A novelette in five parts, based on the world of twenty one pilots.

 

SELDOM SURFACE

There was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest. Streets and locations were dependable, and the responsibilities of the day seemed to be accomplished with minimal effort. Once a task was taught and understood, we delighted in our ability to complete our obligations timely, and felt secure in knowing tomorrow’s duties would be accomplished with the same efficiency. We all worked to represent our bishop with honor, and knew that each inhabitant of our region had a like-minded dedication to consistency.

 

There are groups of lines, like a tally. Two vertical strokes, a shorter horizontal dash, two more strokes at a diagonal.Sometimes the sets of two lines merge into thicker bands.

There are motifs like a pitchfork, like an E on its side. Some lines wavy, others straight. 

There are representations of vultures—coloured wingspans, sculpted beaks, bright eyes seeing both worlds. The beady dots are in varying stages of opening. Or falling asleep… 

Etched in the surface. 

Painted over the grey. 

Symbols and shades of ochre that have slowly lost their saturation through elapsed eras. 

The cave wall is a tessellating tapestry. A metamorphosis, and yet a recurring cycle of images, faded, but their meaning remains. Memories… 

“It’s in our colours.”  

The groups of engraved or yellow or thicker red lines are just like one of their logos, a logo that flips the false doctrine of Vialism on its head. Neon gravestones overturned to a protective covering of life and hope.  

The E-like motif, in all its variations, in shades from yellow to a pinkish red, still holds the shape of their insignia of truth. East is up. Not Dema’s false compass or exalting statues.  

Even the poses of yellow-eyed vultures echo the print they use, representing an aspect of their kinship. Both the trash dragons and Banditos turn death into life. Feeding on the fear and pain and loss, and committing to living. 

Lin of course knew such caves existed in the hillsides and gorges. The Banditos often shelter in their welcoming mouths, like little fish feeding in a megalodon’s maw. But there was a different sensation entering this cave, something heightened in her nerves and her feelings as the hallowed coolness washed over her, and her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she got her eyes in and suddenly the walls were alive. Never has she seen art like this. It took her breath away. It’s still deflating her lungs. More than she ever imagined.  

There appear to be faded representations of so many more of Trench’s animals too, many weathered or flaked off or covered by flows in parts. Outlines of songbirds perch with dots for eyes. Big-bellied horses gallop along a rim of stone partway up the wall. The three-quarter-profile of lions stare like children’s horror portraits. Cheetah’s coats are painted with such awesome precision. Rabbits and dogs emerge from the contours of the rocks in a frozen, eternal chase. As Lin moves her torch, they seem to move like a zoetrope. And deeper, a long painted shape, with etched scales, looks like some sort of sea serpent from half-known coastal myths. There are faces of some other creatures too, with big eyes and ears, a sort of chubbiness to them, and antlers. 

Sets of crossed over antlers are etched near to those creatures, so old as to be almost smoothed away. They pattern the tapering shaft, part of a panel with symbols beyond those she recognises. The light gives shadow and dimensions to these grave engravings. They suddenly become clear like visions in the night, seared into the morning’s mind’s eye like the sunrise. 

Simple skeletons, with six ribs. Some have a skull outline at the top of the spine line, others have more of an oval face, with almond eyes. There are some detached skulls too, with empty sockets, stylised with four long teeth and a missing lower jaw. A more realistic skull has a compass E pitchfork on its forehead… 

Staring at these ancient depictions of the departed, time stands still. Time stands still, and there’s a metaphor at hand, a metaphoric blast. Under the skies of potential millennia, under colours, under clothes, under skin, underneath we’re all the same. Only skeleton bones remain.   

Yet art remains too. There are glyphs reminiscent of Zs, and circles with lines through. More obscure geometric art dominates certain sections, or appears within the larger animal figures, superimposed. Super imposing. 

One set of lines looks like a chair. Another, like architectural plans from a dream. A curved sign is reminiscent of a lightbulb. There are simple shapes, squares and rectangles filled with colours, like test palettes, or shields. Circles and crescents, suns and moons. Octagons. Other shaded forms convey the roundness of a tower. There are crude figures, some headless, others with tapered lower bodies and crossed arms. 

They’re all the most mesmerising mysteries. Lin has witnessed many miracles in the wilderness. Miracles of nature. But there’s something about these traces, evidence of peoples long gone, that strikes a different chord in her heart. 

All these symbols and depictions, they’re just as Preston and Brikka promised, and more. 

Lin couldn’t believe what she was hearing when the pair of them returned from Brikka’s first visit here. Preston found the caves, and wanted to keep them secret while he documented them. But he told Brikka via a letter, and when they returned, they weren’t exactly quiet. Lin often listens around the campfire. She likes staying by that warmth, hearing everyone’s stories, recording them in her mind and notebook. All their stories inspire her, and she knows there are those in the future that will want to read what this group of Banditos were like. There are those in the city too, living such different lives. They could never conceive of stone this old and alive in their concrete labyrinth. 

The wild gorges of Trench are labyrinthine too, but within those nooks and crannies are so many wonders, like this cave. The Vulture Tree at the bottom of the East Canyon was a well-known landmark, but Preston’s discovery is new. Striding past that leafless coral of a cottonwood tree, Lin looked up at the birds perched like fruits. At least their eyes were all normal. Soulful rather than seized. 

She’s so glad she eventually summoned the courage to ask to come along next time,  wanting to document the amazing signs too. They feel important, as a phantom limb to their full-body goal as Banditos. 

What drew her at first to their conversation was Preston’s urging that these were proof that their struggle against Vialism has been waged many times before, an eternal resistance. There is both hope and hopelessness in that. 

Some symbols here seem to belong to an earlier phase or culture, a skeletal aesthetic, perhaps even from the time when ice was retreating across the whole continent, sculpting the landscape she knows so well. But amidst the animals and the obscurities, her eyes first found the Bandito symbols. And if they are so old as to be painted amidst this time-forgotten tapestry of recurring meaning, even if they are later, then surely their rebellion is old too. 

“Dema withheld so much of the past from us, right?” Brikka says. “We were never the first to inhabit these hills and rebel.” 

“What do you think?” asks Preston. 

“The hunt for answers must continue back at camp, right?” Brikka smiles. “We have to ask Torchbearer. He might have been in this fight a long time! Ha…” 

Torchbearer is their leader and their saviour. Nobody knows his real name. If he was a character in the stories Lin was told as a child, he’d be called a superhero, or a god. He’s omniscient like a god, they all know that. He inhabits a triangular existence. He can be sitting there with them at camp, but somehow be in two other somewheres, guiding two other someones to find them. Projections, that the guided cannot see through. He has his body, but those other aspects too—Cautes and Cautopates, he once called them. And through them, like flame, he can flicker-see the continent in many dimensions. By no means does he share this triumvirate vision. 

“Yes,” Lin begins. “Perhaps our struggle started long ago. Perhaps this rebellion has been waged many times before. But I believe in our cause. I believe in Torchbearer. We deserve the truth, but we deserve his plan to succeed. He must believe this time to be different. He must believe in this second Clancy.” 

While the others weigh her words, Lin is weighed down into the waters of the cave of her mind. The hunt for answers… 

This ability and the knowledge Torchbearer has acquired… Did he find this cave, inspiring the symbols in current Banditos, to honour the past? Or was he here when this cave was painted? Evidence left for the current rebellion. Is the city that ancient? The double bars logo, resisting the neon gravestones… how long have those horrible markers been created? The bishops erased all concepts of the past from its citizens, and yet keeps them frozen in time. 

Torchbearer teaches that they hijacked an ancient religion. Something that existed before Vialism. The city of Dema was dedicated to this previous faith, perhaps something more merged at peace, one with the nature of Trench, and the nature of the human soul. Without walls, and without self-destruction. Perhaps Vialism’s neon gravestones echo an earlier design. Something draws her to the poses of those sets of antlers, just as the bishops display the glass cages of their alchemy during assemblages… 

The vultures sitting in the tree outside are descendants of the vital logistics of this previous religion, Lin is sure. Some amongst the Banditos know the older structures within the nine bishops’ towers—the brickwork and the catacombs, compared to the concrete of the districts, the glorious vista and necropolis that sprawled over whatever came before... 

There are still so many gaps to be filled in their knowledge. But that just inspires Lin not just to aid escapees, but to tear down the whole vialistic system behind that false perimeter, as Torchbearer works towards. Surely then everyone can know their history, and the reality of their present, and learn from it, rather than produce just to be consumed. To continually give until they give in. 

No one knows, or remembers, where the bones in the catacombs went. If the original towers of Dema were once for excarnation, for the bodies to be cleaned by the nature of Trench, then the skeletons in the centre of the ossuary must have been taken to catacombs. At some point, the bishops took over, constructed their city, set fire to the bones of what came before, and brought in their citizens. Maybe a century, maybe decades ago. Somehow… does something within the stolen bones give them their miraculous power? 

The glorious gone of Dema are now buried under neon gravestones. But something about the light is important, some power of the soul that feeds the religion that leads those lost souls to self-destruction. But why do the bishops preach that doctrine? What do they gain by controlling a dwindling mass? 

Is it power just to gain power? Evil incarnate, incarcerate. Tempted by control and controlled by temptation. 

Perhaps the bishops were once ordinary people, but their rituals with the ash of the ancients stained half their faces black, and now they are ashen, flaking things. Diseased. They maintain order by smearing delinquent citizens with residue from their black-stained fingers. Lin saw this firsthand with Clancy. A residue takes over the neck and hands of those smeared, and somehow they are seized by the bishops’ will, to march back to Dema. And that smearing smears memory too. At one point, perhaps they all forgot some innocence, a life akin to childhood. Perhaps by living as Banditos they are reclaiming what was taken. 

