Legend of the Fallen (part two of ..??)

[vagrantdream]

Chloe and Davis are found by the Seeker, and caught in the struggle that will shape their lives forever. Davis into savior/killer and Chloe to halfway whole. Also, there's a connection.
 



When I heard the tales of him, I was nothing more remarkable than Emil, the Eager one. The only solid truth we knew was that He would come. The conqueror was destined to fall. A savior had been foreseen even before our slavery began but he did not reveal himself. We needed to believe. Two decades we’d waited. A hundred more would make no difference.

Rafael came to us a particularly bad year, when the storms had ravaged most of the countryside, seeking shelter. He looked like a madman; face tanned the color of leather, blind eyes with unsettling white pupils, weighty words. The Seeker, he called himself. The protector of a story he would never wholly confide. He told us tales of chaining the winds with his feeble hands so they would not ravage our crops. The soils of our farm didn’t blow away with the drought that followed. My father, in all other respects a practical man, believed. I believed only what I could feel within my fingers.

Since a boy I’d understood the life around me, the dirt on the ground, and the seeds in my palms. The parcel of land my father gave me flourished. Every night after I came from the fields I was weak as a kitten. My mind was alive, and I let myself listen.

Rafael spoke of incantations, forbidden things. He told me of a savior that would one day appear out of the smoke and mist. He told me how his sword would cut us free. He spoke to me of texts that had been destroyed years before, in fear that the people would arm themselves.

It became so that I wanted to carve those texts into my memory so I could not forget. He was pleased. Only then he spoke to me of magicks, and of the things he could teach me.

“I have no gift.” I scoffed at him then, going back to my books and my pages of script. He might have been mad, but I never wanted to lose the words he said. ”I study plants. I learn the truth behind things. That is all. You cannot teach someone with no magic.”

“You go to the field and bring things to life. That sounds like magic to me,” he said, piercing eyes not turning from the fire. “You do not have the gift, but you have magic.”

“I do not.” I said again, angry at myself enough to tear the parchment.

“Hold out your hand.” he said finally, taking my knife from me and smearing it into the ruined mixture. I asked him what he was doing, and if his eyes had pupils they would have looked right through me. “I will not teach a rebellious boy.”

I settled my hand out to take the knife back, gritting my teeth and waiting for a lecture on how patience was a form of magic. Rafael stabbed the point of the knife through the tip of my knuckle. I knocked the chair out behind me. The cut left by the rusted blade stung and I knew I would not be able to plant any tomorrow if I did not want it to swell.

“What are you?” I cried, angry at him, but more angry at myself for believing.

“Look at your hand.” he said. “And tell me that is not magic.” He showed me his hands, still on the wood of the table. Mages always needed their hands. I felt something stirring under my skin. The image of the ivy swirled like a dark tattoo, running over my knuckles into my palm.
“Think of something .”

“The Book of Orden.” As I spoke, I saw the image of it, the map to a place seas away, outlined in the ivy. “Gallia!” The map crawled under my skin. His face tilted into a smile that was only half-triumph. I was his apprentice.



A girlish shape stumbles out of the fog. The runes align themselves under Emil’s skin. Death. Soldiers. Pursuit.
The Confessor is far younger than he’d pictured, but people age quickly here. There could be mistaking the stained white dress, but not the glowing metal encircling her wrist. “I need you to lead me to the Traveler.” She says. The pattern leaps and turns on itself, awakened.

“I do not know where he is.” He says.

“You are the Seeker! What have you been doing here, if not finding him?!”

“I have traveled for miles searching for him. I have seen no sign, until now. You have already made contact.” He is not nearly as old as he ought to be. Mages cast concealment spells. Mages lie.

“The prophecy said the Seeker rescued him at birth. He was meant to raise him, train him.” Chloe holds her hand between them. If he gets any closer…

“That was my teacher. Seekers are replaceable, unlike Confessors.” He says, not at all calming. “Who did you find?”

It couldn’t have been the stranger. In an absurd way she supposes the irony makes sense. Perhaps-The bracelet keeps pulsing, burning, and Chloe bites her lip to keep conscious.

“So you met him on the path.” The light on the Seeker’s staff glows and the patterns on his skin writhe like snakes.

“Don’t come any closer.” She whispers. There is a shape in the fog; they are not alone. The Seeker pushes his way forward, past her, to the man on her trail. His breath hisses out.

Davis had been bleeding and she shouldn’t have left him. He’d followed her all this way. If that is not the sign of a Traveler, she does not know what is. Davis comes closer, as if he can see no one else at all. His skin is ashy. Chloe murmurs a few words of comfort. The Seeker will heal him. She trusts the Seeker. They are safe.

