Wordsworth – Chapter 30 – Tenebrism 1

Taylor

I don’t trust Emma.

I can’t trust Emma.

I won’t trust Emma.

“But you trust me, don’t you, Sweetie?” Lisa’s voice asks from the earpiece hidden between my inky locks.

“That is not a fair question,” I answer as I keep focusing on the tale of three army surgeons and a daring bet so that the three gifted men can keep healing the wounded found in this little park.

A park near a school.

“Whoever said foxes play fair?” she asks with the forced humor she’s held onto since she started guiding me across the city to the places where I could be needed.

Where I was unerringly needed.

“Are you sure—”

“I’m not a damn fairy, Tay. Stop thinking about that Tinkerbell costume.”

Despite myself, I smile.

It’s… almost easy to do, so long as I keep my mind on the fanciful details of yet another of the Grimm Brothers’ tales. So long as I don’t think about what surrounds me and what I’ve seen all day.

But I do. I do think about those things because it would be indecent not to. Because what kind of Hero turns away from Tragedy when they should be so intimately enmeshed?

Because what else could I miss if I willingly blinded myself?

“You need to act,” she says as a surgeon made of black words with the eyes of a cat kneels by the side of a little girl who giggles at his face, uncaring of the flowers blooming across her body and her greening skin.

“I am acting,” I say.

“You know what I mean.”

I look all around me. At children and parents turned into a garden of flesh, happy in their own ways as their thoughts become those of leaf and wood.

At those already healed after my surgeons cut off the seeds expelled by Bakuda’s bomb, reverting whatever it was that triggered the awful process.

But what I see is a video playing on my phone at Lisa’s prodding. The video of Bakuda declaring that those who were at one point my family are about to be lost only because of the pride of a mad dragon.

A dragon who hurt Lisa.

I could trick myself. Pretend that I’m going to fight Lung because of revenge on behalf of my love. That I will thwart Bakuda’s scheme because I want to rub it on Emma’s face.

But clever foxes aren’t fond of being lied to.

Or, well, they are, at times, when they plan their own lies to fight back with.

“Let me finish here. I don’t know how long they would last without me,” I say.

“Of course,” she answers as I focus on the trickle of my words, sometimes reciting a few passages of the story to keep it going, to give each doctor a renewed dose of their miraculous salve.

Yet a part of me keeps wondering if there’s not a better tale. What would happen if I gave out the golden apples of Idunn. If they would restore youthful vigor, or heal the eater. If they would give the kind of immortality that so many of my tales warn against.

Or if their effects would fade out as soon as I stopped speaking and my words went back to me.

“Tay?”” she asks, interrupting… nothing worth considering.

“Yes?”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

And I sigh.

***

Emma

“Don’t!” Armsmaster yells.

But Red is faster.

I should have Amber. I should hold onto the sense memory of the exhilaration of motion, push every bit of my power into speed and excitement.

Red is easier.

A corona of blazing fury surrounds me, my boots sinking into the bubbling tarmac as Colin takes a step back, shielding the exposed part of his face reflexively before I turn to where Lung’s challenge has come from.

Because I should be rushing to my family. To save my father like he couldn’t save me. From the ABB, for added irony.

To save Mom because her only crime was to believe her daughter and husband, even if I never want to forgive her for that.

To save Anne.

Because… she’s Anne.

Red falters for a moment, but I’m quick to grab onto it with the ease of familiarity. With the practice of using it as a shield against all my other colors when I’m not brave enough to suffer them.

I crouch.

And jump.

The molten street splatters all around me as I surge up and forward, right to the nearest rooftop on my plotted, straight line toward the dragon that holds the secret of where my family is hidden.

To the monster I already crushed once.

I will just have to make sure he lives long enough to talk.

Wind rushes past my face, whistling at both my speed and the superheated aura exploding it away from me. Colin’s voice tries to reach me, distorted as I leave him behind. The buildings surrounding my target are tinted orange by the smoldering remnants of Lung’s challenge.

And then something explodes against my back.

Suddenly, I’m not surrounded by Red, all but flying under the power of my fury, but enveloped by deep Blue. By the barrage of memories of a girl clinging to me during her mother’s funeral, of a slender body, taller than my own, embracing me, asking me for a strength I couldn’t give her because she was so much more than I ever would be that it was ludicrous she thought I could do anything but silently stand there, clumsy words held back by the tears in her eyes—

I crash.

