Hangman Chapter 68

Chapter 68-

It is a misnomer to call fear an instinct. Fear is simply a conscious response to a threat, the detection of that threat is instinct in and of itself. There are few things more threatening to the body than the sudden disappearance of the ground from under you, physically and figuratively, so the fact that Ky felt no fear in the present moment meant one of three things: that he was not afraid of falling, that his sorrow had supplanted his need to survive, or that he was not human.

The tops of the buildings looked so different from up here.

Instantly, his mind broke and flooded the rest of his body with the desire walled inside. He pointed his rod and cried the name:

“[IRON MAIDEN]!!”

A burst of lightning sent him careening through the air like a missile, a black rocket against the azure blue. When he finally landed on a flat roof, his body slammed into the concrete and dug a small crater into it.

Ky’s hand pushed against the rooftop, lifting himself up; his clothes were torn and premature soreness wracked his body. His face was smudged with bits of dirt, and a cut was now running across his cheek. None of this was any matter, though, because he knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do there.

---

“Gruse-” Sonsee reached out for her, only for her to shrink away. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Few intelligible words could leave her lips, as she was heaving and raging like she was vomiting a demon. “Nooo…” she wailed, her pitch descending into a deep, wretched pit. “No…” again and again, sometimes softly, sometimes loudly, her grief rose and fell like the waves.

Gallow watched her wallow with an intrigue that surprised himself.

That tone…

When he was sentenced to death, his mother had cried the same words in the court, her distraught so feverish she needed to be assisted by security lest she hurt herself or another. Somewhere deep in his mind, he knew what Gruse knew.

Silently, he reached his hand through the bars.

“Gruse… Is that your name?”

She bared her eyes up at him like they were fangs. She grabbed the bars and shook them twice, crashing them against the bars to cause a clamor that rang through the small hall.

It was a short display of rage, and when it was over, she hung her head because staring at the floor was less intimidating than into someone’s face.

“Hey.”

When Gallow spoke, it was like there was no one else in the room. She craned her neck to see him, and he looked at her with kindness that sent seismic quakes through her bones. Who was this, who had killed the first man she’d dared to bring into her life? Who had sent bullets into the body of the second?

“I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t let you cry like that,” he said. “I don’t want that to be the last thing I hear from you.”

The last thing.

What was the last thing she’d said to Myst? She couldn’t even remember.

A flash of red, and the heavy padlock was shattered into scraps of metal. The door swung weakly open and Gallow stepped out. Sonsee thought it was funny that he closed it behind him, a very polite gesture. He looked at Gestalt, who had remained quiet, simply watching the young people cry among themselves. Gruse was now facing away from them, her brow hardened, trying to calm down and keep the tears down.

“Bit of an awkward time to ask for that service again,” Gallow observed.

As if reading his mind, Gestalt cracked his knuckles and assured them, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this one.”

He placed his hands on either side of the lock and muttered,

“[AUSTERITY BLUES]”

The lock seemed to flex, going from its resting state to an abrupt stiffness, moving just a few degrees forward from where it hung on the door. A moment later, it snapped apart, and pieces of its mechanism flew outward.

The four others watched him exit the cell with varying levels of interest.

“Alright,” Gestalt clapped his hands together. “Let’s get outta here.”

Dazey left Sonsee’s side and did her best to stand up.

“Dazey?” Sonsee asked while Gruse watched from her periphery.

The boyish-girl took a few steps forward and tensed all of her muscles to keep herself standing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning on the frame of the door. “But I have to go back, this is already bad enough, if I stay around you any longer, Lord Bach might punish me.” Dazey made sure to twist her neck to get a view of them before turning back away.

“[BIRD GEHRL]...”

Her body dissipated into a flock of birds which flew down the hall in a storm, passing Rodan and Dana’s cells, through torchlight, and around corners, she became sparse. One was left behind the others, flapping its wings weakly so that when it hit the ground again it would limply hop a few times until taking off again. The cell room was quiet.

