The Demonic God Rises

The next day, Kai got up at first light. Obviously, he couldn't tell it was dawn since he lived underground, but his internal clock had wired itself to this time after almost a decade of routine. This was the best time to get out in the fields and sift through piles of trash for good parts. Where there was least competition, but more importantly, the grain wasn't as thick this time of the day.

Didn't rise up in great big clouds of black that seeped into every pore of your skin, every little nook and cranny of your lungs and stayed there, chipping apart the pink and soft flesh day by day until one day you collapsed coughing and never got back up.

Kai was more concerned about the grain than any competing Scrapper looking for parts. Leeva had weak lungs, and pops had told him take her along. He thought about pops for a bit, wondering what was up with the guy.

He'd tried talking more with pops and getting some more info, but once pops had let out the word 'god' he mellowed out, didn't want to talk anymore, and Kai had to lead the old man back to his bunk.

Kai shoved himself off his hammock, collapsing on the hard, rocky floor in a groggy, groaning heap. He wished he could find something to lay on the floor to make it softer. A carpet or rug, maybe, but those were expensive, and he didn't exactly have credits to spare.

Still, he couldn't knock off what he already had. Was a hell of a lot better than most joints. Small room, sure, but it was nice. A neat little cube cut into the rock. Pops had said this place had been a bunker, which explained why it had a proper ventilation system, a functional network of pipes and plumbing, and means to implement electricity.

Pops used to be a bit of a revolutionary. Fought off the city and their soldiers forty or so years ago when they actually invested effort into wiping out the squatters and scrappers in their outskirts. Used this place as a neat little hub for anti-city activity. Planned a few bombings, hits, and the like.

Nowadays, though, the city couldn't give a single rat's a.s.s about squatters. Not like the squatters could actually band together and pose a real threat – the city had mechs loaded with lasers that could turn metal into putty while your average Scrapper might, if he was real lucky, have a blaster that didn't malfunction every three shots.

Still, the bunker had been useful for a long time, and it was the gold standard for living in. The ventilation event kept out the grain from the surface, made the air squeaky clean to breathe.

Compared to the squatter houses on the surface – little more than scrap metal huts welded together to block out some wind and rain – Kai lived in a f.u.c.k.i.n.g gold-plated mansion.

When Kai readied himself, picking out clothes in a humble pile and giving himself a basic wash more to wake himself up than to clean, he slung a sturdy backpack on and headed out of his room, traversing through a narrow corridor.

Stone on either side of him, almost touching him. Felt claustrophobic, and a sweat broke out at the back of his neck. Kai knew that once upon a time, Daemons could fly, but now their wings were smaller, less functional. Still meant that he felt real uncomfortable underground, sorta like a caged bird.

But he dealt with it. He was good at dealing with things. Got real good at it once he dealt with his parents kicking the bucket. Not many things worse than that to stomach.

When Kai got to the main room of the bunker, where the gang had the meeting yesterday night, he found Leeva there, waiting. She had her lengthy hair packed into a bun – looked like a neat ball of snow perched behind her head. Typical dress for a regular scavenging outing. Comfortable trousers, flexible shirt, sturdy jacket on top. Thick boots with iron soles for navigating over piles of metallic stuff.

All stuff that Kai himself wore. But she had one thing one that he didn't: a mask. It didn't cover all of her face, just her mouth, a patch of plasticky black with a cylindrical filter where the lips were.

"How am I not surprised you're already set to go," said Kai.

Leeva crossed her arms and stared at him. Kai shrugged. Maybe she was still cross with him.

Anyways, he didn't have time to spend arguing with her. He grabbed the table in the center of the room and dragged it to the side, revealing a circular platform underneath. Wide enough for four or five people. He stepped on it, and Leeva stood beside him.

After a few seconds, the platform clicked, feeling their weight, and the ceiling opened up with a dull groan. It took a few minutes, but soon enough, there was a neat circular hole above, just the same size as the platform they stood on, and sunlight streamed in, driving away the underground darkness.

Kai felt his vision go white for a second as it went from night vision to regular. Leeva blinked hard, rubbing her eyes. Elves didn't have the luxury of dynamic vision, nor did humans, so it took a while for them to adjust from pitch black to sunlight.

"You good?" said Kai when he saw Leeva open her eyes for more than three seconds.

Leeva nodded. Kai exhaled. She still didn't want to talk, it seemed. With a stomp, he pressed into the center of the platform, where a cylindrical metal protrusion jutted out. It sunk into the platform with a click, and the ground beneath the two started rumbling, shaking.

The platform rose up, coughing up clouds of dust. It shook a hell of a lot too, and Kai had to keep his focus up, legs shoulder-width apart, strength in his core – yadda yadda – to not stumble. Now here, Leeva had the advantage as an elf. With her light frame and inborn agility, she kept on her feet with a graceful calm.