Clancy… the first with that name, typed beautiful letters. He escaped with a camera, and wrote on the back of his photographs. No one knows how he escaped and began his fearful wanderings, apart from Torchbearer. But he wasn’t the one the Banditos hoped for. 

A different citizen was much closer to the leader of the bishops, Nico. Because of his role in Dema as a leader of celebrations, he knew something none of the others knew. Lin herself was shocked to find out. It was a major realisation that there are more people living on the continent of Trench, in a much more advanced civilisation than within Dema, with machines beyond their enforcedly limited imagination. Dema has computers, but this citizen discovered so much more. 

Of course Dema needed supplies to maintain its populace, coming from some other society across the ocean. There is a whole town on the frigid coast by Port Vial, with ships and submarines. And there are roads linking Dema to the port, often snow-frosted. The city with no apparent entrances has a secret exit in the west wall, a heavily guarded garage and stables for the bishops to use. 

This citizen used his knowledge of the outside world to gather a few objects himself, like a red beany and sunglasses. But he dreamed of more, and convinced Nico to let him ride in the back of one of the cars on the way to the coast. It was the tail end of a cold winter. Lin remembers when Torchbearer beamed a third of him into the path of that vehicle, over and over. 

He reached out to this special soul, and together they stopped the dmaorg-issued transport vehicle, burnt it, and Torchbearer presented the escapee with a projected jacket in the trunk of the scorched car. He took it, his first introduction to the Banditos’ colours, and set off to wander the wilderness. 

The sustained ignition and Torchbearer’s meddling with Dema’s advanced sensors should have been enough to allow a complete escape. And only later did Dema inspect the scene, and link the subject of investigation to the name Clancy. But somehow, a bishop came for him. 

Nico rode out on a white horse. For some reason, this citizen was special to him as well as Torchbearer. All the Banditos gathered yellow petals, waiting on either side of the gorge, prepared to warn the escapee that Nico was after him, and try and help him escape the seizing, push on through and away. It took a lot of gathering, but Lin would do anything to free someone. When Nico smeared him and he begun his march to the city, Torchbearer signalled for the petals to be thrown. It worked. 

The bishops can’t see yellow, and Nico’s horse was spooked. He lost his control, the spell broken, and the potential new Bandito sprinted, screaming. With each splashing step, Lin had felt hope for him. But he fell. Nico caught up with him, and they retreated from the bishop’s gaze. Not before watching the man’s last conscious act of clutching a yellow flower to his chest, though. Apparently the colourblind bishop let him carry it back to Dema. 

The first Clancy watched his fellow escapee taken back by Nico. But he gave into fear of the unknown, and was returned to Dema by his bishop, the kindly Keons. He gave in to Vialism back inside those walls. However, his questioning letters, coming so close to escape from inside his own mind, survived. 

The vehicle igniter found them, used them as motivation. He grew braver, stepping out into Trench and gathering yellow flowers with each little escape, as proof in a drawer, another sign of his worthiness. But he was always captured, stuck in a cycle in service to Nico. During this time, though, Torchbearer must have begun to communicate with him more, building a friendship, even a special handshake. Each time he returned to his room with a flower, his trust in Banditos grew. 

When he started a secret page within Dema’s website, something those out in the wild couldn’t access but appreciated, Torchbearer knew he was the one. Together, when he could access dmaorg’s computer terminal, they scanned and released Clancy’s letters, and clues for other citizens who could find the link. He took on the mantle of Clancy when he wrote a new letter for the pair’s first plan together. A major rescue operation for all those wishing to leave, a complete diversion on that year’s Annual Assemblage of the Glorified. 

“All earthly honour unto the glorious gone. Let their ash mark the path of those who remain.” So the bishops say to the congregation. Once a year they gather, all nine, allowing the most vialistic of citizens to see them and their alchemy at work. Lin used to believe in the glory of those fictionalised ancestors, gave thanks to them, venerated liquidised ash from stolen skeletons… 

But that year, a large group of Banditos entered through the catacombs. Lin wasn’t amongst them. How she wishes she could’ve seen Torchbearer’s distraction. The Banditos created a whole drum kit for their leader, to bash out musical symbols—cymbals?—to draw the attention of the perimeter guards, and signal every citizen dreaming of escape. All Torchbearer instructed the new Clancy to tell others was to go lower. He uploaded the original Clancy’s last, confused letter, before leaving. 

The drumming was apparently heard all the way in the convocation. The bishops only stormed onto the scene by the time Clancy and a few more proud and emotional souls escaped through the catacomb tunnels. Death to life, once again. Two current Banditos were only kids at that time. They were the first to find the remnants of the concert. 

Lin wishes she could have met the first Clancy, but she remembers the first time she saw the second Clancy up close. There was something about both his interior and exterior self, a presence. The Banditos welcomed him to their world with another musical celebration, and a special monumental testament to his first escape. They’d recovered the car wreck after Dema’s investigators were done with it, and set harmless flames within its frame. 

Wanting to start over now, fully committed to rebellion as Clancy the Bandito, he had his head shaved, and was taught their colours, from yellow to red, in tape that Torchbearer provides from the outside world, like the shavers. 

But again, somehow, Nico found their camp. Lin wasn’t there to see it. She’d already gone to bed when a devil walked amongst her sacred space. Those sitting with Clancy by the fire froze in deep-rooted raw fear. Clancy was grabbed by the neck, rendered motionless, and was dragged off, leaving a path in the gravel. 

Nico had apparently had enough betrayal from his once-loyalist. Both the car and the letters of Clancy leaked online were then linked to the one man. As Nico likes his nickname Blurryface, he assumed Clancy took up the name as a pseudonym. 

They left the smouldering wreck there as a marker. 

And Clancy was imprisoned for good. 

All the files he had uploaded to the special page on dmaorg.info, the whole account he had used, was terminated. 

He was only let out of his cell to work on a television show for the bishops. A big splash for the new technicolour technology. They shackled his creativity. Clancy had no idea the words of his predecessor and his own schemes had gained notoriety amongst the whole populace. So, the bishops used him as the new face of the United Vialists of the Sacred Municipality of Dema. A celebrity, as real as the corpses they eventually seized to host the programme. 

Years went by, a hiatus in the wilderness, when Banditos hardly heard of Clancy or escapees. The camp just moved from place to place, staying alive. Lin wished then that she’d spent more time with the man when he’d sat at the fire. They all felt like they could levitate with him amongst them. For those years, their feet were too firmly planted. 

Meanwhile, varying bishops would oversee Clancy’s songwriting for the variety show, Good Day Dema. Always Keons was present, but never Nico. When he had finished, Clancy named the album he had created Scaled and Icy. On the surface, an allusion to the dragon figurine Keons had gifted him, his only companion in those sessions, but the title was also an anagram of Clancy is dead. Keons must have known. Perhaps because this Clancy took the name of the Clancy he loved like a son, Keons softened to the idea of helping the rest of the populace, all his sons. 

In the buildup to the livestreamed special, Clancy’s terminated page on dmaorg.info was used instead to market the Feature Performance Event. Keons oversaw this, knowing the hidden messages Clancy had placed would reach the right people, would set the record straight. The anagram, if Nico understood it, could also be seen as clever propaganda from Keons. 

When rehearsals began, Torchbearer appeared to Clancy as a drummer and surely aided in the symbolism of aspects of the show, set pieces reflecting realities well outside the walls and only in the saturated dreams of its creator. But aspects of real events and the Banditos were fictionalised to appease the bishops, so citizens would continue to believe they were just legends, despite the evidence right in front of their eyes. 

That was when he relayed Clancy’s situation to the Banditos, pink spray-dyed hair and all. Hope seemed lost—there was no way the caged creative could be freed, guarded so deep within the complex—though Torchbearer continued his bandmate role in Clancy’s mind, through the whole performance. 

Thinking about the iconography and the music of that era, Lin realises… the wavier version of their pitchfork E symbol is so similar to the logo the band chose, like the shape of a sai, Scaled and Icy… Huh. 

Keons pushed for further change, and four years on from the Banditos’ complete diversion at the Annual Assemblage of the Glorified, Clancy was made to perform for premiere citizens of Dema, those closest to self-destruction. Before fully committing to Vialism, this batch were allowed to see the outside world as Clancy once had, a last supper and party on a submarine. Art infected by the artificial. Alchemical artifice. Horrific puppetry, power beyond all comprehension. Her own words echo back to her, as they did in the cave. But I believe in our cause. All Lin knows is that Torchbearer’s projection is staying by Clancy’s side on that voyage, and they must be on their way back to the concrete coffin now. I believe in Torchbearer. What happens next, only he knows. We deserve the truth, but we deserve his plan to succeed. But how could any of this have been planned? He must believe this time to be different. 

He must believe in this second Clancy. 

She is caught up in this monsoon of a timeline, a storm of thoughts, on the solemn, somnolent walk back to camp, whilst they gather the natural roots and fruits from the landscape, until something wakes her— 

Mewing? From behind a boulder. 

Preston and Brikka let her take the lead, as she treads carefully to get a better view. 

Three cheetah cubs are huddled together. Their fluffy coats are the cutest thing she has ever seen, their little eyes so bright, open, calling mouths so pink, little tails! For a fleeting moment she ponders the possibility of a pet cheetah. But where’s their mother? She must be coming back soon. They should move on. 

The cubs are obviously distressed to be calling like they are, though. 

“Sahlo Folina,” Lin sings. “Sahlo Folina.” And soon Preston and Brikka join her in the Banditos’ chant, their call for help, the song for when you’re lost between two places. 

“Sahlo Folina.” 

The repeated phrase, the blending of their voices behind those important lengthened syllables… It does calm the cubs. They quiet. 

Looking at their sweet faces, their whole nature, almost brings tears to her eyes. They are so perfect, a balm for the soul, a light beyond all fabricated neon. So perfect, wild and free and so cute! If only everyone alive could experience this and see the pointlessness of their obedience to others’ rules. Would this sight even change the minds of the bishops? Could even they relinquish control if they could truly experience the world like this? In all its tumbling joy? 