“I said I’d find you.” Davis sways and her hand moves to steady him. His free hand hangs at his side, unmoving. He is the Traveler of course, as the legend had said. The connection is there; it had been prophesied. That is why he had found her, felt drawn to the missing pieces of his power. She’d worn the bracelet. It was nothing more mystical than that. She breathes out relief and a little bit of hurt.

“I have much to tell you.” The Seeker tells him. “But first we must save your life.”



Davis looks very young, laid out in the space in front of the fire.

“He’d pressed the leaf into his skin while he was conscious. Curious.” The Seeker looks down at him, almost like he would at a specimen.

“He was a healer. He told me. Now will you do something?” Chloe looks straight back at the Seeker until he reaches for another vial. The Seeker kneels at the Traveler’s side and the overpowering smells of the herbs he has ground make her head light. He presses black powder over Davis’s face and eyes and stands. Davis lies as if dead. “What will that do? “

The mage seems to realize he is talking to someone other than his herbs. “I have put some eyebright on him. That nasty surprise will wake him, once the fever breaks.”

Chloe had expected more. “That’s all?”

“The poison is in him now. Whether his body and the herb can burn it out is up to him.” The Seeker is brusque and nonchalant, grabbing up all the jars in his hands and pulling up a bedroll from the corner in the wall. “It would be smart to rest now. Expect to have a long journey tomorrow.”

“You can’t sleep at a time like this!” Her skin is no longer burning, but she cannot forget that he was the man that had stopped and nearly died for a woman he was told would harm him. They don’t know he can just fight this alone. She had left Clark to fight alone. “I won’t let him die.”

“All fevers are in the same, in practice. That’s what I don’t understand. ” The Seeker says patiently when she glares. Davis’s skin is graying and she doesn’t need to reach out and touch him to know what his hand would feel like. Stiff, frozen like hers had been.

“It will get worse before it gets better. If you will not relax...” He hands her a plain cotton towel. “Keep the blood moving. He will have the cleanest face in the seven counties.” He lies back down again.

“Don’t you have anything else? He might not wake up!”

“I’m sorry to disappoint. And he will. As you say, he is the Traveler. He has a destiny.”

Chloe stays like that for hours, hunched over the improvised bed. After the fifth, she is gone, hand growing numb where she has slumped down over him. Two different breaths flow in and out in tandem.

From the corner in the wall, the Seeker props himself up, as awake as he has been the entire night. The fever has broken. The bracelet has melded into her skin.



The guards of the Conqueror’s third keep didn’t hassle him. Not even they were suspicious of the hideous bent peddler with greasy hair and slow loping walk. He doesn’t look like anything special. He doesn’t have the gift.

Lex feels his way along the wall and ducks his head into the cave mouth. The black tunnels had stopped frightening him after he’d been thrown in them at six. At twenty, this is how he’d gotten supplies in. He couldn’t be spotted like this, least of all by Lionel. They were one of two things he’d never know. Hadn’t he still won? The prodigal son was coming back home. It was enough to laugh at the irony.

Lex Luthor got shipped away his twenty fourth summer to oversee the command of the third Gallian prison. Cowards. Criminals. Deserters. They needed a strong hand to bring them to heel, Lionel-no, father had said.
That is your duty. You’ll have to leave your little Gallian farmers, or they will pay for the losses out of their pockets. It had been one of the little traps Lionel liked to pull tight around him. And watch him squirm out.

Lex leapt into the trap. It was about proving he could handle it. That the heir with the lily soft hands could hold out in a group of hostile condemned men, wouldn’t that prove something? A reset nose and a few scars later, here he was.

The prisoners had escaped before the conqueror’s troops took control. He was still alive, coming back with his tail between his legs, to all appearances. Lionel had lost his last outpost, but Lex… He could take him now.

Lex can just hear the ugly charm ooze out of Lionel’s voice. Of course your tenants are not here anymore. Things change. The strong survive and move on, and the weak…. They come home to their fathers. Lex closes his scarred fist. He can stop him. He’d done worse. The end justifies the means for him too. If he can suck it up that long.

A ledge of low hanging rock scrape at his head. Lex barely grimaces, brings his hand up to feel smooth bleeding skin. That isn’t good for the illusion. He really has to get it together. Blood drips over his hand. Funny… but… this place looks so much- smaller than it used to be. Maybe the lack of oxygen is doing things to his brain.

The center stone is still here, unchanged. The right tunnel should have forked here. He only sees one way to go, a jagged exit big enough for a wild dog and, barely. Maybe it had been so long….. that… he is lost. If Lionel had known and collapsed it, or he was on fate’s wrong side, he wasn’t going to stop anyone.

“Briccriu!” He swears. His yell echoes off the cave walls and he hears a cracking like the shot of an arrow. This place hadn’t collapsed. It is collapsing over his head.



The Seeker has known Davis for all his life. He knows he was taken to the lower county by the first Seeker, to be left behind, laden with magic protections and wards. Davis had learned how to run as the soldiers marched in and out of the city. He had learned the tricks of survival, an herb here, a medicine there.

