A New World

by Brendan O'Neill

  “We have to run!” Melina said desperately. “More will be coming.” As if on cue, hundreds of keening, high pitched wails sounded in the distance. I slid my pistol back in its holster as Kinsey and I raced after her fleeing form.

  The Flight

  Our feet pounded through the deep murk of the Ebon Swamp waters. Melina guided us over the few islands meekly peeking out from black liquid that swallowed everything else. The dry land helped us to make good time, but no matter how fast we ran it wasn’t fast enough.

  High pitched wails dogged our steps as we pushed our bodies to the limit. Chests heaving and legs pumping, we fought to keep ahead of the lizard creatures chasing us. Death was on our heels, and yet we couldn’t see it.

  I glanced back, catching tiny flashes of movement in the underbrush or just below the surface of the water. Branches moved, and previously still water suddenly rippled. They were close, but I couldn’t see them.

  “Maybe they gave up!” Kinsey shouted hopefully as she stumbled through the black muck. She almost went down, but managed to keep her feet as I grabbed one of her arms. Her other, by chance, seized a thick branch from atop a fallen tree as she stumbled past.

  There was a splashing sound behind us that turned our heads. A scaly reptilian form exploded out of the water less than twenty feet away, hissing like a viper. It moved fast, so damned fast that I didn’t have time to draw my weapon. Dull yellow teeth flashed as the beast charged us with a lightning speed that made it appear to run atop the disgusting black water. The lizard dove at me, maw gaping. It was inches from my face, so close that I could see deep inside its gullet and the decaying meat stuck between its razor-like teeth. Suddenly it ripped away from me, leaving only the fetid smell of its rotten breath. It hung from a vine by the neck, slowly strangling. I nodded my thanks to Melina as we continued our desperate flight for our lives.

  There was a flash of movement to our left and a blur of beige-green scales slammed into Melina before she could react. The creature reared its head back, mouth open easily wide enough to swallow her entire head. My pistol started up, but Kinsey beat me to it. Bark exploded from the thick branch she swung on impact, and a one-foot section of her stick flying off into the distance. The Liskoja fell back, clutching at its broken and sagging jaw. Instantly, the three of us were running again.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Kinsey shouted as terrible, high pitched howls surrounded us.

  “We’re almost there!” Melina shouted back. I looked through the trees and shrubs where she pointed only to see a solid wall of rock jutting into the air. “That’s it!” she shouted. A flare of hope burst in our chests. The desperate elation of those staring death in the eye, and yet just within reach of the realm of safety.

  Two more of the lizard creatures appeared in front of us, but we wouldn’t be deterred this close to our goal. Melina’s hand waved and my pistol barked again. One hoisted high into the air, a spiked vine wrapped around its neck. The other sank below the black surface, its last breath hissing away as it disappeared.

  The three of us burst out of the strangling dull foliage of the swamp onto a small bank of verdant grass. A rainbow embraced cascade of shimmering water rushed from a 30’ high cliff and cascaded into a pool of glassy water before us. It coursed south from great and distant mountains that tore into the sky, whose heavy white caps on serrated peaks bore the genesis of the river’s headwaters. The crystalline river that flowed between us and a granite-feldspar cliff made my mouth water just looking at it. For a moment, I was amazed that filth and paradise could lay just a few feet apart.

  High pitched keens snapped me back to my senses.

  “You led us to a damned cliff!” I growled at the woman. We moved to the very edge of the utopian stream, desperate to put as much distance between us and the swamp as possible.

  I turned to face an enemy that was completely melded into their environment. Cool mist from the waterfall gently caressed my skin as I looked down the sights of my pistol deep into the swamp. Stillness. Deathly stillness.

  “Buy me time,” Melina said over her shoulder to me. She faced the waterfall, her arms out and palms up. Melina’s eyes closed and a sudden look of elated ecstasy covered her face as she started whispering almost inaudibly in a lyrical language.

