rogue_2

'I am Irene, an Iberian.'

As the former Inquisitor finishes speaking, she walks towards the dark tide with her head held high.

The weather on the Iberian coastline can be fickle. Jordi Fontanarossa has an important job to do every Sunday afternoon, but today he simply cannot bear the sound of the rain falling outside, each drop feeling like a hammer blow to his heart. He knows the name of his feeling. He cannot continue to write, and puts down his pen to try to leave the paper-filled room.

He smells the familiar scent of wet earth, mixed with a faint tinge of blood. It does not just represent a type of weather or a season, but a difficult period. Whenever there is news from the front, whenever the wet air fills his nostrils, Jordi is again reminded of the times.

It has been like this ever since the fall of the Ægir.

It is almost dusk, though Iberia's last redoubt is bright as midday under the illumination of countless lights. Jordi tries to ignore the chatter of the Penal Battalion officers in their dull and strictly-regulated tones. The words spoken here behind the front lines are neither determined nor despondent, but largely numb and indifferent. Jordi counts his own steps, until he collides head-on with someone else.

'Sorry, sir.'

The man's youth surprises Jordi. He is about Jordi's height, sturdy in build, but missing an arm. He has not bothered to wipe away the blood on his face, despite being here at headquarters. Jordi thought he must have been a veteran of many battles, but when his gaze meets the young man's eyes, and the battered lantern and sword in the young man's baggage, he realizes that it is a young trainee Inquisitor from Ægir.

Jordi once knew a young Inquisitor like him.

'Have you just returned?'

'Yes, Sir Secretary.'

The young Inquisitor's tone is surprisingly calm, as though he has left the nightmares of the battlefield behind. But Jordi knows that it is a tragic sort of acclimation to the cruelties of war. He has seen it far too many times. He steps aside to give way for the young Inquisitor. He knows that his type is few and far between these days.

The young Inquisitor nods and passes by Jordi. His silhouette is unsteady, looking as though it could melt into the shadows of the buildings at any moment.

Jordi turns around and asks, 'What's your name?'

'Mathias, sir.'

'That's not an Ægir name...'

'My foster mother is Iberian. Only my Ægir surname remains.' The young Inquisitor hesitates, as though deliberating whether to spend valuable time talking about such private matters, but eventually he says, 'Breogan.'

'What?'

'My family's name is Breogan. I don't know anything about it, other than the name. I don't even know if it's supposed to be a family name, or the name of one of my ancestors. Our home has...'

Jordi Fontanarossa falls silent.

It is the young Inquisitor who eventually breaks the silence. 'I understand that you're Saint Carmen's, er... apostle?'

The name makes Jordi's heart ache. He feels his stomach churn and wants to throw up. Fighting back the sensation of vertigo, he answers in a low voice, 'Yes.'

Then he asks, almost self-deprecatingly, 'Are you disappointed? Disappointed that I'm not fighting with you on the front at a time like this?'

'No, sir.' Realizing that Jordi misunderstood what he meant, the young Inquisitor smiles wryly. 'Saint Carmen says we are the keepers of the flame. But you and others like you <i>are</i> the flame.'

Jordi has to hold back the lump in his throat and force a smile. 'Thank you... perhaps it's a coincidence, but the name Breogan is not unknown to me. There's no evidence linking me to him, but I know some stories about Breogan.'

'I know the legend of the shipwright, Sir Secretary.'

'No,' Jordi pauses for a moment, as memories gush to the surface. 'I've been to Ægir. I've been home.'

The young Inquisitor's eyes light up for an instant, but his longing for his bloodline is soon suppressed by other matters.

'Thank you. I hope we meet again.'

The young Inquisitor leaves.

The rain is getting heavier. Jordi returns to his disorganized office, to the sound of the bell announcing the nightly hours. He cleans up the mess on his desk, returning it to the presentable state that it was several weeks ago. He takes a deep breath, but he could no longer hold back his emotions. Fear, sorrow, and resentment swallow him in an instant. He chokes on his own sobbing, and it is all he could do to prevent his tears from falling onto the typewriter.

He types a line beneath 'Missing Persons'.

'Carmen I Iberia - Confirmed Dead'

'1300 km.'

It takes a moment for Jordi to realize that he made the exclamation, as eyes around the hall turn towards him. The first to understand the significance of what he said is High Inquisitor Irene, who stops to gaze at the map in the middle of the hall.

