The Wild Beasts of Anthony Mannis

The three classifications of beasts with available statistics:

Crony: five feet or smaller in length or height. All observed invokers ages three to thirteen can summon these to some degree.

Command: five to twenty feet in length or height. Of observed invokers, sixty-two percent can summon a seven-foot command. Twenty-four percent can summon a fourteen-foot command.

Colossus: twenty feet or larger in length or height. Less than one percent of observed invokers can summon these. If someone you know is able, please contact your local chapter representative of the Borges School for the Gifted.

- Information Available to Borges Citizens Pamphlet VII

The sun was rising, the sky just beginning to become a sweet red. Mist from the forest began to burn off, spiraling upwards like frosted breath. As the sun rose higher, the light broke into the grassy clearing, revealing a rocky outcrop in which there was a circle of large stones.

Anthony broke the silence irreverently by crashing into the clearing in a fit of hearty wheezing, clutching at his chest, doubled over. Sweat dripped down his forehead and rolled off his nose, mixing in with the grassy morning dew. His feet throbbed, swollen inside his shoes. How far did we run? How far could we have gone in one night?

He looked around to see if he recognized his surroundings. He had grown up in these woods, but as they had opted to stay off-trail to avoid the CDF, he only had a vague idea of where he was. Somewhere east of Mint Village, maybe halfway to Lanaya? Unless I’m mixed up, and we’re on our way west to Wormtown.

He patted one of the giant stones. These are weird.

He jumped when he heard a rustle behind him, picking up one of many decent-sized rocks as if to throw.

“Chill out, it’s me,” Philip said, jogging up. His glasses were fogged.

“You know, you didn’t have to run so fast. We’ll be traveling for a while, you might as well pace yourself.”

“Chill out,” Anthony snapped, “We just escaped a mass relocation. Chill out. You chill out!”

Philip raised his hands in defensive apology and looked around, sniffing the morning air. “Boy, I’m tired. You wanna rest here? These big rocks make a halfway decent shelter.”

Anthony felt the weight of running all night catch up to him, and nodded.

They plopped down with a grunt. The stones were cool on their backs, the grass tickled their legs, the sun began to warm them, and far away they heard a mourning dove coo. If someone saw us now, they never would have thought we’re running for our lives, thought Anthony. He felt the invoker patch bunched in his pocket and ran his fingers over the stitching of the red circle and teardrop. His stomach sank.

“I hate this place,” he whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“That was the last thing I said to Ma. I hate this place.”

He leaned his head against the stone.

“What if I never see her again?” he burst, “What if it’s the last thing I ever say to her?”

Philip pushed his glasses up his nose. “Hey, hey. It will not be—we will see them again. You must agree.”

He smiled and lay a hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“Do not blame yourself for this. It is no one’s fault but the Borges.”

Anthony pursed his lips and tilted his head up. He’s right. It is the Borges. With their metal machines and plastic armor. He watched the clouds go by overhead. I’ll deal with them. I’ll deal with all of them. I’ll free Ma and Munroe from wherever they’re being held. I’ll tear down the stalkers and shoot down the sweepers and smash Cirk Malpy with my colossi until only dust remains…

The floor was cool on his cheek, but Anthony knew he shouldn’t lie there. Green and black gold-veined marble made up the walls that surrounded him. He pulled himself upright, staring down the dim, torch-lit corridor at a far off staircase. He heard the crackle of a fire and the march of footsteps behind him. Turning, his eyes widened at a tall, authoritative figure shrouded in black. It’s going to be chilly tonight, Munroe’s voice echoed.

He woke up, and the dream fell away. His eyes cleared and he brushed a leaf from his hair. His neck hurt from sleeping on the ground, and dirt covered his face.

“Philip?” he asked quietly.

“Yes?”

“What are we going to do now?”

Philip sat up. It was clear he had been thinking up a plan for a while.

“I think we should get help.” he said slowly.

Anthony stared at him and threw a rock at a larger rock a bit too forcefully. Clunk. “I’m fine on my own. I can take anything the Borges throw at me.”

“I’m sure you can, but just to be sure, I highly recommend that you hear me out—I think we should go to Desert Zone.”

“Desert Zone…is awfully far from Cirk Malpy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not what I want. I want Ma and Munroe.”

Clunk went another rock. “I know they’re both in Cirk Malpy. They’re probably turning him into one of their Special Service Invokers. Ma is probably interned in one of the districts—”

“Gogue, probably.” Philip offered.

“Yes. Thanks. Ma is probably interned in one of the districts, probably Gogue, and I’d like to get her out. So let’s go there. Now.”

Philip reached into his backpack and spread out a map. “Look. Here’s Mint Village. We’re only a little bit outside of it.”

He traced his finger northeast along a trail, away from the direction of Cirk Malpy.

“If we head towards Free Crossing, skirting the Lanayan, we can make our way to East Blue, and from there we can take a ship towards Tajima, the big trading port in Desert Zone.”

He tapped on a small tower sketched in Desert Zone. “This is the Golden Library in Tajima. It is the home of an invoker—it is rumored he is a visionary. Tier three, possibly higher.”

