Defenestrate The Masses
Abandoning The Fight
He was the Rook. The Rook was he. It still needed clarification if to traverse into truth. He sat alone in a quiet room not even Jude Ennis knew of, high in the head Edward called home.
He searched his memory of the most recent blackout, for the actions he must have shared with the Rook. They were hazy at best, dreamlike at worst. If he was to embrace the creature within, he must first understand its motives, its motivation - its truth.
He saw the moment he had chosen to let go to the creature within, when the haziness began. As though the black mist were over his eyes he saw what had occurred, if in crackled reality. Anathema reacted surprisingly quickly for the dense gravity he exuded. Like a flicker or strobe, time moved to Anathema now being prostrate on the floor, but this didn’t last. He took out the tranquilliser, pointing, but with another time flash it was crushed in the black claw-like hand of the Rook, and dropped to the floor. Time shifted again and the Rook was under pressure from a number of Anathema’s paid mercenary criminals. There seemed an endless supply of them, but the Rook swished and swiped them away with the imagination of a wing. Another flash and Anathema was no longer present. His initiative had been compromised by Edward’s acceptance. A time shift showed the Rook rise into the sky, a vapour trail of black smoke marked his passage across the azure, another couple of time flashes took him further into the City, eventually ending up at the Wedge. Edward, through this haze, could see residents come out to tend to him, as it seemed a matter of course. They weren’t surprised, the children weren’t afraid. One child, in fact, calmly knelt by his head and stroked it, tenderly, her other hand engaged in holding a broken-faced doll. It was the greatest of possessions. She offered it to the prostrate and drained Rook, who put out a black leather looking hand, pushing back the doll, this hand gently reciprocating the tenderness it had been shown in mirroring the stroke of the child’s head before true darkness entered, the mist dropped away and the veil fell from Edward River’s eyes, returning to the world that birthed it.
Edward saw what the Rook was to the people at that moment. A tear dropped from his eye unnoticed, splashing the dust at his feet, cleaning the covering away. Washing the dirt - a small part of the way to full cleanliness, but a start regardless. And it seemed that was all that was needed. At least to begin with.
There were two masters now in this body. The man Edward and the hero Rook. There should be a compromise between them if full utilisation was to occur. Edward reached out with his mind for the Rook. It had to be there somewhere, if not in voice then in thought. Something stirred, like an itch, an impulse. It felt tired and sluggish, but it responded.
“I don’t know if you understand me, but I know you are a part of me, or we are equal. Conrad Miller destroyed himself to create us. Do you agree we must work together in symbiosis?” Edward felt a tug at a deep lizard brain part of him, as close to an affirmative as he was likely to get. The Rook, it seemed, was less a person and more a concept made solid, frankly as solid as the mist could become. They were a hybrid of Edward River and the Rook. There would certainly have to be a partnership utilised if Conrad’s plan was to work. He had run out of time to tell Edward of this plan, but left the veiled clues in his journals, the portions of the Volumes that spoke his own words. His philosophy was sound, and it was just. When they saw what he had planned they would know, and Edward suspected the only way to accomplish that was with both himself and the Rook, in symbiotic function. However it was going to work, it had to work, as there was no alternative. Anathema, Daedalus Devereaux - all that darkness had to have a motive darker than their hearts. Edward and the Rook had been created as an antidote to that. Whatever happened, it had to work. Or Conrad’s work was for nought.
Once outside and preparations for his journey to the City centre were complete, Edward immediately felt conflict arising. He wanted to get moving, but the Rook, dormant until now, until the realisation of their joint ownership, pressed for something else. Edward knew there must be compromise, as from a man to a beast, so he acquiesced to the Rook’s pull. First the beast must be sated, then reason could return and the task explored with a mutually beneficial outcome. Edward, by thought alone, flickered the briefest of thoughts that perhaps the unknown beast would have been better hidden, but if he was to believe this, then everything Conrad had worked for would be pointless. Man must give way to the beast if he required the assistance of that beast. That was the nature of things.