“Come on, Lin.” 

She backtracks to catch up. As they carry on the path back to camp, the mother cheetah slinks over the hillside back to her children. Her coat and the way she moves is exactly as the ancient artists depicted. Cave art brought to life as if no time has passed at all. 

Visionary. 

Torchbearer meets them as they approach the smokestacks and yellow flags of home. 

“Sorry, Lin. We’re packing up camp,” he says with a sigh. 

“How come?” 

“We need to head southwest.” 

“To Port Vial?” She knows it’s been a particularly icy winter over there. 

“No, no. Not that far, to the cliffs facing Voldsøy.” 

The violent island, as it’s known inside of Dema. Banditos never go there either. It will be a long journey to where the island is in view from the mainland. 

“Torchbearer,” Preston begins. “We need to ask you about something. We weren’t just gathering food. I’ve found a cave…” 

“Do you know about the symbols down there?” Brikka asks. “How old are they?” How old are you? 

Torchbearer smiles. A rare sight. He’s usually so determined, or elsewhere. 

“Yes. Like this Clancy is the… second—to bear that title, many before have fought with me against Vialism.” 

“You’ve failed each time?” Brikka asks desperately. 

But Torchbearer’s eyes have that glaze which means he is elsewhere, in one of his other aspects. He must be guiding Clancy… on Voldsøy? Did Torchbearer somehow intercept the sub like the car? At least they got some sort of answer, not that it was the most reassuring. 

The trio leave him be. 

Lin helps strike camp, takes inventory of everything there in their packs. 

They always move on. Always.

 

NO KIN

This place, my place, however, seems devoid of the romance and wonder that the old stories tell. But somewhere between the iron order and infallible precision of Dema, a hum of wonder exists. It’s this quiet wonder that my mind tends to gets lost in. This hope of discovery alone has birthed a new version of myself; A better version, I hope, that will find a way to experience what’s beyond these colossal walls.

 

“…lo Folina… Sahlo…” Lin is jolted back awake by Soren’s cry. It’s as black as the bishop’s ashy ritual substance outside. 

She quickly shoves on her boots and rushes out to the torch store. 

For nights, Soren, one of the Banditos’ watchers, had volunteered to sit by the small fire on the hilltop, while the rest of them rested just lower in the valley, out of the sea breeze. Soren also happens to be a great ukelele player, so they’d all drifted off to her occasional noodling and subdued singing. Last night, Carmen joined her, providing Soren with a scarf and coat matching her own. 

Serpentine, the Banditos run for Soren’s fire, torches in hand. She and Carmen already have theirs lit and raised. Lin rushes past Torchbearer, still sitting by the remnant of the main campfire. His eyes are glazed—clearly, in Clancy’s mind, he’s by his side, guiding him to hold up his torch, and so is remaining well out of sight to maintain his best-intentioned illusion. 

Lin’s still getting over what Torchbearer told them on the way here. Keons is dead. Somehow—why won’t Torchbearer tell them how?—the bishop seized the body of a dragon from the ocean floor. Not the toy winged kind, but one just like she saw represented in the cave. 

Banditos were virtually myths within Dema before the publishing of Clancy’s letters, and the concert on the convocation. The dragon cave art seemed fantastical to her. Now to know that there was once a dragon somewhere beneath those waves, recently reanimated! Trench really is a continent of infinite discoveries and connections, like the folds of a brain and its synapses. 

Torchbearer’s third self was with Keons, witnessed him using some other technique to the bishops’ alchemy in some secret place. But he was discovered, and stabbed to death by the other eight, though not before he controlled the dragon to sink the submarine. Lin was surprised that Keons overtly rebelled against Nico, but even more surprised to hear the bishops killed one of their own. She hopes most survivors of the sub—especially the rest of the band which Torchbearer always seemed buoyed to be playing amongst—made it back to Port Vial, to live some other life there. Torchbearer guided Clancy to Voldsøy, for some sort of training. But he didn’t know how long it would take, which night would be the night when they’d make contact. 

It must be tonight. 

As the serpent of sprinting bodies becomes a hydra, more and more blazing flares join the clifftop line, looking out across a section of the Paladin Strait to the island’s shores. Others just rush to the ends of the line, their torches lit by fire-starting kits and then their neighbour’s flames like dominoes of fire. As Lin joins the flickering mass, she just sees Clancy raise his torch that much higher. 

Such a tiny speck of orange in all that darkness. The ocean’s blacker than black. The sky is too, and filled with sea fog. But that light shines. Just as he had amongst them at the camp. 

He’s so close, almost close enough to swim the Strait. 

The feeling is electric amongst the Banditos. Clancy, so much more now than when he was taken back to Dema, is in view. Torchbearer’s plan must be proceeding to the letter, no pun intended. 

And it proceeds perfectly on the following days, heading for the more forested southeast coast, closest to Voldsøy, where Clancy will land. He must have a boat to cross even the narrowest part of the Strait, but Torchbearer’s being as tight-lipped on that as before. Torchbearer’s said Clancy will explain everything in his own words when they meet him again. But for now, Clancy’s figuring it out for himself. When he’s writing and sketching and training, Torchbearer can afford not to be present. Even when one of his selves is with Clancy, his body can continue to walk on, a little spookily. 

They are constantly on the move. 

On the first night, something must change with Clancy, some progress. Torchbearer sends their fastest runners, Tari and Wendt, with light packs to make the distance back to Dema. The rebellion is building on the inside, and there’s something they need to retrieve for Clancy. Lin doesn’t hear the specifics, only flickers of the pair’s conversation about returning to the city, joking about maybe being able to investigate who the bishops were before they were bishops, their true ages, if they had families. 

Lin, Preston and Brikka agreed to keep their cave art observations to themselves until Clancy is settled back amongst them, and they fully grasp the whole plan. But what if the others knew? Would some take heart, and others lose it? Who is she to decide? She has no abilities. It’s a burden she hasn’t had to bear before, so different to the practicalities of pitching camp. 

On the second night, she overhears Gwen and Hilt, the two young people whose journeys were forever changed by being brave enough to investigate the diversion those years ago. Inspired by the sight from their windows, and the traces of colour left behind, they found their own way out of the city to join the Banditos while Clancy was in his cell. 

“Seeing the nine towers silhouetted by the moon from the clifftop… I swear, they were supernaturally looming in the glow,” mutters Gwen. “It’s just like I wrote you, it’s still tormenting me. The dreams and life that place robbed from us, robbed the whole landscape. It’s an arrogant eyesore to vialist vanity. Just so… it’s just so pointless, isn’t it?” 

“Gwen. It’s like I wrote back. Cheer up! We’re not there anymore. Don’t dwell on what they took. But what you’ve gained. We’re here now, fighting and free. Don’t take that for granted. We defeated that place. We discovered ourselves. And I’m pretty proud of us for that. I’m proud of you. And now we’re in a place to help others, with Clancy! Just think, the pain was worth it, to be there to witness their first concert, for him to wake us up, and now we’ll get to meet him! I can’t wait! I’ve prepared my own letter, in the style of his, with my own story.” 

What a gift. 

The woodland is a welcome break from the dark plains of the southern coastline. 

Whilst they make camp in a clearing in the forest of Voldskog, Torchbearer sends three more ahead, Nick, Chris and Jordan, towards the bayou shore. He has the rest create a bonfire to welcome Clancy again with heat and cheer, just like before. 

Assembling the pyre is such a community activity. The Banditos are alive like an ants’ nest, as anticipation builds and they sing a chorus. But once it is done, Torchbearer quiets them all. They are to wait at the edge of the clearing with fire-starting kits. 

When Clancy nears, Nick, Chris and Jordan will light the bonfire and Torchbearer will cease his projection and go to meet Clancy as his true self. It will shake the man, still so certain of the corporeality of the aspect of the being beside him through shows, sea swells, island adventures and the ride across the Paladin Strait. Clancy was never really alone, yet was by himself that whole time. It will be a lot to navigate. 

Once Torchbearer has given Clancy his gift, then they will light their torches, and show they are all there for him, that they have not lost faith. Torchbearer explains in hushed tones that Clancy’s journal is restored on the website, using Keons’ access, that a rebellion has really built within the walls of Dema, and that the outfit he sent Tari and Wendt to smuggle out is the uniform those in the city will know as their leader. Clancy will wear it to unite those inside and out, but for now, Torchbearer will project the mask into his hand, like he did the jacket long ago. 

They wait for darkness to slowly envelop them, dispersed away from the bonfire, while Torchbearer strides through the woods out of sight of them all. Is even he nervous? 

When Clancy arrives out of the woods and into the firelight, it’s hard to recognise him. Painted orange by the inferno, he’s a weary figure in black. Black head to toe, from his beanie to his cloak and shoes. 

Lin can’t be sure, but it looks like he carries antlers in one hand. 

Then everyone’s eyes are on Torchbearer, standing there, the fire and all it represents between him and Clancy. He holds his burning light high. He raises his free hand to lower his bandana, to show his face. 

Clancy, oh poor Clancy, looks beside him, as if someone was there… 

Even at a distance Lin can see his face scrunch then go flat, while the cogs whir and click into place and the machine in his mind spits out a feeling of betrayal. Then as if smeared, he marches towards Torchbearer, who mirrors his pace. 

When they’re face to face, Lin doesn’t know what will happen. 

Silhouetted by the towering flame, Torchbearer hands Clancy the mask only he can see. 

He looks down and takes it. 

Lin lights her torch from Hayden’s, gazing back over to see Clancy look Torchbearer properly in the eye. 

His odyssey is at an end. 

“Welcome back to Trench.” 

