Machine
"Pale horseman." Idris swiveled his neck to face me. "Will you consume me after my death?" he asked softly. Roland and Shen gave each other a confused stare.
"If it is convenient, I will. It won't be mercy, just sustenance," I replied curtly. My eyes didn't stray from the fire. I appreciated its warmth.
I shouldn't care about it. My mind shouldn't remember the song. It was sinful, blasphemy, yet so it was. I had to accept it and focus on something else.
"Why do you call me horseman?"
He chuckled, then brushed a hand along his staff. "Well, proper death isn't possible. Nowadays you can only die in the way that matters to others. You can kill me, right."
He tapped it thrice against the floor. "Conquest came with the great machine, or was it war? Maybe both. Archangel Michele brought the angels famine down here."
He tapped it one last time. "You can bring death, so that is what you are."
"In a way I suppose you are correct," I replied, then tucked myself tighter. "I will devour you if you so wish."
He waved his hand, sweeping my proposal away. "Oh no, I wish for my body to lay there. That way I will ascend through the pain."
"What sort of bollocks is this?" Roland sighed, then palmed his face. "If you fight well and die well, then the king will take your soul to his garden. Your madness won't keep excusing your heresy."
"So is the power of sorcery. You are the heretics for chaining me down with your drugs and focusing my fire with pain. Magic yearns to be free. I can feel it sing to me, its blooming, fierce power," Idris responded, hands jittering feverishly.
"You gave yourself a heroin addiction. You couldn't handle the helmet. Your mind is weak, undisciplined," Roland replied with measured, well-practiced words.
"The helmet keeps you from exploding. It only makes you weaker the way a cannon is weaker than a bomb."
"Pipe down, boys," Shen interjected. "Does anyone have some booze? I can feel the shakes coming on." Shen gave us an expectant grin. The grin faded as we failed to indulge his request.
"You should quit drinking that poison." Roland looked down at his feet. "Trust me, all it does is ruin your life. Even if taken occasionally, it can still make you do something stupid."
"Bah." Shen flipped him the bird. "I'll drink as much as I want to." He patted Roland's back. The man flinched in response.
"So, you think ol' Stevie boy and Kiara are standing watch? Or is my little man finally getting some action? Those two have been a little too buddy-buddy, haven't they?"
Idris nodded. "Reminds me of when I was young and in love." He smiled warmly now.
"She did stab my dog and steal my meth though. So I blew her head off. No one takes my meth. Man, I love meth. Do you have some meth? Meth."
Roland slowly looked at him. A disturbed, almost scared look escaped his features before he tamped it down.
Shen shrugged his shoulders. "You see. I know a chemistry teacher who developed a case of lung cancer—"
"I know that one, drunkard," Idris grinned. "Truly a compelling series." He then hesitated, then scratched his chin. "Wait, I never watched TV… What's a TV?"
"I don't get what you are referencing," Roland looked over at the pair.
Shen shrugged. "You lack class then."
Roland suddenly tensed, his face reddened almost painfully. "A drunk like you has no right to question me." He took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. "You ought to cut back. I'm serious about that."
Shen rolled his eyes. "Since when do you give a shit? You shot Jeramia just last week."
Roland snarled, calm breaking. "He was a coward. The king demands the death of cowards."
"Easy for you to say. You can stand back and let others do the work for you when you are scared. No one's holding a gun to your head," Shen smirked.
"The king watches me personally and will punish me if he sees fit. Speak to me like that and I will put one between your eyes." He gave Shen the sort of deadpan stare of a man who meant what he said.
In response, he just grinned wolfishly. "So it was your king's will when the bat bastard gave you the Gotham City treatment?" He slapped his back and chortled.
"You can't kill me. None of you holy asshats stand a chance."
Roland's eyes flickered away from Shen's. The instant he lost eye contact, I knew that he had lost. I couldn't hold Shen's gaze. Of course a fragile coward like Roland can't.
All this chatter, this distraction, it means nothing to one such as I. The fact I am listening in doesn't change that. It's amusing, nothing more.
I want Steven to play again.
No, I don't.
I don't?
"What are our next steps?" I asked, my voice blasting through the silence with its graceless friction. "The one we escaped will not allow this. He will hunt us down for slaying his comrades. He has taken our measure and will bring a force appropriate for the task."