'1300 km from the lighthouse of Gran Faro.' Irene lets herself sink in her memories for a moment. 'Our national border, humanity's line of defense, has retreated by 1300 km.'

Jordi sighs, 'It could have been worse, if not for the support of the other countries.'

'At the same time, it also means that the entire might of Terra is gathered on the defensive lines of Iberia. There is no second line of defense. For all intents and purposes, this 1300 km of land belongs to the oceans now.'

Jordi continues to gaze across the hall, unsure where to go to. 'The line is far from secure. The Seaborn are not only invading through Iberia... Sargon, Ursus, Yan. The fires of war have spread across the land.'

'Yes. This is our mission. If any Victorian Viscount or Padishah of Sargon could be a Deep Cultist, then all is lost. This time, however, we killed the bishops leading those Sea Terrors, leaving none alive. Yet the Seaborn continue to invade the land. Something is guiding them.'

Jordi is stunned. 'But the Deep Viscount is dead, by the hands of the Leithanian lawkeepers! Could there be another...?'

'Or perhaps the collective has sensed a greater danger, and is thus trying to assimilate and consolidate the land ecosystem for the sake of its survival.'

Irene stops before a massive door. Jordi realizes that he has never been here before, despite having worked at the place for more than a decade.

'Therefore, we must succeed.' Irene turns around, her still-youthful face hardened by weariness. 'I have been restored to the station of High Inquisitor.'

'I can see that. You already were in all but name.'

'As High Inquisitor, there is something I must ask of you.'

Irene raises her lamp. Light fills the hall, and opens a gap in the door as it drives out the shadows.

A lantern. The great room might have been a prison, then a furnace, a workshop. Now, as various items lie covered in dust in the corners, there is a single lantern in the middle of the room.

'A Seaborn was once held here. Every Inquisitor came to learn the truth about the ocean before they were ordained.' Irene's voice is utterly calm. 'But there is no need for that anymore.'

'So the place has been repurposed into a... furnace?'

'Yes.'

'And the lamp?'

Irene approaches it, as though approaching a god that does not exist. She picks it up, and light fills Jordi's vision.

Not so much a flame as a sun.

'Carmen, Dario, Johann, Carlos... all the Inquisitorial lanterns that we could retrieve, reforged into one. We have thought long and hard about what to call it, but we have made no decision.' Irene ceases her casting, and the light returns to its tiny glass prison. 'The Inquisition has entrusted the task to you.'

'Me?!'

'Don't you know how to use a lantern?'

'I've been taught by Saint Carmen... but I'm no Inquisitor...'

'It does not matter. All that matters is you can light it, or seek the next one who can, if you cannot dispel your doubts.' Irene smiles. Jordi recalls with a start that the two of them are the same age. 'You have borne witness to the struggles of the Inquisition, watched over our triumphs from the lighthouse. You remember the brave martyrs, and the innocent victims. The lantern is not murder; it is hope.'

Irene pauses for an instant, then continues, 'You must remember it. Pass it on.'

'What about you?' Jordi's words left his mouth before he even realized it.

'We have a codename for the Seaborn that we must kill. Its name is...' Irene lets go, and heads towards the door in the flickering light and shadow.

'Gladiia.'

When Jordi bid farewell to Kal'tsit, the familiar woman had become a stranger. She was the builder of the Last City, not the Dr. Kal'tsit who taught Operator Lumen on that little ship. The people from Kal'tsit's memory were not by her side, and Jordi had lost much himself. Jordi never mentioned Rhodes Island in the short time that he lived in the city, fearing that the past would trigger the few remaining vestiges of hope.

'The ocean remains dangerous, even if... we've come to terms with our place.' Kal'tsit was not surprised at Jordi's request. 'We have been allowed to survive as an ancillary to the ecosystem, slave to the Many, a part of the symbiosis. It doesn't mean that we can...'

Kal'tsit stops, seemingly recalling that the man coming to bid her farewell came from the eye of the maelstrom.

'I know,' Jordi smiles. 'But I want to see the sea.'

'...Do you need an escort?'

'No, not for an old paper-pusher that no one cares about.'

Kal'tsit said no more. She quickly arranged a vehicle and some supplies for Jordi. Certainly, going home is not something to cause a commotion over. Jordi takes one last look at the city before he leaves. It no longer needs to move. The collective will only permit civilization that is at peace, and forever at a standstill.

He remembers that he has never truly fought on the front lines, or helped to build the city. His work has always been insignificant. When the lighthouse is lit, it is the light that guides the ships and Iberia, not the watchman of the lighthouse.