Torchbearer goes to perform their handshake, but Clancy is instead looking their way, to the Banditos. She can see a healing scar on his nose, similar to the one he first had when stumbling through Trench after escaping the car. Hesitantly, Lin and all the rest huddle closer. 

“That small eerie island has made me a weapon.” 

His voice, his words, as powerful as the light and heat behind him. 

Straight to business, Clancy takes his journal out from under his cloak and addresses them, Torchbearer lingering by his side. Lin can now see a sign on his collar in red ochre… one of those skeletal outlines, spine, ribs and skull. 

“Eight days straight I spent on Voldsøy. Eight hours each on the eastern cove.” He lifts up the pair of antlers and it’s like they strike Lin in the chest. She senses a similar reaction from Preston and Brikka. 

“These antlers were gifted to me from one of the inhabitants of Voldsøy, named Ned. His people taught me, watered me at their pools and fed me their bread. They are a device, some sort of neurological expansion. They are also a psychokinetic weapon. As I was waiting for… my torch to be mirrored by you all, I realised I had felt the power of these spikes before. Perhaps you know the rumours of Dema as true, that the bishops not only have the power to smear and control their populace, but that their seizing extends to the dead. 

“The glorious gone of Dema are not just a means of control. Vialism teaches that their souls go to paradise. But their souls are used like batteries. Before they are buried, they are laid on slabs, and their bodies seized by a bishop. 

“The poor souls working in those cellars not only slave away blowing glass, but then catch the breath from the corpses given second lives. The breath of the reanimated is the element in the neon tubes of their own grave markers and the lights of the living. Before they are heated and made to glow, though, the tubes are left in basins, for the impurities to condense as liquid, passing through the glass membrane. This black substance adds to the sea of it that the bishops covet. Every morning they must ritualistically apply it to their hands to maintain the power in their bodies, expressed in the blackness of their lower faces. 

“The bishops exploit every citizen for their own longevity. They feed on their host’s soul as they seize it, which produces more of the substance used to control, which feeds their hijacked religion, which leads to more… gone. A cycle.” 

Torchbearer shows no reaction while many of the Banditos gasp. Lin’s heart just drops more. Everything in the cave, everything she’d thought. All the nightmares she could conceive, all the dreams caught in the eyes of those cheetah cubs. A war in her mind’s eye. 

The bishops lead the masses to early graves just to lengthen their own lives. 

“I know, it’s a horrible conclusion to arrive at. A cycle of death with no end, only more power for those necromancers in their towers. This power is a corruption of something ancient, sacred. In a time before Vialism, antlers like these were the only way to seize available vessels. The creatures that they grow from were guardians of the whole continent. And they used the power for good. The spirits of every living thing were connected with this power, and no memories ever died. Yes, the inverse of bishops’ amnesic smearing. Bodies were inhabited to witness flashbacks of entire life stories. Stories, passed down not just orally but through transference. Not seized as we know it, but grasped before meaning faded. Learning from the past, rather than erasing it. 

“Inspiration, creativity. They weren’t stolen-moment sparks in the darkness. They were the sunlight. It was a world ruled by a religion of peace, not fear. It was the paradise, and Vialism swapped interconnectedness for immortality. 

“The Clancy before me helped Keons understand this. He had always been interested in the old ways, the power of creativity and songs to name the world, express emotions and unite its one people. I understand you know of Keons’ death at the hand of the other eight. 

“My introduction to seizing was a baptism of fire. When I first washed up, I was soaking and freezing. I… was guided across the island, through thick grass and forests filled with circle charms made of twigs and effigies with bird skulls. Occasionally I saw Ned’s antlers ahead in the foliage. At the entrance to their cave, the beings had left these fresh clothes for me, and a pack of supplies, like a cage crafted of more sticks and bones. When I fully saw them in my torchlight, they bounded further in, leading me to their cozy fireplace. A sacred place in the middle of the cave system, again adorned with bones. I sat with them, studied them, their big paws and bellies, their spread ears and most with little horns. They passed round a ladle of something chemical-tasting but warming. And though they never spoke, I felt amongst friends. 

“But when Ned left, I followed him out into a cove, into snow. Somehow, it was a new day and… he broke off his antlers, these antlers, and gave them to me. All the others of his kind were then somehow across the top rocks of the cove, like you all once were in the gorge with the petals, looking down at me. When I looked back, Ned had vanished. That was when I heard his name, though, like a whisper on the wind. Ned. I later learnt he had reappeared in one of their pools, little stubs ready to grow again. 

“Behind me, as one, the rest of his people gestured, and I followed, holding the antlers over my head. Suddenly I saw all sorts of colours, blues, greens and purples—I let them all slide over me—and then… I saw through Keons’ glowing eyes. Ned’s antlers linked me with a pair Keons had kept locked away, artefacts from his visit to Voldsøy as a younger bishop. He had learnt from Ned’s people, and stayed in contact through the device they gifted him. I think he knew that using them would alert Nico and the others, and yet he used them to save me, to send me to the island. He seized the sea dragon which sunk Dema’s submarine. 

“And so, I seized the body of Keons. I saw through his veil, as his body reanimated upwards as I inhabited it fully. It was all instinctual, movements held within me. Not so much muscle memory as soul movement. I could feel the antlers in my hands back in the cove, but I could see Keons’ older, stained fingers. 

“You’ll be pleased to hear that the last acts of his body were not to crumple to blades in his back, but to dance as a free spirit, like he did in his youth, before his skin was rotten with Vialism. I didn’t even control all of that. They were his memories flowing through me. Then we grabbed one of the rods of neon he had surrounded himself with for the dragon-seizing ritual. It smashed with cyan sparks, and a heatless fire erupted. That was when I lost control, awoke in my own body like jolting out of a nightmare. 

“But, as I said, I had felt the power of the antlers before that moment. Before I ever dreamt of tricking Nico, I’ve dreamt of flying. I know now that those were the eyes of seized vultures I was seeing through. I somehow was born with the power to intercept the bishops’ psychokinesis, to see the things their living hosts see, and to reclaim moments smeared away from the glorious gone surrounding Dema’s constructs. 

“When Clancy self-destructed, I had the first episode of many, seeing myself fallen in the gorge and Nico, the rider in the river. It was like an out of body experience, watching from his crevice hiding place. From that day onwards, I would have blood red visions of a world so unfamiliar. I’ve only seen comparable architecture at Port Vial. I know now that these were memories of people long gone, childhood memories of people from the port, or even other continents, before the city was created, long repressed. I was in a snow-laden abandoned building, in a public square in front of some gateway, cycling down a street on a tricycle, in a forest alternating dark to brightly lit, on a dark track with men in strange masks and outfits, or in prison. So many lives, memories smeared like fresh ink. 

“In my cell I had similar visions, inspiring set pieces for their event, of performing in front of a crowd, of cycling home from a store, standing on a frozen lake, walking white corridors at night, making an image in the snow, having my hair cut in a garage, following a raised path through frosted woods, climbing higher and higher buildings until I was atop a tower taller than any of the bishops’, in a city so much larger, putting on a show in a massive underground garage… 

“Throughout my life I’ve seen things differently to most citizens too. I have been an exception. Perhaps that’s why Nico let me so close. I could see the hosts of Good Day Dema decaying. I could see the robed figures on the submarine were puppeteered cadavers.  

“Seizing Clancy’s empty vessel was something I had no idea I was doing, but somehow we connected, and perhaps there is a part of him in me, which drew me to his letters, which makes our handwriting so similar. I am Clancy, in more ways than one… 

“Until the moment I picked up those antlers, I thought all of these episodes were me battling my inner self. But it was the bishops’ unnaturalness that I was tapping into. I was under assault from everyone Nico has led to death. All the glowing eyes. And so I say this for them. 

“For years, I thought the cycle I was breaking was my own failed perimeter escapes. Or my own creative mind turned against me. But the cycle to break is their dominion over other souls, their consumption and pollution of something sacred, the connection that all the animals of Trench still know… that we all once knew in our bones when we walked not as outlaw heathens but living according to the laws of the land, amongst beings as magical as Ned. They were thought to be extinct.” 

Etched in the surface. 

Painted over the grey. 

Symbols and shades of ochre that have slowly lost their saturation through elapsed eras. 

The cave wall is a tessellating tapestry. A metamorphosis, and yet a recurring cycle of images, faded, but their meaning remains. Memories… 

It was all laid out so long ago, as clear as crystal, and repressed. 

Lin has never felt so seen, so inspired, so angry, so hopeful, so sad, so faithful, so awake, so thoughtful, so alive. She will stay alive to see Vialism ended, for all. 

“We are bringing their magic back. We are taking it all back. 

“Ned’s people taught me how to sense and select vessels to seize, how to return to my own body more safely. They taught me more movements too, the antlers magnifying some force within me, in the other sense of psychokinesis. 

“I… Torchbearer and I both believed that this power would change the momentum of this war. And it has. I outsmarted the bishops. I began to seize the glorious gone still preparing for burial, yet to have their gravestones crafted. I found my people in the city, those who now run my site. I even dictated a new letter to someone this morning, named Ryan, before crossing the Strait. With a rebel named Laura I created a uniform for Clancy, so as I spoke to larger and larger groups of rebels through different vessels, leaving embers of inspiration, they saw the same leader who was once one of them. The spark from before my imprisonment grew into a torch, and with my final speech as we just landed, it is an inferno. 

“We will destroy and rebuild.” 

But then doubt crosses his features. 

“Wait… all those gathered in the hall this morning to hear my words, see the presentation of all Clancy’s notes, and learn our plan to win… I couldn’t maintain control for that long… did they see the face of the vessel?” 

For the first time, Clancy looks back to Torchbearer. 

He instantly reaches out a hand to reassure him. 