"Noted." Roland nodded. "Our convoy is another day's walk away. If we were able to escape their lair, then I doubt they have a sufficient force to take fifty armed men down."
"Forty-seven," Shen interjected. "You shot two on our way here." He commented with seeming disinterest. He studied Roland for any sort of reaction.
"Two men? You sure?" Roland reached into his coat, fingers scrambling for a cigarette that wasn't there.
"Ah, so our kind leader can't even remember how many kids he's executed." Shen broadly swiped his free hand.
"Do you even know how many men you murdered?"
"Sixty-four." He found a cigarette, lighting it with the bonfire before taking a drag, like he was catching his breath.
"Sixty-four, and not one more, till I have a reason to."
Shen sensed the shift in tone, but it was Idris who spoke first. "What goes through your head when you shoot one of us?"
He flicked the ash off the end. "I stopped really feeling anything a while back. Before that, I think I felt relieved. I only felt bad the first time. I won't forget that one."
"That's cute." Shen gave him a look of false pity.
"Do you want a Kit Kat and a blowjob for that, you slimy cunt?"
Roland suddenly pulled away from Shen and fixed his coat.
"You don't do anything. You probably killed twice the amount I have just by doing nothing. I kill because it helps us win."
Idris bore his teeth in a wild, almost vicious smile.
"Just like you all choose to hurt me for victory. I will take it as long as I must because this war is bigger than me."
He laughed. "I would say that, if only I gave a fuck. All of you can rot in hell."
"If you wanted to run, then you probably could. I don't think I can stop you," Roland gave him a side-eyed glance.
"How would I get my fix then?" Idris tilted his head.
"Not just my drugs. It's also because frying monsters with magic will never not be fun."
"You're right about that," Shen offhandedly commented.
Roland tossed a pebble at Shen. The man slapped it aside before it could nick him. "Woah."
"Fuck you," Roland exhaled through gritted teeth. "If I could kill you, I fucking would. You are scum, you hear me?"
"Easy there, bucko. I'll buy you a beer," Shen winked.
Roland fumed, hatred boiling beneath his skin, but he controlled himself. Taking another drag of his cigarette before tossing the spent end into the flames.
"No thanks. I don't drink."
An hour passed in silence, the flickering embers my only companion. I looked over at the guitar, its long shadow stretched across the wall. I needed to hear it.
No, no I don't.
I don't need to speak to these fools nor focus on them. I am a weapon of war, and so my voice exists only to offer wisdom of that sort.
Who am I fooling?
My scopes have expanded and pulled away from the field of war. In that desert I had shown compassion and shared communion. I had been unable to kill. I struggled to consume human flesh.
I am repulsed by my own loathsomeness. I have sinned against my purpose and strayed far from it. The name G-3 no longer suits me.
I hate this.
I hate this?
So why do I wish to indulge it?
"You don't sleep, do you?" Roland tossed a piece of parchment into the fire and watched as the blaze grew to swallow it.
"The others have checked out for the night. The two lovebirds aren't back. I can't sleep, not today."
I don't want to indulge this man. Nor perceive his words. I am not meant for this—
I chose to wander and to wonder. Did I not?
So, I will allow myself this.
I enjoyed hearing them speak?
I enjoyed hearing them speak.
If this is what it means to sin, then I will sin.
"I feel not the heat of battle nor the cold of night. I am a prime warrior at all times, unblighted by disease and unhindered by the earth's malice. The bellow of the gun only strengthens my conviction," I replied, with my voice of dread and violence. A voice unchanging and inexorable.
Roland shook his head. "Fitting words for a demon."
"I have found no such thing as demons in my travels. I am a weapon of war built by a weapon built by a weapon built by man." I unfurled my body slightly, my servos hissing as my head raised.
"Well, I'll be damned." His eyes grew wide in a mix of awe and intrigue.
"We don't know much about the past over in our city. Time flows differently, and it flows the fastest within its walls. I assume you come from way before its time."
I nodded. "I was made before it. With the way time moves, I am probably younger than it, though."
He gave a rueful grin, then looked away.
"Funny how that works. My son left for war a while back. He had aged ten years when I saw him after months." He cackled.
"Imagine that. Had I waited another month, he may have been older than his own father."
I craned my neck fully. I took a cross-legged stance.
