Angelos Odyssey

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Artemis

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I’m with my pupil, Avodeus, in one of the hotel rooms that was previously reserved for another guest aboard the great zekomata. Alas, all that’s left of this guest is a head parted from its body by a swathe of dried red staining the blue sheets of a bed to my right. The head, turned to the side, gazes my way with its eyes wide and its mouth open in terror.

As Avodeus and I sit in wooden chairs facing the metal door which marks the entrance to the room, the tall abomination that calls itself Sygdom, tilting his head to the side, stares at me with cold eyes and says, “You’re as disgusting as they come, aren’t you?”

A shirtless man with a mohawk and a body fully covered in tattoos enters the room with blood still dripping from his axe. “Boss,” he says, “let me take on the ‘Knight Killer.’ This one’s from Noboros. I don’t think they’d be too happy with us if we forced him to fight and he got himself hurt out there.”

Sygdom turns to him slowly and replies, “Noboros is nothing without their old leader. Zunaga was the king of all syndicates; his stepping down meant that Noboros became fallible. If they dare to make a move on the Maeja,” he frowns while holding up a finger surrounded in tau the color of sludge, “I’ll plague every last one of them. If they wish to fight us, Vishok, then I’d welcome the challenge.”

Sygdom nods toward the lobby outside and says, “Leave us. I’ve waited a long time to meet this one. And tell the ‘Knight Killer’ to prepare himself.”

“Yes sir,” Vishok bows his head and turns to exit the room.

Sygdom looks back at us and addresses Avodeus first, “The Angelos Association appears to have dealt you a bad hand, child. This one’s merely an old hack. He’s got nothing to live for and no reason to improve.” Sygdom snorts, and, at the same time, his head twitches as he turns to me with a grin and says, “You’re one of the oldest members and yet you’ve shown the least amount of power. Your apprentice is hiding a lot of his potential—I can tell—and it looks like it’ll take someone stronger than you to bring it out of him.” As Sygdom leans in, his smile deepens, “I used to idolize people like you, you know? Noboros, the deadliest gang of criminals known to man. The infamy surrounding your little group was once enough to make someone like me submit.

“But now… now times have changed, Artemis Spilsbury. Even the hardest criminals can be broken down, and you’re far from the ‘hardest,’ aren’t you?”

“He’s killed over sixty people,” Avodeus says while keeping his eyes fixed to the floor.

“I’m sure he has,” Sygdom responds in a tone of amusement, “but how many targets has he taken down exactly?”

targets “Two,” I tell him.

“That’s all?”

“They weren’t easy assignments.”

“Of course not. I know all about the assignments the Angelos Association hands down to people like you. Every target’s a suicide mission, but what I want to know is how someone so pitiful, someone so frail, someone like you, could manage just one?”

youI don’t respond.

“What? You’re not going to vouch for yourself? Do you really require a child to speak up for you, Artemis, or will you answer me like a man? Don’t think that being nothing but bones will save you from being stricken with an untimely illness,” he says with a smirk while once again holding up his finger.

I look down and carefully deliberate over my responses before replying, “I survived this long for a reason. There’s something I’ve yet to show you, and I think you’ll be excited to see it. The wait will be well worth it.”

“Hmph.” Sygdom stares down at me as if I were but an insect. “Let me make it clear to you that you’re nothing but pitiful trash to me, Artemis. You and the Knight Killer are irredeemable. My message to him will be quite different, but know that no matter how well you perform in the upcoming match that you’re just here for our entertainment. If you survive and Noboros presents us with a ransom I deem to be appropriate, then you might go free. All in all,” he says with a wink, “it depends on how much me and the boys have had to drink.”

might Sygdom turns his back, opens the door, and, before leaving the room, says, “You’ve got five minutes to get ready. Make sure you say your goodbyes.”

-

“I wasn’t a very good politician,” I admit to my pupil and decide to tell him the truth as the rest of our time together begins to run out.

“I ran a small section belonging to the Guveni Prefect in the Sadu Kingdom. I inherited it from my father, and, instead of doing things his way, I fired all of his old ministers because I thought that I could do things differently under a new administration. I let the people elect new ones, and then…

“Then, there was a famine. The Prefects to the South, who’d supplied most of our food during droughts, were engaged in a war with the Pashakhan Emirate, who’d managed to place an embargo along our trade routes. We sent our soldiers to help with the conflict, and none of them returned. The famine got worse as the blizzards began to hit, and soon there was no use for bureaucrats. Our administration fell apart, and so I became desperate.”

“What did you do to make those people so angry?” he asks me.

