“I’m sure you will get your chance,” Gaby offered, trying to reassure Sam. She sure hoped so.
† † †
They started climbing over a pile of rocks. A rockslide had taken place recently. Gaby examined it and then the walls around them. Something was off. There weren’t visible marks of cannon fire that had hit these rocks, but in a couple of them, there were some discernible scratches. The rock in this part of the Maze seemed to be hard as nails, so no regular animal could have left them. The sense of unease she’d had since they left the Figaro was growing. Gaby was about to say something to Sam when the other woman interrupted her.
“Why are you so sure that he is still alive? I mean, I hope so too but it was a long fall, his Gift didn’t seem to be working and that thing impaled him. How come you are so damn certain?”
“Something is telling me that he is.”
“The Gift?”
“In part, well, no, just something inside here,” Gaby pointed to her heart. “I don’t know if it makes sense.”
“In part? Do you hear voices? Dad said he did during the days after he got the Gift. How does it feel?”
“It is weird, I confess,” Gaby tried to put her thoughts in order. It had never been easy to explain what had happened to her, what others called the Gift, to someone who didn’t have it. It was such an alien experience, the way it made your skin crawl when something felt off, the way your stomach felt empty no matter how much you ate. The constant influx of sensorial inputs. It messed with your head in ways not many could understand. You felt elated one moment and then depressed the next.
It was as if her brain had been disassembled and then put together in a different way. And she had gotten away with it easy, in part thanks to her training. Alex had gotten it worse, suffering from anxiety attacks and bouts of depression for years after he’d gotten his Gift. The occasional inhuman voices the Gift made you hear didn’t help. That was in part why she tried to take psychology at college, to help her friend. That’s why she took to playing the guitar and singing, to help herself cope with it. Gaby wondered how Fionn would have felt after he got his Gift. Had his friends and family understood it? Helped him to cope?
Gaby took a deep breath as they descended the other side of the rockslide.
“When the Gift is on,” Gaby started. “You get a heightened perception of the world. Every one of the six senses gets enhanced. And you keep hearing a voice that is not yours, telling you things that can or can’t be useful. And then, of course, there are the increased physical attributes and special abilities. It is as if you have a brand new body that’s alien to you, like when you get new shoes and have to wear them a while to feel more comfortable. And then you have to learn how to turn the Gift off to cope with the day to day.”
“You can turn it on and off?” Sam sounded surprised.
“More or less. You learn to block it most of the time. If you have it ‘on,’ you get tired and hungry faster, all the time, you can barely sleep. And the sensory input is so high that you get dazzled. I tend to block it. Alex for sure blocks it most of the time, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to live a regular life.”
“What do you mean?”
“His Gift manifests as electromagnetic pulses. If he is not careful, he can fry anything electronic around him. It gets worse when he has a cold or the voices get too strong for him.”
“Dad never had those issues.”
“I guess Fionn has had several years to learn to deal with it.” Gaby paused suddenly. She closed her eyes and focused on her hearing. Taking several deep breaths, she opened herself to the world, using the Gift. She blocked the sounds of the insects and the dimwik lizards climbing the walls. It was a faint noise, with a specific cadence.
“Did you hear that?”
“No,” Sam replied, confused. “What did you hear? Voices?”
“Heavy breathing. Moans. Coming from that direction,” Gaby pointed to the right of a side passage, it seemed to end in a crevice about a hundred meters further away. Sam looked that way and walked a few meters. She knelt and touched something with her index and middle fingers. She smelled it.
“It’s a blood trail. Human or freefolk, judging by the color and the smell,” Sam explained.
“I think we are getting close. We need to hurry. I have a bad feeling about this.”
They started to run towards the side passage. There was little light inside, so Sam took out a flashlight from the backpack. Gaby found it odd that she didn’t cast a spell in a place where that would be easier. Sam seemed to be tense. Maybe she saw something that put her in that state. Gaby was about to ask her what was going on when they turned a corner.
Gaby felt nauseated at what she was seeing. Blood and entrails all over the place.
“Oh, Heavens.”
She bit her tongue and walked towards the mangled, badly battered, bloodied body in front of her. It was difficult to tell if it was human or freefolk, or even alive. But the faint speckles of light emanating from the body told Gaby that it was Fionn. And it meant that his Gift was back and was trying to heal him. But given the current state of his body, it wasn’t working properly.
“His healing won’t work if we don’t put that back inside him,” Sam managed to say. “He once cut off his hand and had to hold it to his arm with his other hand for a day until it healed.”
Gaby knelt near the damaged body. Her hands were quickly covered in blood as she started to put Fionn’s entrails inside his belly. Fionn’s injuries weren’t just from being impaled. There was torn flesh as if something had taken a bite. As she worked, she silently thanked the training she’d received at the Sisters of Mercy. It had made her many things, but being squeamish at the sight of blood and gore had not been one of them. She put herself into the task, helped by Samantha, collecting what had to be collected. It was a matter of determination as much as of love.