He’d found a nameless place to settle, thick with unfarmed land, a town of children and old men. He made his life. ‘You have a destiny’ is not enough for him.

“I don’t believe that.” Davis says, even now raising himself from the ground. He is drawn to the Confessor’s hands on his neck and face, taking the blood away. It is perfectly healed.

“You’ve always known it. Haven’t you wondered why you were the only one of your age alive? How the scouts could never track you? How you’ve managed to be free so long? It’s in your blood, you were meant to be.”

“I had no chances that I was not given.”

“I gave you one. I ask that you listen.”

“Look. I’m sorry. I know….No one else would have taken us in these conditions.”

“We were meant to find each other. I was meant to find you. She was meant to join her life to yours.” Davis believes he is drawn to her as a man is drawn to a woman. The Seeker wants to laugh in despair because he expected a hardened fighter, not a romantic.

“If I was meant to be this traveler, then why did you even search for me?” Davis insists on asking, sitting up on the dirt, the muscles of his shoulders tightening in a powerful spurt. The bloodstained rag tumbles out of the Chloe’s fingers. Sorry, Davis whispers, reaching down with fumbling hands.

Emil sighs. “You have access to extraordinary strength but you are not a God. I could use some help, here, Confessor.”

She crouches, eyes level with the Traveler’s. Her eyes hurt, leached of color. His bond is with her. Only she can convince him, only she can absorb him completely. He should have seen this. The only person close to her had died. She would do anything to defeat the Conqueror. Emil wants to yell for her to stop but untapped energy radiates out, making the air choking and heavy. Half of the Confessors do not survive this, the rest drive their charges mad.

She reaches out a fragile hand to stroke just under the Traveler’s neck and it glows white. Davis’s forehead crinkles in puzzlement before his eyes half-lid and hold, feeling just the human part of the sensation. This Traveler does not try to fight it. She must know what she is doing.

Confessors are trained to empty minds of anything but themselves. It must be an initiation, a ceremony of some kind. Perhaps she is testing if his will will give in to hers. The Traveler does not move, and the Seeker can barely hear the rustle of his breath, as if it could stop entirely.

“I was meant to be with you.” the Confessor says, finally, what was meant to be firm coming out a hollow whisper. The Traveler smiles gently, fingers curling around her hand in the twisted cloth.

“Maybe you were sent to me.” He says.

Yes. She is saying inside, but she is like one of those sirens who cannot speak. Her eyes water, like they did when walking through the wall of flame and she needs it to cease before it tears her apart. But it draws her. Chloe rests her hand on his chest and feels it burn. She is healing herself by doing this. It is different from all the other times. She is not forcing her mind out; it is following its own path. It needs to go this way. It needs to be…whole. Davis’s thoughts surround her like a rush of her own blood.

They are good thoughts- protective, not-overpowering. No different from what she sees in him. His eyes are clear, adoring, and she is falling headlong into memories, snapshots of darkened tunnels and night, and darkly crackling fires. She has to get closer.

Deeper, beyond surface thoughts, there is a boy lying naked in a meadow, a pitch black, unlit cabin-looming beyond. Have you come for me? Will you tell me what shall I do? The boy asks, but she is looking at the man’s face.
Davis is breathing quicker but he does not understand quite yet. He will take the knowledge; he will take these thoughts, and only like this can the mission be complete. Not all is lost now.

Listen to me. The words hiss in the back of her skull. I will tell you what you are. It’s would be so…easy. She remembers what she is supposed to do. Only, she is looking at the man. The man that saved her.

We’ll take care of you, she thinks she hears. Blood and dirt, and careful fingers. It is almost enough to banish the cleansing feeling tingling though her pores, the rush, the addiction. The wounds open, day old scab marks in her mind. You were sent to Clark, Lionel used to say. Would you have almost killed him too?
Probably.
Not this time.
Moment by moment, second by second Chloe stops drowning. The heat is pulling back in; she is, back into the box. She is cold and numb, pressing her hand into Davis’s skin, trying to remember how to breathe. Her hand trembles on his throat and falls to his arm, this time he doesn’t grab back. Nothing to worry about. She’s a disturbed girl. She didn’t almost kill him too. Chloe closes her hand over her mouth, trying to capture the fading warmth. His eyes are on hers as if nothing ever happened at all.

“No, no. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Davis is saying. “You’re free. You belong to you. I won’t be like that...” Davis. Traveler, which is it?

Chloe closes her eyes, shakily dipping the bloody cloth into the bowl again, bringing it up. The liquid dribbles down his shoulder, onto the dirt floor.

“We should be on our way to the village to warn them.” He whispers.

“You can’t. We must all leave now.” As soon as they fall into the Conqueror’s net, everything is at risk.