The ride up took a while, too. Pops didn't have the means to keep the bunker's elevator maintained, so over the decades, it had clogged down with rust, part disrepair, and the like. It worked, but the way up took way too long, and the whole way up, Kai struggled to stay on. He thought maybe Leeva even snickered at him here and there.

Kai took his mind off the embarrassing situation and looked up. He could see blue skies overhead splotched with a cloud here and there. Good. If he could see the sky, it meant the grain hadn't kicked up yet, covering up the skies with a film of inky black.

"About pops," shouted Leeva over the thunderous rumble of the rising platform.

"Yeah?"

"He told me you wanted help getting up Golden Peak."

Kai nodded. Golden Peak was a bitch to navigate. Highest trash mountain in the fields. So named because its peak was capped in a golden color – supposedly back in the day, stuff like diamonds, gold, and silver were all real expensive and precious. Well, they'd been forgotten mostly, so they congregated on this single peak, forming a beautiful, brilliant star that shone under the sun.

Nobody really went up to the top of Golden Peak because, obviously, stuff like gold wasn't worth the long a.s.s climb, but pops had wanted them to get there. Where they'd find magic, supposedly.

"Said I'd find god up there," said Kai.

"A god? Pops must be punishing you for yesterday. Though, I do have to admit: it is a pretty place." Leeva looked up at the shining sun. "If I was a god, I'd like to stay there. So high up that the grain doesn't reach you, where you can't even see all the chaos and misery down below."

"Well, you'd be a pretty damn awful god then."

Leeva snapped her gaze back at Kai, her brows puckered with the faintest hints of annoyance.

"Well? What about you? If you were a god, what would you do?"

"I'd try and help. If I had the power to be a god and I just let the world keep rotting, then what's the point? So many times in my life, I've thought, if only I had the power. The strength. I'm guessing a ton of others have thought the same thing. Well, I'd change that."

"We have different ideas of what being a god is." Leeva pursed her lips and looked at her boots. "If I was a god and created this world, I wouldn't help. I'd be ashamed at the shitshow of violence and suffering that I'd coughed up."

Kai lingered his stare on Leeva's neck, at the rings of scarred skin that rimmed it. Remnants of being collared. He looked down too. He stayed quiet.

Both of them spent the rest of the way up in melancholy.

They stepped off the platform when it reached the surface. Without their weight on its sensors, the platform started moving down, two heavily padded titanium doors closing behind it, securing the bunker from outside invasion.

Kai breathed in warm air. He stepped forward into a desert world, arms outstretched.

"Feels nice to be out," he said.

"It's too hot," said Leeva, tugging at her shirt collar. "Let's get to the peak quickly. It's cooler up there."

"You elves and your love of heights." Kai shook his head. He knelt down by the closed titanium doors and grabbed up handfuls of sand. He tossed them over the door, spreading a thin layer over them. He didn't try to cover it up perfectly – the wind would carry and build up sand over it soon enough.

"Ready?" said Leeva impatiently. She had put on goggles to block the sand infused wind out and wrapped the hood of her jacket over her head.

Kai put on his googles, tightened his good, and gave a thumbs up. Seeing that, Leeva nodded and broke out in a brisk pace, towards the horizon where mountains of trash loomed. Among them, one in particular stood out, its top sparkling with an almost blinding glamour - Golden Peak.

These were the Isles.

A barren desert wasteland outside the walls of Elsia, the city of paradise. So named because apparently, most of the Isles used to be a massive trash heap, a landfill for many more cities than just Elsia, way back in the day.

A few weapons of mass destruction exploding and environmental disasters later, and it was a desert.

Rejects from Elsia, convicts, political criminals, or people that were fed up with the city's rules, came out here, but not many of them endured its tough conditions.

It took a special breed to survive in the Isles, and the prim and proper, fat and lazy type that came from the city did not fit the bill. They wouldn't match up with the real Scrappers – people who'd been born in the Isles, who'd known only its harsh conditions all the years of their lives.

Kai was a Scrapper. So was Leeva. Really, everyone in the gang was. Of course, some Elsians managed out here if they had relevant skills. The Doc that Kai mentioned earlier, for example, was doing pretty well for himself with his city knowledge and gear.

The Isles were f.u.c.k.i.n.g huge, almost a city of their own, with four main villages in each of the cardinal directions relative to Elsia. Kai lived closest to Thermer, the southern village, but the bunker was south even of that. It stood at the very border of the Fields – the name of the giant fields of scrap that circled the Isles.

If you had to visualize everything, you'd just have to imagine three rings within each other. The centermost ring would be the borders for Elsia, the city, the second ring the sandy Isles, and the third the trash filled Fields. Elsia was the smallest, the Isles a little bigger, but not by much, and the Fields the largest by a huge margin.

