The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (44 page)

“We don't have much time!” Urea shouts. “The
flock can carry many of us to safety, but we need to organize.”

“You and the Evanimals are going to save you,
but not us. You leave the rest of us to die!”

Urea recognizes Rufus Aurelius's voice, and
knows Skup does to. But they can't start killing everyone who
disagrees with them. They need to save the last remnants of
humanity, not end them.

“Then I'll leave last.” Urea pledges, “Once
every single person is safely on the surface, I will leave.”

The crowd's intensity fades. The shouts and
roars die down to silence.

Skup chimes.

prong...so its fine> Urea chimes.

Skup volunteers.

she
scoffs, and Skup wipes back a tear. “Go!” Urea yells for everyone
to hear.

Skup's kingcrow leaps into the air, taking
Jacob with him. Kao finally breathes, his sister will be safe.

“Nature won't save us just because her chosen
one stays!” Ntelo shouts. Urea expected the High Priestess sooner,
she's ready.

“Nature doesn't want to kill anyone! Nature
has no intentions, no will of its own. We're all expressions of the
Earth, or god or whatever you want to call it. Nature's just a
concept, like the Creator God of the old religions, it was a nice
idea once, something to think about, but nothing to forfeit our
minds to.

“Our religion has become dogmatic. We've been
listening to other's beliefs about our relationship with the earth,
with reality, with the divine. We all have to forge our own
understanding of the world around us. We'll have to, the
accomplishments of our ancestors are crumbling beneath us.

“Nature's not perfect, nor humanity an
imperfection. Everything is just trying to survive. Everything
makes mistakes. We're all Nature, there's no line that divides
humanity from the rest of the planet. Nature's in all of us.
Nature's greatest strength is that it self corrects, but that's
only a boon if there's anything left to fix. Nature has no
intentions other than the strongest survive. Humanity suffered
because we became weak and docile. Nature doesn't punish, but she
takes advantage. Other beings were more tenacious, more willing to
adapt, so they flourished. We can rejoin the race of life out
there, The Wild Man can teach us how!”

Kao looks back at the crowd with steady eyes.
He makes no promises, offers them no false hope, only the
understanding that those who are willing, will survive.

“But we cannot hesitate. Those that do, will
perish. What we need now is for every family to decide who will go
first, who is willing to sacrifice themselves that others may
live.”

The crowd is silent. No one moves, then
someone in the back steps forward. An older woman, hairless, not
elderly but no longer young. She pushes an eight year old girl in
front of her.

“Please, save my Jessica. I won't be of any
use down there,” she turns to her daughter, “I love you, okay
honey? I'll always be with you.”

“I don't want to go!” Jessica cries, but Elia
gently picks her up and places her on the back of her kingcrow.

Elia climbs atop her bird and sits the little
girl behind her.

“I have room for five more, the rest of you
will have to ride wild birds.”

More parents come forward, their children
bawl and scream in protest. There parents coo sweet nothings in
their ears.

“I'll come down later.”

“You always wanted to touch a vultus.”

“Everything will be OK.”

The gaggle of kids is lifted by parents'
arms--trembling with sorrow, hope and fear--onto the birds.

“What of the High Priestess?” Aurelius
shouts.

Urea curses herself for not having Elia kill
him like she did Luca. He was the far more dangerous of the
two.

“Save the priestess!” More people take up the
chant.

Urea takes a deep breath, swallows her pride
and calls for Priestess Ntelo to come forward. Ntelo obliges,
looking surprised that anyone was so kind to nominate her to
survive.

A pilot escorts them all to Elia's bird, they
wrap themselves around her thick scaly legs. She takes off, taking
children and the conniving Priestess with her.

The Spire shakes violently now, the light
from below is becoming more violent. They have little time
left.

More vultus take Elia and Skup's place. More
children are pushed forward. Husbands push wives, grandfathers push
sons. Soon the crowd is split in two, those generous enough to
sacrifice themselves, and those brave enough to have let their
family live in their memories. Pilots load bird after bird to
capacity, sometimes struggling with only five people, sometimes
they carry many as ten. Their weight pales compared to the biselk
the kingcrows are accustomed to carrying. Each bird squawks
politely once fully burdened, then silently dives over the side,
following their leader's example.