“While I was… tying up our boat, I projected myself to all of the rebels, in my real form, this form. I explained to them that it was no bishop trick, that it was you speaking from afar. I followed up your speech with one of my own, reinforcing everything you said. They have smuggled your uniform out of the city walls. That illusion is shattered, but they will still clear the way for you to climb that tower, while we attract the bishops’ attention from the outside.” 

Clancy nods along, but then steps back, and Torchbearer withdraws his arm. 

“The illusion is shattered? What about my disillusionment? I thought maybe you were seizing too, there with me within Dema, gathering their attention. I thought I was seeing you like I saw myself in the reflections. But that was just a third layer of lies.” 

The electric excitement amongst the Banditos morphs to taut-rope tension. 

“Clancy, it was the only way I could be with you. You must have known… since the road… that I was with you in spirit, when I couldn’t be there in body.” 

“Didn’t you know how much I was struggling to get everything sorted in here?” He gestures to his head with the antlers, and Lin has to look away. “And just as I had stopped feeling afraid, just as I began to feel powerful, you pull the rug out?” 

“Clancy, not here.” Torchbearer steps forward. “Banditos. You have heard our plan. We will march on Dema, Clancy will climb the tower, and use his psychokinesis, the power of the antlers, to counteract the bishops’ alchemical power. He will destroy them. He will free the whole continent from Vialism. He will break the cycle in half.” 

“Thank you,” Clancy says. But he lets the invisible mask fall from his grip. He must have realised it was another projection. Each Bandito too must grapple with their own realisations, born from everything just laid out before them. 

“I am sorry,” says Torchbearer. “And I will not give up on you.”

 

DO YOU FEEL AT HOME

A lifeless light surrounds us each night. Never could I imagine that something so luminous could feel so dark. It’s this glow that reminds us of the dreamless existence we’ve been sentenced to. But what I call a sentence, others accept as normalcy.

 

Clancy’s been travelling with them down the coast, but at a distance and whenever they pitch, he wanders into the wilderness to think. Sometimes he takes the antlers to practice as a weapon; sometimes he takes one of the camp’s ukuleles to reconnect with his creativity—a man divided. This time, while he was gone, Tari and Wendt rendezvoused. His uniform is within one of the Banditos’ more ornate chests. Torchbearer even had that planned.

They’ve all had a lot of time to think on what Torchbearer kept from them all. Clancy’s revelations paint everything Lin’s thought, everything she’s heard, everything she’s known, in new shades of light. It’s certainly radicalised them all. Living in the wild seemed to be rebellion enough, living to spite Dema’s religion of death. But that was never enough. It was worse than she ever feared or theorised. 

There can be no more neutrality with the necromancers and their construct. Clancy has shown them that. Lin knows now that she always sensed his exceptional nature. But even that has changed since he’s learnt to consciously seize like bishops, she thinks. 

Fighting fire with fire. 

After the speech and conflict at the Voldskog bonfire, Torchbearer stayed by the flame while Clancy was properly welcomed in again. There was merrymaking, but it all seemed an act somehow. An act of defiance in the face of the truth of their world. An act all the same. 

Clancy was peppered with questions, comments expressing inspiration, from and for him. When they first saw him, many pointed out, he was such a different man, confused in that gorge or amongst them for one night. He was just beginning his journey. Gwen and Hilt were still child citizens of Dema, only just waking to the terrible limits of Vialism. 

He let the two of them shave his head this time—the pink from Good Day Dema had been washed clean from his hair by the Paladin Strait seawater. 

A fresh start amongst his people. 

The camp began to change with him amongst them. 

Alongside crates and bags of vegetables to be cooked in their various scrounged pots, pans and grills, Banditos gathered yellow flowers again, displayed in string-tied bundles. Lin has also joined a new club. 

When she, Preston and Brikka talked to Clancy, they asked him more about Voldsøy’s inhabitants’ symbols. He seemed genuinely interested when they said they’d found similar in a cave here on the mainland, as if they’d answered some implicit demand for proof. 

The time to withhold from people was over. The trio’s story of discovering evidence of a world before Dema spread like wildfire, and soon most of their number had joined the so-called Skeleton Clique. 

There will always be those that celebrate creativity and life, and fight against the descent towards meaninglessness. The cave paintings of the ossuary towers before Dema were a celebration. They were monuments to the time when people still lived amongst nature, clean but not sanitised. The circular excarnation structures were kindred echoes of the even more ancient harmony, the circle of life, the cycle of death.  

Lin created a new flag, with a black stylised skull, and they flew it that night—an homage to the art of Ned’s people, but also an ode to the old religion of the site now known as Dema. A unifying symbol. Underneath we’re all the same. 

They’ve flown it since, right in the centre of this firmer camp that they’ve set up in the terrain they all know. A proper home base while they waited for Clancy’s uniform, and waited for the man himself to come around and finalise the plan. Items have been gathered from nearby stores, including more metal tent poles to supplement the sticks. Tents are sturdier with new sheets, or patched over with yellow tape. Rolls of it dot the site. Lanterns have been set up too. 

Meanwhile Baldur took Clancy’s Voldsøy notes and drawings, passing them on to the rebels in the city. He also took a scout group to set up a second encampment pitched closer to Dema, full of supplies. It seems like tomorrow morning, nearly everyone will light their torches and march to meet them there. 

But Torchbearer’s asked Lin to stay. They need a base to return to after the battle, a safe space. Magnus will stay with her, and Laci and Hayden, the other members of her camp making team. 

She doesn’t know how she feels about that. The bond between their two leaders, their guide and their weapon, will never be as it was. She would physically fight everything Dema put in the way regardless, not just for them, but for all those brainwashed or trapped.  

Perhaps her fight is a more difficult one, though—to cultivate a future. They have never lost a Bandito before. No one knows if the bishops have any defense to deploy outside the walls. When those inside Dema are given the choice to rebuild a better society or leave the city altogether, they will need Banditos to show them the way. 

Lin is preserving what they have now, forever. All the notes she’d taken, it’s just like Clancy said. Stories retold. Immortal memories, not men. That will be the legacy she curates in her exhibition for those new Banditos. It’s what Torchbearer must want her to do, keep the flame alive with Laci and Hayden, while Magnus keeps watch. 

Since Torchbearer and three more Banditos, Mark, Mason and Brandon, have taken the chest with the uniform to bring Clancy back, the camp is a hive of activity. Everyone is getting their things in order, or more likely just fretting, finding things to do now Banditos have become a militia. This is the fight of their lives, yet she’s sitting out. It’s always been her role though, to create and supply and maintain and observe and record. 

In another life, without the oppression of Dema to rebel against, she may have been a natural historian. She’d draw, or even photograph, Trench’s dazzling array of flora and fauna. An anthropologist too, with proper dedicated time to study Bandito life. She’d record all their songs, capture every person’s wonderful portrait, create a whole mosaic of film. Polarized polaroids. 

Lin would much rather tend than rend. 

Sitting near the fire in the centre of camp, she watches the five return. It seems today Clancy has accepted his uniform, but has waited to don it in front of them all. The chest is placed on a jutting rock. Torchbearer mysteriously peels off out of sight, while Clancy removes the covering Ned’s people gave him. 

He pulls out a black stole, with Clancy vertically printed on it in white, right way up morphing into upside down. A repeating pattern of Clancy, adjusted around his neck, impressively designed by a Dema citizen, the same Laura who washed and kept the uniform safe before Tari and Wendt picked it up. 

Clancy then pulls out a jacket, with red stripes across the shoulders, where yellow used to be. He holds it out in front of him, hesitating, considering, before he slides it on. The mask completes the look. It’s funny now Lin can finally see it, a sort of balaclava with pinches of fabric like the little ears of those cubs, and a band of red down the centre. 

Rebel red… The red uniform is something not conceived of before by Banditos. Some choose to wear shades of orange, but never the red of the bishops’ cloaks. Clancy is reclaiming that colour than none before him dared to embrace. 

But he doesn’t put the mask on, yet. He tucks it under the jacket as everyone sees he’s ready. They gather round as Clancy pulls a map out of the chest. It’s the original map that led to another of their symbols, a symmetrical medallion in the form of Trench’s mycelial-like network of gorges, ravines and valleys. 

Lin stands and joins the rest of the crowd, as Clancy holds it out over the edge of the chest. The final item Torchbearer had prepared for him is rope, ready to tie the antlers around his waist when he makes his run. 

Then she sees him, torch in hand. 

And he lays it out, what he had planned. 

Torchbearer traces their route for them. But by the way Clancy’s holding the map, it looks as if they’ll be heading south, rather than west, towards the city. 

“East is up,” Torchbearer reminds him. 

“You’re the judge,” Clancy says without much mirth. 

That coldness continues into that evening, but Lin’s warmed by all the goodbyes she and the others who will remain receive, while they’re all still together. A final night of normality. 

Still, she can’t stand that Clancy and Torchbearer can be so cold. Clancy moves from campfire to campfire, spending time with everyone, but won’t look at Torchbearer. At some point, after playing a song on the ukelele titled Trees, he leaves camp. Even if she can’t climb a tower and defeat a necromancer, she can help two friends be friends again. 

So when Clancy does return to the encampment and Torchbearer goes to meet him, Lin follows at a distance. Beneath the Skeleton Clique flag, they’re arguing.

“You’re just doing it to gather more power, just like the bishops!” It’s spooky seeing Torchbearer even slightly angry. 

“I need their power to defeat them! And the letters I write have much more impact than whatever you do for the people in the city. I was lost like them, and you were just waiting! Now you wrote me a letter?” 

“Because you wouldn’t talk to me! I wanted to know what you were thinking. The first letter he typed for you, you told me about but… you went away from camp yesterday just to write another. I had to let him know not to share them until the day we attack, tomorrow now. You sound too confident. It’s not an honest record or instruction, it’s a boast. A way they’ll never suspect, and a way they’ll never understand… I can reach them all… I can teach them. They can learn what I’ve learned, and fly by all of the constructs Dema has placed in front of them.” 