Then she felt them. Before she could react they made enough noise to startle Sam as well. Gaby and Sam turned around. Crawling down from the walls of the canyon two strange, insect-like creatures. Most of their body was black, so black that they seemed to eat whatever light ray dared to touch the surface of their carapaces. The only source of color were the brilliant neon stripes and shapes that peppered their bodies, in stark contrast to the black. Gaby couldn’t make a clear shape and got distracted by the stripes and shapes. They were so pretty, so relaxing that she couldn’t stop looking at them.
“Don’t stare at them,” Sam told her, grabbing her by the shoulder, waking her up from her daze. “They use those lights to hypnotize their prey.”
“What are they?”
“The creatures Asherah fought in the legend: Lurkers. They are not animals. They are sentient predators that come from the Infinity Pits. They eat freefolk, especially those that use magick. They feed on it,” Sam said, her voice trembling, betraying a sense of fear. Gaby couldn’t blame her. It seemed that for her people, they were the boogeyman. That would explain why Sam used a flashlight instead of a spell. It made sense now.
“So they are incursions,” Gaby replied, biting her lip a bit. She tried to remain in front of them, blocking the creatures from Sam and Fionn. “That explains the drop in temperature.”
“Natural occurring ones,” Sam added. “They never leave this place though.”
Gaby took another look at the Lurkers, being careful to not stare at their hypnotic patterns. Without the distraction of the hypnosis, Gaby thought they resembled the mud scarabs from the Watersnakes, mixed with the deep water crabs found at Orca Bay and blended with the furry limbs of a tarantula. They spoke, their voices taking on the resonance of nails scratching a blackboard, and Gaby was surprised she could understand them.
“They would make for a nice meal,” one of them hissed.
“I tasted a bit of the human bleeding there. It was delightful,” the second one replied.
The fact that they had preyed on Fionn enraged Gaby, breaking any leftover of their hypnotic effect on her. She felt her blood boiling. She clenched her teeth. They would pay for it.
“Sam, can you help your dad? I need to carry out some pest control,” Gaby said, standing up and unsheathing her twin short blades.
“Just hold them off long enough until I pick him up. With any luck, we will manage to evade them.”
“How much time do you think you will need?”
“Just a few minutes,” Sam said with short breaths.
Gaby stared at the two Lurkers surrounding them. To know their true size was impossible, as they were camouflaging part of their bodies within the canyon’s shadows. She just needed to keep them at bay long enough for Sam to work her magick in Fionn’s body to help him heal. But her magick and Fionn’s aura turned them into a tasty snack for the creatures. The only option Gaby had was to give them a meal they couldn’t ignore and even less, pass up. Her grip on her twin swords tightened. Their blades glowed blue and red. Her irises started to glow icy blue.
Gaby faced the Lurkers, keeping Sam and Fionn behind her. Twirling her blades, she stood at a ready stance. Heartguard, her left blade in horizontal position, the arm holding it extended to its full length. Soulkeeper, the right one, with the blade in vertical position, retracted. It was a hand-to-hand combat stance adapted to the shorter blades. She waited for the first attack, a horizontal strike from one of the first Lurker’s claws, and parried it. The second one, the smaller one, attacked her from the flank. They were trying to surround her. Their claws packed a punch, as each parry made her bones ache, even as she deflected the attack. Taking the hits in earnest would have surely ended with her limbs being pulverized. More than a combat, it became a game to keep the Lurkers busy long enough to help Sam escape with Fionn and maybe, just maybe, get a lucky hit to scare them off.
For a second, Gaby felt that time slowed enough for her to see the fast attacks of the Lurkers’ claws, but her body couldn’t react with enough speed to counter them. Even if the Gift gave her heightened senses, the truth was she had neglected to practice with it. Having prophetic dreams wouldn’t help her now.
The Lurkers increased their speed and Gaby found herself blocking rather than evading until one strike landed on her right side and sent her flying into the wall of the canyon. Dazed, she struggled to get on her feet.
The creatures closed in on Sam and Fionn. Sam was occupied trying to keep Fionn’s body together long enough for it to start healing and her defensive spells were unfocused and weak. Gaby tasted her own blood, her lip had been split and she was having trouble breathing. The creatures were stronger than she had surmised at first, even with the Gift activated.
Going by what Sam had told her about the Lurkers, they were parasites that fed on the magick energies emanated by the Maze. They would only get stronger with time. Gaby needed to take them down with all her might. And that meant entering the addictive and dangerous Ice State without Alex nearby to bring her back. It would unleash a dark side she still had trouble keeping in check, even after more than a decade of trying. Letting it free would mean sacrificing her own mind. But she looked to where Sam was, and to where Fionn lay. He had sacrificed himself to cover their escape. It was her turn to return the favor. And then it came to her. Her third realization was that if she wanted her loved ones to be safe, she would have to do it herself. And that meant confronting her inner nightmares and use the teachings from the Sisters of Mercy to do so. It was like the legend of Asherah that Sam just told her. Fionn would need a miracle to heal himself this time. And that miracle would have to be her.
Sorry, Alex, but I just need to do it once more if we are going to make it out of this place.