“I stationed whatever armed units we had left around my manor and set to work trying to ‘erase hunger’ in the only way that I thought possible. I had two children to look after and a wife who anticipated the worst. When our rations kept getting lower, and the central government refused to send us any aid, I decided to begin my experiments. I decided to erase the problem of hunger by creating humans who could go without, through creating Awakened humans who wouldn’t need to consume food regularly.

“I was an experimenter, not a real scientist. There were real scientists available, but it took threats of violence to bring a small number of them to heel. The rest were executed. When some of the more belligerent members of my administration chose to retaliate, they were also executed. When the people started rising up…”

were I stare down at the steel blue flooring.

“I had them killed, too. My administration shrank, and the experiments continued. The things we did to people were horrible, Avodeus, and I don’t expect to be forgiven for my actions in this lifetime. When I embarked on this journey, I knew that there was no going back, and so I continued. I continued up until my people rebelled. It started off as a rumor, something simple and scandalous. That rumor built up until the truth was unavoidable. I was experimenting on my own subjects, and they knew it.”

I can feel an old ache that bristles at a feverish pitch, rising up to my skull and radiating out with a pain I’d like to forget. I feel my chest sink; my heart drops into my stomach.

“When they found out, it wasn’t long before they started gathering outside my family’s home, before the guards were swayed to leave us to the wolves. I knew that the vengeance they sought would extend to the people I cared about.”

I sigh and stare toward the entrance to the room. There’s not much time left.

“I knew that, if they got to me, they’d get to my family as well. I knew that my family would pay for my transgressions, and I… I couldn’t allow them to suffer. I killed them.

“I killed them, and—and I’ve never been able to move past the thought of them in my mind. I injected them with what I thought might be the antidote to human weakness, with what I thought might Awaken them, and they passed away. And then, my people came for me.

“They turned me into an experiment. They cut off my limbs, then they reattached them. They used the serums I’d developed on me. They tortured me, day in and day out, asking where the rest of their rations were, asking how they were supposed to feed their families, asking why I’d killed my own family. I was disgraced, and I, Duke Spilsbury of the Guveni Prefecture, was pilloried by his own people.”

me I’d “If I was one of your experiments, would you kill me?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t.”

“Why did they let you go?” he asks me.

“It wasn’t their choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hmm.” I take a deep breath. “I mean that the unexpected happened. There was another party who’d heard about what I was doing.

“When they’d finished torturing me, my people tied me to a wooden pillar. They lit a fire at my feet, condemned me for my crimes, and gathered so that they could watch me as I burned alive. That was supposed to be the end. I sent up a prayer and closed my eyes.

“The crowd started to get quiet. When I opened my eyes, the flames around me started to disperse. I felt a cold breeze trailing in the wake of an aura the color of snow. Wind like frigid ice blew through the city, and those who had before cursed my name turned to look behind themselves as they began to shiver. It was noon, but, with how cloudy it was, you could hardly tell. The heat of the summer and the barrenness of the surrounding fields had led to a drought alongside a famine we couldn’t hope to fight, and so this sudden bout of cold weather felt more than out of place. The aura around us condensed into a pale blue fog; the people who’d betrayed me looked me over one more time before something else caught their attention.

“Outside of the crowd, I saw two silhouettes approaching. One small and one massive. The first to speak to them was a women in a white robe with skin the color of ice and eyes like blue inkblots set above a confident smile. ‘My name is Queen Orzusela, and my friend and I have decided that you’ll let this one go.’

“‘What if we don’t,’” one of the rioters yelled, “‘who’s going to stop us?’

“The smile didn’t leave her face. Queen Orzusela’s body dissipated and faded into the aura surrounding her, and all I could hear was her cackling with laughter as a much greater shadow began to approach. A shirtless man who stood as tall as a giant shook the earth with each step that he took toward the crowd; long, braided black hair draped across a body as wide as three men. As he grew closer, I noticed a pair of shades covering his eyes and what looked like a permanent scowl adorning face muscles well beyond ordinary proportions.

“My people stared at him in awe, and he said, ‘My name is Kerim Zunaga. Move or you’ll be obliterated.’