“We can’t give up on them!”

“That is the only way you can save them.” There are two pieces of crossed wood looped in a cord around the Traveler’s throat. Destiny and Fate would mean nothing to him. “You believe in the teacher, do you not?” Christians are few and they are searched for, killed faster than the mages. Davis must know persecution. He must want to stop it.

“I have seen what the Conqueror would do to your kind.”

“Then explain it to me.” There is no time.

“You have told us about the Seeker, not about yourself. Who are you really? I still don’t know why we trust you.” The Confessor whispers. “You will tell us.” Her eyes glow lightly, paler than any shade of green that Emil has seen before. It’s a strange feeling, being compelled to speak. “I am only an apprentice.” Emil says.



From the sixth Seeker I learned the names of plants, the history of those who had come before him. He gave me no more tales of pure and immediate salvation. I learned the true nature of the traveler, this two sided mercurial force; capable of salvation or destruction. The last drawings showed a loathsome wolf’s head and a man’s snarling from a human body.

He will need guidance, much guidance, the Seeker said, as if he had pierced a veil to the future with his white eyes. You must be strong. I? Strong? I knew the truth at last, and I wanted nothing more that to return to the steady rhythm of my old life. This was his work, not mine.
Too far to retrace my steps. Too far to cut ties; I could not bring myself to leave. He was not my father; he was no longer my guide. I saw him as myself. And yet, I learned.

I learned nothing of who the conqueror was. Oh, I heard the tales, of how he controlled vast armies with a single drop of blood. How they slashed their way across the territories bringing everything under his will. I learned how he brought all magics into himself in an attempt to create a bygone world. I never knew who we were up against until Rafael died.

The conqueror found the Seeker, of course. I remember that night, the deadly paleness of my teacher’s skin. He seemed to know what was near; he had known from the very start. A poisoned life force, was simple enough for one such as he. “He’s finally succeeded.”

“You’re not going to die. The traveler needs you to teach him.” I said. Rafael knew it was too late. He wouldn’t let me move him, take him to a safe place. The conqueror knew where he was and it was only through mad luck that he had managed to elude him this long.
“He needs a Seeker. That’s not me anymore. I only hope that I have taught you enough.”

I told him that was impossible, but I was just the apprentice, not the teacher and he wouldn’t listen.
His voice cracked feebly when he bellowed, but it was still enough for me take our only horse galloping wildly across the barrier, his dull mage staff in hand. I finally understood why he had chosen me.
Mages the conqueror could track, not me. My magic was of the earth, not truly mine. Part of the world, not separate from it.

The true Seeker left nothing behind. Only me. From that moment I became him. I became his mission. I became every Seeker that had come before me and everyone who would follow. My sole purpose was to find the Traveler. In the end it all would all come down to it.



“His soldiers will destroy this territory if they believe you are in it.” Davis thought he was destined to live.

“The prophecy is clouded. You can be many other things.” The ‘Seeker’ turns, tousle-headed, young, half-joking. “You may be a butcher. Either way you have to choose now.”

Davis had made his choice the moment he stopped on that path. “I can come back.” There are people he had to say goodbye to. Even the apostles walked back to their families. “If the barrier does not come down they will die.”

“You have a greater purpose.” Always the half-statements- truths, lies, riddles.

“I know the pain of leaving those you love.” Emil pauses, eyes looking into the campfire. “It is your mission. As it was mine. Think of what others will lose if you do not exist.”

“There is something else that you are not telling me.” Davis says. “What is it?”

The Seeker cannot clamp his mouth closed again.

“What is it?” Chloe echoes, eyes large and soft in the light, finally rising from the blood soaked cloth, to him for a moment before looking back to the Seeker. She is afraid again.

“They will have reached the village.” He says.

“By coming here I lead him straight to the Traveler.” Chloe is horrified, and under the fear , something inside him clenches a little more. The Conqueror’s men have never existed on this side of the barrier. Her eyes remind Davis she has lived her life all on the other side.

“The village is burning; it’s the perfect cover for us to escape.” The Seeker says. Patterns are dancing along his hands, his fingers readjusting together over the stone of his staff. He is just an apprentice. “He knows who you are. He knows where. The more time you give him, the easier you will be discovered. My teacher fell and he was far more prepared than you.”

It is all set, all so solid, like a very measured madman would tell it. Somehow, he cannot explain, Davis knows the Seeker is not lying. Davis is unfairly, wrongly…compelled.

“So we are going to free the people, and bring hope to everyone he has taken over. If what you say is true we must go with you. No looking back. Just leaving them to him.” Davis whispers. All of them. Jonathan, Martha, the hundreds of others …

“If you lose one to save thousands… That is how I found you.”

“And because of that I will save their lives.”

“We will both give our lives so you can.”