“So you’re quoting me now? It’s the truth, I can do it… And you appeared to Ryan just like me? And he let you read my unpublished note and then sat at the typewriter and wrote out one for you?” 

“It worked, didn’t it? Listen, Clancy. You read my note. You came back to camp with me, and put on this uniform. We brought you everything you need. We’ll get you to the tower. You’re the exception, but you can’t risk overcompensating. Fly by. You’re not a vulture. And they’re not all like you. They’ll need care, and time.” 

“Do you remember my name before Clancy? I’m starting to forget him. He’s like the Tyler Joseph they invented for their show, just a character in a band—the only band in the world for those citizens!—named after some text in the library. I am Clancy. The red, and it’s antithesis. Claim cyan. Another anagram for this convoluted world, as I composed behind that blue door… I’ve been thinking too much, I know.” 

Listening in when she knows she shouldn’t, a vulture flares its wings in Lin’s imagination, feathers dyeing the blue of defeat. But she will fight that image. 

“It seems so much simpler when you’re above it all,” Clancy continues. “That’s why I encoded fly by into that note. Do you want to know what I just got Ryan to put in? Or will you just go and spy it out with one of your other selves? 

“Tell me, please.” 

“I wrote about how the campfires of this camp feel like home. There’s clarity in the flame. The yellow and red. Banditos and the resistance I’ve created. And within it all, follow the torches. My last code mirroring what I wrote in my first letter as Clancy, white on black. We’ve come full circle. Do you remember how scared I was composing those words, to match the one that came before me? 

“They’ve never seen anything quite like this, and by morning, everything will be different. That’s what I wrote then, and I believed it. The revolution shall arrive with the sun. That’s how I finished that note just. This time it’s all coming to an end.” He gestures to the invisible line between himself and Torchbearer. “This is coming to an end.” 

Torchbearer looks hurt. 

“Did you come up with another clever anagram for that file?” he asks after moments of silence between them. 

“Maniac clay!” Lin exclaims as she joins the conversation, to much bemusement from the two legends bickering like schoolboys. 

The phrase just came to her. As an occasional potter, sculpting storage out of rolled sausages of Trench clay, she’d noticed that you can’t spell Clancy without clay. Something possessed her to fit the remaining I am nc into maniac. 

Her mind conjures images of a continually remolding chunk of the landscape rolling itself around, forming all sorts of forms in a wild, uncontrolled frenzy. Clay snowmen and skeletons and Ned’s kin and more creatures, animals and many-limbed monstrous mouths. Hopefully that doesn’t offend Clancy… 

“Haven’t you added an extra a?” Torchbearer smiles. “Hello Lin.” 

“I like it,” Clancy smiles too. “How much of that did you hear?” 

“Most…” 

“Well thank you for breaking us up there. You were one of those telling me about the cave art, right?” 

“Mmhmm!” 

“I’d love to see it, but there’s no time. Maybe when all this is over…” 

“So you will return to the Banditos?” Lin asks excitedly. We are your home? 

“It’s my intention to, yes, in some capacity, once the city is free.” He looks across to Torchbearer, still beaming. 

“And Lin created the Skeleton Clique flag,” Torchbearer points out. 

“I know Ned and his people would love it. Once Vialism is destroyed, you never know, they may come back to the mainland and we can make something new and all be friends again, like before.” Job done. 

Clancy takes hold of Torchbearer’s hand. 

The night is coming to an end. 

A new dawn’s light will ride the hills. 

The revolution shall arrive with the sun. 

They’re really doing it, for all those forgotten artists. 

For all those gone too soon.

 

IS THIS REALLY YOU

They are asleep. They’re so sure that they know the truth, and carry on throughout their day with the same meaningless tasks. They’ve forgotten to look up, and to look outward, to understand that this isn’t about ‘in there.’ This is about ‘out here.’

 

A face. 

A city. 

A war. 

A man. 

A torchbearer. 

A plan. 

A plan to enter the walls of Dema, climb the tower and burn it to the ground.

Lin wakes up, staring at tent fabric. It flaps and stretches like a continent experiencing an earthquake, like a heartbeat bumping a chest, like a waving hand. The dream projects from her mind’s eye onto that canvas. 

The dream was mythic in its simplicity… simple city. 

She dreamt of the images as cave art, animated by torchlight on ancient stone. A vision, a memory from the landscape, or a premonition, a prophecy… in paint so faded but in a composition so clear. 

The face is the looming darkness of a bishop, only a forehead of the lightest ochre framed in a red cloak hood. A blurry adversaire. Dema is so clearly depicted, its nine towers of varying heights. People with dashes of yellow and torches in hand run towards colourless figures outside the city, etched without paint. A man with red highlights runs away from the battle. A torchbearer, their Torchbearer, the same cross of yellow lines on his person, stands amidst the fight, watching. The man, Clancy, is depicted again climbing the side of a tower, towards a window. An inferno blazes behind the silhouette, burning the void of the bishop’s lower jaw. 

Again as she gets dressed for the day, questions swirl, relating to the truth of that dream. Was Torchbearer really there so long ago? A light that does not dim? Or did he find the art and use it as prophecy? Is it the basis of his plan? Or has his plan been cycling for aeons? 

Will the results of today entertain her faith? She must believe. 

The camp is a violent sort of quiet with only the three of them, and Magnus on the periphery, waiting, waiting, waiting. They’ve been alone for a whole day now. 

Lin just needs something to bring down her level of concern. It’s easy for her tired, wandering mind to alternate between madness, happiness, paranoia and fun as she imagines the events at Dema. Trying to fill her mind with images doesn’t help. An alien alphabet swirls through imaginings of caterpillars, butterflies, flowers, sheets of music, indoctrination, brain scans, reptilian eyes, open mouths, landscapes from all over a globe she’s never travelled. 

“Sahlo Folina!” 

The cry comes from Magnus while the rest of them are eating dinner. 

He’s running towards them. “It’s a death eater.” Another nickname for the birds, a remnant from that earlier time. 

Sure enough, a vulture swoops behind him— 

And swoops down towards them, screeching. 

It lands on one of the old wooden chairs, a scroll tied down one leg. A small nametag has also been attached by the bird’s ruff. 

Its eyes are soulful, not seized. The others are a little scared of seeing the magnificent creature so close, so Lin approaches it. 

Approaches him. Clifford has been scrawled onto the tag, in Torchbearer’s handwriting. He must have been able to bond with the vulture using his power somehow. 

“Torchbearer sent him,” Lin assures the others. “Thank you,” she says just to the bird, and Torchbearer. His presence, his eyes, his skin, the feathers from the largest blades to the tiny fluff, the way he breathes and shuffles, the weight of him as she lifts up the leg a little and unties the bundle, are all beautiful. 

She unravels a note addressed to Magnus, from Baldur. Lin hands it to him. Usually the Banditos’ letters to each other are just ways of speaking completely confidentially in such a cramped camp. Tent walls offer little sound dampening. But this one actually travelled! 

“He obviously wrote this in two parts,” Magnus clears his throat. “Magnus, I assume you’re back at base. We’ve found a spot on the outer perimeter of Dema, and set up camp here. We arrived thinking we would log the routines of the guards, and report back with their schedule. But things are moving fast. Then he must have written this second half before heading in… Magnus! Clancy has done it!” 

He’s done it! Completed the plan. Liberation! 

Lin and Laci and Hayden all cheer and stand and hug each other in the warmth. 

“The front line was able to push through the guards, while he found a way into the city. They distracted everyone, and now Clancy is in. So, the rebels inside did their part. But this next section…” 

All the new art painting in her mind suddenly seems to run and lose its clarity when Magnus hesitates. And she thinks… Why send this message now? Why not wait and tell them, or send a more complete message about the aftermath? Why did Torchbearer send a vulture and not just appear before them to tell them? Unless he needs all his focus on something in the city. 

“He is what he told us he was. He has led us all to this moment, and it’s his time to… take over…” Lin looks across to Magnus and all that new art is firmly washed away in a torrent. That violent quiet returns, apart from Clifford’s rustling. 

“Clancy will be even more powerful than Nico. They have no idea what is coming… Victorious, Baldur. What does he mean?” 

“Clancy is the exception,” Laci points out, sitting back down. 

“But I didn’t realise he wanted to take over like that.” Hayden stares into his bowl. 

“He must have been talking about it with the Banditos before they headed to battle. Baldur must have heard Clancy. I thought… Something must have changed.” It’s as if Lin’s on a carousel of skeletal animals and it won’t stop. “Overcompensating. Boasting about power. Tempted by control. Controlled by temptation. I just hope that…” 

So what of Clancy, the fate of the bishops, the citizens of Dema? What has happened? Baldur must have written that after Clancy made it inside but before the Banditos went into the city. And Torchbearer took the time to tame a vulture to send it back? Or… 

“I need to write a letter back to Baldur.” 

“Yes, okay,” Lin agrees. She quickly finds a page and a lead pencil for Magnus. 

Together, the four of them find the words under the watchful eye of Clifford. 

“Baldur, I’m happy to hear the movement has progressed, but I’m worried about your desire for Clancy to be more powerful than Nico. Is this what you wanted? Is this what any of us wanted? Nico’s power is the element that has given Dema and Vialism such an iron fist. More power, even if it’s Clancy’s power, will corrupt the movement we’ve fought so hard to bring to Dema. We are all one people, and people striving for hope and victory, not more tyranny. Clancy must know that! Fraught, Magnus.” 

After Magnus reads those last words, Lin takes the letter, rolls it up and fixes it to Clifford’s leg. The vulture knows what to do. 

Their message takes flight. 

But Baldur has already taken a new name with his new robe.