---

That night’s snow had draped the palace rooftops and carpeted the courtyard grass. Leon trudged through the central courtyard in full garb, white silk cape and all, trailed by a row of attendants.

“Your Majesty,” one of the attendants notified him from behind.

“Yes?” He didn’t bother to look back.

“Your meeting with the Duke of Frank is scheduled to begin in five minutes.”

“I know,” Leon shrugged off the reminder with nonchalance. It was a beautiful day, enough to go outside, but not enough to leave the wall of the palace’s perimeter. In the city, the snow was dirty slush, unlike the palace, where it remained pure and untouched, just as it had fallen. In that respect, treading through it and upsetting its crystalline arrangement gave him a great feeling of power over nature.

CRASH

“Hm?” he smirked. Fifty or sixty feet away, the tall, arched chain gate was melted into hot steel that boiled the snow where it fell. Someone was marching through it, someone in all black, with a tall, rigid posture, a rod wielded in hand.

An open-mouthed, subtle smile befell Leon’s face, and he stepped forward as his attendants retreated.

“Monaco!” he called, arms stretched wide, as if to welcome him. Ky’s face was grim, Leon didn’t even need to activate his eyes to tell his intent. “You’ve come to fight me on today of all days? Shouldn’t you be at Church with your daddy?”

Ky’s face didn’t shift, if anything, it intensified. His blood was gasoline, ready to ignite with his Vocation’s spark. He raised his Ishtar up and grasped it with both hands towards the king.

Leon’s tepid smile solidified into a full-fledged grin; he dug his heel into the snow.

“King Leon…” the attendant behind him inched back to the safety of the other two before they all took off running for help.

A wave of light washed over Leon, and his cloth garb was replaced with golden armor, or rather, the light hardened into a brilliant form around him resembling armor, its majesty so great that bits of it danced like flames. All of the snow around him was melted to water that soaked into the grass and reflected the immense light coming off of him.

“This is the power of the royal blood,” he proclaimed. “Every generation of Kings lives inside of me, General; when you face me, you show down with history!”

The glare of light was near-blinding, but Ky kept his eyes focused straight ahead.

“[IRON… MAIDEN]!!”

The path before him was engulfed in lightning. Leon raised a finger, and split the beam in two like a river. When Ky let up the attack, a scorched, Y-shaped line was burnt into the ground. Leon curled his hand as if grasping something, and a golden cane appeared from swirling flame, topped with a hammerhead, oddly small for its grandeur, it looked almost like a religious implement.

“Are you done?” he wondered aloud and stepped forward, dragging his hammer along the ground to produce a blaze that carried him straight across the courtyard. Leon discharged all of his velocity through his hammer in Ky’s direction.

“Finish you swiftly.”

Flame clashed with lightning, and the next thing he knew, the hammer was locked with Ky’s Ishtar. Leon’s expression broke for a moment to reveal his shock.

“The Saint’s Hammer should incinerate anything it touches.” This didn’t make sense.

The two of them broke their clash and for the first time, Leon postured to decide his next move.

“What is that thing?” he asked, raising his own weapon to guard. “I should have melted you the moment this touched you; what is that thing? What are you?”

Ky grit his teeth. Leon had sharpened his intent-perception to pick up on even the most minute of actions one wanted to take. Ideally, he should have been untouchable, able to decipher anything from a stealthy assassination attempt to a wild, instinctual swing of the blade; now, however, when his eyes shone with gold fire, all he could see in Ky’s heart was the intense, maddening desire to kill him. Leon had known that Ky was no fan of his, but this sudden, violent outburst was no mere tantrum; something had snapped inside of him, this was a full commitment.

“[IRON MAIDEN]!!”

Ky brought his wand down in an overhead swing, slamming down a thirty-foot pillar of thunder that shook the ground beneath their feet. Any normal human would have been burnt to cinders by the attack, but Leon was left only panting beneath a curtain of golden light he’d conjured above himself.

“Impressive,” he thought, straightening his back. “But don’t get any ideas.”

