Geist, p.23
Geist, page 23
Hideous wails filled the tower, announcing a horde of spider-daemons, heels clacking, gaining on the trio’s position. Charles winced and drew his daggers with a nod.
“We’ll hold the line!” Beatrice readied her broadsword. “Go finish it for us, okay?”
I intend to….
#
Victor didn’t recall how he reached the pinnacle of madness, only that Quasimodo was draining his strength. Dismissing the geist into the aether of his mind, Victor felt awareness and sense return, like a lungful of air after a terrible dive. Leng stared at him, somewhere between admiration and panic, managing a golf clap; the camera still hung from his neck.
“Okay, that was clever,” he admitted. “I’m impressed you made it this far. I would shake your hand, but we’re not on those terms anymore, are we?”
“Fuck you.”
“Thought so,” Leng chuckled. “I don’t blame you. Hell, I know you hate me. Another sacrifice, I guess.” He almost sounded remorseful. “Kickstarting a better future through ‘murder’? Psychologically torturing you so that you could handle the road ahead? The latter wasn’t exactly fun, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I am the villain of your story.”
“Is that supposed to make me pity you?”
Leng kicked a pebble across the floating isle. “Think about it this way. You want a way home, right? The city’s just a passing thing for you. I’m not so lucky. No one in Holy Gothica is.” His gaze pierced into Victor like a needle in the eye. “Imagine if your entire life was a plot in some dime novel. Last chapter’s closing in. There’s no free will unless you feel the reader’s eyes piercing your every thought. Recognizing that earns you freedom. Power.”
Victor said nothing; his thoughts were sharp again, taking note of every logical fallacy for a counter-rant, boiling in a perfect stew of spite.
“Why?” he repeated, feigning naivety. “What does this all amount to?”
“Surprised you have to ask,” Leng said. “Daemons are mirrors of what we really want. Hunger doesn’t lie. I’m not a minion, more of an accomplice.”
“Suppose I need some ‘life experience’ then?”
“Now you’re getting it!” Leng clasping his hands. “You need to understand the agony of the everyman. Even if it means sharing my grief secondhand. Yuko had to go, kid. I swear you’ll thank me someday.” He grinned, stretching his arms wide. “You’re the ‘Far Messiah.’ You’re meant to see the world, down to the grittiest detail, and decide if it’s worth saving. Or not. Mankind’s on trial, Victor. And you’re the judge.”
Victor waited for a moment or two. “Are you done?”
“Huh? I mean, I guess—?”
“Cool,” Victor interrupted, cracking his neck and knuckles. “My turn. So, Fukuhara left you for Edgar after gaining the courage to escape your sociopathic ass. Like many others, she was murdered by her abuser while trying to leave safely. You were, for lack of better words, empowered by the Inferno to act out your depraved fantasies. The ‘impossibility’ of being caught transformed you from an angry nihilist to a rejected Batman villain,” he continued, without stopping for a single breath. “Upon realizing your game had actual stakes, you manipulated Edgar into carrying out your crimes, jeopardizing my friends’ lives and facilitating Yuko’s death. Somehow you believe your own misfortune, self-inflicted or not, is cause enough to condemn the entire world as irredeemable, despite you being a quintessential example of everything wrong with it. Even then, you lack the follow-through to pursue its destruction, trying to groom me into a ‘savior of mass destruction’ instead. In short, you’re a coward. A truly pathetic manchild who skimmed the back of a philosophy textbook and claims to be an expert on life.” He savored the shock on Leng’s face. “Should I break it down for you further? Bitch?”
That felt so good….
“P…pretentious little shit,” Leng spat, his composure lost and ego shattered. “Breaking you wasn’t my first choice. Do you seriously think the city can be salvaged? Were you even listening?” He seethed. “I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?”
“Several months, actually.” Victor let the sarcasm flow into venom. “Possibly your entire life. Also, I’m a realist. Sorry, I know what words actually mean.”
“Shut up!” Leng snapped. “Look around you. The world’s dying—!”
“Also,” Victor did not relent, “switching between ‘tragic hero’ and ‘let’s unmake the world for fun’ isn’t terribly convincing. Pick one.” He stepped forward until Leng was backed into a corner, heels teetering on the edge. “Are we going to fight or what? Suffice it to say, I really want to punch you in the face. Repeatedly.”