“Because it’s right, you would do that for just me. I can do it for all of them. I will not abandon them.”

Emil moves and his energy crackles around him. “In theory.” He says. “In practice, it does not work. You see it, can’t you, Confessor? Speak to him.” He turns his staff over in his hand, no longer nonchalant. “It is your duty.”

She does not move her hand from the knob, and Davis can hear a sound, like the altered beat of a drum.

“I will follow you.” Chloe tells Davis finally, stretches out her hand, bound up in strange metal. For a moment Davis thinks she will reach out again. Something inside him hums and sooths. There is a quiver of arrows in her palm. “I’ll watch your back.”

Emil tenses. His unease hurts his ears like a whistle would a half-tame wolf. Davis doesn’t turn his back on him. That is the first way to get yourself killed. Chloe is past the doorway, walking lightly, and Davis can hear a thousand things, the whisper of her frayed white gown, and the drag of her feet against the cobblestone.

“So it is done then.” The Seeker says. Davis half expects retaliation- vines, blinding light to spring out of his staff. Nothing comes. Instead, the curly haired man picks up his potions, one by one and meticulously lays them in their box. Polishes them. Smiles. “No need to fear me. I‘m not suicidal enough to go about trying to put a stop to you both. Go, have your idealism. You know where I’ll be.”

Davis nods, uncertain, but still walks the last few steps out the door with a glance behind him.

“I’ll be alive.” The Seeker volunteers.



Lex forgets all Lionel’s teachings about dying on his feet. He throws himself half into the low crawl space along the wall and curls around himself. By the time there is silence, he can’t breathe his nose is so thick with gravel dust. He’d traded a quick death for a slow one. At least he isn’t pinned.

Better give up here than come back crawling. You’re not worth it. You’re not chosen. That is the oxygen deprivation, not him. Lex forces his hands to the top of the opening. Shoulders next…

It is a little lighter on the other side. By the time he is three quarters free, he starts coughing. The air isn’t exactly fresh but it is air.
Lex shifts himself on his back, swallows, gropes to stand. He can’t afford the quick intake of air yet.

There he sees the first of the bodies. It is one of the Conqueror’s soldiers. His skin is dusted over and ashy red, black charring half of his chest and uniform away. Beside him is another, and another and scattered among shattered crossbows. Horseless. This place is a burial ground.

One is different. He wears a loose cloak, the same kind of black that Lionel’s spies wore. Lionel would had to have left him here to die. A shaft of light trickles through his fingers, and Lex can see he is young. Very young. A farmer. It was almost a whim to turn the body over. The youth is heavy; shoulders a deadweight, his legs and arms stiff. Lex wishes he had actually learned more about healing, or the stages of death.

He’s wearing a black hood and half of his face is coated with dust and crusted rock. It slumps back down to the dirt again under all that hair but not before Lex can make out the lifelike color of a spot of skin and a glimmering sheen through his amulet. He can’t still be alive…? Lex has seen weirder things. If he was put under a spell, or a calmant poison…

The most important thing is to get the kid breathing. Lex has never…resuscitated any one before. But it has to be cut-and-dry. He is loose lipped and unmoving as Lex supports his jaw to keep it open. No intake of breath yet. Lex pinches the bridge of his nose shut and settles his mouth, blows breaths out quickly. There is an unnatural warmth to his skin. Or is that a stage of decomposition?

In and out. On four again. Lex pushes down on his sternum hard, almost as if he is going to break the bone. If he was alive, he would have been coughing by now. Two minutes and counting. Lex gets nothing. Had he expected to? He isn’t Lex Luthor, Savior of the Oppressed. He isn’t gifted.

Not on the first try anyway. He closes his eyes and pulls himself out of the light, pushing down a sense of loss he can’t quite understand. Time to get out, he thinks. Then he gets punched full on in the face.



“Kneel.” The voice seems to come from every corner of the chamber. It is calling to him and his knees fall to the black ice. My Lord is here.

He can feel the smoothness of his voice in every pint of the decaying blood that remains in his veins. He has spoken his name. But he knows him from the blackness of his robes, the pale but devastating firmness of the ruling hands, the slide of the polished blade. He cannot look up. The knife caresses his mouth. Life returns to him, one drop, sliding, just one drop sizzling onto his flesh. Living burns.

“You may speak.”

“I am the last. He has killed eight of the guards and myself. I have failed you.”

The white, white hands rest in front of his eyes and Number 4256 does not expect a quick death. He has failed, yet he does not flinch and tries to hold down the weak sound of his voice. If he releases his hand his tripes will spill out. He must wait; soon, soon perhaps, if he can be worthy again, the blood will see it knitted up.

“And did he know you? Did he remember your face?”

“No, Lord.”

“I will assign you new underlings. These have proved…defective. Report to the barracks. You will be dispatched to the village. Destroy all traces of his origins.” That’s it, the telltale snap of fingers and his feet seem to obey.