  Eternal seconds passed as she stood motionlessly and whispered. Under normal circumstances I would have kicked her in the ass to get her moving onto something useful. But after what I’d seen, I was more than willing to give her a bit of latitude. Besides, my attention was on that miserable swamp we’d just escaped from.

  Reptilian forms slowly started to take shape at the edge of the swamp. Scaled bodies rising from black waters, or suddenly stepping out from behind impossibly narrow trees. Others began shifting behind thin shrubs, their natural camouflage so efficient that they were essentially invisible until they moved. In seconds, almost a hundred of the scaled creatures stood before us.

  There were so many. Some mostly brown, other mostly green, all some combination of earth tones. Their eyes varied from green to yellow to gray. Some bore scales that were dull and cracked. Others had scales that shone as if polished. But each creature, large or small, wore a snarl with barred teeth. And they all carried a menacing hunger for our flesh.

  A handful of the creatures advanced a few steps hesitantly as if unsure about something, the rest stood or shifted impatiently and watched us. None came closer than thirty feet, the border where black swamp became emerald grass. They milled about, eyeing us hungrily as a starving man would a steak behind armored Plexiglas. Hatred oozed out of them, rolling over us like a London fog, thick and oppressive.

  “Why did they stop?” Kinsey asked in the most silent of whispers, as if worried any sound at all would set them off.

  I’ve never been as timid as my sister, but I couldn’t help feeling as unsettled as she. “I don’t know,” I whispered back as I looked at the evil creatures staring at us like a pack of starving wolves. I looked back at Melina who still stood as she had, palms up in a world of unmatched rapture. “Hey,” I said to her, but she continued her lyrical whispers as if unaware.

  I brought my foot up and kicked her in the ass. “Elf chick!” I whispered even louder. Her body rocked from the impact, but she still seemed unaware of us. Anywhere else my whisper would still have been just a whisper. But with the wall of hungry creatures just a few arm lengths away it felt like a shout. Death surrounded us, waiting within sight yet just out of reach. They seemed desperate to reach us but unwilling to close the last few feet. They just shuffled in the black mire, watching us with hate-filled eyes.

  Soon, one of the beasts with shiny scales seemed to become irritated enough to charge. It only managed a handful of steps before my gun barked its superiority yet again. A thin cloud of red mist erupted from the beast’s back, and it slowly sank down into the murky water. The others snarled and growled at its death, or perhaps our lives, but kept their distance.

  They continued their irritated pacing as they watched us, desperate in their hunger yet inexplicable in their hesitation. I focused on their eyes as they milled about. They weren’t watching me or my pistol, the obvious dangers. They were watching Melina and the river.

  Suddenly, like a flock of birds impulsively taking flight as one, the liskoja vanished back into the swamp. Seconds later, the trees and black water were as still as a graveyard.

  Mentally, I calculated my ammunition. My Glock had a seventeen round clip plus the one I kept in the chamber. When I’d gotten out of the car in front of my old home I didn’t think I’d need my two spare clips. Not to see my sister in our old home. Of the eighteen rounds I’d started with, I’d already burned four just in our run through the swamp. And I was pretty sure those damned beasts would come back.

  Kinsey was panting hard, almost hyperventilating. My sister had always been a runner so I guessed it was more fear than anything else. She was soaking wet from the foul liquid, her bare legs stained from the thighs down. We all
had dark stains from the miserable, stinking liquid.

  Melina still stood facing the river, her voice whispering quietly in that lyrical language. Her head was back, a slight smile on her face. Then, silence. She dropped her arms and lowered to one knee, head bowed. I was about to say something when the water started to take shape.

  Tendrils of water as thin as hair reached up into the air, writhing like snakes. Thousands of watery filaments danced and squirmed, crashing into each other to make larger strands. Larger and larger the watery strands became as they continued to merge until five very human looking shapes of water swayed before us.

  The watery people had no faces to speak of, their heads were little more than orbs of clear water. But their liquid bodies carried the distinctive shapes of two male and three female humanoids from the hips up.

