Icarus in the Dark

Alphonse gazes from the shadowed deep of his study. His face is taut yet placid, like plastic wrap, and pock-marked by laser sights. Their trails dance in the musty air, skipping past moonbeam after moonbeam, coming to rest beneath the business ends of a half-dozen fully-automatic assault rifles, wielded by a half-dozen gold-cloaked Temple Knights. Chief among them is Beatrice Beauvoir.

"Archmage Alphonse Lavoisier," she commands, trembling, "by the Writ of Detainment you are to be brought to stand trial for the crimes of," she swallows, "improper use of magic, terrorism, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, heresy, apostasy, and crimes against humanity. Surrender yourself to Holy Law, or die."

The words hang in the air like the laser light beams, which shimmer now as the Knights' arms shiver, and the loose metallic parts of their rifles rattle. The dusty air swirls in eddies and the moonlight fades behind wispy clouds. Beatrice shifts her weight, and the floorboards moan, and the splintered remnants of the door jamb crinkle. Alphonse alone is still.

"You've been practicing that speech all day," he says. "You wrote it down, read it again and again over breakfast. You put on your uniform and told yourself today was just going to be another day. You would find me, and you would give your speech, and I would not resist arrest. You thought I would not resist because some part of you still believes I'm innocent, and the rest of you believes that I would never hurt you. That's why you volunteered for this: because you know me better than anyone else."

"Archmage step forward into the light with your hands up and kneel on the ground or I will shoot you."

"I know you will, but if you came here to kill me, you don't need my permission. I am not coming with you."

The telepathy node in Beatrice's skull whined. "We are losing control of the situation, Captain. Permission to open fire."

"Not granted, Lieutenant," she replied. "Orders were to bring him in alive, not 'alive if possible'. Marcel's squad should be in breaching position soon."

Beatrice did know Alphonse, and she knew that he would not allow himself to be taken by surprise. He was the most brilliant mage she had ever known, a master of alchemy, thaumaturgy, and dimensional analytics. Of course he would know they were coming. She could even sense the crackling energies of bounded fields lining the study. The arcano-ionized air smelled like the feeling of dread upon doing something you desperately wanted to do, but knowing you'll be punished for it soon. (Such synaesthesia is a hallmark of high-level magics, and none are quite so evocative as Alphonse's.) If she or any of her fellow Knights took one step forward, they'd be vaporized. At best.

But Alphonse was right when he said she believed he would not hurt her. In their time together, he traveled to many dark and terrible places--they both had. She watched as his faith in goodness and humanity was chewed and stretched out like the Devil's bubblegum. But no matter what he always said that he would protect her. For reasons she never understood herself, he saw in her a purity and beauty that defied the wickedness in the world. She knew this because he said so, one night under covers after dark, when he thought she was asleep.

That man in the shadows, so stoic and calm in the laser light, is still Alphonse. His beard has grown and his hair has tangled itself in knots, but cut through the overgrowth and the man is still there. The man who is wanted for the deaths of nearly a hundred Temple Knight recruits--some no older than boys--was once a boy himself, full of wonder and curiosity and love like no one but Beatrice could know. When Captain Marcel's squad blows the breaching charge on the wall behind him, and mana-dampening chaff fills the air, she will bring Alphonse back to the light.

He speaks again: "You've heard the story of Icarus, right? Not much of a myth in itself--more of a side note in the greater mythology of King Minos--but it has a way of capturing the human imagination. Poor Icarus. Flew too close to the sun and down he fell. I never really liked the moral though."

Beatrice hears faint booted footsteps from a nearby hallway and coughs to try and hide the sound. "What you're supposed to learn is humility. Know your limits. Beware the power of forces gigantic, inhuman, and uncaring. You know what I learned? The limitations of wax as an adhesive."

Beatrice's Lieutenant chimes in, "You wanna fly into the sun be my guest you son of a bitch."