Leon threw the hammer forward as a flaming missile, forcing Ky to deflect it with his baton. Making use of the demigod-like strength and speed accessible to him, he closed the distance between them, landing at Ky’s side in just over a second. Leon clenched his gauntlets and delivered a blow to Ky’s abdomen that suspended him in the air.

“Remain, by King’s decree.”

SLAM

SLAM

Two more heavy punches to his center.

“Pilgrimage, by King’s decree.”

CRASH

One last fierce strike engulfed Ky in gold fire, bathing the ground they stood on in blinding light. A heartbeat later, a hole opened up in the palace’s third floor.

“What?!” Leon wouldn’t stand for what he saw. Off in the distance, Ky rose to his feet with the husky breathing and heaving shoulders of a wild animal. It should have been impossible, he should have been reduced to a few atoms, but he was not only intact, but alive.

Ky’s glare filled the courtyard from where he stood in the hole he’d blown through the building. Pieces of glass and debris were scattered at the floor and smoke billowed from behind him. He felt something wet seeping slowly from his side, and opened his jacket to see that among his milky white skin, what looked like a puncture wound had opened. It was unlike the ones he’d seen on the battlefield; it was like his skin was a thick, crystalline layer from which a single shard had been ripped, and now small cracks had formed around it like shattered glass. Behind the wound was a dark, fleshy mass of what looked like muscle, but which pulsed like a heartbeat, and from it, blood oozed slowly and ran down his waist.

Ky took a long exhale through his teeth, frustrated and angry. It was just like Jericho’s wound back in the prison, it was just like it. He snapped his jacket shut again to hide it from his view.

“But my blood is still red.”

---

“Hey, Gallow, Sonsee,” Rodan said with a shaky laugh. The group, fleeing the cell room, ground to a halt and the two he’d called by name stared at him with uncanny intensity.

“Hello! Friends!” he added, trying to shake their looks. “Would you mind freeing myself and my wife, if that’s not too much?” Rodan was being as nice as possible. Gestalt looked at Sonsee and Gallow, whose faces were grim and lips pursed.

“Just do it,” Gallow relented.

Gestalt shrugged and blew the locks of both cells apart.

The five of them jogged down the hall, following Sonsee’s directions.

“Eroh is close by,” she informed them. “Gruse, I’ll get you to him, but you’re on your own from there.”

Gruse didn’t flinch at her warning, she’d already made up her mind. As she ran, she knew she was getting closer to where she’d felt her connection sever, closer to him.

They turned the corner and almost ran directly into Eroh.

“Hey!” he snarled, trying not to trip over his own feet. “I got it,” he held up the orb, and Sonsee felt some relief for Gruse’s sake, that she wouldn’t have to spend any longer here, in this labyrinth.

Gruse’s eyes met Eroh’s, and she asked, “Where did you come from?”

Eroh was confused for a second. “Come from? There was a chamber back there-”

“Where?” Gruse insisted. “Which way?”

Eroh blinked at her. “Down and to the left, then another left, then straight ahead, but I’m not going back there.”

Gruse pushed past him, singlemindedly rushing ahead.

“Gruse!” Sonsee called, but Gallow stopped her.

“Whatever it is,” he said in confidence. “It’s something she needs to see. If she doesn’t now, she’ll never move past it.

The walls flew by like clouds on a windy day, turn after turn, and then-

There he stood, in the center of the hall. He stood at an average height for a Hopish man, his hair was thin and black, short, and speckled with flowers of red, yellow, blue, pink. But, his eyes; they were sunken and statuesque, as if they’d been dark and angry since his birth.

“Is this yours?”

His voice was chilling, the very sound of it sucked the heat from the flames lining the hall. He wore no shirt to cover his body, just a large piece of thin, rough black cloth fashioned into a cape by a chunky collar which secured it at his neck. Gruse could see the color of his pale arms beneath the cape as he reached his hand out to her.

“Lord Bach doesn’t take kindly to strangers breaking his things.”

Her eyes bulged, and her jaw trembled.

“You…!” It was a single word, short and breathy; quiet, and rasping in its pure rage.

