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Chapter 20: Ghastly Remains

Chapter 20: Ghastly Remains

"That has to be the most morally undisciplined person I’ve ever heard of," Rook said.

Mara turned toward him. They had been discussing Batman for the past several hours, though discussing was perhaps too generous a word for what Rook had been doing. He interrupted every few minutes to question decisions made by a fictional man from a world he had never visited, usually with the confidence of someone who believed the writers should have consulted him first.

"How do you even think of simply putting murderers, killers and psychotic maniacs in jail?" he continued. "And then doing it over and over again when they escape? If you have the power to eliminate them and deliberately choose not to, that’s morally negligent. Completely unrealistic."

"I mean, it’s a comic." Mara shrugged as she stepped over another exposed root. "But I understand what you’re saying. He probably should have killed some of them. They always come back, cause more trouble and get innocent people killed."

"Exactly."

"He has reasons."

"He has excuses."

"They’re usually very compelling excuses."

"They don’t sound compelling to the families of everyone his enemies murder after escaping for the seventeenth time."

Mara glanced at him. "You’ve become strangely invested in this."

"I dislike incompetence."

"He has defeated gods."

"And yet he can’t build a better prison."

"He doesn’t run the prison."

"Then he should."

"That would take time away from beating criminals."

"Apparently, he needs the criminals to escape so he can keep beating them. This entire arrangement sounds suspicious."

Mara laughed beneath her breath. "You’ve known about Batman for less than a day and already think you could do his job better."

"I could."

"You can’t even Cull an Abomination."

"I never said I would be Batman here. Put me in his world, give me his money and several months to understand the weapons available, and his city would become considerably quieter."

"You’d be arrested within a week."

"Only if they caught me."

"Batman would catch you."

"Then one of us would learn something."

Mara was preparing to explain precisely how badly that encounter would end for him when Rook suddenly raised one hand.

She stopped speaking.

His pace had slowed over the last few minutes, though she had assumed he was listening to her story. Now she noticed how closely he was studying the darkness ahead. The useless compass rested in his other hand, its cracked glass reflecting the blue glow of the lantern.

"What’s going on?" Mara asked.

"We made it to the other side of the forest." Rook returned the compass beneath his coat. "This is where the bullshit starts."

The trees began thinning around them.

Their enormous trunks stood farther apart, and the thick canopy overhead broke into ragged openings. Through them, Mara could see the same immense black sky stretching across the Underworld. The sweet smell of fruit and rotting leaves weakened with every step, slowly replaced by cold stone, stagnant water and something faintly metallic.

Rook moved toward the final line of trees, taking care to avoid the roots surrounding them. The ground rose beneath his boots, forming a low ridge along the forest’s edge. When he reached the top, he stopped.

Mara climbed beside him.

Up ahead, dozens of blue lights were scattered across an enormous stretch of darkness.

Some hung from broken pillars. Others flickered beneath collapsed archways or floated above streets buried in rubble. None appeared bright enough to illuminate more than a small circle around itself, yet together they revealed the ghostly outline of a vast city.

Walls surrounded it, or what remained of them.

Entire sections had collapsed, leaving mountains of fractured stone spread across the surrounding land. Several towers leaned at impossible angles, their upper floors resting against nearby buildings. Massive pillars lay broken across roads wide enough to accommodate armies. One had fallen through the center of a domed structure and split it nearly in half.

The buildings still standing were little more than shells. Their roofs had collapsed, their windows opened into perfect darkness, and black vegetation crawled over their walls. In places, the streets had sunk deep enough to form ravines between the ruins.

Mara stared at it.

The layout looked disturbingly familiar. Even beneath centuries of destruction, she recognized the broad walls, the central avenue and the tall structure rising from the heart of the city. Its peak had been torn away, but the base still resembled the tower containing the Soul Beacon in the Eleventh Bastion.

"What is this?" she asked.

"The Eighty-Sixth Bastion," Rook replied. "One of the oldest Bastions ever built. It was also one of the most powerful, back then."

Mara looked at him, then returned her attention to the ruins.