Kao tries to step into the former group. His
sister is safe, his quest is won. He needs no more toil upon this
bizarre and alien world. But the people of the Spire do not allow
it. A hundred hands lay upon his back and push him forward. At
first he resists, but the look in their eyes convinces him. He is
to save their children, their lovers, their family. None will
survive without Kao. To sacrifice him is to sacrifice all.

Reluctantly, but with honor, he climbs upon
the back of a bird and gestures for people to send their loved ones
forward. Instead a gang of monkeys bounds forward. They greet Kao
with enthusiasm, happy to be free of their masters, and clamber
upon his bird with enthusiasm.

The crowd of Naturalists avoid Kao's eyes.
They are guilty, shamed by the Wild Man for their slavery. He knows
they seek redemption with this last act. Whether he lives or dies,
he forgives them.

The crowd parts and a funeral procession
carry the hermit's battered body forward. Kao shakes his head, No.
This is too far. His body will stay here, his mind is already lost.
But the people shove him forward.

The hunter's heart leaps from his chest when
he hears the hermit say, in his own voice, “Kao.”

Kao swallows hard. Does the hermit really
still live? He pulls him up from the people’s giving hands and
seats the old man behind him on the bird. The hermit hugs Kao with
tired hands.

“Kao, you've done it, you've destroyed the
Spire,” he croaks in the hunter's ear, then Kao spurs the kingcrow
and they leap from the Spire.

A thousand curses upon the nonbelievers! A thousand
deaths for those who destroyed the Spire, for that be Nature's
will! Death to false the gods!

The Spire rattles now. Skup understands all
this is no less his fault than any other's. The single prong that
flew from his wing and lodged itself in the Spire glows white hot
and throws out great jets of electrified plasma. It works as a
miniature fractal of the Spire itself. As the Spire sucks much of
the earth’s energy and channels it into the air through a vessel
much smaller than the whole that powers it, the lone prong the juts
from the Spire drains much of its energy and throws it into the
air. And he thought Urea could pull it out, they were doomed the
moment it chinked the Spire's armor. Its too high, too hot, too
late.

The prong has caused an interference loop
that can't be stopped. Hotter and hotter it burns, there are no
rivers to cool its tiny mass, so it approaches corona heat. The
Spire is not impervious to the thorn in its side. The area nearest
the shard glows almost as much as it, and warps uncomfortably.
Their time is running out.

The pilots perform admirably. Without
hesitation, each mounted their
biselk
, the poor animals now
terrified of what their bout with the Spire has done and do their
best to keep the Spire from tipping, but it is a losing battle. The
biselk
's jousts do something to drain the power of the
Spire, but not enough.

Even worse, the tiny prongs suck energy from
the Spire the same as the Spire does to the earth. As Skup flew
over the Garden on his first flight in the air, an experience far
greater and more thrilling than any he's ever experienced, he did
not fail to notice the rivers boiling. Too much heat, the water is
almost all gone, evaporated into the night air.

The only liquid that flows is magma, heavy
and hot beneath the surface of the earth. Here and there, rivulets
of it bubble forth from the surface, already one pilot and
biselk
have been lost to the molten rock. Their weight was
too much, they stepped on ground too soft and melted into nothing,
yet the magma's appetite is not quenched. It seems Tennay's candle
metaphor was apt, though he didn't suspect the earth itself would
be the wax to the Spire's flame.

The other pilots do not hesitate or falter.
They choose their approaches more carefully, but none fail to
understand the gravity of their actions. Each joust diverts energy
from the Spire into their skeletons, rather than converting it into
raw heat. Though they all understand they do nothing but delay the
inevitable.

Already Elia has made five trips to the top
of the Spire and back, the flock following her lead without
hesitation. More than five hundred citizens run across the earth
from the Spire, desperate to get away from the heat and waves of
electricity it throws into the air. Skup's never been so smitten
with Elia. She's a natural with the flock, and what she did to Luca
was, well... cool. Her sweat and the shock of black feathers that
cling to her make her look like a winged angel of death.