Edward was led to a familiar crack in the wall at the foot of the once great statue now collapsed. Inside was the simplest of rooms - no great furnishings were afforded this home, but warmth and comfort arose from every molecule within. A Mother tended a child in the oversized bed of the room, in fact the only bed in the whole property. She was surprised by Edward’s entrance and made to stand, but Edward brushed her offer away and to remain seated.
“I know her. She was the one who showed me – us – tenderness. I am sorry, lady, but my friend within has a motivation to see her. With your indulgence?” She nodded and smiled and Edward gave permission to the beast within.
Instead of complete blackout, Edward was afforded a back seat to the spectacle that followed. The mist rose as it would, except this time the smoky tendrils explored with gentle movement, not the rushed and plunging, searching barbs that usually occurred. Slowly and delicately they wrapped the complicit Edward River, until only the suggestion of a man’s form remained. What stood there was the true face of the Rook. It stood majestic, wings unfurled, tiny flickers at the edges of smoke dancing, the face though covered exuded majesty also; the suggestion of eyes masked by black goggle-like coverings, the respirator shaped muzzle. Parts of the covering that passed for skin, shining and leather-like, while maintaining the constant flow of smoke, were patterned in triskeles, fractal spirals and the suggestion of once loved nature in the form of roots and flowers of the faintest of hue as an arguably beautiful creation from the hands of its loved creator, who saw beauty even in the most basest of creatures. The Rook was as much a son of Conrad Miller as Edward River was. The Rook knelt at the child’s side, next to the Mother. The Mother spoke.
“I know you know, friend. Her only dying wish was to see the Above. I don’t ask for me. I ask for her, as she loves you greatly.” The Rook scooped the child up gently, making sure the Mother tucked her in with a blanket and a kiss on her forehead, “Hope, my dear, hold on tight. He is going to show you the world from the Above.” She smiled through desperately closeted tears. Hope. And so she had become. For all.
The Gasten were rising for the second time that day. The sky was overcast but demonstrated a picture book backdrop for the flight of fancy for the little girl, Hope. They climbed, not too fast, keeping pace with the stream of Gasten.
The Rook took her to the mountainous Solitary Tracts, dominant in its countenance, reaching both high and wide, pock marked with facilities to aid the Proctors. The Rook tempted the recruits in their first phase of flight, not quite Guardians with Wings yet, more Fledglings with Ambition. The flurry of dark cloud that blurred between them took many by surprise, emoting furry in them but giggles from Hope. The Rook took the child to the Skyport, buzzed a Skycraft or two, headed into the thick, dark dangerous clouds soaking the pair of them, further flight out the other side to a nest of Prefects of the Sky, calves spun around their Mothers, others danced above in lazy but practiced steps, the songs they sang were of a different cadence, of minor scales, in a different time signature, yet they complemented each other like an operatic chorus of many voices singing their own refrain, complementing the overall sound. The Rook took Hope to the old Parliament building, ringed in cloud but as derelict as a still functioning office space could be. The Rook slotted through the belltower, scraping the bell deliberately with a stray tendril, ringing the giant bell like a prayer bowl. The Rook took them to the small habitable spaces in oversized faces, yet deliberately avoided the Laboratory. Even animal instinct abhors that which remains dangerous.
Hope let out a sigh and visibly appeared weaker. She let go of her doll, her grip loosened from faintness. The Rook turned and raced after it, protecting Hope from the descent. The Above, Phantasma, left them now. The Pyramid came closer, reconstruction from previous encounters there were taking place, with hovering Proctors licking the wound. The Ridge States, the Curved Bundle, the Wedge, they all became sharper in vision. The Rook reached out and caught the doll, no worse for wear, giving it back to the girl. She took it but couldn’t grasp it. She could barely manage a smile, but as the Rook returned her to her Mother, they knew. She needed not the words nor the motion. They knew. The Rook relinquished control back to Edward, even as the last vestiges of the Rook searched blindly for the girl, but she was gone.
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