For the first time, Alphonse moves, stifling a chuckle. "Maybe someday, I'll give it a try. Right now though, you're my guests, and I think you're being very rude. I can't imagine convincing any of you that what I'm doing is right, and good, and just, but I want you to understand that I think it is. Just the same as you hold some truths self-evident, so plainly sacred, so too do I. I am not going to stand trial, and I am not going to die."

Beatrice's telepathy node buzzes and Captain Marcel's thoughts crackle in her head. "Sorry for the wait, Beauvoir. This place is absolutely mired in trap fields. You were right about this nutjob."

"He's meticulous," she thinks in reply, hoping her slight irritation will not be conveyed. "Besides I'd rather you be slow than slush. Target's in position. On your mark."

"I'm sorry it had to come to this," Alphonse says. "I really, truly am. It's not fair to anyone. But I didn't start this war. I'm ending it. Tell your friends behind me to duck."

Through the windows, the streaks of moonlight begin to intensify and grow, and then--in an instant--the room is awash in a sea of light--bright as the sun--dust particles ignite to embers--a rifle barrel peaking into the light is glowing red--windows crack and shatter spontaneously--Alphonse is revealed in the glow--the light flutters and begins to fade.

Beatrice breaks rank and runs to a window. In the distance, she sees the city of Reims, she sees the glowing plume of smoke enveloping the Temple Cairn, she sees the writhing black blastwave approaching the manor at impossible speed. She hears several guns firing. She turns and she does not see Alphonse anywhere. She feels warm blood on her face and looks and sees Lieutenant Petrus has a serpentine dagger coming out of his chest. Then she feels the blastwave hit.

There is such overwhelming sorrow in the blast. It rings a nocturne in her head in which all the notes are memories of disappointing  people she cared about. She is thrown against a wall and feels her ribs crack with a deafening saltiness. She has blood in her mouth and it tastes like one of the many nights she spent lying in bed waiting for Alphonse to come home from his lab and wondering if he would ever find peace; wondering if she would ever find the man she used to love.

The visions fade and Beatrice is left feeling empty. In a few minutes, the adrenaline will run dry and she will be in such horrible pain, but for now she is calm. She sees five corpses splayed out in front of her. They all have names but right now she can't remember any of them. She does, for some reason, remember that one of them threw a birthday party last weekend for their dog. She feels very ashamed that these might be her last thoughts.

A black leather shoe steps gingerly over the corpse's head. It's Alphonse, of course. Beatrice bought him those shoes as a gift. He walks up to her, and crouches down. She'd like to turn to look at him, but she thinks her neck might be broken. He lightly brushes his hand over her hair, pushing aside stray locks clotted up with blood and dust.

"Hey Bumble Bea," he says fondly. He sniffles. "I did a pretty bad thing this time. I'm gonna have to do some more. Here: I don't want anyone to think you were my accomplice," he says as he stabs her in the stomach with the knife. It hurts. "I want you to survive, Bea. I want you to live and keep on living and doing what you think is right. But I'm going to do the same, and that means destroying every fetter that holds humanity back. If god exists, I'm going to kill god. If you recover, and you want to kill me, I want you to try and kill me too. You're the only one who can, Beatrice. I love you." He pulls the dagger out, and she feels a spreading warmth as she looks down and sees blood oozing out of her gut.

He knew. He knew she would volunteer for this mission and he knew exactly the reason why. Out here in his hillside estate is just about the only place she could have survived the mana-bomb. She's going to see the miles of destruction it left, and she's going to see the corpses of mothers and children, and she's going to think about them for months and months as she painfully recovers from her injuries, and all the good memories she ever had of Alphonse will crumble away, and the only things remaining will be a burning hatred, and a desire to kill that runs deeper and thicker than any desire ever has. And then she, or Alphonse, or both, will die, and everything will be just as he planned.

Except he's wrong, because there is still that small part of her that believes he can be saved. It's the part of her that still loves him, and it the part that he always loved about her. It is the fire that rages like the sun, and welcomes Icarus with open arms, and refuses to burn his wings.