But Number 4256 is different, not quite like the others. He has half to the door when he speaks.

“Permission to follow. Lord? I will prove my loyalty. I will bring him to you as you commanded.” Number 4256 has never let a man who killed him live and that must hold even here. He knows what the other is, a monster, an abomination. He needs to be controlled.

“He will come to me.” The voice says.

“He killed my men. He will endanger your others. Your armies…”

“No doubt he will decimate them.”

“He has great untapped power. Then Lord, I beg, let my repair my mistake. I have strengths, I can track. Send me with a few strong men and I can stop him before…”

“Do not test me. It is enough trouble that I have woken you again.”

“Then dispatch me on my own. I will find you both he and the Confessor…” The soldier’s good name will be repaired. He will defeat them before they become an open threat. The Lord is an otherwise reasonable man... what could the Lord be---

“He will come to me.” The Lord’s clear voice continues but ever fiber of the soldier fights against this dishonor.

“Lord- ’’

“Silence!” he roars. It is -odd- that even his roars are measured. The Servant’s very blood seizes up within him and out of his throat no more words will come.

“He cannot fight his blood.” The Conqueror pronounces. “He will seek my service..”
Number 4256 falls to the ground. The drop of life-giving blood deadens and he sleeps again.



Davis goes behind, but he doesn’t really need to follow her. He knows the paths of the village, the trails. He moves steadily, not quickly, always looking beside him. Not yet like a predator, like Clark used to move. But still not quite mortal.

Chloe must watch his back, but he is afraid to let her lag out of sight. He will protect her, maybe like Clark did. Maybe more. She does not know how much this bond will change them both. She is not tired and maybe that’s his strength. Chloe finds herself running as she never has before.

The air tastes like wails and smoke. A girl, she must be five at most, stumbles into them, half blind. She is calling for her mother.

Chloe doesn’t think Davis knows an herb for smoke inhalation. But he holds out something, a cloth she holds over her nose, scented with eyebright. The girl looks at them with wide dark brown eyes, blinking and aware. Davis crouches down to her level.

“Is your mother back there?”

“She told me to run.”

“Take the bend out of the forest. She will follow you.” Davis says.

There are no soldiers to fight and kill, only the elements. Hundreds make it out alive, guided through the gates by his hands. The smoke has sent the others most of the way to the light bringer. And suddenly he stops, like an animal scenting danger. A strange, fractured noise comes from his throat. “They killed her.”

Davis’s eyes are moving back and forth behind his eyelids and for a moment it looks as if he is glowing like the fire. It’s a moment’s optical illusion. This is his first transformation. The pain flickers along his face, a veil over his eyes. “I hear them dying.” He says. The traveler is meant to have these instincts. He could feel the people and it hurt him like his own pain.

“What are you talking about?’

The sweat stands out stark against his skin. “The conqueror placed his soldiers outside the gates to catch anyone who escaped.”

“It’s alright.” Chloe whispers. “Davis...”

This is nothing like she thought it would be. He doesn’t glow like a God anymore. When he falls, rock crumbles under his fingernails, his face trembles, darker. His skin, for once, looks less real. It looks as if the power in him will tear him off like a vestment.

Chloe reaches out to touch his face, bring him calm, ease this somehow. Her hand brushes his shoulder and digs in. “If you separate yourself, you can do this.” She should be the one guiding him through it. She doesn’t trust herself quite yet.

“Get the people out,” he says, “I’ll do the rest.” It will take him precious minutes to stop the Conqueror’s men.

“I can’t leave you to fight them alone.”

“My parents are in there. I can’t leave them alone. If I am who you think I am, I’ll survive. Trust me.” Chloe does not see the exact moment Davis appears beside her again, but she knows the soldiers are all dead.

**
He finds her kneeling in what had been his home. She feels only a little of what he feels and the fear is paralyzing. There’s only one room left-the small space that is piles of tinder. Davis screams for Martha and it hits her that even he had people he loved. Especially him.

There is an older man, his hair grey at the temples, lying dead on the ground. Davis calls him Jonathan. His death was quick, Chloe tells him. It was a quick slash through the throat- not the belly where it would have taken him time to bleed out. It was the cut of a practiced blade. “He’s gone.”

This time Davis doesn’t stand, but she reaches to ease his hand away, sticky and warm with blood. It isn’t their bond that makes her need to comfort him, she tells herself, forcing back the insistent ache. It isn’t that at all-but how can she say that now? Her hand is coated in metal that burns forge hot at his touch.

“You wanted to save someone else too. Martha. If we can find her.”

“She isn’t here.”

“Can you feel her?”

“She’s not here.” Davis repeats. His eyes are bloody.