 

ULTIMUS CAPITULUS 

I’ve been here for a few weeks now, and while the routines of this world are comforting, and certainly easier than life out there, my mind keeps bouncing between the two places. Which one is home? Are the bishops protecting us, and the torches upon the hilltops dangerous? Or is it the other way around?

 

Lin is making a new pot when they arrive the next day. 

All four of them have found things to keep them calm. For Lin, it’s moulding clay. Something tactile yet giving, working with nature’s elements yet making something new. New shapes, curves, rims. There’s something special about that, and carving little shapes with a sharp stone, or using bits of twine to press in certain patterns to the wet clay. 

No fired vessel is enough to hold all her anxieties, though. 

It’s like all her pots blacken in the fire and crack apart when the Banditos return. 

Magnus sees the brigada approach, so the four of them meet them just on the edge of the camp. It takes Lin a while to take in all the new faces, silent, sombre. It takes her longer to realise the nine that are missing. 

Torchbearer approaches the four of them, so far spared whatever harrowing circumstances reduced the brightness of that morning march two days ago to dim embers. A big cylinder hangs beneath his pack. 

His torch is unlit. 

Her belief in the plan, her faith in him, remained somewhere until this moment. 

Torchbearer looks at Magnus first. 

“I’m sorry. He joined him.” 

“What?” 

Where is Clancy? 

“Clancy destroyed the bishops. But I was too late. He’s Nova now, given in to his vulturistic impulses.”

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

“He has become the new leader of the niners, and Baldur joined him, as Aldu. Seven more accepted robes from Nova. They took new names. Imbay. Ekell. Sueba. Riske. Tekeller. Annde. Gede. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.” 

Jim, Joe, Sue, Chris, Kate, Ann, George. She will remember their names. Lin can see their faces, their smiles and tears. Now their faces will turn to ashen flesh, their skin will start to break up and fall apart. 

“But, we have twenty-one new recruits to welcome. Lin, Laci, Hayden, Magnus… Meet…” Each one in turn awkwardly nods as they’re introduced. 

Aria is an artist. Eliot was a guard whose last transmission to dmaorg was a bold message for rebels to evacuate as Clancy climbed the tower, not knowing what was to happen and that Torchbearer would actually rush in. Mara had escaped Dema before, and dedicated herself to recruiting others once Clancy announced his return. Jansen was one of those recruits, as was Nia. Leo was an engineer in Dema, who knew about the ancient structures beneath the concrete. Sara was one of the first to search for proof that the glorious were a lie. She found Fredrik, a librarian in charge of the not-so-ancient vialist texts. Barea reach out to Rayana, another previous escapee, after seeing her dancing. Jirita worked in the necropolis gardens, and recruited Kinton, a guard there, by placing a yellow flower in his pocket. Karta was a baker, who recruited Pierre. His blackened hands reveal that he worked in glory, or rather death, crafting neon gravestones with all that entailed in the cellars of the towers. Not anymore. 

Mariam, Darius, Keira, Irina, Miko, Radhika and Kornelia were also all members of the crowd at Clancy’s—and then Torchbearer’s—last speech, all young people finding their way. 

But people like Ryan and Laura didn’t make it out, and so many more. 

Why, Clancy? 

Why? 

And Torchbearer seems to have moved on. He’s seen it too many times. Why? 

Everything Lin had prepared lies dormant and she just stands there whilst friends old and new settle into camp. Magnus too doesn’t move. 

Preston comes to see them. 

“I was one of the last to leave Dema with Torchbearer. We gathered lots of stuff, but you can see that later. As he stuffed the mask in his bag, I got his attention… I really liked this Clancy, I said. But that’s not Clancy up there anymore, he said. He’s out there somewhere. And we will try again.

“Lin, like we saw in the cave. We’re not the first rebellion. And we won’t be the last… I think I find comfort in that now. Someone else will take up the Clancy mantle, some soul still in Dema or out lost in Trench for us to find and teach. He’ll be better.” 

“But Baldur’s gone!” Magnus shouts. 

Lin, still reeling, watches as the distraught man strides towards the closest campfire… 

And hurls charcoal onto a tent. 

It collapses in on itself and blackens. Poles around it and everything they were supporting fall too and char—rope and the drying fabrics on them, crates, pots and pans, baskets. 

Banditos back away and chant Sahlo Folina, before Torchbearer approaches and his presence seems to make whatever fire was starting die down. 

He hugs an arm around Magnus, holds him and he breaks down and cries into his shoulder. He holds his jolting, weeping body for long moments as Lin sleepwalks closer. Preston finds Brikka, and they accompany her to see what Torchbearer places on the blackened fabric when Magnus slumps away to more caring arms. 

Torchbearer mutters something about the decreation of a man before walking away too. 

Her two cave-siblings hold her, either side, as she leans in. 

The smell of charcoal is overpowering. Her eyes water as she sees it’s a note from Clancy—his last note—that Torchbearer has placed on this ruined tent. A fitting metaphor for the way she feels. A fitting end to all this journalling and encoding, the legacy of two lost men. 

TB, 

The crown is heavy, but I can carry it. This city needs hope, and I alone can give it to them. But the city needs to feel powerful again, and snap out of the lifeless obedience they’ve been trapped in. I can give it to them. I gave them hope. I will be their example of absolute power. I feel alive again. 

—Clancy 

He just went too far, too hungry and selfish and why couldn’t they have stopped him? She tried, and they’ll try again but what’s to say it’s not just a larger cycle of Clancys and bishops, and Banditos and glorious gone and the next Clancy will kill Nova like the one she knew killed Nico and maybe Nico was a Clancy before too, who dethroned a Vetus bishop and Vialism still remains and Torchbearer is just insane for thinking it’ll turn out differently.  

No, that’s not right. 

Lin needs all the answers. 

Then she can enjoy some aspect of this pyrrhic victory with the freshly liberated souls. 

That evening, through scattered reports and remarks, she finds out what happened, pieces the whole chain of events together with what links she can fathom. It’s not a satisfying puzzle. The way things fit together make a picture no one wants to see completed. 

It was amazing how in the course of a week, a whole resistance was inspired, organised, mobilised. People were ready to receive Clancy’s Voldsøy notes. In the days building to the battle, they shared online a map featuring the port and the island, then Clancy’s report of creating the show and journeying to the cave, his psychokinesis diagrams and thoughts upon first receiving that gift, or rather the curse now, of that weapon and that power. 

While Baldur’s group was there, the rebels they met shared news from the inside. Dema had put up notices around the city, that enemies were planning to take it and citizens should report any unusual perimeter activity immediately. 

On top of that, someone at dmaorg discovered Clancy’s page. Letters were sent out to anyone who accessed the documents now part of an investigation against the delinquent, urging them to come forward with any information on his whereabouts. Little did they know he was just a ghost within Dema, moving from body to body. 

But someone else in the municipality snuck more into the envelopes of those they knew to possess rebellious spirit, including copies of the letter Ryan typed for Clancy before the journey across the Strait. A document was provided to make sure the letter wasn’t leaked, in the form of an official disclosure agreement, but with the link to the site handwritten on there. Citizens quickly found still alive in bold letters within the message, letting those not at the gatherings know that Clancy was out there. A newer map was also included in these special envelopes, alluding to the Strait. 

Some citizens even received copies of a report filled in by Nico years ago, detailing Clancy’s many crimes when he escaped and burnt that car. As if hearing about them in detail would sway them back to the bishops’ side. Sway, sway. 

Lin learns from someone else that all three of Clancy’s dictated letters were uploaded the day of the battle, with his hidden message and even her botched anagram as one of the file names. But something much more sinister happened the day of the attack. 

Nico was eventually notified, and went from door to door, window to window, finding all of those who accessed the website first thing in the morning. His distracted nature worked to the whole rebellion’s advantage, but those individual resistance members were horrified, closing their doors, windows and blinds, trying to stay quiet. 

Still Nico found them in a hasty fit of rage, searching their rooms like a hound in a warren. He snatched every rebellious thing, gathering their letters like death sentences. His black hands smudged them, and he even found Torchbearer’s dictated letter to Clancy, which hadn’t been sent with the others of Ryan’s to be scanned. But the rebels were spared when the other bishops spotted the Banditos coming using seized vultures. 

And so they sent out some huge lightning-like surge of power. By the time Banditos got close to the walls, the glorious gone on the eastern side of the city… were all seized out of the necropolis dirt. An army of bodies climbed the perimeter wall like insects, carrying tubes from their graves in smear-black hands. They descended just as quickly, raining down to the ground of Trench. With yellow eyes and pale faces, they stared the Banditos down. 

Lin can only imagine the horror. Their corpses would be quite well preserved in Dema’s necropolis. But being able to identify a lost friend’s face is infinitely worse than staring into rotten flesh clinging to bones. She dreamt of those etched figures in her vision of the battle. 

On Torchbearer’s command, the Banditos rushed the gone. The undead army was puppeteered to meet them, and they fought, flaming torches against lifeless neon. Once a corpse was hit with fire, they fell. 

Clancy broke away, and while the Banditos had the seven’s attention and the Dema rebels distracted any guards, he sprinted through the catacombs and emerged in front of the tower he climbed brick by brick, heading to the unguarded window at the top. 

When the dead came alive, Nico sped back to his tower, where Clancy met the seven bishops who’d summoned the undead army. Only he knows what happened next, once he was inside. His psychokinesis must have destroyed the bishops, because all the glorious gone bodies were released from control. 

And then it all went wrong. 

Nico had been waiting to strike. He’d mockingly written Dear Clancy in red over Torchbearer’s letter, and over several of the notices, while he’d lurked behind the door to the tower’s top chamber. 

Torchbearer, from down on the ground, sensed when Nico surged in and grabbed Clancy by the throat. Trying to smear, to seize, to smother him. Torchbearer appeared in his rebel red form in Clancy’s mind, while his body was on the line. One final connection, amidst the final confrontation. 

