Geist intermezzo, p.17
Geist Intermezzo, page 17
This is how they feel? All of them?
Holy Gothica was a city of blood, shit, and diesel. This she had always known, but not the whispers of everyone in it. Not all at once. The hollow decadence of the “elite,” while the masses wallowed in neglect, in squalor and destitution far below, all numbed by wickedness.
She couldn’t see a single smile, or hear a single laugh.
Ingrid slumped to her knees to the rippling cobblestones under her bare feet. She surrendered, letting the currents of malice take her away to places of deeper cruelty.
“Only a cynic would call this living,” she whimpered.
“Then you understand well,” the voice replied.
If only she could do anything to ease their pain. She wasn’t the only one who knew misery. She wouldn’t wish this feeling upon anyone. Not even Thaddeus. Hate was only partially why she’d killed him. In a twisted way, Ingrid had seen a broken man without hope of salvation or happiness. All of Holy Gothica shared that damnation.
Heaving and sighing, Ingrid couldn’t even muster tears. “What are you, exactly? Another daemon? Another thing that I must conquer?”
“Not as you understand it,” the voice replied. “We are the culmination of the world’s anxiety and depression. A living expression of civil unrest and the will to new beginnings. You may say, we are what awaits the masses in the depths of despair.”
“A god?” Ingrid raised her head.
“If this world reflects the thoughts of mankind,” the voice replied, “and if there is no lost soul within its walls, we are what takes form. We are the truth that exists, even when you avert your eyes. We are the divine creators and guardians of this shadow world. Its beginning and its end. And I am the first to be released, the Director of Pestilence.”
“Pestilence,” Ingrid said. “Then you are what Thaddeus awakened?”
Images of deformity flashed in her mind. The inexplicable plague that corroded Holy Gothica from its very foundations. Was this being its origin? Could the undertows of despair manifest as an incurable epidemic? She already knew the answer.
This was the psychological imprint of disease itself—leprosy incarnate.
“One year ago,” the voice said, “mortal men attempted to harness our power, in order to better their petty kingdom. But they knew not what they tampered with. Our true nature. The result was a blackest calamity, which you witnessed. And upon that vergence, upon the creation of the so-called Devil’s Hour, we were awakened by mankind’s hubris. And in the throes of their foolishness, we embedded a nearby child with a fragment of our will.”
“You gave me these powers?” Ingrid gasped. “What are you?”
“A Director born out of the disease of human thoughts,” it said. “One that ushers willing men to the end of life’s journey. A Director which mankind so fears, yet worships.”
Ingrid stepped back, gazing at the moon. It was wreathed in pallid flame, churning and warping in its own sickly green flares. Ingrid felt it staring back at her, eyeing her with righteous judgment, like a psychopomp of cosmic entropy—a camera obscura.
“Then, why has a ‘Director’ called upon me?”
“You have been exposed to far greater pain than most,” the Director said. “You have seen truths which many have ignored or long repressed. That this world is beyond saving. And so, if you wish it, I will grant you a fraction of my power.”
“What does this power entail?”
“True justice,” the Director replied. “Even if Ludwig topples the Imperium with his revolution, it will merely be a change of hands. An anarchic reign of terror. The streets will run with the blood of a different breed of heretics. Only its utter destruction can end the cycle.”
After everything she’d seen, Ingrid believed every word—she had since long ago, deep down, in the blackest pits of her heart. Holy Gothica was a cesspool that needed draining. And so, she would obey this apocalyptic gospel. “I…,” she said. “I swear myself to you.”
“Soon we will strike,” the Director said. “A tremendous surge will engulf the city and its holdings. The lost and leprous masses will be awakened by our cosmic truth. It is then that you will smite the sinful and relieve the virtuous.”
Ingrid knew she would never see her family again. Nor would she ever know happiness. This was all she could do now. Be it justice or mercy, she didn’t care. Rich and poor, leper and noble, all would march to the guillotine. Any other notion was discriminatory. This was the logical conclusion of her power, to bring ruin to the sodom of Holy Gothica.
