you have. For this I admire you, as I always have. With your abilities, with your father’s agility and your son’s light, you have seen and been a part of a world I could never understand, no matter how much control I have brought to my own. And yet we have shared that world. And I shared responsibility over your son, for a brief time, before his death. I could never express my gratitude for being allowed that in a thousand lifetimes. He was a good boy, Dust. Have you truly understood that? For this you may grieve another night, even while the pain is still fresh and the funeral games linger.

“He died in this war, and you and both know what that means. Do you know how he died? Has anyone ever told you? He died in my arms, Dust, in my own arms. I saw into his eyes, his peace with what befell him. You should only ever be proud of him. The look on his face, this was what he wanted, what he ever wanted. He died in a war and his death didn’t bring victory any closer. In many ways, it made victory look more distant. Godsend saw to that, but looks are only ever deceiving, aren’t they? That has been our weapon, our greatest weapon, what united the both of us beyond everything else. We have different tools, and the same tools. Our greatest weapon is our ability to command the stage, to own it, isn’t it? Does it matter what it looks like?”

“And now you’re plotting your exit, aren’t you?” Dust says. “You know what you’re planning is suicide, to walk directly into a trap?”

“I have already fallen into a trap,” Cotton says. “We are always falling into traps. You told me that, don’t you remember? Risk is part of the game. Do we have our own traps? That is what our opponents don’t understand, what they never see. They are too busy thinking themselves clever to see that. This is all one inevitable fireball, and the stage is going to burn. Can it still be called a victory? You can tell me that. Your father can tell me that.”

“They called my father’s a victory,” Dust says. “They never allowed me to call mine one, because they were too busy rejecting it. War is a terrible cost to pay, but it must be paid. Do you see utopia anywhere? There is always sacrifice to be made to achieve peace of mind.”

“I wonder who your mentor was,” Cotton says.

“I was my own mentor,” Dust says. “To some extent, my father was, but I had to train myself. I only ever had myself. You had books an examples, and people constantly quoting their philosophies to you. It’s a wonder you still stand. What has been your cost, Cotton? What have you given up? I gave up a son. What have you lost?”

“You mean besides my second life?” Cotton says. “There is always a price, of course there is. Some are more invisible than others. Some pay a higher price to achieve more, and their pain is the greatest, and least knowable. I don’t think we want to know it. That’s what I have come to decide. Great pain shouldn’t be known. It becomes an object of guilt, of pity, of resentment, of disbelief. What is great pain? What is great sacrifice? I wonder if you can tell me that, Nicolas?”

“I have already told you the sum of my existence,” Dust says. “Others have done that, too. Has it been enough? I believe so. I believe you’ve turned out better than any of us, the old fools. I wonder, how did you take Switchblade’s death?”

“I took it as I take any death,” Cotton says. “As I am taking Viper’s. It is a moment to mourn, to commemorate the passing of someone great. It isn’t just about sacrifice, and isn’t enough to say that they accomplished something, because the living will always remember their dead. The important thing is to remember the simplest thing that they could do. They were strong enough to live.”

“And strong enough to die,” Dust says.

“And strong enough to die,” Cottons says. “I’m not sure if any of us accomplish anything greater than that, in the end. People are always talking about a will to live. Is it because that’s what we’re constantly keeping together, that will? Without it, are we that fragile?”

“You suggest we’re stronger,” Dust says.

“I suggest nothing,” Cotton says. “The only thing I know is there always seems to be something left to be done. That is what successive generations see. And that is what I see before me.”

“I cherish your wisdom,” Dust says. In the state his body has known for a decade, in this cloud of so many particles suggested in the name he has taken for himself, he has already moved on. He really did die the day Viper killed him in that museum. He has been lingering, as if a ghost. His body is unique enough so that his mind was able to remain on this earth, and his body resilient, just enough, so that he could reclaim it, in this insubstantial form, and yet in his presence, few are able to tolerate him for long. In many ways, he had to relinquish his son to Cotton, and in just as many ways, he wanted to, and in some ways, his son has now joined him. When he sees a glimmer of light now, he wonders if it is Xenon.

Such a moment passes. He leaves Cotton to the business that soon enough ensnares the Eidolon beneath the Palomar. Cotton has no regrets, no inner torment. Not like he had before, not anymore. He has lingering thoughts, desires he know he won’t be able to shake, but Dust, as he has for so long now, serves as a gentle reminder of what he’s gained, what can never be taken away, because it has already been given. This is a war, and there are losses all around him, but if there is a defeat ahead of him, there is victory, too. He has made sure of that. He would never have allowed himself to fall into a simple trap without having first understood and accepted what would happen. This is a calculated sacrifice he was always fated to make, and with that, he long ago made peace. What is left to cling to? He has already given everything, and has already seen what course the war will take without him. He returns to the rhythm of his breathing, in this chest below the river, just to the side of a city he pledged his life to. There is peace in this.

Part XI: Thicker than Blood

“Do you know that they were all set to bring Dad down?” Malcolm says. He and his brother have been sitting in the mayor’s office for a good ten minutes, neither speaking, and he suddenly introduces this thought. “It seems his performance has been lagging. They were going to raid his operation, maybe replace him, maybe see what the city is like without a boss. They were set to do this, and then the war broke loose, after Xenon’s death. Amazing, isn’t it, how one little incident can change that?”