It is not a hard punch. Lex has had much worse in the prison. For such a big hand the punch has as much force behind it as a small child’s would have. The big guy crawls a few steps into the corner, the easiest place to defend. Lex would know. He nearly stumbles twice. Lex turns his head, just to be polite, catching a glance of brilliant green through the cave exit.

“I won’t let you get through there alive.” An incompletely rough voice says, as the youth turns back, stopping to hack up blood and glowing green bile.

Lex scrubs at his lips with the back of his hand. “I saved your life and you’re angry that your manhood was insulted?”

The hair falls out of his eyes and Lex knows exactly why the voice is familiar.

A disbelieving chuckle forms in the pit of his throat. “Clark?”

Clark had been…Clark is one of those whose powers Lionel had tapped into. Even as a boy, he’d had inhuman speed. Strength. Lex found out that little fact when he’d gotten whisked away from his own guillotine. Clark was a -one of the gifted, and the frontline of Lionel’s weaponry. Of course, Clark had gotten the chance to point blank deny it was him later. The whole thing had happened fast enough. He never did. Lex never knew why.

“How do you know my name, puppet?” That is a common enough derogatory term for the Conqueror’s soldiers in the barracks.

“No, Clark.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?”

“I am your friend.”

“If you really knew me, you would drop the guise.”

But friends, were they friends? Clark had become Kal after that- in the years that followed- a mask where everything got shut away- raids of cities and disappearances into the night.
Clark had been Lex’s friend- the naïve, unassuming village kid who always helped people. Lex had never known that Clark, but for a moment. He’d found himself gently set down in a cornfield. One minute he’d been looking into the clearest, most child-wise eyes, the next he’d seen his cloak vanish in a flurry of black.

And here they are.

Lex tosses the amulet down. It shatters, the blue glow dimming. The illusion burns away like flecks of old dust, dims from twisted knuckles to only vaguely scarred. He runs a hand down his forehead, the Luthor ring a brand.

“Alexander.” Clark bows his head, just a respectful distance and no further. Another thing Lionel had taught him. Lex swallows back the desire to grimace. Clark was raised to be Lionel’s right hand after all. If Lex has any second thoughts about revealing himself, the chance is gone.

“I meant it when I said I preferred Lex.”

“I thought you died in the prisons.” Clark says. “I never found you.”

Lex doesn’t know this Clark. You can’t just forget after someone saves you. He met the people Clark saved, one after another after another despite the soldier that Lionel wanted and what he was. Lex used to try to manipulate the variables, delay the missions. Make sure Clark didn’t get sent to the heavy combat. That spirit of his wasn’t meant for that. Lionel stopped him more often than not.

When Lex reaches out, Clark returns the pressure. Still and so calm. “I never thought I’d see you again, Lex.”

“Then it’s lucky that I started an avalanche here then. There’s a tunnel to the other side.”

“I can’t get out of here. Not with a broken leg.”

“What are you talking about? We’re getting out, Clark.”

“I’ve no reason to.” There had been a massive stone pinning him down, the sharp point cutting through tissue- the bone is visible beneath the surface. Clark doesn’t ask for help. He doesn’t even move. “I’m glad you came.” (When he left, Lex had counted on the fact that Clark was one of those whose spirits who wouldn’t break.)

“Look. We’re going home, Clark.”

“This is the tunnel. So where is home?” Clark asks.

Lex casts a glance through the tunnel. Enough to see that the ruins of crumbled rock behind him give way to green fields, and green fields and…green fields…

“I thought I could ask you.”

There’s not much to do when your home is simply not there.



Her careful eyes watch Davis hammering the sticks of wood tight together over the pyre. She doesn’t understand this ritual of his though she understands what he supposed to be. The rest hasn’t set in yet. Only that this has to mean something.

Jonathan has already died for this and many will die after. Soon, the cross will be gone too. And the body. The column of thick smoke billowing around them does not give a clue to their location because there is so much of it, everywhere the eye can see.

Davis kneels, deep into the dirt. He scrubs ash out of his eyes. His face must be black now. There is no time, he knows. This is the only way he can mourn. He feels the gore on his fingertips, blood from the bodies of men who were forced into killing without thought or reason, but the sickness was not there yet. He remembers the spray of blood vaguely, the chinks of warped metal armor. This was not how he had been taught.

Davis wishes he could pray for their souls too. Every life was important to the father. The girl’s small body had been so trampled on the ground.

Why, Father? Davis never asked Martha or Jonathan why the armies marched on his town and brought it down. You didn’t have to know why to survive. Why would anyone do this?

Chloe’s voice cuts through the quiet. He’d never even asked. And yet, she is kneeling too, in this part of his private world he’s never even shared with those who had made him.

“He wanted to send us a message this way. Sapping their life forces with whispers would have been more humane. Their deaths would have been less painful; they wouldn’t have known they were dying. He fears you. It’s not going to get better. But you are the one. You will end him. That’s why.”