  “Why would our cousin call upon us?” a feminine voice asked from the form in the center of the five. The voice was a whisper, but held a clear note of annoyance.

  “We would cross your realm into my own,” Melina said, her head bowed in respect. “Into the Elvin Weald.”

  “We rarely stop others from crossing our realm, elfling. You do not need our permission to pass.” More annoyance in her voice. The others whispered their agreement.

  “The crossing is not the difficulty, Lords of the Rivers. We cannot scale the cliff without help.”

  “Can you not just use your magic to cross, cousin?”

  “I would not deign to use my gift to bring the destroyers across your domain without your permission,” the elf said waiving her hand in our direction. “I have no wish to insult you.”

  “She can’t mean us, right,” I whispered to Kinsey as I looked to where the slavering monsters had been just a short time ago. “Was she planning on bringing the lizard creatures with us?”

  “No, I think we’re the destroyers,” she whispered back.

  “And can you guarantee the destroyers will not return to taint our realm?” The whisper from the watery person was angry now, chorused by other angry whispers.

  “We’ve spent our lives containing their poisonous influences. We will continue to manage them as we’ve always done.”

  There was a long refrain of angry whispers as the watery people considered her request. A keening, high pitched wail in the swamp behind us caught Kinsey’s and my attention. We turned, watching the forest warily. Melina never turned, never even acted as though she heard the cries. She continued to wait on the watery creatures, her head down in reverence. But she must have heard them, the calls were way too loud to miss.

  I was worried about interrupting, but those damned lizard calls were getting closer. Already I saw movement in the trees again and the nearest of the screams sounded like they were only a stone’s throw away. I could see the creatures dart in and out of cover in the swamp. They were watching us, but didn’t want to come out in the open.

  I brought an elbow back and nudged Melina gently. She didn’t react. I tried again even harder, but still no reaction. She was focused intently on the watery creatures she summoned.

  In the deep swamp, half hidden in the trees, three new liskoja creatures moved through the thick black muck as easily as I would on a park trail. These three were different than the lizards that attacked us earlier. The scales around their muzzles were fading to gray, and each carried long gnarled staves. Their staves were decorated, from differing feathers, to strips of pelts from random creatures, and even brightly colored branches from unknown plants. But the staves all had one thing in common. They all had a humanoid skull capping the top and other bones tied on in some way.

  The three stopped, about fifty yards down the river from us. They waved and shook those staves, but not at us. They’d focused their attention on a tall, thick Tupelo near the edge of the swamp. Chanting, if you can call it that, rose from the throats of the three staff-wielding lizards. It was chorused by the other lizard creatures as they continued to dash in and out of sight. Unlike their earlier cries, the chant carried a low pitch. It was a slowly oscillating guttural moan that seemed to intensify in volume as the trio worked. The sound was disturbingly similar to the throat singing that Tibetan monks are so famous for. Until that day, I’d always liked that sound.

  As the trio of staff-wielders waved their staves at the great tree, pieces of its trunk started to warp. The warped wood flexed and bent until it splintered. They continued their waving and more of the trunk warped until it shattered. Whatever they were doing, it was eating away at the trunk of the massive tree.

  I turned back and nudged Melina with my elbow. As I’d expected, no response. But, luckily, I didn’t have to wait long.

  One of the masculine watery forms moved to the center. “It is as you say, elfling.” The male’s whisper was low and resigned. “Our cousins have always risked their lives to keep the destroyers in check.” There was a short pause. “Not an easy task. In gratitude for your sacrifice we will make our own sacrifice and assist you this day.”

  The five watery forms suddenly lost cohesion and collapsed into the river with a splash. Melina’s head snapped up and turned toward the three staff-wielders. Our eyes followed hers and horror tore at our souls. Almost a quarter of the tree’s trunk had warped and splintered away. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized what they were trying to do.