Leng forced a grimace. “Have it your way. I should warn you, though. You’re not the only one who got sick powers for free.” He reeled with laughter, eyes glazing over, toxic and white. Clouds of darkness enveloped the Dollmaker, erupting into crimson flames. Victor was pushed back by its gathering power as Leng cradled his skull, screaming in a hurricane of wrath, channeling a lifetime of malice into a single form. “Gut him, Gwynplaine!”
A geist—?!
The clouds burst. Gwynplaine was a monstrous fool, the culmination of Leng’s cruelty, shrouded in a heavy leather duster and smock, punctuated by bloodstains and gumboots. Under a top hat, its face was covered by a pale sack, painted as a lazy parody of a clown. Rips in the burlap revealed a smile, though what glimpses Victor caught were grotesque; lips peeled, unnaturally wide, slit and scarred into a grimace. Its laughter was shrill yet forced as if masking a lifetime of misery with sadism and petty revenge. With a flick of its wrists, Gwynplaine drew a pair of long, saw-toothed razors, waiting for the Dollmaker’s command.
“Dante,” Victor called.
The moonlit knight did not hesitate. As the name escaped Victor’s lips, he felt the geist cleave its way from a furnace of unstoppable rage, clutching its halberd, eye ablaze, fixed on its opponent. Dante’s coattails were tattered and its rabbit ears threadbare. Still, the geist radiated with determination. It reflected a damaged mind not yet broken, driven by Victor’s own desire for redemption and happier ends. No matter how painful the journey may be.
“I don’t plan on holding back,” Leng warned.
“Neither do I.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Black wind swept the battleground. The steeples and shingles of Holy Gothica slowly bled into the Inferno, tangled in crimson veins and arteries. Hordes of locusts swarmed the dueling geists, like moths to the flame. Dante swung its halberd wide, coattails as threadbare banners, interlocking its blade with Gwynplaine’s twin razors.
Victor gritted his teeth. Whenever the geists clashed, the eruption of crimson sparks made it impossible to tell which was which, even to him.
“That’s a lot of wasted effort,” Leng sighed, just out of reach, watching his opponent in vile admiration. “The worlds will merge soon enough. So subtly, no one will feel a thing.”
“Why should I believe a word you say?” Victor asked.
“Take it or leave it.” Leng fiddled with his camera. “I already offered you closure. You could’ve just believed Edgar was the Dollmaker. The case would’ve been closed. You chose to keep digging, to find ‘the truth,’ and here we are.” He smirked. “Hope it was worth it. If it helps, Yuko would be soaking, seeing you froth like a rabid dog over her corpse—”
“Don’t you dare!”
Victor’s rage flared to murderous intent. Dante broke the fiend’s guard, cleaving deep into its shoulder. Black blood splattered the knight’s face. Gwynplaine howled with laughter as if goading its foe to finish the job. Victor didn’t need any encouragement.
“Fuck!” Leng clutched his shoulder, sharing his geist’s pain. “There’s that conviction again. A little late, though.”
Gwynplaine flicked open a spare knife and stabbed Dante in the chest. Victor’s mind froze over, willpower numbed by sudden agony. Dante slumped to its knees, crippled by a cheap shot. Victor tried to stand, shaking, until Leng raised his camera.
What the—?!
Blinded by light, Victor collapsed on the ground, paralyzed. When the flash cleared, his senses were slurred yet heightened, an overdose of agony. Dante was deaf to his commands, left to struggle until Gwynplaine overpowered the geist with ease.
“They say a photograph can capture a man’s soul.” Leng came to Victor’s side, holding the camera, a photo printed from its slot as the bulb flickered with a malign intelligence. “So long as you’re conscious, though, pay attention. You can’t unmake the world without a stamp of approval. Even though the masses beg for it.” He shook the Polaroid, a predatory smile across his lips. “Pleasure and pain. Love and hate. They sink down into the Inferno. Where no one can feel them. Ingrid wanted a ‘clean slate’ for society, but I’ve got a better world in mind. One of passion. Where everyone’s daemons were stimulated and sated. Down to the primal root. No one holding anything back. Raw and pure. Sounds utopian, right?”