Kai wondered sometimes about what lay beyond the fields, but he'd never tried. The Fields were massive and the further you got in them, the more Skritters you'd see and the likelier it was you'd lose a leg to a mine.

But Skritters were the bigger issue. Worse than the mines, even. Massive insects that trawled through the trash fields with expert ease, their mandibles easily capable of shearing off a human's arm. If you got into a colony of them, boy, you'd better kiss your a.s.s goodbye.

"Feels odd going for something not related to picking up parts," said Leeva.

Kai broke out his thoughts and glanced at the Fields. They were closer now. He sneaked a look back, making sure the wind covered up his tracks.

They had.

Often times, some fools would straggle behind other Scrappers, wait until they came down the Fields with their loot, and then kill them and steal everything.

Today, though, Kai didn't feel too worried, which was why he had the luxury of just sinking into his thoughts while walking.

"Considering there's a chance of a Scrapwhirl popping up, it's to be expected," said Kai. "Can't be picking up parts at ground level where the vortexes really catch you."

Pops had mentioned that there was a chance of a Scrapwhirl popping up today. Every so often, there'd be gravitational disturbances that formed vortexes that s.u.c.k.e.d up sand, trash, and people at ground level, crushing them to a pulp within and spitting them out all fused together in a gory, metallic box the day after. They were invisible, and they randomly generated, so it was entirely up to lady luck to decide whether you lived or not, and most didn't trust her.

They vortexes tended to cl.u.s.ter around the Fields, and Screws, technicians dedicated to reading signals for Scrapwhirls, gave forecasts for them. Today was a relatively risky day, but as long as Kai and Leeva made it up the peak, the Scrapwhirl wouldn't suck them in.

"Funny coming from you." Leeva raised her arm in front of her, trying to shield herself from the battering winds and the gritty sands that came with them. "Before Pops picked you up, when you were an errand boy for the Don, didn't they make you search for parts even in days with

Scrapwhirls?"

Kai grimaced. He didn't like remembering his childhood.

After his parents died when he was around five, he'd spent the next five years with the head honcho of Therma, an elf called the Don who'd been exiled from Elsia for dealing illegal weaponry. When the Don got into the Isles, his brutal, no-fluff, no-shit demeanor fit right in, and with the help of the blueprints he'd snuck out, he got himself an iron control over Therma with a few mechs.

Wobbly mechs made from bad parts, sure, but still leagues better than what your average Scrapper could arm himself with.

Without a place to be, Kai had been forced to work for the Don. If he wasn't a Daemon, Kai would have died on the streets, probably. But as a Daemon, he was a premium specimen, and the Don drove him like a dog.

Every single day, ferried to the Fields and back, sifting through trash piles for useful parts for weapons.

"As a Daemon, I can sorta sense Scrapwhirls before they come," said Kai. He tapped his horns. "I feel a buzzing in my horns, and then I can guess where the vortexes are."

"Let's make sure you're still functional today."

Kai rolled his eyes beneath his goggles. "Let's hope you can lead me up the peak without getting us torn apart by Skritters."

When they got to the outskirts of the Isles, they stopped. The Isles ended extremely abruptly. As in, one second you were stepping in sand, the next you were knee-deep in rusted metal parts.

Up close, Kai could make out the sheer scale of the Fields. Golden Peak looked so clear in the distance, what with its shining cap, but over here, it wasn't even visible, hidden behind several other gargantuan piles of trash.

Just miles and miles of metal and parts everywhere, a sea of orange tinted white that gave off a decaying l.u.s.ter under the sun. If he looked up, he could make out a golden glint in the sky, just about where the clouds were, really cementing just how damn high Golden Peak got.

"Whoo, boy, I am not in the mood for a hike," said Kai. Normally, he could fish out parts within the first ten miles of stepping into the Fields, so he didn't go farther than that. "Though for you, I guess it's not much of an issue. I hear you make the trek up there just for fun."

Leeva stared into the distance, where Golden Peak was supposed to be. "I've only been to the peak once. Absolutely breathtaking, the view from up there, but I have to agree it's a real bitch to get up."

"I've never been up there. Never saw a need. Actually, no sane person ever sees a need. The Fields re-organize every night, so there's new pickings every single day. Zero reason to go out that far. Why'd you go?"

"I like the view," said Leeva simply. "Let's go. We need to hurry to make it there and back in time for sunset."

Kai gave a mocking salute. "Roger that."

Leeva clicked her tongue and headed forwards. Kai felt his wings lie flat against his back, pressing against his shirt. He really wished he was like his ancestors so he could fly at this point, but alas, the past was the past.