Ninus

Marcus had written his ode to the ending of their rule; a long, intricate prose inscribed into vellum parchments, written in blood and ink. It was contained within a thick leather binding, and sat perched on top of his desk alone in his study. It was the product of many years hard work, but there was much more yet to be done.

His shoddy, rundown apartment sat on the outskirts of Ninus, the city of light which held a billion souls within its vastness. The once beautiful, now decadent and mindless hive, was the one city left standing intact after the Schism, the catastrophic event which had befallen mankind on what would have been the eve of their Enlightenment, a pinnacle of technological prowess which would have allowed them to spread out into the stars, breaking free of the confinements of their worldly cocoon.

His story began sometime in 19.1a, the year of Aoes, a most venerable saint. It was he who realised that the event had reduced mankind to a bunch of stumbling nostalgic drones recalling better days. His work concerning the Schism had inspired the inhabitants of a broken world to forget their inheritance and set off down a newly forged path, free of the chains of their evolutionary omnibus.
To be born on such a year filled Marcus with pride, lifted him away from the clutches of his crimes, and set him free. To anyone it would seem that had saved his life, or to be more precise his mind, when everything he knew was washed away in the wake of a new authority.

His home was what he made it; in his head, were the last truth resided. It set in stone the tragedy of nature; that mankind could never be entrusted with its own survival. Perhaps that is why they had relented their grip to others more…capable. He mused on the idea endlessly.

Marcus was never a religious man. He always saw God as an abstraction; a generalised man-made superstitious concept designed to flood our minds with a self-censoring instinct. It was a limitation that did not make a scratch on his ethos. Reality and its meaning thereof rested solely in his own mind, twisted and bent to shape his view of the world. And what he saw made him despair. A glowing, stagnant metropolis, sinking into the past on a wave of ignorance. They had their God now, he thought, and laughed; a bitter laconic bark. Control was such an easy concept to bestow upon the populous, once they had sold their souls to the Dukes.

His coat tails brushed around his ankles in a light wind. The night was cool and crisp, and the stars above were obscured by Ninus; the focus of his attention. His back rested against one of the steel girders that framed his immediate surroundings. They were warped into crude shapes, valiant memorials of more optimistic days, when the people of this godforsaken town still had a will to fight. He could be the only one left now who still had his sense of self, a lone freedom fighter against a tyranny of unspeakable girth. He loved the idea, mulled it over inside his head. He was a grinning god of chaos, a wraith of rectitude, a bittersweet pill of justice, together with his trusted Kinet pistol strapped lovingly to his side. They had had their chance; he had given his warnings of a terrible retribution, a tide of reclamation which would free the people from the little bastard machines which were running the show now. Oh how they would burn.

Thus, let it be so.

A shrieking crash flourished amid the sound of traffic below. A little to his left, a dome of what looked like crystal shattered, creating an almighty clamour of dust and glass, sparkling in the flames that were now spewing from its ruined husk. He heard noises, sirens in the distance, racing towards the now smoldering remains of a former Fury Hive, an institution of governance run by the Dukes; the elite members of an Empire which spanned countless timelines.

He rested a hand against his chin; legs crossed in a symbol of quiet inner wrath, and watched his exquisite sketches of destruction bear fruit. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins as he considered the next part of his plan; a crushing blow which would drive the Furies back down into the little tunnels of time where they first appeared, during the Schism. One of humanity’s greatest failures, Marcus thought, was science. We looked down too deep for answers, and found something unimaginably ancient buried under the rubble of our existence. We brought the wrath of the Dukes down upon ourselves. It was the fault of us alone, and the task of Marcus to put it right.

He felt around in the darkness for another footfall, in between the rusted spaces of the steel structure, and made his way slowly towards the edge. Ornithopters hovered overhead, scanning the buildings in a frantic search. They were scared, he thought, the little mindworms were scared. So, he was having some effect. But there were more fireworks in the pipeline. The show must go on.

A ledge presented itself just below him, a bit out of the way. Effort was required to leap the five metre or so gap, but he made it smoothly, arching out and landing without breaking stride until he found his airbike, placed just where he had left it. A click of the ignition and the whirring blue veined beast growled into life; pulsing and shimmering in a static ion discharge. He pulled the bike up and it shot skyward, straight into an oncoming ornithopter. He immediately brandished his Kinet, effortlessly flaunting its lethal design and aiming it at one of the blades of the ‘thopter. A direct hit instigated its destruction, as it lost flight stability and began to fall towards a block of apartments, crashing in a cataclysm of sparks and screams from dying Furies and residents alike. A price worth being paid, he thought.

In the distance, he could see it. The Spire. It stretched up forever into the sky, forever being a truth in some context, as its peak extended beyond the sky of his world, into an infinite number of skies in an infinite number of worlds. The prospect of defeating such a ruthlessly imposing hegemonic power would have been daunting to any sane man. Marcus did not quite fall into the category of complacently rational, nor mentally unstable. Somewhere in between, perhaps. His thoughts were pristine, a clarity that could only be achieved with a degree of insanity. He had never felt so thrillingly alive.

His exploits had attracted the attention of the wider Fury Administrative. He felt searchlights underneath him, scanning the skies for his presence. A proxy contingent of ornithopters and Needle machines started to fire in his general direction. He banked his airbike hard to the left, side rolling until he caught the ion wind nearer the surface, emitted by the cruising Fury vehicles. The wind locked together with the exhausts of his ‘bike, and helped him maneuver furiously into a more suitable position. All the while the Needle machines were closing in, their sleek near invisible outer armour slicing smoothly through the ion current. He could take on 6 or 7 at most, but no more. Shouldering his Kinet pistol, he left the ‘bike hovering for the split second it took to dispatch 3 Needles, then he turned deftly and shot off, positioning his direction at an angle to the ground. He would be harder to spot between the buildings.

The Spire was close; tantalizingly so. He checked his cargo. All was well. Without warning, a ‘thopter presented itself right in front of him, turrets firing wildly in his direction. A split second’s delay and he would have been shredded. Marcus was quicker than that. The airbike immediately delved down into one of the pockets of space occupied by the Fury machines. To the outside world, it would have seemed the ‘bike had just winked out of existence. A picosecond later the ‘bike darted out of its temporary refuge, 6 metres to the ‘thopter’s immediate right. The maneuver was unexpected, and its mistake cost the lives of the pilots. The Spire towered over him now, a glowing monument to the iron rule of the Dukes. It sickened him.

In a final realisation of what he was about to do, he pulled the airbike upwards at a 90 degree angle, throttling vertically up the side of the wall of the Spire. His destination was near the tip, where the Spire transcended the constraints of reality. It was the main link the Dukes had with his world. If he could break that link, there was a chance it would dispel the remaining Fury machines, and free his people. The possibility remained that it would not, but he did not dwell too heavily on negatives.

As the tip approached, he readied the bomb strapped to the right side of his airbike. A countdown sequence began, with the option of remote intervention if something went wrong. This was it, the end of everything. He laughed as hard and as honestly as he had ever laughed in his life. It was his emancipation, the freeing of his mind from the misery of control. What happened after, well, he wouldn’t be around to see it. This was what he was made to do, and he had done it in style. He was content.

Then the bomb went off.

***