Chapter 88

Mari led him by the hand back through the shanty town that was Piper’s Hill. The place had become a hub of activity since last night – the former slaves were swiftly packing their things and making ready to move. Marcus saw Yokun and humans both swaddling their younglings and carrying as much as they could from their ramshackle houses as they converged in the town center.

Those that passed Mari on their way looked up at her as though staring at their living salvation. Some of them dropped to their knees and offered her prayers. She took the time to draw a palm across their cheeks as a sign of acknowledgement.

They really do look upon her as a Goddess, Marcus thought. That’s…familiar.

“Mari,” he asked as they passed another cluster of beleaguered townsfolk, “Where are we going?”

“To someone who can help,” she called back to him without turning her head. “We need to get your busy little hand under control. Then, well, you can see what’s happening here, can’t you, Marc?”

Marcus gulped as he replied. “I’m afraid I can, though I can’t quite believe it.”

His train of thought was confirmed as they came upon a small enclave of armored townsfolk further in the depths of the lair – each one of them clad in a leather hauberk that looked as though it could stop the tip of a spear but probably do less than nothing against gunfire. There were probably around 200 of them all standing shoulder to shoulder in the room, and as Mari entered with Marcus they threw their fists into the air and heaped praises upon the woman they had clearly followed through fire and worse.

Marcus saw humans, Yokun, even some more of the odd catfolk down here together, each of them bearing a jagged broadsword at their hip, though the Yokun also bore intricate yew longbows on their backs. The cat-people each held a shortsword at their hip – a versatile weapon that probably suited their flexible forms.

Marcus felt their eyes shift from Mari towards him as their leader led him through the crowd and out into another narrow passageway with barely enough light to see a thing. Though, as they left the great enclave, Marcus spotted Marvin the ex-farmer addressing the crowd. He held up a green bottle within which a viscous black ooze slopped around. In his other hand was a taper soaked in oil.

Marcus noticed then that there was an entire table of these bottles behind him – each one ready for, well, the obvious.

Even as Marcus struggled to accept what he was looking at, Marvin’s bombastic voice confirmed his suspicions:

“Now, remember!” he called out to the crowd. “Light the Hakkatov swiftly and then toss it away from friendly forces! It don’t matter how good your depth perception is, folks, when this little beauty goes off, there’s gonna be a boom that’ll burn up anything within a two-mile radius! So toss these lil’ bastards before an infantry charge or during the mop up op!”

“Molotov cocktails…” Marcus murmured. “Unbelievable…”

“If the history of revolutions has taught us anything,” Mari chuckled as she led him down the darkest corridor of their lair. “It’s that there can’t be a real revolution without ‘em, right?”

“And I can guess who gave them the idea.”

Mari stopped for a moment as a distinct rumbling could be heard echoing from the surface world.

“Marc,” she said. “Everybody out there wants nothing more than to break their shackles. You can understand why they don’t exactly have misgivings about burning their former slavemasters alive, hm?”

“Mari…” Marcus murmured. “Why…how did you end up here?”

She faced him directly, then, staring into his face with a determination that was just so her.

“You remember what that bastard Barenz said to you back home?” she asked. “If you could look at generations of people suffering and say that their sacrifices were worth it? Well, I learned just how tough that was, Marc. I was supposed to watch entire families toil in my name, in service to a faith I couldn’t give less of a shit about, and I was expected to not only put up with it, but endorse it? Fuck that.”

She stepped close to him and gulped, thinking that she ran the risk of turning him from her. Even though he could have told her that he’d never let her go again.

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The tops of the ceiling began to shake. Something was happening above.

“I’ve had to learn the same lesson, Mari,” Marcus told her. “But all this…Mari, all those people out there were prepped for war. I know the look in their eyes. They’re willing to fight and die against their old Masters, aren’t they?”

Mari bit her lip. She nodded.

“And so am I.”

Another dolorous clang shook the entire corridor.

“We don’t have time,” she said. “Come on.”

“Mari-“ Marcus begged. “You need to tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s not me that knows the story best. You’ll want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

In the face of Marcus’s confusion they final came to the end of the corridor and passed through a warded metal door that seemed to respond to Mari’s touch instinctively, taking them into a small, dimly lit chamber.