Dangling from Shade’s fingers was a little golden chain, and at its end was a salamander, splattered red. His eyes mocked her with unwavering scrutiny, and Gruse was filled with such anger as to make the heavens quake; in the space of a few heartbeats, she could no longer see clearly, and let out a roar of fury.

“AAAAAGH!!!”

Thousands of crimson arms barraged the walls and ceiling, each one with enough force to bend steel. Shade’s brow raised; at this point, she would cause a cave-in.

Heaps of brick and stone crashed down to the ground, each piece of rubble being slashed to dust the instant it got within a few inches of her head. Concrete dust flooded the hall, but she kept on going and going, her onslaught wreaking havoc on everything around her.

“It’s always like this!!” her mind howled. “It’s always been like this, and I should have known!!”

When the dust settled, she had collapsed to the ground on her knees, face cradled in her hands and surrounded by debris. She’d caved in the hall between them, and now was left as she should have been from the start,

Alone.

---

The wall of the Gladial burst open. Eroh was the first out, shaking his new left hand with pride. The others followed him and rushed out into the street behind the building, where even the smaller towers loomed overhead and cast shadows on them.

“This way!” Sonsee took the lead down a maze of alleys until they were far away from the Gladial as possible.

“We can stop here,” she gestured, panting.

Eroh leaned against the side of the alley while the escapees stretched their legs; Rodan and Dana finally had time to embrace each other.

“Well,” Eroh mused. “I wasn’t planning on going back to Andeidra, but I don’t mind being on the wanted list here.”

“I don’t think you are,” Sonsee suggested.

“Oh, really?” Eroh was almost dismissive.

“We were in there for over an hour, at least,” Sonsee explained. “And there were no police around. Do you think that’s strange at all?”

Gallow spoke up. “It’s entirely possible that the security is entirely handled by the Inquisition Squad. I didn’t see a single person in there who was government-employed.”

“Neither did I,” Gestalt added.

They each considered the information for a moment.

“That means that everything that happens in there,” Sonsee thought out loud. “Is through the Church?”

“Ugh,” Eroh mocked, tossing the orb up and down in his hand like a baseball.

“And you,” Gallow squinted at him. “Why are you still here?”

Eroh caught the orb and focused on Gallow. “I’m just waiting for them to catch up.” He gestured in the direction of the Gladial, referring to Gruse and Myst. “I don’t have the contact info of the collector who wants this, they made sure I didn’t know, pssht…” he rolled his eyes. “This’ll get me enough to get by for years.”

“You don’t seem like someone who settles down,” Gallow quipped. “What, are you gonna buy a house?”

Eroh shrugged. “I like to have some spending money for every now and again. If I want something, I can just take it or kill it, but you need to buy someone’s heart.”

“Heart?” Sonsee joined Gallow in squinting.

Eroh’s lips twisted. “Something like that.”

“We’re not cashing in,” a voice from down the alley corrected him. “Not yet.

Basked in the late afternoon sun, Gruse took every inch towards them with the deliberate care of a walk to the noose. Her head hung, black and crimson teased hair tossed into her eyes; her hands fallen limply to her waist, swaying with each step.

When she finally stood before them, she lifted her head, and with drooping, bloodshot eyes said, “I’m not doing anything until I kill Bach.”

Everyone but Eroh was shocked. K-kill him?” Rodan’s voice quivered.

“That’s what I’ll do,” she said. “That’s how angry I am. I’m not going to let this happen.”

Gallow stepped in front of her and again, it was like there was no one else but them. “What happened?”

Her teeth ground against each other and when she spoke, her words faltered and slipped. “Myst was killed by one of Bach’s- his…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

Sonsee whispered in Gallow’s ear, “Myst was the one who killed Cartwright.”

“Myst was a good person,” Gruse insisted. “I know you don’t think that, but he was,” she was adamant, straightening out her arms. “His death deserves to be avenged.”

For a moment, the alley was quiet; in the distance, the wheels of carriages clacked against the stone streets. No one quite knew what to say; Dana stayed close to Rodan, Sonsee wrung her hands together, and Gestalt watched in silence, until Gallow spoke up.