“No,” Anthony said flatly, “we’re on our own. Other kids aren’t going to be able to help us anyway, no matter what their level. How old is this ‘visionary’ supposed to be, anyway? Nine?”

Clunk.

“Sixty.”

Anthony dropped the rock he was about to throw. “Sixty? Impossible. No kid keeps their powers past fifteen.”

“Eh, not impossible, I would say, just highly improbable. Hector kept his, didn’t he?”

“Yea, Hector did, I know my history, so what? Is an adult gonna help us, like Darius ‘helped us?’ Remember what he said? He told us to run away…”

Clunk. Then it clicked.

“You want me to go train under this ‘desert visionary’ from Tajima.”

“Yes.”

“That’s very far.”

“Yes.”

“And how do you know this guy? What’s his name?”

“I, uh…read about him in a book. I don’t recall his name, I wrote it down somewhere…but it’s the same place where Hector trained. Hector! Hector the Great!”

Anthony frowned. “You think it’s a gamble that I’ll keep my powers long enough to storm Cirk Malpy and rescue my mother and brother, but instead you want me to take a bigger gamble that I’ll keep my powers long enough to travel to Desert Zone to train with a ‘visionary’ who may or may not exist and who may or may not train me to maybe succeed at a rescue for my mother and brother? That’s your plan, your promise for justice? I ran off with the wrong person. I shoulda gone with Darius.”

Clunk, angrily this time.

“…Yes, that’s my plan.” Philip sighed. “Anthony, I know exactly how strong you are. Darius is a man of action, sure, but even he said to run away. If you went with him, maybe you could have knocked a few Borges heads together, stormed Cirk Malpy; but then what? You saw how easily they took down Munroe. They’d get you too. What would you do if they sent Violet after you? And they will.”

Anthony shrugged, but he knew Philip was right. He’d heard stories about The Black Death’s best Special Service Invoker…

“The real truth,” Philip continued, “is that what you are now is nothing compared to what the visionary could unlock. When you go rescue your family, you will have much better odds! I’ve read about how strong Hector was, and he took the Borges citadel almost by himself!”

“No,” Anthony got up and started down the hill, “I’m going to Cirk Malpy. I like my odds just fine.”

Right at that moment, four rangers dropped out of the trees in front of him.

#

“Hello.” Anthony said tentatively.

Three of the rangers had rifles slung across their backs, and one, with silver shoulder pads, had a pistol at her hip. Their captain, he noted.

“What village you from, boy?” she barked, ignoring niceties.

Anthony glanced behind him, Philip was nowhere to be seen. Those boulders are good hiding spots. Where did he go?

He groaned inwardly. Why did I throw a bunch of rocks? The noise must have echoed around the whole glen.

“The captain asked you a question, ratface,” sneered one of the rangers. He had an overbite and a lot of pimples.

“You’re calling me ratface?” Anthony shot back. “Ever look in a mirror, buddy?” One of the other rangers—he was missing a few teeth—snickered, a whistling sound. The ratfaced ranger, taken aback, stepped forward and knocked Anthony in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. Anthony fell to the ground, coughing. Man, that must be their go-to move, he thought back to when the PSO had hit him the same way. He noticed that the ground was cool and felt good on his hands, and with his ear pressed against the dirt he could hear the slow footsteps of someone heavy.

“What village are you from, boy?” came the question again, this time from a deeper, more dangerous voice. It sounded muffled and alien.

“Worm…Wormtown.” Anthony gasped, thinking of the first village that came to his mind. He looked up to see heavy black boots, a gleaming black trench coat—under which a suit of black CDF armor was visible— and a full-faced, impassive helmet. The rangers stood behind him at attention. Anthony froze. The man in black.

“Wormtown. How’s the mining over there?”

“Oh you know,”—Anthony felt like throwing up from that blow—“We’re opening up a little library with the aid funds Cirk Malpy didn’t send us. Where’s your partner? On sick leave?”

The Spectre Man stood in contemplative silence. After a rigid moment he turned to the ranger captain. “You may interrogate him.”

The captain stepped past the black-armored Spectre Man and kicked Anthony in the same place that Ratface had struck him. “Oh, a wise guy, huh? Wormtown, huh?”

She hoisted Anthony up by his shirt. “You think Officer Raffick was born yesterday? Wormtown is a three-day walk from here. Mint Village is a day at most. Warden Tan also just declared martial law on Mint Village—there are refugees everywhere. So tell him again where you’re from, wise guy, and be smart about it when you’re talking to a ranger captain of the Borges Citadel Defense Force.”

“Borges?” Now Anthony really felt like throwing up, “rangers are barely Borges. You guys are so low you have to answer to pissos. Mangy rangers in the trees, one fell out because he sneezed,” he mocked with the children’s folk song.

The captain pulled back her fist for a punch, but Officer Raffick held up a black-gloved hand. There was a pause before he spoke. “How old do you think this…‘wise guy’ is?”

“Old as that invoker that was snatched up in the Mint Village raid,” said the captain.

“You know anything about that… ‘wise guy’?” Officer Raffick said.