Victor couldn’t move his lips.
“Of course, you agree.” The Dollmaker twisted the knobs of his camera. “Just on a subconscious level. If you didn’t, the Inferno wouldn’t have greenlit my efforts. How else could your friends’ daemons turn out so pent up and angsty? All it takes is ‘famine,’ apparently. A flood of desire to get revelations into production.”
Gwynplaine ran a razor up and down Dante’s broken body as if debating where to start cutting. Victor blew through fixed teeth, trying to conquer his helplessness.
“That said,” Leng continued. “You think you’re better than everyone else. Somehow immune to humanity and primal instinct. I mean, how could you not? You’re the goddamn savior of the world. Not that you’d ever admit it. Ironically, challenging that denial was the last nail in the coffin. Of all the things it took, though. A rusty can of tits and ass? Really?”
Bad move….
Victor was about to twitch his fingers when Gwynplaine cut into Dante’s chest, shaving flesh with the precision of a barber. He couldn’t even scream, only endure, like a surgery without anesthesia, motionless, clinging onto coherent thought. Gwynplaine stopped short of the geist’s ribcage. Leng loaded his revolver as if bored of mere torture.
“If anything,” he continued, “I deserve a promotion for the painstaking effort this took. You’re an almighty idiot. An oxymoron. Is the position of ‘Far Messiah’ vacant yet?”
“S…shut up,” Victor choked.
Leng peered down at him. “You know, I envy your persistence.” He crouched to Victor’s level, pressing the pistol against his victim’s brow. “How deep does it run, I wonder?”
As Victor stared into Leng’s cold eyes, he realized something. Eyes were indeed windows into the soul. However, its glass worked both ways. Though the Inferno took on the monstrous form of Leng’s evil, bestowing the killer with tremendous power, Victor saw all the symptoms of fear and vulnerability. A wretched excuse of a man to be overcome.
“Y…you,” Victor choked. “You—”
“Yuko wasn’t even real.” Leng rolled his eyes. “At least my squeeze was human. Sexbots aren’t capable of love. It wasn’t wired that way.”
With a spasm of the arm, Victor gripped Leng’s wrist, fingernails digging into skin, forcing his aim down. “Y…you left the safety on.”
Before Leng could retort, Victor punched him in the gut. Hard. Flesh quaked against his fist. The Dollmaker stumbled, barely able to keep upright. Winded, Leng raised a hand as if to say, “Well done.” Victor readied the electro-staff and drew his sword, recalling that Leng had given him these weapons. Perhaps the Dollmaker was guilted by Thaddeus’s death. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness or kindness. Regardless, Victor was past mercy.
“O…okay,” Leng wheezed. “Take it easy there.”
In a feat of resurrected resolve, Dante grabbed Leng’s geist by the throat and slammed it into the cracked earth. In a single motion, the rabbit-eared knight impaled Gwynplaine through the mouth. The fool lay broken, cracking and splintering apart like cheap porcelain, bursting into cinders and ash. Leng clutched his skull, eyes wide, howling, as if a limb had been torn from his body. Dante did not relent, mutilating its enemy’s corpse.
I really shouldn’t be this satisfied.
“By the way,” Victor said, sharing his geist’s solace, all but smiling. Step by step, he cornered the Dollmaker, marching through swarm and flame, sword at hand. “You had to ‘ripen’ your victims somehow. Did that camera do something?” He sliced across Leng’s arm and chest, shallow and swift. “Would explain how easy that was.”
Leng flinched and cowered as if bleeding for the first time. Until hatred took over. With a feral cry, the Dollmaker lunged at Victor, tackling him to the ground.
The sword and staff skidded across the pavement.
“I gave you so many chances,” Leng slammed a fist against Victor’s jaw, “and you wasted them. You’re weak. An autistic piece of trash freeloading off of pity.” He punched, again and again. “You have no idea what desperate is. What the city does to people. You can’t imagine the shit I’ve been through! After all I’ve done, trying to make you stronger. You’d need it, kid.” He clutched the victim’s throat, squeezing, pressing down. “Strength for what’s coming.”