“Do you think you’re strong enough to kill him?”

Gruse’s eyes widened, as if she were loosening her anger. “No, I’m not.”

“Then why don’t you come with us.”

Surprise ran through Sonsee. “Gallow?”

He looked back to her, but continued speaking to Gruse. “Yeah, I have a feeling we’ll be running into him again. He’s coming after me, one way or the other.”

They looked lost as to what he meant, spurring him to add, “Oh, yeah, I’ll explain that once we’re on the way.”

“On the way?” Gruse asked, glad to be distracted with a question.

“Yep,” Gallow grinned and threw his gaze in Rodan’s direction. “All the way to the Serpent Isles.” Rodan sighed and brought his hand to his forehead. “See?” Gallow raised his hands up as if gesturing to some splendor around him, and looked at Sonsee with a smug expression. “Everything worked out, everyone wins!”

The entire group’s attention was caught by the sound of an almighty explosion in the distance, as if an entire battalion of cannons had just been fired at the same instant.

“What the hell…?” Gestalt muttered under his breath.

“It came from the…” Rodan paused, making sure his mental map was correct. “The palace?”

---

“Push forward” was all that ran through Ky’s mind. “I need to push forward beyond you!”

He raised his baton and pictured in his mind what he wanted to do.

“[IRON… MAIDEN - THOUSAND SUNS]”

With sweat running down his brow, his body surged with electricity; he was going to use it in a way he never had before. Ishtar glowed and coursed with it, when suddenly, sparks appeared in the air around him. The sparks congealed and solidified into six bars of pulsing lightning, like missiles ready to launch. Dark intent grew in his eyes, and steadily, several more appeared to surround him in racks.

“You madman…” Leon walked slowly in his direction, the Saint’s Hammer reforming in his hand. “You better show off before you die.”

With the precision and intensity of a needle through a thread, Ky raised his weapon, wrist trembling, and brought it down again at Leon. On his command, a dozen or so lightning missiles blasted forward, converging on him.

Leon was already prepared. He dashed forward with the blazing speed of his hammer, weaving through an opening in the missiles’ pattern. The distance between them was only a few feet, and Ky swung again, throwing another wave of thunder at him, only for Leon to touch it with a single finger, allowing it to phase through him like a ghost.

“Pass, by King’s decree.”

Ky didn’t even have time to process what had happened when he felt the force of a truck slam into his gut. He flew through the ceiling, crashing back down atop the golden roof of the palace.

“It was an admirable strategy,” Leon mocked him as he floated up through the hole to rise above him. “You launched those in such a pattern as to force me to move through the center, so you’d know for certain where I’d go if I evaded it.” He spoke with the exceeding confidence of someone who had already won. “You would have succeeded, as well, if I was a mortal man. This power has been passed down a single line for generations, traced back to Cilvias the Great, fourth of the Saviour’s Seven Saints. I am the King Of Everything This Light Touches, and I’ll like to make an example out of you.”

Ky stood up.

“Ah, I’m impressed,” Leon tilted his head as if looking at a baby animal.

Everything flashed through Ky’s mind, from birth to present. He could remember his childhood in the orphanage-- is that what it was? No, it couldn’t have been. The woman who looked after him, did she know? Who was she? What did he do in-between his birth and the time he was eighteen? Why wasn’t it there in his memory? Why wasn’t it there?

Chains coiled around his heart, tightening as he watched Leon stare at him like that.

Everything he’d done was to raise himself out of the muck… What Bach had told him, it wasn’t a lie, was it? Because he believed it, in his own dream, that he might rise up from nothing higher than any other man, and he would do it in the most absolute realm-- the battlefield. He would fight for his country and become the youngest General to ever serve, and he would push humanity beyond what it had known before.

“Why do you walk around like that?” Ky asked him.

Leon didn’t even need him to clarify. “Because I’m better than you. If you still can’t understand that, it only proves my point.”

“[IRON MAIDEN]!!”

He’d see now, he’d see if that was true. He would prove that he was, after all, a man and not a porcelain piano key.