“He was met with silence. And so, the great Zunaga, the ‘God of Noboros,’ staggered his stance, drew his right fist behind him, and aimed with the palm of his left hand. Zunaga stepped and punched: the wind carried his punch and erupted into a blast; it cleaved through the bodies of the insurrectionists, bursting them open with sprays of bright blood, and smashed into the wooden body of the pillar below me, splintering it as the bottom half was blasted into oblivion. While still tied to the upper half of the pole, I was forced to fall with it as it struck the ground. The remaining civilians unleashed a barrage of gunfire upon Zunaga, whose body simply deflected each bullet with ease. The gunmen remained still long enough for the aura from before to wrap around them and form a barrier of pale blue tau from which they couldn’t escape. With shrill screams, they shook and fought to break free, but each shooter was trapped within a hardening shell of ice that thickened until not another sound was heard. Queen Orzusela reappeared to admire her handiwork, and she looked them over with delight. ‘Perhaps these flowers of mine will grow into something wonderful. There’s so much potential trapped behind those shells. What do you think, Zunaga? Don’t they make beautiful sculptures?’

“‘They’re irrelevant,’ Zunaga replied while striding toward me. As he passed by one of the frozen statues, he smashed its head with a punch before moving to stand over me. Zunaga studied me for several seconds, then he turned his back and said as he walked away, ‘Not strong enough.’

“Another one of his followers appeared at my side. A thin, dark-haired man with round glasses and who wore a black thermal. He looked into my eyes and smiled, then he said, ‘My mentor’s taken quite an interest in your work, Duke Spilsbury. He doesn’t seem to be very impressed with you, specifically, but he sympathizes with your cause. I do as well.’”

“Was that Inen?” Avodeus asks.

I nod. “Yes. Zunaga rejected me, but Inen saw potential. Noboros needed more people back then, and Inen was interested in my research. He said, ‘Our leader’s heard all about you. He wasn’t going to come at first, but then I explained what it would mean if your little experiments actually paid off. You wanted to Awaken people, didn’t you? That’s why they turned on you, right? You went too far. Everyone knows about what you’ve been doing in that lab, Artemis.’”

“Inen chuckled and continued, “‘We could’ve abandoned you to your fate, but I decided to push the issue with our lord. Once I told him that Awakening enough people early might lead to more powerful humans emerging from this pitiful country, it piqued his interest enough to help you. Now you owe us, Artemis. From this day forward, you’ll have the opportunity to become the sixteenth member of Noboros. There’s just one condition that you have to meet, and then you’re free to join us.’

“‘What’s that?’” I asked him.

“‘Survive your own research. Live through the same experiments you put your own people through. If you Awaken, you get to be number sixteen.’”

-

“I survived. Do you judge me?”

“I don’t know,” Avodeus says to me without looking my way. “I think I did something bad, too, so I don’t think I can.”

“You made a deal with a being you don’t understand to save your own life, and it changed you. I committed a crime against my people, and I was rescued when I shouldn’t have been. You were just a child, but I was a man who knew full well what he was doing.”

“Are you sorry?”

I sigh, and, like him, I avert my gaze to stare at the ground in front of me.

“Yes. That’s why I converted. At first, the guilt wasn’t as hard to deal with. I managed to ignore what I was doing by focusing on my family, by paying attention to my own needs and justifying my actions by lying to myself and saying that I was making ‘progress.’”

I lower my head to hold it in my hands as I rub my temples. “I’m a disgrace. In joining Noboros, I committed myself to becoming completely amoral. My family was gone, along with my subjects. No god saved me, and I’m only alive today because a band of criminals believed me to be capable even in my darkest moment.

“And so, there eventually came a day when I couldn’t take it anymore.”

There’s a knock at the door, and someone who sounds like Vishok shouts, “It’s time! Get out here!”

“Just a moment,” is my response.

He bangs on the door, screaming, “Hurry up!”

I stand to my feet and take a deep breath before I continue.

“As you get older, Avodeus, you’ll find that we can only ignore our bad decisions for so long. People like Inen and Zunaga embraced their darker natures and refused to look back. As for me, I chose to serve a higher power in hopes of finding redemption. I serve Jao because this way of life has promised me some means of finding atonement; for me, there is more meaning in atonement than there is in survival itself.”

I turn to my pupil and say to him, “I would offer to pray with you, but I believe that everyone must find their own way to deal with their mistakes, god or no god. I’ve decided to leave you with one last piece of advice instead…

“Avodeus, our lives are representations of how we’ve come to cope with the conditions that made us. These conditions are often out of our control. When I’d gained all the power that I could ever desire, I chose a path which bound me to death upon understanding that I’d failed. If all our lives are spent reconciling what we want with what we deserve, then we should expend all of our efforts on carving out destinies which we deem to be fitting for who we are as people. As for me, my destiny is to fight another degenerate like myself. Even if I win, I don’t expect to survive, and so I’ve one last option that I’ve set aside so that I may fulfill my destiny to the best of my ability.

“I have one last prayer, but it’s not for you. It’s for me.”