  Melina spun and broke for the waterfall at a dead run. Kinsey and I followed at her heels, amazed at what we saw before us. The water from the falls spilled down in tiers as though invisible platforms had pushed right out of the rock below it. The tiers formed a narrow stairway leading from the grassy bank to the cliff top, right along the face of the waterfall. Melina was already scampering up the stairs like a mountain goat. My sister and I followed much more carefully, picking our way uncertainly up the watery stairway.

  It was a strange sensation standing on water whose surface was as solid as concrete. I glanced down as I moved, seeing nothing but a thin sheet of moving water below my feet. The base of the waterfall was only slightly distorted by the water I walked on, and at this angle I could see tiny chartreuse green frogs and even tinier silver fish swimming in the pool below me. Hundreds of starving lizard monsters were less than a dozen feet away, and yet the little bastards seemed unaware of the imminent danger.

  In spite of my fear of heights, I kept my eyes down for the climb. The steps extended less than twelve inches from the face of the cliff where the water poured down from. I sure as hell didn’t want to fall off and land in the pond. Or worse, land where the lizards could get ahold of me. When my feet finally settled upon dirt again, I was greeted with the most vibrant and luxurious forest I’d ever seen.

  Oaks and maples of the most vivid green stood majestically, covering the forest floor in their cooling shade. Redwoods and cedars of the deepest green broke through the surrounding canopy to stand tall and proud. Regal plants and shrubs peeked through the mossy groundcover at various points around the forest floor, each a perfectly formed island in an emerald ocean. Kitten sized creatures that looked similar to fennec foxes of a burnt umber color bounded through the forest without a care while brightly colored birds sang sweetly in the boughs above. It smelled fresh and clean as though rain had just graced the forest a short while ago. But in spite of the clean rain-washed smell, my feet actually dried somewhat when they sank into the sumptuous moss.

  “My God, its paradise!” Kinsey breathed looking at the idyllic forest around us. She sank to her knees as she looked around in wonder.

  “Get up!” I commanded. “We have to keep moving!” My voice was so harsh the foxes froze and stared. Even the birds stopped singing at my tone.

  “But why?” Kinsey seemed in a daze, as though she were just waking up from an intense dream. Before I could say anything Melina spoke.

  “The liskoja are coming.”

  “What?” Kinsey asked, her eyes glazed.

  I’d seen people in that state before. Sometimes after a mental trauma, parts of a person’s mind
s shuts down. That causes some people react with panic, others rage out of control. Kinsey had entered the dream-like state. PTSD, shellshock, or whatever else you want to call it, it was the bane of emergencies.

  I pulled Kinsey to her feet, and looked into her eyes. “Remember those lizards that were felling that tree? I’m no expert, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that they mean to use it as a ramp up the cliff.”

  No response other than a blank stare. She just looked at me with a dazed captivation.

  “Shit,” I growled, turning to Melina. “We don’t have time for this. At the rate they’re working they’ll be done any second. We have to go now!”

  The Stand

  Melina nodded when I told her it’s time to leave, but didn’t seem in much of a hurry. In fact, she was far more focused on searching the forest with her eyes. I took one more look at my dazed sister, then grabbed her by the wrist and spun on Melina.

  “We have to go,” I said again, a commanding snarl to my voice. “Which way?”

  A small smile spread across Melina’s face as she turned to me. “Don’t worry, we’ll make safety.” She dashed off into the trees.

  “Where?” I shouted after her, doing my best to follow as I drug my sister along. But Melina wasn’t answering. She was bounding through the forest like a deer, gracefully leaping obstacles and gliding over the emerald carpet of moss.

  “Fuck!” I growled as my dazed sister stumbled after me. Kinsey was too stupefied to watch the forest floor around her. I was doing my best to avoid obstacles, but it was a minefield of moss covered rocks large enough to catch the toes and Melina was quickly disappearing into the forest ahead of us. At least she was leaving and obvious trail in the deep moss.

  After several minutes, rage was starting to build in my chest. I was angry at Melina for leaving us behind, frustrated at my sister’s condition, and scared those damned liskoja creatures were just behind us. A high pitched howl in the distance justified those fears and spurred me on even more.