Free Fall

1.

Easy is the descent –


8.

His psychiatrist peers at him from over thick-rimmed glasses and asks, “Do you suffer from sleep disturbances? Bad dreams?”

“No,” he says, and it is the truth.

Daedarus does not sleep. He has not slept since returning from the Cynefin, having lost a sister and a nephew and something that for decades will remain nameless.

It is as though a chasm has opened up inside of him, and the void created by the absence of that something that he has lost has sharpened into a fine point. He is no longer governed by the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself. Where once he was human and walking dead, now he is a monster and vividly alive. He is boundless and infinite, having at once been torn into pieces and made unbearably whole, and beneath his skin is woven a magic vicious in its simplicity.

The runes from the ritual are nothing but faded scars now, kept hidden under his sleeves. They tell Daedarus only one thing: lose control and you die.

The corpse of his sister, staring accusingly into the void, had served a similar purpose.

But it has been a long time since he could feel anything about that.


7.

“Would the First be amenable to negotiations?” asks the German ambassador.

“The First has repeatedly proposed the drafting of a peace treaty, Ambassador. He regrets, as do I, that it has taken you this long to comply. Unfortunately, a ceasefire is no longer sufficient. We are looking for more than a simple negotiation.”

“If you’re suggesting that Oberstraubing should join forces with your band of bastards—”

“You called this meeting. Not me. If there’s nothing else—”

“Gottverdammt! Just tell me what you want. Tell me what your First wants.” The Ambassador leans forward on the table and runs a hand over his sallow face. “We have no idea how to handle this. Those among our citizens who are not busy rioting have sought shelter underfoot. Canned food, water and toiletries have all but disappeared from our shelves. I’ve come here with orders to give you whatever you want—men, firearms, ammunition, treaties. What the Hell does he want?”

Barnabas smiles. It is a lopsided, somewhat awkward expression that shows too much teeth and looks out of place on the notoriously dour man’s face.

It has very little to do with amusement.


6.

‘Hadrian Crane’ is only a small piece of a larger puzzle. Daedarus first writes the name in the margin of a book. His handwriting is irregular and inelegant, one of the few insecurities that has followed him from childhood and clung to his mind like bramble thorn.

‘Crane’ he writes, over and over again, filling the margins with his new name and eclectic, barely interconnected notes.

Outside the sky lightens and sunlight creeps into the room, inch by cautious inch.

Daedarus takes what feels like his first breath in forty years and there’s a quiet pleasure that slips through his fingers like running water, giving way to something new—something icy and exhilarating and so real that it feels almost dangerous.

He will use many other names.

But this —

blue eyes and curls and ancient runes daubed on pale skin and smiles sharp enough to draw blood

— is the only one that he remembers.


5.

History is composed of long lulls and sudden crescendos. Omissions, intermissions and the spanning silence between the rise and fall of empires.

Daedarus knows this. For him it is as if these redactions, these trivialities, these moments lost to memory, have been compressed into the space of a single second; a Sianach falls by his athame and a season changes; he is twenty-three and pressing a hand to his face, trying to erase the images that have been branded into the back of his eyelids; a pretty brunette presses her lips to his and at sixteen he knows that he will never find pleasure in flesh; he is standing on a shore somewhere outside of Klaksvík, eyes narrowed against the sea spray as he says goodbye to the beautiful Faroe Islands where he has spent the last three years of his life; sunlight spears through the mullioned windows of a cluttered bookstore as a young Daedarus reads from a book he cannot afford. These moments have become a single second that lingers decades too long.

Armagh, Laufenthal, Istanbul and Marrakesh. Years come and go and Daedarus is not sure what it is he is looking for or how he knows when he has found it.

He blinks and the forests of Kazakhstan bleed away into the colorful streets of Elberon, with its eclectic architecture and processed Magic that smells overpoweringly of soap and disinfectant. Daedarus scowls as his Magic writhes and his head begins to ache and suddenly he is remembering childish dreams of peace and reform from so long ago.


4.

The days are growing shorter and shorter. Daedarus allows the silence to wind loosely around him, sinking through his skin and into his bones, as he gazes for a long moment into the fire-streaked sky. He can feel something lurking — dark and heavy and prepared to devour — and knows not whether it lies within him or before him or behind him or everywhere around him all at once.


3.

Messrs and Mesdames of the UMN,

As of August 14th, 2010 at 4:35 PM EST, the city-state of Elberon has come under the control of known terrorist Daedarus H. Cain and the extremist political faction 'the Syndicate’. Under a decree issued by Cain on August 20th at 2:50 PM EST, the civil liberties of the peoples of Elberon have been suspended. Citizens have been prohibited from dissenting under penalty of death.

In the face of these blatant violations of human rights and the violent coup of an established and respected government, we call upon our fellow members of the UMN to come to the aid of our brothers and sisters in Elberon.

Ortwin Eichel
Chancellor of Oberstraubing


2.

Canton again, and that manor with its rotten foundation, ghosts in the attic and golden-framed pictures on the walls, black and white with faces gazing passively into nothingness. It’s just a house, but Daedarus feels it like a force, tangible and suffocating. He wishes to turn and walk away, to be anywhere, nowhere, just away.

He sets all of the useless remnants of his past aflame. All the photographs and the books and the records and the letters — they burn.

Daedarus’s eyes gleam red in the firelight.


0.

– and quick, too.

---

“You never need to apologize
for how you chose to survive.”
— Clementine von Radics