Anthem's Fall (20 page)

“You do not know what you’re saying,” Master Tolland said. “It is through the lineage of the Blood Ring and by exercising the fear of his legions that Emperor Faris derives his true power. Do not believe his power lies purely in his prowess. You alone could not defeat the authority that adorns him. It is a truth I came to terms with long ago.”

Gravitas turned from the window and pointed to the crowds at the base of the palace. “These people are celebrating a holocaust!”

“They have been taught no better, Gravitas. A man is only as aware as his upbringing allows him to be. You cannot blame them for their lack of view, or their ignorance.”

Gravitas nodded. “I know that. But I wanted to show them a different way—a better path. Now I can’t do anything but flee from them in defeat.”

“I must say, Gravitas, I am somewhat surprised that this banishment upsets you so.”

“What do you possibly mean?” Gravitas said, his voice growing hoarse with frustration. “
You
made me how I am. Flawed. And now you don’t care in the slightest bit that I can never step foot on Anthem again. You think you can throw me away and forget I exist. Everyone thinks they can. Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to
let
it happen. They’ve built a structure that values only strength, and now they fear me because I’m as strong as they are, and I don’t agree. I’m going to fly to the center of the city and make my stand. Let the challenges come. They have ordered me to leave, now let’s see them try to force me out. I need to know these murderers had to face a power equal to themselves for once in their lives.”

“Calm yourself,” Master Tolland said.

“
NO
!”

“Calm yourself,” Master Tolland repeated, his tone not negotiating. He pointed to the celebration far below. “You answer your own dilemma, Gravitas. Those people are not ready to see their emperor fall. They value him above all else. They see a polarization between those who have the right to take, and those who—by their own limitations—allow themselves to be taken from. In their eyes, planet Orion was theirs for the winning. And it was the power of Emperor Faris that won it for them. Should you rise against him, you will be seen as the villain, Gravitas. They will fear you, they will rally against you, and your family will be made to suffer for it.”

Gravitas trudged to the nearby bench and sat down angrily. His dirt-encrusted armor and mud-stained face looked strikingly out of place among the clean surfaces and pristine windows of the hallway.

“I’ve known you since you were a young boy.” Master Tolland’s aging face lifted in a furrowed smile as he sat down beside the teenager. “I consider you a son. You are the child of one of my oldest friends, and the greatest student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. I remember the first night you spent on Mount Karlsbad vividly. You were so . . . confused . . . to be away from your home, to be living with a stranger in the cold North. But even then you were so strong, Gravitas, so immensely strong, both in body and—infinitely more important—in mind. You learned to make the best of it.”

“So you think I am going to
make the best of it
again?” Gravitas glared at him. “You think I’ll simply move into a further isolation than I’ve already wasted my childhood mired in?”

Master Tolland ignored the interruption. “Even in the beginning, I understood why your father wanted a different life for you, a life outside our contentious world. You were a remarkably inquisitive child. As a boy—without any exposure to such ideas—you questioned the authoritarian rule of the Epsilon. You took nothing for granted, assumed no truths, and perceived of morality before it was taught to you. You were born with a truly unusual degree of independent thought. My goal in training you was to preserve and cultivate that natural independence. It was my lofty aspiration to prevent your deep sense of morality from dying out through the acceptance of what is considered normal among those people celebrating down there.”

“Well, it has all been for nothing,” Gravitas said.

“It has not been for nothing. I have succeeded in training you to become a powerful fighter, perhaps even the most powerful of our day. Your Sejero blood is as pure as any can claim, and your mind is hardened to the life of a warrior.” Master Tolland paused and leaned closer to Gravitas. “But far more importantly, immeasurably more significantly, I provided you an upbringing where you were allowed your own perspectives. You will never be anyone’s slave, whether it be literal slavery or the unseen shackles of socialization.”

Gravitas stared quietly out over the spires of Sejeroreich.