And Marcus almost fell back against the metal ground as he beheld the hulking behemoth that stood before them.

“Hello, Hialjia,” Mari said. “We’re here.”

The creature Mari was addressing was a six-foot tall minotaur, its every breath a molten gust of dank air that clung to Marcus like a sheet of dust. A greataxe that looked as though it could split clean through five men at once hang at her back. When she addressed Mari, she did so with the all the fanfare of an animal prospecting an offering of a meal from its mate.

“Hmpf. Lady bring small man. He good?”

“Very much so,” Mari smiled.

The great creature brought her bronze-encrusted greataxe down to rest by her side and snarled at Marcus. Globules of blue saliva dribbled down her chin and pooled on the ground under them – a particularly luminescent saliva, Marcus noted, though he wasn’t sure why that was the detail he was focusing on in this moment…

“You go,” Hialjia said. “Hialjia make ready for rumble. Help small man Marvin and furball Karliah.”

“She’d prefer it if you didn’t call her furball for once,” Mari said, giving Hialjia a slight petting on her massive pierced nose.

The muscle-bound minotaur huffed as she sidled by them, only just barely fitting into the corridor they’d come through.

“Hialjia do her best,” the beast said. “Good luck with Oracle.”

“That…that is one…large…woman,” Marcus whispered as they creature turned its great back to him. At his questioning glare, Mari simply shrugged – again, an action so schoolgirl-like in its innocence that it could conjure nothing but laughter from him.

“After all while on Thea, you get used to seeing some crazy sights,” Mari said as she beckoned him into the chamber proper. “I’ll bet you’ve seen things even weirder than her.”

“Nothing quite so big,” Marcus murmured. “Could’ve used her in a couple of engagements…”

In the chamber itself was nothing but pitch black, and as Mari and he entered Marcus felt her tense up slightly. Someone else was in here. She knew it, and Marcus could feel it as soon as the metal door closed behind them.

And it took no time for the presence to then announce itself.

“Pale Matriarch, is this the male?”

The voice was both singular and collective – like a sea of chanting children intoning some ancient mass beside the flailing waves of a serene ocean. Marcus felt a strange sense of tranquility wash over him instantly. It was as though, as soon as the broadly female voice started talking, every problem Marcus had ever had simply fizzled away like a dying candle.

“He is the one, Oracle” Mari whispered, bowing her head in respect. “But he comes to us with the burden of magic. It is not a burden he chose to bear.”

“But one which he shoulders nonetheless,” the ageless voice intoned. “As we each carry our own burdens.”

A pair of reptilian eyes then flashed in the depths of the dark. Green – fiery green, like unnatural embers stoked up by a chemical reaction that should never have been performed. As soon as these eyes met his, Marcus’s hand went out of control. He flopped to the ground, clutching at it and trying to still the onset of another flash of lightning. Mari bent down to help him only for the creature sitting before them both to stick out a scaled arm and stop her.

“There is power in that light,” the reptile said. “Though it is not, I think, as powerful as the military mind that wields it.”

Marcus looked up through his pain to see that two burning braziers now lit up the dark. The reptile crouched in front of him was clad in an embroidered cloak that looked older than time itself, surrounded by cushions and oddly shaped pipes that puffed sweet-smelling scents into the air. She – for it was a she – looked the very image of an ancient mystic. Either that, or a charlatan fortune teller…

“He doubts me,” the creature said with a lick of her dry, grey lips. “As any sane man should.”

Mari managed to bring him to his feet as he looked at her in shock. But not even she would meet the eyes of the ancient reptile that addressed them.

Then, Marcus saw the mark just below the reptile’s neck – the number sheared into the soft flesh between her scales.

“A…another slave,” he groaned.

At Mari’s exasperated look, the creature merely gave a hoarse chuckle.

“Once,” she said. “Just as you were once a slave to the rats who trundle beneath our feet. Always a pawn in someone else’s game.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes at her, feeling his hand become more and more charged with every step towards the old Yokun that he took.

“How do you know that?”

The Yokun smiled.

“It is my business to know,” the old lizard said. “I am the last Matriarch of Whispers, Marcus Graham. And you have come here exactly when you were supposed to.”

***

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