Through Her Mismatched Eyes I

Maximilien was not the only one to hear of Telos’ startling rise as the leader of a rebel faction. Other people had heard, and made maneuvers to either take advantage or to try and hinder his efforts.

As the Eaglets had grown in numbers, it became impossible to notice a new face slip in amongst the crowd. In fact, that happened on a daily basis, thus it was expected to see some new faces every now and then. So one day, when a new face, a feminine face, joined the throng, no one thought twice about it.

Her hair was scraggy, dirt was smeared across her face, and her eyes were this kind of dull blue, as if there were layers and layers of sadness and apathy rolled over them. There had been brightness once here, her eyes spoke, there had been vitality and innocence. But those things were gone now, those things had left and, I assure you, were never fucking coming back.

And she knew that, she knew that goddammit, she knew she had been robbed, transfigured, maimed. Her eyes were apathetic but not dumb. A terrible intelligence was evident on her face, and she moved through the encampment with obvious purpose.

When night fell, she began to watch Telos. She watched as he ate dinner, she watched as he drank and laughed with his closest allies. She watched all this with a blank face. Hours passed, and he finally got up to go to bed. He wandered down the side of one of the tents, and she followed. He stopped to piss, just outside his tent, and she pulled out a knife. She slowly approached, but he finished peeing quickly, and turned around in time to see her.

He foiled her attack and dragged her inside his tent, holding her up to the light, and a scared face stared back at him, the scared face of Cavillace.

Echo I

At the same time, a force was moving northwards, towards Tell Ramad from the Imperiya. Like the wind, it crossed great distances of land extremely fast, through the Rockies and Venice, up the Via Regia and towards Damascus.

This force was a man. The man was determined to help Telos in the fight against Eoin. He had caught word of the Eaglets and their recent mission to try and overthrow Eoin and his Agentes. It had been some time since he had seen any action, but this man, this man knew when his time was being called, when he could act for the good of mankind.

When he arrived at the camp, he wandered around it for a while, sizing up the force of the Eaglets. They had swelled in numbers to over five hundred, and they seemed pretty well equipped. Still, he wondered why their camp was never attacked. Eoin had more than enough Agentes, let alone men in other branches of the military, that he would be more than able to launch an overwhelming attack on the camp.

As the man walked around, he couldn’t get that suspicion out of his thoughts. Either Eoin was taking a long time to plan their massacre, or he was letting them stay here.

The man had spotted Telos setting up plans for a new raid. He walked up to Telos and shook his hand, explaining the problem he was beginning to suspect. Telos said nothing but let shock spread over his face: standing in front of him was Maximilien.

Desertion I

The grand campaign, as Telos’ subordinates called it, was going well, it seemed. After they had made their way to Tell Ramad, Eoin decided to reorganize the counter-insurgency in an effort to keep them out of the city. Patrols were set up, curfews established, and the Agentes, as always, slowly found themselves with more control.

As the constraints tightened on the city and its inhabitants, people were slowly won over to the cause of the Eaglets, and would flee for Tell Ramad and the freedom promised by Telos. A cult of personality was slowly developing around him, and while he seemed oblivious to it, Beatrice became increasingly worried about his ego, and how it would (at the very least) affect the cause.

But she had also become worried because he was paying less attention to her. She thought the cause had been about them, the two of them, avenging Skara Brae, righting the wrong. It seemed like he was more interested now, though, in overthrowing Eoin. Vengeance had been supplanted by competition, justice replaced with destruction.

Beatrice began to lose her desire to fight the good fight; it seemed like everyone was in it for the thrill, not the purpose. She felt excluded, left out, different. As they ran various guerilla attacks on the patrols, and laid bombs at checkpoints, and kidnapped higher ups for ransom, she drifted in and out of the camp.

She would wander the woods for days at a time, sitting by streams and crying gently. Sometimes she would fall asleep and wake up only when a deer licked her face. What had her life become? Death? Chaos? Revenge? What did any of these things matter?

She felt sick.

Eaglets IV

They came out of their houses like ants. It just happened: the Agentes didn’t have enough time to group and form any kind of substantial defense. It was like a sunshower. They came from nowhere and suddenly, in front of the southern checkpoint in Lviv, suddenly an army was bearing down on them, shots were being fired, the fifteen men at the checkpoint were overwhelmed.

They swarmed over the checkpoint, a tidal wave of violence, of screaming and shooting. Telos, it is remembered vividly by many who were there, Telos grabbed one of the leaders and shot him in the head, up through his chin. He then threw the body to the side as if it were a sack of coffee beans.