And so, the false city began to crumble, burning in the fires of her mind, warping into a distorted reflection of what would come to pass. The cathedrals eroded as the Imperial edifices began to rot under their own decadent weight. The moon burned all the brighter. Ingrid felt the blessing of these suicidal souls, embracing the truth of what needed to be done.
“It is time to end this.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Show side panel
When his eyes opened, Victor was adrift in tranquil silence. The cobalt sanctum felt hollow again. All joy and worldliness had left the Opera House. Once more it was a melancholy estate from the journey’s beginning; a darker reflection of his soul. Victor knew why.
Thaddeus….
Victor cradled his skull, sitting in that chair, elbows on the oaken desk. Those chandeliers wept silent sparks, veiling the chamber in fleeting light. The flashing neurons seemed distant and empty. Indeed, the Impresario rolled his wheelchair forward, and his eyes glistened in empathy and sorrow. He did not smile or speak, but clasped his gloved wrists.
“He’s gone,” Victor mustered. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
The Impresario nodded.
“Just tell me what to do.” Tears welled in Victor’s eyes. “I don’t care about this world anymore. The one bond I had here is gone now. Charles…Beatrice… They’re all I have left. And I have to get them out of here. If not for my sake, for their’s.”
“Are you sure Thaddeus was the only thing you had here?”
Victor remembered Yuko, but he pushed such a notion aside. She was a prostitute, wasn’t she? What was their relationship, if not casual sex? It wasn’t that Victor hoped for that. Far from it. He wanted her by his side. He wanted her touch. Her love. He wasn’t sure she was currently capable of supplying the latter.
“Ah,” the Impresario said. “You care about her.”
“So?” Victor spat. “I…I just want someone. Call me desperate, but it’s true. And…well, Yuko’s my type. But she’s a dream, isn’t she? Charles and Beatrice are real.”
“Dreams and waking are relative,” the Impresario replied. “What one initially perceives as truth may be but an illusion masking the reality. What we feel. What we think. What we believe. It is why you cared about Thaddeus so. And that lady may yet be the key to many things. Many poets and prophets were driven by such unfettered inspiration. Lust and love.”
Victor smirked at the triteness. “Still, I know what’s real.”
“Even after the death of a ‘dream?’” The Impresario drew a single card, revealing the Tower in the upright position. “Be careful of what you desire. For an even greater shadow looms, I fear. A shadow born of everyone’s souls.”
Victor’s heart sank into his chest.
“You will either embrace the truth of your existential responsibility, or….” The curtains rolled open. Victor squinted at its radiance. An image of fog and moonlight warped from the silver screen, revealing a series of familiar, grey sights. “You may yet return home.”
“Wait, what?!” Victor gawked. “You had that power the whole time?”
“I do not,” the Impresario replied. “But there are other powers in this world, Victor. Other powers beyond the will of the Opera House, and the living shadows of your friends. Remember what I said upon your odyssey’s beginning?”
“Something about a darkness of my own making,” Victor said. “What’s your point?”
“Try though I may, your stubbornness has only deepened the fog. Something I should have foreseen. And in the fog, something stirs. To you, nostalgia is a crippling burden, and truth a nuisance. You cower under a cloak of angst and denial.”
Victor’s fists tightened, but he said nothing.
“The coming dark may be your final ordeal,” the Impresario said. “Should you fail or falter, you will find the long corridor to home. If so, you will live your normal life and die an unremembered death, while this world collapses under the pull of chaos.”
Victor couldn’t believe it. After all this time, a way home existed. He was blinded by anger and didn’t know what to think. But rage at the Impresario wouldn’t get him anywhere. He took a shivering breath and braced himself for the trial that lay ahead.
“This is what you wanted,” the Impresario said.