Only Chloe eyes don’t change-green as the sea-not witch’s eyes. The dirty white hood covers her bright hair. For one moment- the longing is so deep to pull it free, bury his head there and remember to breathe again.

Her hand briefly falls overtop his clenched one before faltering back. Her touch raises a tangible change in him, and he knows now- the legend, their bond. He knows and he doesn’t care. He wishes he could be just Davis to her. And yet, she stays. And it feels like they are mourning together.

“Do you really think this God hears you?” she asks, voice quiet, after what seems like forever.

“Yes. I don’t know why or how.”

Chloe says, “I don’t believe. I wish I could.” He can hear her voice, fragile as a plant before the cold. She doesn’t move for a very long time. When she does, a small smudge of ash has trailed out over her cheek, a blackened tear. Davis wishes he could wipe it away. Knows she would flinch back as if struck.

“A friend of mine chose to die today. I should’ve felt something inside me different. I should feel empty. Instead…” She motions around him, the campfire. “I have you. I’d do anything for you.”

“You believe that?” Chloe bites into her lip. She is not afraid of what he’s done, but her eyes tell him she is blaming herself for something, like a victim that has never been taught better. “Yes, I believe that.”

The embers of the small fire are starting to die, now, and if the Seeker doesn’t come, it is only them. Only them with miles and miles of battlefields ahead of them. “Then, you’re not so different from me.”



Maybe Lex was wrong. Clark somehow exits the small crawl space, dragging his ruined knee behind him. It disturbs Lex how impassive his face is.

Out in the grass, Lex grimaces, trying to bear Clark’s weight as he takes an unsteady step. “We’re facing the wrong way.”

“No.”

“How can the entire town be gone?”

“Lionel finally did it.” Clark laughs and laughs, taunt chest contracting into a cough. “That was his reason. He never cared about the rebellion. He wanted his own little Utopia. His army was just a group of generators for his ultimate project. Their magic will feed the barrier so the place might as well not exist. The Conqueror can never get in now.” (The conqueror always gets in.)

The dead soldiers, Clark. Lionel’s plan. None of it adds up. Clark had been Lionel’s perfect weapon.“You were the best. Why would he leave you behind?” Lex asks, the question burning him.

“I disobeyed. Then, I was cured. He could take my powers any time he wanted to.” That’s all Clark says. Lex feels the questions, the hows rising in his throat, but then he sees his face, bone white, and doesn’t ask. The silence is anything but comfortable.

“What are you going to do now?” Clark asks finally, as if the thought of a future just occurred to him. “Where are we going?”

“I’m part of the resistance. Are you going to follow me?”

“No, I am going to settle down with a loud woman, run a farm single-handed and crippled. Then I’ll have many large babies. I have nowhere else to go, Lex. I guess you get a brother after all.”

A smile is out of place here, but for a moment Lex is happy. “We’re going to clean you up. I know people. Then we can do it all.”

Lex used to have a dream once. Both of them, pulling down the thick walls of the Conqueror’s armies. Dismantling them from the inside. Maybe they could be the resistance. Working together. No lies.

Clark shakes his head.

“If you want to free the people, just know Lionel has fine-tuned the spell all these years. We won’t ever find the town. He bound the souls of the dead townspeople to the spell. Makes it possible to do the impossible. If you tear down the wall you will kill them all.”

Lex doesn’t have enough energy for it to sink it just yet.

“It’s not that.”

“And what are you looking for?” Not that Utopia for sure.

“There are some people I need to find.” Lex says.

“-the men from the prison. Your soldiers, now. Come on, Lex, they are the only men you’ve had contact with. Are you going to keep secrets now?”

Lex’s step jostles him for a moment and Clark can’t feel the bone like a solid piece. His legs feel like they are rotting. The bone is shattered and burning. Clark grits his teeth and keeps on. He catches onto Lex’s eyes, burning steel, surprised. “I always knew you’ve watched out for me. It goes both ways.”

(Lex doesn’t know that he was always Lionel’s true experiment. Never him.)

“So how far are these men of yours?” Clark asks.

Endnotes:
In short: Chloe and Davis are bonded now, which means he's going to be saddled with uncontrollable primal tendencies. Chloe better work on controlling her feelings if she doesn't want to mindrape/kill him. They lost Emil.  Lex wants to kill Lionel, but now he's traveling with Clark and that complicates it.

Yes, Davis is the Conqueror/Zod's Clone. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what resurrected Clark is to this story. It's going to get far more tangled than SV ever was.

Next week, Chloe concocts a brilliant/stupid plan to get Emil on their trail, Davis struggles with killing instincts and an old enemy is freed from sleep to try and kill them both. Plus, Lex meets up with his resistance fighters, shows a darker side, but that's not exactly the problem...