“And so we arrive at today,” Master Tolland said. “A day that I, and deep down I believe you as well, always knew was coming. You are too powerful to be suppressed by the strength of any hand, and filled with too much integrity to allow indifference to shrivel your willpower. This is the day when my brilliant and powerful student—the pride of my life—has committed himself to his first self-determining action. And yet, having acted upon these convictions I have instilled in his core since he was a child, my student now seems to feel regret, regret of an independent choice made out of free thought. And this, you see, confuses me.”

“My regret is that I did not cast my Imperial armor to the dirt of Orion and die defending those slaughtered Yabu against my brothers in arms,” Gravitas murmured. “It is not a mistake I will make again. I am flying to the center of Sejeroreich and challenging the emperor to a duel to the death.”

“And tell me,” Master Tolland said. “Once he is dead, will you take the Blood Ring for yourself and proclaim your own beliefs as right and true? Will you appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner—or perhaps simply emperor?”

“You know that’s not what I want,” Gravitas said.

“Of course it isn’t. What you want is for the people’s values to change, but that cannot happen through the will of one man.”

Gravitas stared down at the cheering masses and knew Master Tolland was right. “Fire cannot stop fire.”

Master Tolland nodded. “One of the first lessons I taught you.”

Running his fingers across the coarse fabric of the crimson cloak, Gravitas smirked sadly.

“Time’s up, Nerol!” the deep voice of General Hoff called out. Gravitas lifted his gaze from the window and saw the general along with the ranks of Royal Guards walking down the hallway toward him and Master Tolland. “Your father arrived to the roof hangar with a ship. Time for you to go.”

“And who will force me to the roof?” Gravitas asked, insulted by the general’s tone. He folded the crimson cloak loosely around his left arm. “You are ordering me around, general, yet I could kill you where you stand—all of you.”

“Shall I call for reinforcements? We can do it that way too, if a scene is what you want. It’s all up to you, Nerol.”

“Do not do this, Gravitas.” Master Tolland placed a pleading hand against his chest. “You have followed my advice all your life. I beg you to follow it for just a little longer. There is still a path for you, though you cannot yet see it.”

“Well? What will it be?” General Hoff said, his hand poised over the alarm. “Which will you embrace, exile or death?”

Gravitas looked to Master Tolland, and seeing the hopeful sureness in his teacher’s expression, he allowed his tense shoulders to relax. “Show me to the roof, general.”

“Very good. We’ll take the stairs so no one sees you.” General Hoff and the Royal Guards sauntered forward and guided Gravitas beyond a doorway and into a narrow stairway leading up to the roof. Up and up they trudged through the many floors of the upper palace. Gravitas did not know what to think. He felt numb and hopeless, a pawn of his teacher and a titan rendered useless through philosophy and reflection.

“I think you should return to Orion, Nerol,” General Hoff spoke as they rounded the steps. There was a smear of mockery to his tone. “I heard our soldiers saw to it that Lord General Bronson Vikkor’s final orders were followed through with such determination that not a single one of those Yabu escaped our fires. Every last one of them burned. You should go back to see their corpses and the resource extraction rigs at work.”

Gravitas said nothing. They reached the top of the stairway and stood before the closed door. General Hoff turned and looked down at him. “Where did you get that cloak?”

“It belonged to a child.” Gravitas said. “If you try to take it from me, if you even touch it, it will cost you your life.”

General Hoff seemed to think his words were amusing. “Put it on. I don’t want your face to be seen.”

The general and a few Royal Guards chuckled in amusement at the cloak and pushed open the heavy door to the hangar as Gravitas draped the fabric over his head. A warm summer wind blew against them as they stepped out onto the roof of the palace. Dwarfing all of the surrounding skyscrapers, the palace roof severed the very clouds that were cast in the violet light of the setting sun. Waiting at the docking bay in the center of the roof, Pral Nerol was standing alongside his ship, the
Traverser I
.

Gravitas walked to his father, his long cloak flapping and his profile casting a mysterious silhouette against the vanishing sun. “I thought you weren’t coming,” Gravitas said, crashing into his father’s shoulder. “I thought you were going to believe the lies they’re spreading.”

Pral Nerol squeezed Gravitas against his chest as the Royal Guards circled around the
Traverser I
. “Of course not.”