Anthony shook his head. He really didn’t like the way Raffick called him “wise guy.” “Did you know that though it’s called Mint Village, there’s not a lot of wild mint growing around the area?”

“You know,” the captain said, without taking her eyes off Anthony, “they were lookin’ for two invokers. You fellas think this could be him? Patch-less too; that’s a big no-no, kid.”

“Without a doubt, boss,” piped up Ratface. His voice squeaked.

“You really sound like a rat,” Anthony insisted.

“That’s it,” Ratface spat, unsheathing a long hunting knife, “Imma take pleasure in guttin’ ya, boy.”

Anthony threw up. It tasted acidic and he could see the chicken that he had shared with Darius yesterday. The captain let go of him, recoiling in disgust. A rock flew out of the brush and hit Ratface on the jaw with a hollow clunk; a noise, Anthony noted with some satisfaction, that was exactly the same as when the rocks hit against the larger stones.

The captain grabbed for her pistol. “Search the area!” she ordered the ranger with missing teeth. “Someone’s out there!”

She turned back to Anthony, her pistol raised, but it was too late. A glowing blue golem with kettlebell-sized fists punched her solidly in the chest, sending her flying backwards into a tree with a hefty thwack. The ranger amongst the brush turned and fired on the golem. Roaring, the golem covered Anthony with its body and absorbed the bullets. Nonetheless, the boy invoker winced.

Philip dropped clumsily out of the trees, landing square on top of the ranger. There was a clunk of rock hitting jaw and Philip popped up, pleasantly surprised that he disposed of two rangers. A bullet ricocheted off a tree next to him with a twing, and he ducked into the grass.

“Fools!” shouted Officer Raffick, “Ignore him. Get the invoker! Must I handle this?” His two-handed pulse rifle whined and crackled with the charge of energy.

“You know what a fully charged KA-DT railgun blast will do to you and your imaginary friend, wise guy?” he growled, before realizing that the invoker was nowhere in sight. “Where’d the freak go?”

It was true, Anthony had disappeared during the mayhem the blue golem had caused. Philip glanced around wildly for him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

The invocation set its sights on Raffick, who shot an arc of lightning toward it. The beast promptly disappeared before contact, effectively dodging the blast. The lightning beam struck a tree behind it, showering the nearest ranger with electric sparks and lighting his cloak on fire.

Anthony popped up from the undergrowth, eyes blazing. “I’m not a freak.”

As quickly as the golem disappeared, a large blue humanoid wielding a broadsword appeared. Officer Raffick started the charge on his gun again, but it was cleaved in half by the humanoid. He grasped for his revolver but was knocked to the ground by the upstroke of the great blade; the sidearm flew from his hands and bounced along the trail. The visor of his helmet was split in half, blood pooling in it and dripping down the sides. The Spectre Man lay groaning in the grass.

Anthony snickered. “Man, chief—is that how you ‘handle this?’”

The humanoid beast shifted its weight mirthfully. A ranger bullet zipped into its shoulder, blue ripples forming on its back. The groggy rangers were standing back up, firing their rifles into Anthony’s beast, which was acting as a shield for Philip and Anthony. Anthony grimaced in pain, a vein throbbing in his forehead, as the bullets thudded into his invocation. He watched the rangers shoot at him through the hazy form of his guardian, their bodies distorted by its translucency. When Anthony heard the klings of their spent clips ejecting from their rifles, the command blindsided them with a gigantic blow from the flat of its broadsword.

A calm fell back over the glen. The mourning dove cooed again.

“We must go,” Philip worried, “reinforcements are undoubtedly coming.”

“Yea yea, hold on. Let’s do some looting,” Anthony was already going through the unconscious rangers’ pockets for money, “good job with the rock-throwing, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Philip held up Raffick’s pistol gingerly between two fingers, “Do you know how to shoot a gun?”

“No. Do you?”

“Can’t say that I do. Well, I’ll hold onto it. Maybe someone will show us in Ocean Zone. It’s pretty lookin’, anyways. Could probably sell it.”

It was indeed pretty, a top-break revolver with a silver body and a polished bronze handle. He stuffed it into his knapsack and wrapped a hunting belt around his waist. He shoved the knife into its sheath and grinned goofily. Both the belt and the knife were too big for him.

“You look like a jaggo pirate.”

“Shut up, I look awesome.”

“You feeling good enough to move?” he stared amusedly at the vomit Anthony had made on the ground.

“Ha-ha funny man, funny man with the jokes. I’m fine.”

They started jogging away from the scene, their adrenaline keeping them going. Anthony tapped his finger on his chin mid-stride. “Weird. You’d think they would have been better prepared.”

“They were panicked,” Philip remarked, “I doubt most of them had seen a beast before, besides that Spectre Man. And I do find it strange that there was only one of him. Spectre Men always work in pairs. Odd-looking guy though, eh? Dressed in all black.”

“Yea.” Anthony replied absentmindedly. He turned to Philip, his face sober.

“I haven’t changed my mind you know. I’m not going to the Golden Library, Tajima, or Desert Zone. I plan to head to Cirk Malpy to rescue Munroe and Ma. There’s no time to lose.”

Philip smiled primly and nodded. “Whatever you think is best.”