The rooftop was flooded with lightning, spurring Leon to float himself higher up into the air. He reached back his hammer, but before he could make a move, the lightning dissipated, and glowing white specks like dandelion seeds danced through the air. Leon tried to assess what they meant, but couldn’t do anything before Ky finished his command.

“[... SEA OF MADNESS]”

Lightning arced rapidly between the specks, chaining together hundreds of times a second.

ZAP

CRACK

Three or four strikes coursed through Leon’s body, too fast for him to nullify with a decree.

“Ergh!” he grunted, soaring away. A trickle of blood seeped through his teeth, insolence he could not forgive. Raising his hammer, he struck waves of golden fire down onto the rooftop and left flames dancing over it.

Almost all of Ky’s clothes had been burnt away, but he remained.

“[IRON MAIDEN - THOUSAND SUNS]!”

A volley of lightning missiles barraged the skies, curling and twisting in their patterns like flying airmen. Leon was surrounded on all sides by the blinding, flashing death, ensnared in a web of thunder.

“He learns fast,” Leon realized. “This isn’t meant to push me in one direction, it’s trying to cut off all of my options.” Indeed, there wasn’t a single space more than a foot wide to maneuver through, and in a split-second, the missiles tightened and converged until escape was no longer an option.

The center of the web exploded with Leon at its center, sending light scattering in every direction. A crowd of palace servants had gathered in the courtyard, stunned at the display in front of them. From off in the city, people climbed to the roofs of their houses to see the carnage.

It took a moment for the light to clear. Ky couldn’t believe his eyes. Wrapped in a cloak of flames, Leon was untouched, looking down on him like God.

“Don’t you know,” he called through the still air. “That the King is inviolable?”

Leon raised his hammer to the sky, and the heavens above them darkened, everyone who gazed up saw nothing but him shining like the sun. Pockets of gold appeared around him, filling the space around him with a fiery glow.

“Nothing else shines in the sky but me,” he proclaimed, eyes shut in bliss. “So that my light may finally fall on you, Ky Monaco, bastard orphan, and I order you-

Execute, by King’s Decree!”

Each ray of light became a blade that pierced through Ky’s body, opening up hundreds of millions of holes in him. Shards of his body blew apart and scattered to the wind that now rage around him. His form was eviscerated in a single instant, along with annihilating the entire top half of the palace.

Only Leon was left above all, pleased with himself. The rat was exterminated.

“No.”

A presence -- behind him.

“What-?!”

Ky floated in the air much the same as he did, two Silver Wings of solid thunder at his back.

“You bastard!!” Leon cried. “How did you-?”

“A simple illusion, Your Majesty,” Ky whispered. In the moment he saw the sky darken, his death appeared to him, and for the first time, he feared it. That was all the affirmation he needed that he was a man.

“When my Sea of Madness struck you, it wasn’t to kill,” he continued. “It was just to place some of my spirit inside of you…”

“What?” Leon drew his hammer and ignited it with righteous flame as Ky rolled his shoulder like he was stretching.

“It’s a shame I figured out how to use my ability now, of all times” he lamented. “But no one else has forced me to grow so much, thank you, King.” His body surged with power. “I’m going now, I’d like you to see just how high a man can fly!”

In a single breath, thunder erupted from him, engulfing everything around them in a gargantuan storm, a ball of lightning that outshone the sun. Leon was caught in the raw energy, at risk of being fried if he dropped concentration for a second.

“What is he doing-?!! Can his body even handle that much energy??”

In his last moments, Ky’s thoughts echoed throughout this realm of his. It was necessary to plant some of himself in Leon’s spirit for this attack to work, but it had the coincidental effect of letting the King hear his thoughts while caught in the ball.

“Leon… I always hated you.

Someone like you, who was born above others… you sicken me, not because you aren’t superior to them, but because you don’t believe in their potential. Even if I’m not a man, even if I’m some monster who was given these powers, I am not you.

You were born under the Holy Star, But I Will Show You That There Are,

‘ONE THOUSAND STARS IN THE SKY.’

[IRON MAIDEN - LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE]”