Torchbearer had to tell some of the Banditos how Clancy’s mind, in Nico’s grip, was filled with the red eyes of everyone Vialism’s leader had led to death, all those he’d controlled, whose memories he’d erased. Together, amidst raining ash, they fought them back, set them to rest in a hurricane of light. It was unlike anything Torchbearer had experienced before. It was one thing to insert yourself into someone’s vision of reality. Another to be within their unconscious mind, especially under siege from Nico. 

In the bright white light, both Clancy’s image of himself and Torchbearer disintegrated. All that was left was a black void. But Torchbearer fought to appear again and bring Clancy out of that erasure. He offered Clancy his jacket, just like he first left it as an offering in the car. 

Then Clancy pushed both Torchbearer and Nico from his mind, and the two of them fought. Two psychokinetic superpowers squaring up. Torchbearer came back to the battlefield to find Baldur finishing his letter. Then he and his squad led the way into the city, whilst others tended to their wounds. 

Torchbearer knew that Clancy and Nico not only physically fought, but battled through their shared memories. And in those battles, Clancy must have turned the tables, seized some of Nico’s memories. 

When Torchbearer first entered the room, he was launched back, almost back down the stairs onto the rest of the Bandito squad. Clancy, with the last try of his soul, created the symbol of the overturned neon gravestone and sent out a surge of energy from his fingers. 

Torchbearer gathered himself while the eight others ran past. When he came in, and stood in the centre of the group, scanning the room, he saw that only robes were left now of the bishops’ bodies. Some of Clancy’s blood was dotted against one wall. The antlers were snapped. 

He watched as Clancy tore down a red curtain. 

He watched as Clancy wrapped it around himself. 

He watched as Nova turned around to welcome them. 

From his bottom lip downwards, the man’s face was black. When he had taken Nico’s memories, he had also inherited the cycle of power to uphold. The rot, the corruption of the bishops’ power, had already left its permanent mark. Torchbearer was too late. 

Nova went down the line of Banditos, handing out the bishop cloaks. 

Only Torchbearer refused. 

Only Torchbearer descended those stairs, after gathering Clancy’s mask and the screwed-up pile of evidence Nico had gathered, the rebels’ letters. The Banditos all entered the city, only for the terrible news to spread. 

For some members of the city’s populace, it was simply a normal day. Their heads were still down, while a new man sat in charge of the same consuming regime of needless work and death. Giving their too-short lives to trivial tasks, in service to a lie. 

Torchbearer and the Banditos spent the rest of that day finding those ready to leave, returning their letters to them. All of both Clancys’ original typed and handwritten documents were freed, but the loyal Dema guards were on the lookout. So not everyone made it out. 

They sent Clifford back with Baldur’s letter because Magnus deserved to receive those words from his best friend before reality caught up. The vulture returned to the Banditos and their new recruits just as they marched away from the city walls. 

Even without discovering what Nova would do as Dema’s new leader, the citizens that escaped knew it would not be a safe place to stay. Even a force as large as the Banditos wouldn’t survive trying to fully liberate the city from vialists. Hiding and besieging weren’t viable either. 

Because whilst Nico was the dominant evil head of the hydra, there are so many bureaucrats, businessmen, lawmakers, enforcers, that enable that evil, that keep the city and its dmaorg propaganda running. The United Vialists are the body of the beast, and they are harder to chop off and burn. 

Even as Torchbearer, Preston and the few others made their final escape in the confused aftermath, history was being rewritten, redacted, restricted. Any video evidence of the glorious gone grotesquely reanimated to face the Banditos was censored. 

All that is left is digital remains. Maybe it’ll inspire others to search out the Banditos, to see the cracks in the system that they are cogs in. Please wake up. 

When Lin gathers herself, she moves towards voices and the flickering of torches. People are gathered around the burnt tent, a full moon watching over them. All the flowers from the camp have been arranged in a circle around the charred fabric, like a funeral memorial for the Clancy they all believed in. 

He’s dead to them. 

That realisation hits when she sees that rebels red and yellow alike are ripping up what must be their own letters to each other, those typed messages handled by Nico, mentioning the traitor Clancy… and the Banditos’ handwritten notes on their papyrus. They’re throwing them atop Clancy’s last note, wanting to cleanse that part of their past, say goodbye to the last few weeks. Magnus rips Baldur’s letter and the letter they composed together in one angry motion. Even Preston and Brikka tear their first mentions of the Vulture Tree cave. 

And Torchbearer watches. 

“So you’ve all decided?” Lin blurts out. “It’s time to say goodbye?” 

Say goodbye to everything they’ve ever made together? 

“We’re going to burn it,” says Hilt. 

“And then we can move on.” Gwen. Both of them must be heartbroken. Just kids, made to experience so much trauma and betrayal, just for thinking differently. 

Torchbearer is there, emotionless. Isn’t this going against everything he and Clancy preached when he returned to Trench? Can’t he see that their actions are hypocritical? 

Lin confronts him. “Why couldn’t you just have talked to him more? Why couldn’t you have been honest with him, with all of us, from the start?” 

“It had to happen that way… For him to believe I was imprisoned with him, to get on the submarine, to escape and become the weapon. That was the furthest we’ve reached.” 

“But how many Clancys have you known? Do their lives mean nothing to you?” 

“Their lives mean everything to me.” 

“But you failed, again.” 

“I know. But we will try again.” 

It’s not pass or fail then, but a progression. 

Lin will gather the ripped up letters and tape them back together. She has faith, or she prefers to think, that people can learn from the past, listen, act before it’s too late next time. After this whole saga, there is hope in all the little things. 

The world and all its wonders and horrors are unknowable in their complexity, but that is the beauty of art. To make meaning. To etch, to paint, to convey emotions, intentions. As long as stories live, then hope will never die. 

New stories are written every moment. The new Banditos add their name to their flag. 

Lin can already see Aria sketching a composition, unafraid of expression out here. Jirita and Kinton are sharing a passionate kiss after so long bound in their jobs. Others seem to be designing a flyer of their own to send back into Dema, to recruit more, to defy. 

Barea sings the song he composed for Rayana, based on her movements. Soren backs him up on the ukelele. And she cries hearing his melody and words, and she twirls as the tears fall and memory and reality blend together. 

And if you feel inspired, you should just go for it. 

“I wrote Clancy one last letter when I left the tower,” Torchbearer confides to Lin under Barea’s tune. I told him never to forget the raw fear that fueled him, nor his people, the rebels that needed and inspired him. I reminded him that we are all one. 

“I told him that we destroyed them so that we didn’t become them. That we must do better. Him, and me. All of us. We must do better. Everything you’ve felt. You’re not alone. 

“And I don’t dare tell the others. They need to believe in someone new out there. But I hope he’ll hold onto that message, hold onto us, and be changed, and change Dema for good. I’ll never know if he took that jacket from me or not, in his mind before he fought Nico. I don’t know, when he looked at me as Nova, if it was colourblindness or shame that kept him from meeting my eyes. I was just moments too late! Or too early… Two minutes, two seconds… 

“But I do know that the bishops’ power is less a part of him than it was Nico. The black had not stained as far upwards from his throat. Vialism’s grip even on its new leader is less. 

“And to see you save all those letters. You’ve inspired me, Lin.” He sighs. “Next time, we’ll all plan together. And I’m going to write a final note. We’ll hang it on one of the fishing nets in the centre of camp. It’ll be a message for everyone to see, to remember. 

“Always.”

 

And they shall let the lifeless body lie there, for two nights, or for three nights, or a month long, until the birds begin to fly, the plants to grow, the hidden floods to flow, and the wind to dry up the earth. 

And as soon as the birds begin to fly, the plants to grow, the hidden floods to flow, and the wind to dry up the earth, then the worshippers of Mazda shall lay down the dead (on the Dakhma), his eyes towards the sun… 

And when the birds begin to fly, the plants to grow, the hidden floods to flow, and the wind to dry up the earth, then the worshippers of Mazda shall make a breach in the wall of the house, and two men, strong and skillful… shall take up the body… and they shall lay it down on a place where they know there are always… corpse-eating birds. 

—The Vendidad 

 

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear: 

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year. 

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees 

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas. 

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you, 

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you. 

This time they will not lead you round and back 

To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track. 

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell, 

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell. 

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart, 

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart. 

—C.S. Lewis 

 

For me! Where do you live, where have you come from? For me!—I was dying every day and you were killing my boys and you did it for me? What the hell do you think I was thinking of, the Goddamn business? Is that as far as you can see, the business? What is that, the world—the business? What the hell do you mean, you did it for me? Don’t you have a country? Don’t you live in the world? What the hell are you? You’re not even an animal, no animal kills his own, what are you? 

—Arthur Miller 

 

The city gives us the feeling of being at home. 

We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place. 

To uproot oneself socially and vegetatively. 

To exile oneself from every earthly country. 

To do all that to others, from the outside, is a substitute (ersatz) for decreation. It results in unreality. 

But by uprooting oneself one seeks greater reality. 

—Simone Weil 

 

Wisely, we had decided to publish an installment establishing the system of notation for set theory, rather than wait for the detailed treatment that was to follow: it was high time to fix these notations once and for all, and indeed the ones we proposed, which introduced a number of modifications to the notations previously in use, met with general approval. Much later, my own part in these discussions earned me the respect of my daughter Nicolette, when she learned the symbol Ø for the empty set at school and I told her that I had been personally responsible for its adoption. The symbol came from the Norwegian alphabet, with which I alone among the Bourbaki group was familiar. 

—André Weil

 

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Thank you so much for reading. This was a labour of love for all of the pilots’ team and the whole clique. If you enjoyed my interpretation of the Trench mythology, I hope you’ll stick around and subscribe to my newsletter for updates on everything else I write. Or just find me on socials or at the next concert!