Victor’s ears throbbed with delirium. He gasped and choked, vision blurring, as he reached for his sword, feeling its hilt, trying to inch it towards his grasp.
“A week? A month?” Leng kept the stranglehold, drawing his pistol with a steely click. “The world needs more than a saint.” He pushed the barrel into Victor’s mouth. “Where’ll you be when the trigger needs to be pulled? Huh? Where’ll you be?!”
Victor gripped his sword and swung across Leng’s face, cutting deep into sinew and bone, gouging out his left eye. The pistol clattered to the ground. Gore splattered them both. Writhing in agony, the Dollmaker recoiled like a serpent, grabbing at the bleeding empty socket, and yet Victor was deaf to his screams. The world was muffled by a misfire.
“What’s wrong?” He coughed, spitting a crimson clot. “Can’t even put down a retard like me? Need to tie me down and go on a monologue first?”
Victor watched the murderer writhe and seethe.
“I’ll kill you.” The Dollmaker grabbed his revolver. “I’ll kill you,” he repeated, taking aim, shaky, staggering to his feet like a town drunk. “I’ll fucking kill you. Just like I did everyone else.” He pulled the trigger, only to hear a hollow click. “W…what?” He tried, again and again, only to realize the magnitude of his failure. “How? How could this…?”
Victor ignored the killer’s tantrum, eyes fixed on Dante, coated in blood and filth, stains which couldn’t be washed away easily. His geist was somber and dreadful, one who shielded Victor with violence and unrelenting savagery. Gone was the guardian of innocence and nostalgia, its crown of thorns ruined by a pair of slender horns.
He who fights monsters and all that….
Victor reflected on his obsession with The Divine Comedy, recalling its verses and cantos, where his geist’s namesake crossed the icy lake of Cocytus. Where the traitorous and damned lay imprisoned under a sheet of frozen tears, bereft of warmth and comfort.
More than one way to freeze a soul, apparently.
Here and now, in the depths of a different Hell, Victor confronted his own Judas. Leng slumped to his knees, pounding his fists against the pavement.
“So this is the price I pay, huh?” A whimper escaped his lips, somewhere between a sob and laugh. “Whatever, the Inferno owns me anyway.”
Victor dismissed his geist with a wave. “It’s over.”
“Guess so,” Leng said. “Not like I’ve got a life to go back to—”
“Just shut up,” Victor interrupted. “People like you brood and die sooner rather than later.” He sighed, watching the cathedrals of the city fade into the storm clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance as if the Inferno was crawling to a retreat. “The city, this world, is a monstrous place. I never doubted that. It’s still the only ‘home’ I have.”
“Take me in then.” Leng offered his wrists as if trying to disguise his despair with one last taunt. “Go ahead, kid. The Inquisition will be overjoyed.”
“No.”
The Dollmaker’s lips trembled. “W…what?”
“I agree with your statements about my weakness.” Victor wiped the blood from his mouth. “Unfortunately, you’re also responsible for this entire shitshow. My own inaction let you get away with so much. It’s hard to see the end I’m fighting for behind a mountain of casualties.” He savored the judgment and sheer irony. “I suspect I’ll save far more lives, in the long run, this way. A sacrifice, if you will. You’ve helped me realize that, Leng. Thank you.”
“Y…you’re not gonna just leave me here?”
There was a fine line between justice and revenge. Victor took his time, weighing the value of Leng’s life against these dark impulses, and allowed himself a taste of the latter.
“Yes, I am. As for what that entails, well….” Victor eyed the camera on the ground. “I’m sure you and Fukuhara have a lot of catching up to do.”
The color vanished from Leng’s face. “Don’t—!”
Victor stomped on the camera. An explosion of ectoplasm and vengeful power sent him careening back. Victor was spared by luck and whatever he released, sliding on his back, firm yet unharmed. Phantoms and spiteful ghosts poured from the glass and gears: the Dollmaker’s victims, down to the last streetwalker, shrieking and circling as a wake of vultures.
“S…Sally?” Leng begged. “I’m sorry, okay? Oh, and, uh, you—!” He screamed as ceramic hands burst from the earth, pinning his wrists and ankles down. “Shit!”