Victor held back embittered tears. He tried to step forward, but something stopped him. This wasn’t the cunning of the Impresario. No, this was his own conscience. He couldn’t muster a single word, paralyzed by uncertainty, despite the homesickness.
“I want to be free,” he choked. “I just want to go home.”
“If you truly mean what you say,” the Impresario faded into the brightening nova, “then this world is already condemned to the fire. Embrace the truth, or give up on all hope for yourself. Only upon the latter will you return home, as you believe it to be.”
Victor looked away, heart sinking with doubt and guilt. “I know it’s not the most heroic thing, but it is the honest answer,” he sighed. “It’s better than dying here.”
The Impresario chuckled. “We shall see.”
In that moment, the light beyond the curtains grew too much to bear, just as it had upon Victor’s outset. He knew this was the coward’s way, but it was also the way he’d always wanted it. The waking fog swallowed him whole. His thoughts slowed and slurred, drifting up to the “reality” of Holy Gothica. Deep down, Victor knew it wasn’t time.
Not yet, but soon.
#
Dawn crept over the Ash Mountains, casting a bleak veil of twilight upon the Gotland Wastes, piercing the miasma of Holy Gothica. Something was wrong that morning. The sun was smothered by smog, and the stars were snuffed out. Only the moon stared the city down—a lidless eye in the heavens. It was all lost on the drunks at the Whiskey Fountain.
Meanwhile, Victor sat at a table, finishing an old fashioned. The sword and staff leaned by his side. He fiddled with a pen, trying to formulate his wandering thoughts into music.
The Impresario’s words still haunted him.
A chance to return home….
Victor could barely wrap his head around it. The Waking World. A life of safety and mediocrity. A life he had resented and seethed over, until he wound up here—trapped in another world. The topic of teenage fantasy, only wrong in every way. This could be his happy ending, or the damnation of an entire world. In the end, was he actually destined for something?
Am I beginning to care?
“Hey, dude,” Charles yawned. “You’re up early.”
Victor didn’t reply, his gaze fixed on staff paper. His mind was still buzzing with thoughts and theories. Ingrid—she had to be the killer. There wasn’t any other explanation.
Charles pulled up a seat. “You doing okay?”
“Not really,” Victor said. “There’s something else.”
“What’s up?” Charles flagged the bartender for a pitcher and two glasses.
Victor pulled out the tattered journal from his coat pocket. “I found this in Ingrid’s room.” He flipped to the entry he’d read the previous night. “Here.”
The lazy-eyed bartender handed them a pitcher of hoppy beer. Charles poured them each a glass. “Huh?” He skimmed the pages, eyes widening in shock. “What the...?!”
“I think we’re onto something,” Victor said.
“You think she’s it?” Charles sputtered. “The Dollmaker?”
Victor looked away. “I can’t say for sure, but she very well might be.”
“Well, fuck.” Charles stood up. “I’ll grab Beatrice. We need to talk this over. Now.”
When the three gathered around the table, Victor recited his doubts. The more he talked it over, the more things came together. It wasn’t just wishful thinking for Thaddeus’s sake.
He heard motorcycles roaring towards the Ashtray—scouts on patrol.
“So,” Charles said. “Let’s go over what we know again.”
Victor scratched his head, watching flakes of dander fall off his scalp. “Well, Yuko said that Ingrid’s something of an assassin, targeting Imperial officials. From the way it sounds, she has quite a kill count, and disposes of the corpses through the TVs.” He saw the look of shock on Charles’s face. “She knows how the Inferno works.”
“And she left out that detail with me,” Beatrice said. “Convenient, huh?”
“Dammit,” Charles said. “We also know she’s linked to the origins of that place. Come on, dude. We all heard the logs in Thaddeus’s hellscape. Ingrid’s like something out a Richard Donner flick, you know? Devil in a kid’s body. Literally a conduit for Hell.”
“But....” Victor looked away. “If Ingrid really is the Dollmaker, then she’d have to be responsible for the kidnappings and the other murders.”