“It wasn’t Xenon’s death that persuaded them,” Odin says. “It was your election. We all wish you would take a little more credit. Your idea, for instance, has been working well, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s chaos out there. Both sides are becoming more brazen. I’m destroying the city,” Malcolm says. “You call that a success?”

“I call it a strategy,” Odin says. “The National Guard is going to be coming soon, you know. Of course you do. Who do you think they’ll target?”

“Imagine, our father being taken out,” Malcolm says, “because he’s gone soft. When have you ever known him to be soft, even when he was still acting like that, like an even more supercilious Capote? The day changed, but he never did. My reforms? He claims it was his idea, but you can see it in his eye. Our Benjamin is still the same. It’s the world that’s changed around him. They going to remove him, not because he’s changed, but because he hasn’t. This war has produced a new environment of accountability. If you’re not capable of playing under the radar, like a Ulysses Kincaid, you’re a lame duck. Even Rancor would have felt the pressure. They prefer subtlety now. They want control, but they don’t want it flaunted. It’s the way they’ve always done it, I suppose, the sea of power. They are afraid, is the real answer here, they’re afraid that they won’t be able to pass their own test for much longer. They want scapegoats to throw around, unless the public begins to understand that our little democracy is more aristocratic than it’s been led to believe, even though the truth has always been in plain sight. The public is blinded by a useful myth.

“I’m not so arrogant to believe I won this office by any other method than what I’ve just described. Had I run without the reputation of my family, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Who would have heard of me? Who would have misplaced their trust in me? I talk. That is the extent of my cunning. I have been fortunate enough so that I have been able to cultivate this meager ability, and its appearance has served me, along with my family. Yet not a day has gone by since the election that I haven’t felt like a fraud, Odin. I want to relinquish this office. And I make decisions like this in the meantime. The city is more dangerous now than it was a month ago, ten years into a war, Odin. I have made it easier for our friends to operate, but that has only unleashed a lethal combat, more deadly in one day than one month. There were those seething, Odin, seething at the opportunity. We mark ourselves among depraved men. They are filled with anger, and this war has directed that anger to a toxic degree. Once it ends, we will have discovered that the genie has escaped the bottle. If we win, we lose. If we lose, we will have sealed a history of shame. That was never what we wanted, was it? We were only ever in the pursuit of great things.”

“Some losing causes are remembered as noble, as bold,” Odin says. “They may remember us that way, as conquerors who were finally vanquished, as they always are. Does that make you happy, to think about it that way?”

“I wish it did,” Malcolm says. “There are no good days for us anymore.”

“If it makes you feel better, I am preparing to make things right again,” Odin says.

“What do you mean?” Malcolm says.

“I am going to cut away the cancer that has infected us,” Odin says. “The Barracuda.”

“There is great danger in that,” Malcolm says. “How do you hope to accomplish this?”

“I have secrets, Malcolm,” Odin says.

“I am aware of them,” Malcolm says. “Are you aware of mine?”

“We all are,” Odin says. “You are a politician first, but you are still regarded as our greatest warrior. Some know me as Unity. Everyone knows you as Malcolm Bidd. Don’t underestimate yourself. You were elected as much for your name as your talents. Names can only carry people so far. You have exceeded everyone in every way. Your old schools honor you, or have you forgotten? Would you like to make a visit? You won’t easily be forgotten, or derided, by history, Malcolm. How could you possibly fear that? You are better than all of us. I have been only recently trying to catch up, to measure up to a life that has exceeded every expectation, every dream. You are bigger than this city, Malcolm. The nation adores you, too. What do you think that means?”

“I think it means nothing,” Malcolm says. He is not one to mince modesties, only to sometimes fill an image. He does that most often when he is agitated with someone. When calm, he is rational, above the capacity of others. “I would not accept anything else. I want to give this seat up; why would I take any other? I believe that in days past I imagined something, and for a long time I believed in that image more than I was living in the reality of it. Did it take a war to do this? Perhaps it did. I feel shame for that, too. The time is coming when I am going to have to prove myself. I believe I will fail. I believe that when I have been truly tested, I will prove to be unworthy of the challenge. Is that so morbid? You call me a success, but I have never put these abilities to the test. I have walked through exercises and never seen if I were up to their counterparts in reality. I’ve heard what Unity has done. You’re more ready than I am, Odin. I have prepared Barracuda for you. His cancer will soon be eliminated. What will I have to boast of, meanwhile? Godsend is in retreat, the Eidolon incapacitated. Do you know I decided that myself? I am a coward, Odin. Don’t you see? I have never truly been worthy of all that has been handed me. What have I done? I am bringing about the final ruin of this city. Am I to be applauded for that? And they wanted to eliminate our father. Do you see the irony? What did he ever do that was half as terrible? And I did it for him. I wanted him to be proud of me. Is that sad? I can’t imagine it as anything else. I’m a failure, and when the time has come, I’m going to prove it in battle, too. I don’t sleep anymore, Odin. I can’t.”