Blue… Blue makes me heavy. Denser. Hard to move.

That’s the metaphor that Dean came up with. A sadness so deep that you become unmoved by the world around you.

Gallant.

Red sparks around me, but another bolt hits me, Blue blunting the impact as it spreads and becomes deeper, as tears stream down my face, calling up Anne’s disappointed face to join Taylor’s heartbroken one, Sophia mutely leaving my bedside after my failed attempt at making her understand, Dad agreeing with me when I didn’t want him to, when I needed him to be an adult and stop me.

Stop me from becoming a monster.

Blue shifts over my arms as Green overtakes it, and only now do I realize that I’m kneeling amid rubble torn from the façade of the building I had aimed for, on all fours in the middle of the street like the miserable animal that I am, unworthy of—

A hit.

More blue.

Ever more blue, until I stop moving and even thinking.

And then, a solid hand on my shoulder, a hand clad in metal, the weight of it not making me budge in the slightest.

But blue abates ever so slightly, and I look up at Colin, with his visor lifted, his eyes as piercing as ever as he kneels by my side yet remains above me.

“We need a plan,” he says, not letting go of my shoulder, his stern face blurry through my streaming tears.

“I… My… My fault…” I say.

Because what else could I tell him.

And then, for the second time in my life, I’m hugged against hard armor as I break down in the arms of a hero.

“It’s not,” he says. “It’s nobody’s fault but theirs. And we’re going to stop them, Emma. We’re going to save your family.”

I shake my head, futilely trying to dry my tears on a plate of cool metal.

“Emma… Trust me. Just this once. Trust that I will—that I can help you. Please,” he continues, with an unsteady tone that couldn’t be further from Armsmaster. With pleading, and begging, and the need to do better.

How Emma Barnes of you, Armsmaster.

“Sir,” Gallant says, suddenly there, in front of me, standing at attention after shooting me down once again.

Following orders, I guess.

“I hate you,” I tell him, looking away from him.

“I know,” he says with that voice of his that always carries an easy smile.

The gauntlets on my back hold me steady, and Colin suddenly pulls away.

He’s… looking up, toward where Lung is, but something’s different in his eyes, and—

“If you cross me on this, Tattletale, I’ll hunt you down personally.”

Then he does… something. Something intricate with his fingers tapping on the side of his helmet, and a panel slides open over his ear, glowing circuitry painting the palm of his hand with shifting blue tracery as he fishes out something black and small.

He looks down at me, his face still stern but now directed at somebody else as he carefully tugs my blue hair behind my right ear and delicately pushes the thing he holds inside of it.

“Okay,” a familiar girl’s voice mutters as if psyching herself up. “Hey, Emma. First of all, thank you for saving my life and all that jazz, wish this was under better circumstances. Other than that… Me and Taylor are going to save your family.”

“What?”

“No, this isn’t a quid pro quo,” she says as Colin’s eyes narrow. “You know how she is, Ems, this is her just being her. Thing is, somebody needs to stop Lung, and somebody needs to stop the woman pulling his strings. We are better suited at doing the second thing, seeing as you’ve already handled him once.”

“I’m not sending a Ward to fight Lung alone,” Colin says, making it clear that, whatever he handed me, he’s still part of this conversation.

“Of course you aren’t. But the bitch is already counting on that, isn’t she? So, what little surprise has she added to this whole thing to give Lung even the slightest fighting chance?”

“I don’t know, Tattletale. I’m not the Thinker here,” he says, eyebrows furrowing and jaw tightening.

My Blue starts to lighten.

“Glad to be acknowledged! So, the thing is, I’m still not one hundred percent certain of what the Hell’s going on, but… She’s manic. A brief look at your profile of her—”

“My profile of Bakuda?”

“Not yours, obviously, seeing as you don’t have one. The Protectorate’s. Try to keep up. Anyway, she was likely manic-depressive and is now in the middle of the biggest high of her life, completely unhindered by any social constraints. Lung did a number of her before he got captured, and this… I think this is as much revenge as showing off while riding the wave of endorphins. Bakuda has shown some skill with wet tinkering; some of the attacks were carried out by people with bombs implanted inside of them. Add emotional manipulation to the whole thing, and… Yeah.”

I blink.

“What does ‘yeah’ mean, precisely?” Colin asks.

“Well, it means that it’s very likely that Lung is, at this very moment, nothing more than a meat puppet with an emotional bomb implanted into his cranium to pull his strings and who knows what other little surprises.”