Beatrice stirred an old fashioned. “True. And Ingrid’s too methodical for that. I can’t imagine her killing hookers just for shits and giggles.”
“Then who?” Charles asked.
“You know,” Leng chimed in from the back bar, shadowed by a fan. “You kids might be onto something else, and not even realize it.” He turned his head, sipping at yet another shot of absinthe. “Ingrid’s a special case. Even if she isn’t the Dollmaker, she’s a different kind of dangerous. Maybe even worse. Might wanna look into that.”
“What makes you say that?” Victor asked.
“Take it from me,” Leng said. “Kids with psychic powers never led to anything good. Besides, you two don’t remember anything from your captures, do you?”
Charles bit his lips, glancing to the side.
“Yeah,” Leng said. “I thought not. But—”
“Wait,” Beatrice interrupted. “I did see her, when the stormtroopers caught me. Minutes before I woke up in that world! That means she could’ve known where the death squad took me.” She slammed her fists on the table. “Damn! If that’s true—”
“Then she’d be it,” Charles said. “Told ya.”
Victor still wasn’t totally convinced. “Why would she kill the people she’s trying to save from tyranny? Target practice? It doesn’t quite add up.”
“I don’t think Ingrid ever really cared about politics, man,” Charles replied. “She’s a psycho for hire. And more than that, she killed Tin Man. We can’t just let that go.”
“Yeah,” Leng said. “Hard to think he’s gone.”
“You’re telling me.” Victor glanced out the dusty window. Outside, the motorcycles came to a purring halt. A trio of bickering bikers approached the saloon.
“We should talk to Ludwig about this,” Beatrice said.
“Why?” Charles asked. “He’ll just pull some ‘ends justify the means’ shit.”
Victor strapped Thaddeus’s sword and staff across his back, preparing for the trek back to Holy Gothica, where the surges always hit the strongest. “You got a point,” he said. “I doubt he’ll understand, let alone care. We need to head back to Yoshiwara.”
“Talk to me about what?” A familiar figure stormed past the swinging doors. “Something about a dead Inquisitor and a missing soldier?”
Victor’s heart sank. Ludwig was flanked by a pair of raiders in leather long coats. He clutched the lock on his pepper-grinder. His face was contorted into a mix of dire concern and wrath, lips stretched wide by his dental apparatus.
Leng finished his drink, standing up. “Anyway, good luck.”
“Not so fast,” the Leper King spat. “Something’s happened with Ingrid. She’s missing. You’ve seen what she can do. So, start talking.”
The raiders laid calloused hands over their revolvers.
“Uh....” Leng’s eyes darted to Victor. “Would you rather explain this?”
“O-okay, sure.” Victor told Ludwig of everything that happened in the Lazarlarger, careful to emphasize just how deranged Ingrid had become, no matter how it pained him.
Victor held onto Thaddeus’s staff, leaning on it like a crutch.
Ludwig’s eyes softened for a moment. “Hang on. Ingrid killed Thaddeus? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m sorry for your loss, Victor. But this is war. Civil war, sure. But war all the same. There isn’t time for mercy or forgiveness. Only justice.”
“You weren’t there.” Victor was shaking.
Beatrice lay a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Hey—”
“No,” Victor snapped. “I don’t care how many people you had Ingrid kill. But Thaddeus was my friend and mentor, and she murdered him.”
Leng quietly crept up the staircase, fading into the background.
“You saw what Thaddeus put her through. You said it yourself!” Ludwig gritted his teeth. “You’re upset for the wrong reasons. Don’t come crying to me just because you made friends with an inquisitor. But if what you say is true, then Ingrid’s been doing shit behind my back.” His eyes narrowed to a savage glare. “That’s what should scare you.”
“Like killing hookers,” Beatrice scoffed.
“Maybe,” Ludwig said. “I’ve had her dispose of Imperial targets through the TVs, but…this takes everything to a whole new level. Say what you will about the Powder Kegs. But I never condone killing civilians or bystanders.”