A blinding flash and the Spire trembles more
than it had before.

longer!> Jacob chimes. The leader of the Shepherds makes no move
to retreat, instead he and his
biselk
stay pushed up against
the Spire. The
biselk
's thick hooves pawing at lava,
electricity jumping from the Spire to the elk to Jacob and back
again.

Skup
understands. Too much to lose. He doesn't know what will happen
once the Spire crumbles. What will happen to the field? Will his
vultus
turn on him once and for all, what of Urea's
panthera
?

have to save Urea.>

save her, you've as good as killed her.>

From the back of the
biselk
, his body
coursing with electricity, his hair as anarchic and chaotic as the
biselk
's antler's that surround him, he cries. “I love her!”
loud and true.

Before Skup can think it his kingcrow is
pumping furiously towards the sky.

Up and up they soar as the Spire's tilt grows
more inclined. No longer perpendicular, gravity pulls upon it more
and more.

Everything Skup ever knew tumbles out of the
Spire. Without the electromagnetic field to keep everything inside,
the tilt of the floor is enough to send his entire existence
plummeting to the earth below it. Food, tables, chairs, an obscene
amount of poker chips and cards, all tumble to nothingness. He sees
more than a few people fall, they scream as they are forced to
ponder their death longer than any should have to. Others have
leapt and fall silently and await their first and final embrace of
the earth.

The Spire falls faster and faster. Skup
closes his eyes, shocked to share the King Crow's sight without the
Amplification room, and is relieved to see the people of the Spire
fleeing in the opposite direction. Now Skup only worries about a
tidal wave of lava, after seeing the Spire collapse, he believes
anything is possible.

Finally Skup sees the green sheen of the top
of the Spire. The structure is a third lower in the sky than it
should be. The King's sharp eyesight easily picks out Urea among
the remaining people. She clings to grass, her black fingernails
dug into the earth, her cheek resting against the closest thing to
soil she's ever known.

Skup chimes.

She whirls around, and immediately starts to
slide down the steep surface. Not anticipating this, Skup banks
hard and they assume an interception flight. This is going to be
close.

Wild Man
>

panthera
?>

She's more than halfway down the slope
already, also picking up speed. Other people cling to trees or
shrubs, but Urea makes no effort to stop her slide.

for you! Wouldn't be fair to them!>

This causes her to slow her fall, she digs
into the thin layer of earth with her claws, her eyes pierce him
even from this distance.

another voice
chimes, an older voice. The kingcrow spots him first, Tennay clings
to a tree near the edge of the Spire. Skup half suspected the
engineer knew how to chime, at least he never told Baucis.

Don't die for a
thing
... I'll play that part.>

Skup and the kingcrow scoop up Urea in claws
made for tearing flesh. They soar out and above the Spire as it
plummets towards the earth.

The Spire seems to fall forever. Larger than
any redwood, any skyscraper, any mountain, it gathers speed as it
plummets, pivoting on its great base. As it leans gravity wrenches
it apart, and huge fissures form, spewing electricity into the
night like mist from a waterfall. Eventually it embraces the earth.
As it crushes against the ground it shatters to pieces, some as big
as boulders, some small as pebbles that fly off, charged bullets of
exaltation that scatter farther than the caldera that houses the
Garden. The stump is still the tallest structure save the ring of
mountains. A hundred feet above the the ground a jagged crown of
splinters burbles with electricity. Pieces of the Spire smash the
earth like meteorites and sink into its molten crust, the carbon
composites are light enough that the ground supports all but those
that fell from the highest heights. Pieces of the Spire tumble
along the earth and leave red hot scars behind. Many explode in a
showers of sparks, white dust, and rumbles of thunder. When the
dust settles the Spire lays on the earth, pointed due east towards
Father Mountain,as if his gravity beckoned it to him. The Spire was
so huge that pieces from the top rest at the mountain's feet, while
the body of the thing lays in a messy line all the way back to the
center of the Garden.