“You should try sleeping when you know how much responsibility you have for this war,” Odin says. “I made a mistake. You want to blame yourself because of our father? He blessed my union with Elizabeth. That was a far bigger mistake than you could ever make. I made an enemy of Godsend. I brought you what you see as your doom. How do you think that makes me feel? The Solomons have left themselves out of this war. They aim to succeed you. Even with Cinder dead at the hands of Manner, they stand before power they haven’t known in decades. You want to know how this war will end? With the balance of power shifted. That’s what the war has been about this whole time, and that’s what’s going to be the result. We win, we lose. We lose, we lose everything. Neither of us is going to be alive at the end of this.”

“These are grim thoughts for you,” Malcolm says. “I have only ever known you as the bright-headed optimist. Have your experiences in this war really changed you that much? Then the wages have been too high. You have earned maturity at too great a cost. But then, these are increasingly dangerous times, all the more so because we continually allow ourselves to believe that we are advancing. Tell me, though, are we at the future everyone knows so well yet, the one with the flying cars and clones? They have those in comic books, but comic books don’t know what reality is. They cheapen themselves when they invent new technology to cover whatever logical gaps they’re having this month. That’s why they aren’t taken seriously, because they’ve allowed themselves to fall into a complacency where this is okay, where they don’t have to ground themselves in anymore reality than they think they need to. They pretend they do, but they only end up pandering. They want to know what real heroes are like? Look around. They’re too busy looking at themselves. Do you have a plan yet, Odin? Don’t take your focus for granted. Look around you, see what’s out there. I think it would be good for you to do some exploring. At a time like this? Yes. There’s none better. You’ll never find the world to be a more lucid place than when it’s threatened. People are less concerned with their problems than with the perception of them. That’s when they talk, Odin, and that’s when you discover what the world is really like. You will hear what people think then, and you can discover how they are interpreting things. That is all we’re ever doing, interpreting. Accuracy is never the issue. All that I’ve been saying about my place? I don’t now. Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m not. I’m beginning to reflect now. You will always hear the truest thought first, if you have heard anything at all. It is only when someone has found to think that they will put a different air on.”

“We never really talk about our father,” Odin says. “We take him for granted, I think.”

“If that’s true, then that’s what he wants,” Malcolm says. “I assure you, he never speaks about us. We are his future, but he is still concerned about the present. Why shouldn’t he be? He will outlive us both, you know. Can you imagine that burden? I think he’s always known that. It’s why he’s always sequestered himself, because he has been preparing. He has not been doing a very good job of it. He fears to lose us, and so he has spent a lifetime trying to fool himself into thinking he never wanted us in the first place. It is the same way with Clayton Neville. He believes he has only recently entered the path toward Barracuda. He has spent a lifetime preparing. This is the life he has always wanted. He misrepresents us because he has for so long misrepresented himself. There are files, Odin, of things he has probably hidden from himself, not to mentions others, certainly the government he once served. You should have seen his face when he was standing in this room. He has always been too eager. Have you seen that? Maybe you have to look for it, because he masks this, too. I’m not sure how aware he is of these things himself. He no doubt believes, as he always has, that he is only ever doing the right thing. Yet he has made two sets of dangerous enemies, and he is so blind to this fact that he would willingly target the Eidolon. I sabotaged him, you know. The Eidolon, despite what everyone, including our own father, believes, is quite safe. I have been pumping a steady stream of oxygen into his coffin. You did know of these things?”

“I hadn’t, actually,” Odin says.

“You can’t interfere, though,” Malcolm says, remarking on the eagerness that has flooded his brother’s own eyes. “I have always respected the Eidolon. I am giving him a test, and I am testing my foe as well. Neither you nor I will free the Eidolon. He emerges on his own power, or that of Godsend’s. This is the end of that. Is this a cruel game I am playing, another mistake? I don’t believe so, but I have been wrong many times before. I am more often wrong than not, I’ve come to understand, as we all must. At any rate, I think it’s time we were off to our duties. You have much to prepare for. I have a city to run in place of my father.”

Odin readily agrees. The eagerness is still evident in his eye, as is his self-awareness of this. Malcolm watches as his brother struggles with his good nature, walking out of the mayor’s office lost in thought. Malcolm is too, as he always is. He is a constant brooder; he always has been. He has always taken on so much responsibility, as an older brother and for his brother, as his father’s son and for his father, and as a caretaker, guardian, and warrior of this city, which he was charged to shepherd. He lost one of its flock and has now found himself expected to recover it, even though his philosophy is different from this thought. He believes the many are more important, and that he would be reckless to think any other way. The many in this instance require a great deal from him. He was not joking when he told his brother that he expected to forfeit his life in this conflict, that the approaching hour demands it, as inevitable, as necessary, as duty. What has he done with his life to deserve this? Nothing. It will be of that moment, that he brings it upon himself. He believes he will live long enough to see his city burn. There is very little time now for this to be accomplished. Malcolm only wishes he could know how he will be remembered. He has been writing all he knows. He is a constant student, and he sees only one way out. It’s a bitter pill.