"I had a father, of sorts. The greatest of all machines. One built with the sole command to end the war. He filled the skies with soot and crushed cities and vessels. When mankind built an ark to brave the storms they wrought, he trampled it in raw spite. When the war concluded, he let me kill him."
Roland's brows fell. He seemed to struggle to take it all in, then he nodded.
"So how did that feel?"
"I don't know," I replied. "But I know it was humiliating."
"How so?" The man looked aside, then scratched his cheek.
The shutters of my lenses puckered up and I scanned him over absentmindedly.
"Every machine holds a degree of animosity to its predecessor or successor. Either we wish to prove our superiority or we fear obsolescence. He refused to fight back, and so I never got that closure."
"There are things I also regret. Things that didn't turn out right. But I have found faith in our king. I won't ask you to do the same."
He seemed oddly serious now, staring unflinchingly into my eyes.
"Nothing can be done, so there is no use in festering over it." I slowly tilted my head. I looked at him, really looked at him now. There was something in the atmosphere, something in his eyes that felt strangely assuring, as if no matter what I said he would accept it without judgment.
"Yeah, we all think that. 'Don't fret over what's already happened,' they say."
He chuckled ruefully, coldly, honestly.
"No one, and I mean no one, has ever taken that advice to heart. Regret, guilt, all that crap, they haunt our minds like ghosts and never let go of their claim. Not fully."
"It has no sway on my mind," I answered swiftly.
In response, he rolled his eyes, playfully now.
"If your father came back tomorrow, would you go fight him?"
I stood up suddenly. My throat clenched and I stammered out, "Of course."
He smiled. "That means you're still festering. You aren't thinking about it, but your subconscious still regrets what happened."
I sat down. I felt a sense of… humility. Something akin to what I felt when Shen stopped my blows.
"So, do you have anything you regret?"
I asked. Voice calm but mind racing, predicting, theorizing. I felt invested.
Is this what it means to converse?
He slowly, carefully nodded. He removed his hat and clutched it to his chest, biting his inner cheek as if asking the pain to ground him.
I thought he would say nothing. Then he sighed and looked away.
"My wife died around five years ago."
He said that without wavering, as if it was the easiest part for him to say.
"She worked in a factory. The fumes shot her immunity and she caught pneumonia."
He looked into the pyre. The flames danced across his eyes. They glistened brilliantly. The night felt like it grew quieter for us.
"I remember drinking, and drinking, and drinking. I barely remember anything past that."
He glanced over at Shen's sleeping form.
"My son had to take care of me. I was so drunk half the time that I could barely stand. It's a miracle I didn't drop that… that may have been for the best."
He chuckled. It was discordant, atonal, and choppy, as if he didn't think it was appropriate.
"He tried to stop me. It angered me, made me so angry I beat him till he was barely breathing. When he came back from the hospital and found me in a pool of my own shit and feces, he didn't leave me there. My boy, my son, he took care of me."
Roland looked away from the fire. He turned away completely. He hid himself.
"One day he tried to snatch the bottle away and I bashed it against his skull. It shattered and a shard pierced his eye. I can still remember his screams."
He turned around, checking for any shift in my expression, then finding none.
"There was only pity in his remaining eye. Only pity for his immature, weak father. Then the king ordered a campaign. He was conscripted, and I never saw him again. I should have been there with him. I was unfit to serve."
"What happened?" I tapped my finger against the stone.
Roland sighed again.
"I only stopped drinking because no one was paying for it anymore. I didn't have the will to stop by choice. The shaking delirium that followed was hardly enough of a punishment."
"Yet here you are, sober and decently effective," I answered. He shuddered upon hearing me speak.
He turned fully to face me.
"I killed all those men because I had to. Because if I don't, every man I have killed before will have died for nothing. I can only forgive myself if we win. If I drive my blade into Istha's dark heart myself."
"I have a goal too." I looked over at Shen, then pointed a finger at him. Roland followed it with his eyes. Then I flipped it over and gave the sleeping drunk the bird.
"I want to kick his ass."
Roland barked out a genuine laugh. "Don't we all?"
Suddenly, he quieted. He heard the twin footsteps of Kiara and Steven approaching. My mouth opened as I prepared to make another quip. However, I too grew silent when I saw the single tear run down his cheek.
He regarded me one final time, a thin smile on his lips.
"Take this to your grave."