A lot of people talk about this attack as some kind of formative moment for Telos. It’s like his vision was fully realized, his vigor and belief in the cause crystallized, he became more than a leader, he became a symbol, a hero.

Some time after the events, famous painters would make vast canvasses (even murals!) of this event. The Liberation of Lviv, painted a little under a hundred years later, is perhaps the best known work in tribute to Telos and his deeds. A little exaggerated, in that Telos is portrayed with slightly large muscles, and there are many more than fourteen dead bodies in the picture. But still, the brush strokes are graceful and the coloring is inspired, with a glorious yellow-orange sun breaking through the skyscrapers in the distant background. It is undoubtedly El Lissitzky’s finest work.

Eaglets III

After the warehouse was torched, it was basically on. The Agentes in Rebus shut the entire Lviv district down, with checkpoints at every exit point out. This worked for a while, as it became difficult to organize in larger groups; operations were limited. Every few days, an Agent or two would be found murdered in an alley, but large-scale destruction had been temporarily halted.

Telos and Beatrice were desperate to communicate with the group at large. They needed to break through the checkpoint that led to Tell Ramad; there, they could freely set up shop and wage attacks on central Damascus with ease. Tell Ramad was a bit of a wild area, it wasn’t under any real kind of control. Obviously, Eoin wanted to prevent them from making it to Tell Ramad at any cost. If they made it there, the rebellion would have a solid foundation, a place from which to plan and launch attacks.

They wanted to use the internet to communicate, but it was certainly being watched. They would have to go analog. Telos remembered an old tactic that had been used in Algiers; he devised a hierarchachal network of relays. He would pass a note to one man, who in turn knew to pass it to three. Each of these three would be informed of the three they were to pass it to, and each of those three would inform their men who they were to pass it on to.

After a couple days, word had got back to Telos that the notes had made their way around Lviv. As per orders, upon reading the note, the piece of paper was summarily burned, to prevent the Agentes from finding out. Telos was pleased, and soon it would be time to break out of this city.

Eaglets II

The whole operation came together remarkably quickly, due to the rampant anger towards Eoin that festered in the city. It wasn’t entirely Eoin’s doing of course, a lot of people were furious with Minos as well, and the monarchy in general. Eoin was just unlucky enough to be in power. One hundred people met that night, the founding night of the Eaglets. Everyone was under the age of 25, but ready to fight Eoin and his agents with the last of their young breaths.

Telos made a point that they needed weapons, so the first operation would be against a barracks in the northern section of the Lviv district. He would take fifteen men and secure the barracks, then steal all the guns. They carried this maneuver out to perfection, and returned home with twenty pistols, a handful of machine guns, and various other supplies, such as batons and riot shields.

A few civilian houses were raided in response, but overall the agents were strangely quiet. Perhaps Eoin was nervous about overreacting. Telos enjoyed imagining him wracked with anxiety. However, this slight show of mercy failed to sway Telos’ mind. He had already started down his path. His course had been laid out the day Skara Brae had been destroyed.

He and Beatrice led an attack on a warehouse in the south of Damascus. The area was generally unpopulated; it was near the ports, and was used for storage of various items and vehicles. The attack was a show of strength, a signal to Eoin that they were not content with minor acts of vandalism and a single murder. They shot every agent in the building without remorse, perhaps even with a little joy.

Then they burned the building down. Beatrice and Telos watched it go up in flames, and somewhere in their hearts, life, hope, faith, breathed again.

Eaglets I

Word of Telos’ actions spread through the Lviv district of Damascus. Bakers gave him free food, department stores gave him free clothing, little kids looked up to him. He felt awkward, initially, with this sudden kind of fame, but as most people do he warmed up to it.

One day, while he was walking home, quite innocently I assure you, a young street boy ran up to him. The boy demanded that Telos form some kind of resistance, so as to fight Eoin, to take his power away. Telos sighed, explaining to the kid how hard it would be to achieve anything of use. A lot of people would die; were their lives right now worse than dying?

The boy was indignant. Jurek, he said, Jurek Bitschan did not take no for answer! Telos knew, dammit, he knew how they were being treated. Like they were less than human. It’s insulting. It was only a matter of time before they started dying! The abuse by the Agents would grow to such a degree, it was only a matter of time!

The boy, this dirty and scrawny boy who couldn’t be older than fourteen, was making some good points. Still, this wasn’t the kind of thing to be taken lightly: Telos said he would think about it. Jurek conceded and they parted ways. Fate had something to say on the whole matter as well, of course, and later that night, five men in another district were shot execution-style in an alley. It was generally accepted as a response to the murder of the agent.