Whatever power the city had once possessed was difficult to imagine now. There were no guards upon its walls, no crowds moving through its streets and no pale Beacon illuminating the sky. The scattered blue lights only made the emptiness more apparent, casting narrow glimpses of a city that had died long before either of them arrived.

Farther within the city, several lights formed a line along what might once have been a central road, though most disappeared whenever drifting shadows passed over them.

"Did this also fall to the Abominations?" Mara asked.

"Yes."

"When?"

"A little over a thousand years ago."

She looked at him again. "So this was before you."

"Long before me." Rook descended the ridge, although his movement had become noticeably more cautious. "The Eighty-Sixth fell centuries before I arrived in the Underworld. Most of what people know about it comes from stories, and stories become less reliable every time the person telling them dies."

Mara remained atop the ridge for another moment. The pale chain between their wrists extended until it pulled gently against her arm, forcing her to follow.

"What happened?"

"Depends on who you ask." Rook removed the lantern from his hip and lowered its shutter until only a thin strip of blue light escaped. "Some say an Abomination above the known ranks attacked. Others say the Beacon became corrupted and transformed everyone inside the walls. I heard one version where the Bastion’s own Captain opened the gates."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because stories need an idiot to blame."

"That doesn’t mean it wasn’t true."

"No. It simply means every survivor chose a different idiot."

They continued toward the ruins.

The ground between the forest and the Bastion had once been a road. Centuries of neglect had reduced it to broken slabs protruding from the soil, but several sections remained intact enough for them to follow. Rusted weapons lay scattered along either side. Most had fused with the earth, their blades broken and their handles long since rotted away.

Rook stepped around them without looking down.

Mara did the same.

"You said we needed to pay attention here," she said. "Why?"

"Because the forest was simple."

She glanced back at the wall of trees. Somewhere beneath that canopy lived Abominations capable of tearing a creature apart and growing fruit from its remains.

"That was simple?"

"The trees stayed where they were. We avoided touching them, they avoided eating us. A healthy relationship built upon mutual ’Don’t touch me please’."

"One of them dropped a fruit containing an eyeball onto your coffin."

"It was a farewell gift."

Mara looked toward the ruined Bastion. "And this place is more dangerous?"

"Yes."

"It must be filled with Abominations, then."

"No."

Rook stopped beside a fractured milestone. Most of its inscription had been scraped away, but the number carved near its base remained visible.

Eighty-six.

He crouched and ran two fingers across the disturbed soil beside it. The prints there were shallow, partially concealed beneath dust and ash. They resembled those left by ordinary boots.

Mara noticed them as well.

Her eyes followed the tracks toward the city. They continued along the ruined road before disappearing beneath the shadow of the broken gate.

"No Abominations?" she asked.

"A few, perhaps. Nothing worth worrying about."

Mara studied his posture. Rook had crossed a field containing thousands of Abominations without showing this much concern. He had slept beside trees that consumed flesh and transformed it into fruit. Even when the woman-faced creature had walked through their powder circle, he had responded with irritation before fear.

Now his hand rested upon the hilt of his falchion.

"Then what are you worried about?"

Rook stood and continued along the road.

Mara followed him, keeping her voice low despite seeing no movement within the ruins. "If there aren’t many Abominations here, what could possibly be worse?"

The nearest blue light flickered.

For an instant, Mara thought she saw someone standing beneath it.

The figure had been watching from inside a collapsed building, its outline concealed behind a row of broken columns. It vanished the moment the light returned, leaving her uncertain whether anything had been there at all.

She moved closer to Rook.

He noticed.

This time, he did not mock her.

"What could be worse than an Abomination?" she asked again.

Rook looked at her.

"Reapers."

Mara waited for the joke that usually followed his more dramatic statements.

None came.

She glanced toward the city again. Another blue light faded behind one of the ruined walls. As it disappeared, a metallic sound travelled through the darkness, the faint scrape of a blade being drawn.

Rook pulled the falchion from his coffin.

"Abominations are hungry," he said quietly. "Reapers know exactly what they’re doing."

Together, they approached the torn down gates of the Eighty-Sixth Bastion. And it did not take long for shit to hit the fan.