Master Tolland followed behind Gravitas, his gaze held eastward to the darkening horizon. “He is to be exiled by sundown, Pral. We must be succinct in our discussion. What’s done is done, for we do not have the time to discuss it. You have chosen a path, Gravitas, and now we need to make a plan for that path’s future. Is the
Traverser I
prepared to depart?”

“Yes, the ship’s in fine order,” Pral said, still holding his son.

“Good. Then the most important decision now must be made. Where should the boy go?”

“I will return to Orion and destroy the extraction teams there,” Gravitas said, his voice grim and assured.

“It’s true that you could return to Orion and combat the Epsilon presence there until you die of exhaustion. But it would not bring back the locals who perished, or restore the resources that have already been withdrawn from the planet. And once you are out of the way, the Epsilon will begin their extractions once more.” Master Tolland sighed apprehensively. “Ultimately, you would never bring redemption to Orion or its people.”

“It’s what I want to do.”

“A wasted sacrifice is the brash desire of a young man,” Pral Nerol said. “You are far more valuable alive than dead, Gravitas. Tolland, there is a place better suited for him than Orion.”

Master Tolland and Pral exchanged a long uneasy look, as if each in turn was ruminating over a great internal conflict. Gravitas noticed the severity of their expressions and turned from one to the other. “I don’t understand. Where?”

“I think it is a fairly clear choice. I did the calculations on my way here—the
Traverser I
can make the journey,” Pral said, his voice solemn and imploring. “He could flourish there.”

Gravitas shook his head, the hood of the cloak billowing against his cheek. “Where?”

“I’m not sure.” Master Tolland looked out over Sejeroreich for some time. He ran a hand across his gray beard in contemplation. After a long moment, he turned to look at Gravitas, though he spoke to Pral. “I thought we had decided on immaculate preservation.”

“Has this very specific dilemma not proven his convictions?” Pral asked. “The atrocities Gravitas witnessed on Orion, and the choices he made in the face of them demonstrate his awareness of the fragilities we each swore to protect. The actions he made on Orion speak louder than any promise he could possibly give to us now.”

“Yes. Yes, I agree.” Master Tolland nodded at last. “Gravitas has proven himself. He will go.”

“Filgaia,” Pral said with a measure of reverence Gravitas had never heard in his father’s voice.

“Filgaia?” Gravitas asked with bewilderment.

“I will provide you with no preconception of the planet, and I will leave it up to you to form your own perspectives of the place.” Pral Nerol placed an encouraging hand on Gravitas’s shoulder. “You have decided your course, and now you must embrace its consequences. I am proud of you beyond words. We are placing great trust in you, Gravitas. Do not let us down.”

“Some things are more important than race or faction, Gravitas,” Master Tolland said as they led him to the
Traverser I
, its engines roaring. “Principles are one of them. Principles transcend both time and place, and they will keep us united despite our distance.”

“It’s all over,” Gravitas murmured, stepping torpidly into the threshold of the
Traverser I
. He looked the part of the refugee, the crimson cloak concealing the glint of his stained Imperial Armor underneath. He turned back and looked at Master Tolland and his father. General Alegant Hoff and the dozen Royal Guards stood around the ship like statues, and beyond, the lights of Sejeroreich twinkled against the approaching dusk.

“Your past is over,” Pral Nerol said sadly. “But your future remains to be seen. I know you’ll make me proud, Gravitas.”

The steel door of the craft hissed shut. It was done.

The first lonely nights aboard his father’s craft in the cold emptiness of space were the worst of his life. No person to console him or listen to his voice, and only his dark thoughts to dwell upon. Gravitas knew that the Yabu people would be driven to extinction, their innocence and boundless potential erased from the pages of history. A fragile chance for the glory of civilization dashed by the brutality of life. Millions of years of delicate and miraculous growth snuffed out by the fleeting order of the Lord General: an obtuse and uneducated man bestowed at birth with perverse and unnatural power.

Gravitas realized his people had become the technologically cold-blooded Zergos they had once struggled so desperately against. Where once they were victim, in time the Primus had become the very evil that had sought their ruin.