He sits by a cliff. Coral-colored creatures stir the waters for miles, and smooth shelled creatures rattle along the trail of waves. The sea is calm and peaceful, not a cloud in sight. Having conquered humanity, Originium, demons, and beings beyond reason, the way that the Seaborn observe the world is no longer limited to sensations that humans can comprehend.

Jordi knows that the new Chitin God lingers somewhere above the waves, at the most remote corner between the sun and the clouds. Its tendrils have left the pocket where it hid at the very moment that this human left his nest and headed for the coast, on guard against each and every move made by this anomalous individual. Today, It <i>is</i> Terra, and It is a beacon for its kin who have ventured beyond the skies.

Surprisingly, the individual seems to have detected Its will with his primitive human eyes.

'Hello, ocean,' Jordi speaks, like an old man telling a story to a child, unconcerned whether the individual constituents of the Many remaining on Terra can hear him. 'My name is Jordi Fontanarossa. I was once an insignificant enemy of yours.'

With this self-introduction, Jordi begins to tell the story of his life.

Gran Faro. Ægir. Stultifera Navis. Abyssal Hunter. Home. War. Collapse. Awakening. God. Truth. Failure. Death. Parting. Shame. Peace.

His words are sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes loud, sometimes short. No one answers, save for the wind brushing by the strange palms by the share, through the holes in the coral mountains.

Eventually, the old man runs out of words. He gazes at the shore. Without warning, the ocean responds to his thought. Microorganisms turn the sea murky, drawing numerous shelled Sea Terrors, which merge together, twisting and warping themselves into a small boat.

The Many have read his thoughts and expressed them. But Jordi no longer cares why they did so. He smiles and shakes his head. 'No. You're wrong. I'm sorry, but you lost.'

The waves do not answer. The last watchman of Iberia does not speak.

The sun continues to shine. The sounds of the winds, waves and shells rubbing against one another converge and tune themselves into a specific wavelength and frequency. One of the Many, and all of the Many, answer the last words of one little individual on their home planet.

'Goodbye, Jordi Fontanarossa.'

'Goodbye.'

The girl wakes up from the dream with a start. The starlight in her dream lingers in her mind.

How long has it been since she started traveling and studying with 'Grandpa Bishop'? The girl finds it difficult to trace the passage of time, for her life is divided into the time before she witnessed the starlight, and the time after.

She believes that she is awake, serious, determined. If there is something that can prove the value of life, validate the truth of her thoughts, she will reach out to it, embrace it.

'Grandpa' said that not everyone walks the same bridge, nor is it a privilege to walk that bridge. Humanity's possibilities are infinite. All means are merely tools, and it is the end, not the means, that should become the object of worship. He always preached recognizing what one truly wants to do and become, and refusing to accept easy, simple answers.

But I have seen my path. It lies before me, the opportunity of a lifetime. The pact that 'Grandpa' made with his old friend lies silent in the box. 'Grandpa' must have run into trouble, because he has not been back for two days. One more day, and this hideout and everything here will be destroyed, as he arranged.

But none of this matters. Its pulse and breath guide my heartbeat. It is the salvation that I had long sought but never received. Reach out, open the box, drink the pact of the ocean, and I will return to the day when time stopped, and rebuild myself with the starlight reflected off the surface of the ocean.

If the starlight is too bright, then I will go blind for it.

The girl wakes up from the dream with a start. The starlight in her dream lingers in her mind.

She looks at one hand, and the other, and the other, and perhaps the other too. She finds that they and they are scooping up handful after handful of starlight. How could it be? How could the starlight that was so far away be so easily grasped in her hands?

The joy is intense. She subconsciously spreads herself out and begins to spin and dance. The stars seem to understand her joy, and begin to dance in orbit around her, even without...

Without music? It should not be so. Limbs are rhythm, and starlight melody. But why is there no song? Is there no instrument?

No, no... why is it dark? Why does the starlight not shine upon here, or upon me? Why is it not warm?

Is it because it is dry? Do the limbs not feel warmth because they are dry? Does the throat make no sound because it is dry? Then look up and call for rain. Drown out the noises, and sing one last song.

Warm musical notes fall from my hide one after another, transforming into a shining, translucent melody, wrapped in bubbles of every color.

I will become starlight.

The girl wakes up from the dream with a start. The starlight in her dream lingers in her mind.