“What?” I finally say.

“Do they speak English in ‘what?’” she answers.

I blink at… nothing at all other than Colin’s frustrated face.

“Philistines…” Tattletale mutters. “Okay, look, I’m going to be splitting my focus between guiding you and Taylor, so I’m going to need as much info as you can give me. Armsie—can I call you Armsie? What am I saying, of course I can. So, Armsie, you’re gonna set a few camera drones on target and let me accumulate info as Lung keeps massacring the Empire 88—”

“As he keeps doing what?” he says.

“Shesh, it’s like you heroes never listen. Look, I need those drones right now because we still don’t know where Oni Lee is, and I’d rather that not be an unwelcome surprise, so I want you to connect to this network and…”

The Thinker’s chatter becomes almost white noise. Crackling and meaningless.

I find out that I’m smiling.

And, running down my left arm, Gold thrums yet again.

***

Taylor

“I don’t like this,” I mutter as I ride atop Shadowfax, the coat of the king of horses shimmering in a faithful silvery gray made by words tightly woven into every strand of hair.

“You sure? A hero riding to the rescue? I would’ve thought this would be right up your alley,” Lisa comments with an air of distraction as she juggles two conversations and two plans.

“I should have—”

“You are not fighting Lung, Tay. Not while made of paper,” she says.

Cutting me off.

Rudely.

“Don’t sulk,” she adds after a moment.

“I’m not sulking,” I mutter.

“Of course you aren’t,” she says, as condescending as ever.

And so, while I ride across the burning and broken streets of my city, as I let Lisa occasionally correct my course toward where she thinks that Bakuda’s hiding, deep in the heart of the ABB’s territory, I can pretend to sulk at being too flammable to fight an actual dragon rather than worry myself sick.

***

Emma

I am, once again, on the corner of a rooftop.

“Good news,” Tattletale says, “I don’t see a trace of Oni Lee. Bad news? I don’t see a trace of Oni Lee.”

I suppress the urge to mute my earpiece and, by my side, Colin looks like he’s straining to do the very same.

Beneath us? On the wide street below, in front of a condemned building that used to be a bar?

Lung.

Lung fighting against Kaiser, Crusader, Hookwolf.

And winning.

There are puddles of molten steel on the ground as the shapeshifter drags half of his body away from the fight, and Kaiser cowers behind a spiked barricade from where Krieg has not emerged since I arrived.

I don’t know where Crusader is, and I also don’t know what those floating ghosts of his expect to accomplish either, seeing as every stab of a lance only makes Lung madder. If that’s at all possible.

“Sooo… Not to rush you or anything, but how’s the tinkering going?” Lisa asks as Colin’s lips tighten.

His visor is once more lowered, but I’m pretty sure his eyelids must be twitching.

Note to self: next time I get Panacea to heal a dying villain, make Amy install a damn mute button.

“I’m almost done,” he grumbles.

“Well, you should hurry. Unless you’d rather wait and let Lung take care of the Empire for you while you’re at it,” she says.

And Colin’s hands, frantically moving over a holographic display projected in front of him from the left side of his helmet… slow down.

I blink at him.

Lisa cackles.

“Oh, that would be neat, wouldn’t it? A net, utilitarian victory for the greater good, and it would only take you maybemaking extra sure that your newest invention works as intended. Tell me, Armsie, what will the report say?”

I can feel the blood draining from my face, the surge of yellow as I look up at him and…

And he shakes his head.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Tattletale,” he says as he resumes his work.

“No. No, I guess you aren’t,” she answers.

And that should be the end of it.

“That’s not what a hero would do,” I mutter.

Colin barely looks toward me, too focused on whatever it is that diagram of his is supposed to do, and doesn’t answer my meaningless prattle.

“I know,” Tattletale answers me, her voice gentle and… supportive.

Because she does.

She knows what a hero would do. What a hero is doing.

And so, as I wait for her plan to come together, for Colin’s work to give me whatever it is that I need, I can only think about Tattletale’s hero.

About Taylor.

Saving my family.

I don’t deserve it. Don’t deserve to be helped by her. Don’t deserve anything from her other than hatred and scorn.

But it’s not about what you deserve. About who you are. About what you have done.

It’s, and always has been, about what a hero would do.

“Showtime,” Tattletale whispers in my ear.

So I turn to my right, facing another hero.

And I take Armsmaster’s halberd.