Telos became depressed. The cycle of violence gaped at him. He knew what would happen if he went down this road. A few cops would be killed, then a lot of civilians would be killed or arrested, and the whole thing would spin out of control. He looked to Beatrice for advice, but all he found were her cold eyes, the eyes of a soulless woman whose town had burned.

It was like staring into a mirror.

Legenda Aurea III

She’s standing in a river. Not just any river; the Yangtze. The river is moving calmly, gently brushing past her. She is barely disturbed. Her hair, long and curly, a deep brown, is shifting uncertainly in the wind. Her arms are slightly outstretched, palms up, creating wakes in front of her, two small wakes. Her face is tilted slightly towards the river, as if she’s examining her reflection: but she has no eyes.

The water begins to move faster, angrily: it starts to shove forward, trying to push her down, push her under, to take her with it, but she is motionless, she is the strongest rock in this world and she will not move. The Yangtze is furious: it comes in a torrent now, slamming into her back. Water sprays high into the sky around her yet she moves not.

With great concentration, she raises her hands to the sky, and the Yangtze, as much as it hates her, as much as it tries to resist, it cannot, her hands command it, and slowly it rises up, out of the riverbed. At first the angle is not very impressive; a few degrees off the ground. She is the pivot point. If you looked at her feet, you would see the water hit a sharp angle and get directed slightly upwards.

She conducts it higher and higher, willing it up. The angle increases and surely enough, the Yangtze is soon shooting into the sky. Her face remains a cold stare. She is aiming for the moon, it is not yet high enough. Upwards it goes, ever upwards, until the angle is almost ninety degrees, not quite, but enough to be directly firing at the moon. She keeps it this way. She is determined to hit the moon.

And she does. Eventually. The water crashes into the craters on the moon. Now she smiles. The Yangtze groans. She will not let go, though. Sorry Yangtze. You have a new purpose in life.

Élan in Damascus II

Beatrice was surprised how much the budding relationship with Telos warmed her; he was equally surprised by how easy work became. When they got home, they would passionately greet each other, as if it had been a decade since their last meeting. They spent time only with each other now. They never went anywhere except to buy food and go to work. They lived in their own little world.

Then something happened. Maybe it was the passion suddenly in Telos’ life, or maybe it was the fact that he was just done with the whole thing. He got dragged into an alley to be beat, and instead of taking the beating and going home bloody, he grabbed the top of a trashcan and smashed it into the agent’s face. Then he kept smashing, he kept smashing, faster and faster, goddamn you you fucker, goddamn you to Hell, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you fuck you I hate you!!–

When Telos snapped out of it, the man was beyond dead. The blood drained from his face, Telos stood up and walked out of the alley, not even bothering to check to see if there were any police around. He went home and calmly washed off his hands, whistling the whole time.

The city went into an uproar as agents scoured the streets, looking for any sign or clue of the cop-killer. All that was found was the trashcan lid. Telos told Beatrice, and she worshipped him. She had been brainwashed into passivity, into accepting Eoin and the destruction of Skara Brae and her rapes: but Telos… he had fought back. This, this in front of her, this was a real man. This was her man, and he had killed a cop. Beautiful. Amazing. Godlike.

Élan in Damascus I

Telos and Beatrice made themselves at home in the city, taking on menial jobs as a waiter and a store clerk, respectively. While Eoin was securing his position as King of Damascus, they were grinding away in dirty workplaces, just barely earning enough to get by. Their clothes got dirtier and more ragged because they couldn’t replace them. Their hair became disheveled, and their faces drawn. Their eyes slowly lost any spark they once had, replaced instead by stone, stone forged in 11-hour workdays, back to back to back to back to back.

Their work routine went on for a few months. The Jinyi Wei took a stranglehold on the city with a presence on every block. Telos would walk home under the brutal stare of the harsh agents. He got beaten a couple of times, because he looked at them funny or they didn’t like the way he smelled. Beatrice was raped a couple times, also.

When it first happened, she came home and didn’t look at Telos for two hours. After she finally told him, he held her for another two hours. The second time, she just had a defeated look in her eyes; she wasn’t sad, she wasn’t angry, she was just tired and surrendering. It was then that Telos knew he loved this wreck of a woman, because he was just as much of a wreck and they could be wrecks together.

He made love to her for the first time that night; while Eoin was much harsher than Minos, he didn’t care about the relations men and women had. Telos took her that night, not to satisfy himself or Beatrice, but to let her know that not everything was wrong in this world.