Wonder Made

Sixteen, Part Two

Greenish light bathed Stormholden as he approached the train platform, a soaking, stinking, whimpering mass of exerted muscles and exhaust. A mounting pressure behind his eyes foretold of ache.

Feet shuffling across the platform's planks, he reached for a nearby lamppost and pulled himself forward. Leaning against it, he noted the broken lantern and lack of candle; the lamppost's very purpose for being, defeated.

If tethering one's value to that of their prescribed duty, the lamppost should not exist. The pressure behind Stormholden's eyes worsened as he felt a kinship with the lamppost, splinters of wood and rusty nails prodding at his back. Instead, the light that had tainted the captain's skin in sickly ills emanated from three overhead floating orbs, devilry, even so far out here in the middle of nowhere, inescapable.

Tired of such tricks and deception, the captain leaned more of his weight against the lamppost and closed his eyes, cutting himself off from the insanity this new change of scenery provided. His arms rested over his chest, as he breathed in and out, the succor of the air here much pleasanter and smoother than in the wasteland of the dunes.

"Wait here, Cap," Gideon whispered. The heat and stink of Gideon's breath and nearness curled the captain's chest hairs. Stormholden gave a small nod of acknowledgment, before hearing the dull thuds of Gideon's boots fade into the distance.

Left in his absence, Stormholden felt the familiar tug of his former self, a spark of fight that refused to be doused. Escape, it begged him. Escape, and find a way back. A way home.

His hand moved on its own, grazing the hardened leather of his empty scabbard, his sword swallowed by Gideon's madness at the Song. Perhaps, he never had a sword to begin with. Perhaps, Gideon's madness had been his own. He willed his arm back to his side, but his fingers instinctively went to his holster next, where he thumbed one of its straps. Empty. Even without an arsenal at his disposal, a part of him still wished to fight.

He snorted. Go home. Go to what home? The Retelling? One of the world's seven layers where all manner of the written word came to life? Where the unfinished stories were left to wander an endless whitescape, never eating or drinking or sleeping, but never dying? Living in a true, never-ending hell?

No, he couldn't go home; he refused to. How could he, after learning of his inception? How could he face the members of his crew? Or Matilda's children? The Scarlet Reef? How could he look into their eyes and not see the words dictating their every action, thought, and emotion? Them, every bit as blind and oblivious as he'd been.

He'd rather rot on this platform or die at Gideon's hand than face that. Something inside him, something that bespoke to an integral belief that made Stormholden, Stormholden, demanded the captain stand by the choice he'd just made. As if in response, he dug his bootheels deeper into the platform, wood releasing a pained wheeze underneath the weight of his newly solidified conviction.

Stormholden's eyelids flashed a bright white. Thunder rumbled in the distance. He snapped his eyes open. A sky as smooth as velvet stretched out before him, blushing a harsh purple, clouds nonexistent. How peculiar then, for a storm to have brewed without the necessary ingredients to do so. Turning, he saw it; a crackle of lightning slicing through the fabric of the sky. The thunder gods answered almost immediately shrieking their dissent.

On the platform, a shuffling of feet coupled with the murmurings of onlookers alerted the captain to a disturbance. Only one thought occupied his mind then, what had Gideon done this time?

Sensing danger mounting, his sword arm flew to his side, fingers closing around what would have been his hilt. He shook his head, realizing he grasped at nothing. He hurled a curse into the air. Not twenty and one handspans away, three men, who'd been there since Gideon's and his arrival, seated on a mound of rock and plucking the dirt from between their teeth, flitted to and from, grim expressions bogging down the corners of their lips.