“It’s just a dance,” Gaby murmured and just like that, her heart slowed, freezing, her eyes glazed and glowed with more intensity. She had entered into the ‘Ice State’ of the Merciful Assassins. Her mind was now locked in a single objective: to kill the enemy in front of her in order to protect Fionn and Samantha.
She ran towards the Lurkers and slid beneath one to reach the other side, putting herself once more between them and Sam and Fionn. Then, putting all her strength behind it, kicked one of the creatures on the side of the ‘head’ and sent it crashing the other.
“You want them? You will have to pass through me!” Gaby yelled at the creatures.
The first Lurker launched an attack, aiming to crush Gaby flat against the ground, but she somersaulted backwards. Spinning in the air, she extended her legs and landed on top of a rock. The second Lurker dashed forward, and pulverized the rock with its claw.
Gaby leaped forward, striking the head of the second Lurker with Soulkeeper, her right blade. It cut deep, taking out one of the creature’s eyes, spilling blood that glowed blue against the shadows. She landed on the ground and launched herself forward, evading another slashing attack by the first Lurker. Rolling away, she ran towards the wall of the canyon and jumped on it, thrusting herself forward toward the second creature, still disoriented from its injury.
With combined slashes from Heartguard and Soulkeeper, Gaby cut what she assumed was its head. Or at least one of them. With another jump using a rock as a step, she descended upon the first Lurker, hitting it on the back with her two blades.
Gaby kept slashing the Lurkers until only a pulp was left. But she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop. A part of her mind was asking her to stop, but she couldn’t. It was as if she was trapped inside her own body, watching it from afar acting on its own volition. In previous occasions she had been able to break free, either through the help of a loved one or through a memento, like the hoodie she had borrowed from Alex. But this time, in her anger, she had gone too deep. Her heart remained frozen. Such was the curse behind the ‘Ice State.’
She could hear Sam yelling at her, begging her to stop. But for Gaby, it was just a distant sound. Once she unleashed her dark side, it was hard for her to stop. Maybe Alex was right, maybe only true love could break the spell.
Then she heard another voice. Not the usual one she had acquired after the awakening of the Gift. It was his voice.
“Gaby, please stop. Come back. Please.”
She turned around. Sam was cradling Fionn’s severely injured body within what seemed to be a bubble. He was unconscious. And yet Gaby could hear his voice calling her to break the self-inflicted spell. Her heart thawed and a tear rolled down her cheek. A sensation of warmth grew inside her chest.
For a brief second, she saw a vision of Fionn, floating away in a strange space, extending his hand to her. “Please, stop. You can break it.”
Gaby extended her hand and the vision disappeared.
“Gaby! Gaby! Are you ok?” Sam asked, breaking Gaby from her vision. Her eyes were red and it was clear she was trying to contain tears. “My dad is not responding. It’s like he is not there, his body is empty. I need your help. Please.”
She blinked a few times. Gaby’s eyes returned to normal and the grip on her blades loosened. Her heartbeat slowed and she could feel herself breathing normally once more.
Something had changed in her but she had no idea what it was. Correction, two things had changed. On the first, regarding her Gift, she now had an inkling of a new way to use it.
But that would have to wait. On the second, at least she had a better idea what it was. Fionn was breathing with difficulties, but his healing ability was starting to kick in. As long as they could keep him in one piece, his body would recover. And his mind would return soon. As long as she was there with him, he would come back. And her heart bounced inside her chest. Gaby was having trouble admitting it but she was starting to care for Fionn more than expected. Otherwise, his voice wouldn’t have been able to break the trance. Only those she cared for were able to do that.
&nb
sp; “Let’s get him back,” Gaby said.
She smiled her trademark crooked smile, sheathed her blades and went to help Sam carry Fionn’s body back to the Figaro. Once there, she would help him return from wherever his soul was traveling. And then she would never leave his side. Not in the coming battle. Not ever again.
Chapter 13
Rock Bottom
This doesn’t feel that bad. Not this time.
Fionn was floating in space. Or what he thought was space. It wasn’t warm, but certainly it wasn’t cold. It was like when he was half asleep in a comfy bed. Or like when he floated in the lake near Skarabear during a summer day, long before he dived into it to get Black Fang. He was tempted to keep his eyes closed, but curiosity got the best of him and he opened them. He tried to make sense of the surroundings. Here, in this ‘dimension,’ there were drifting derelict ships, massive planets, and asteroids.
Last time it really felt awful. I wonder why?
The first time he died, when the Light Explosion hit him, disintegrating his body, the pain shockwave kept hitting at him for a while. He had been disconcerted, confused. It felt like an eternity, although according to Ywain, his badly burned body hit the ground just a few seconds after being hit by the explosion.
Below him, he saw the same labyrinth he had seen the first time he ‘died.’ Just gazing at that place filled his core with dread and horror. As if he had been there once. As if he had to escape after months trapped in a twisted landscape.
Had that been real too?
That labyrinth was the infamous entrance to the Infinity Pits. Above him, a verdant planet full of light called him. He felt his body… was it his body or his soul? He couldn’t tell. He felt his body being dragged by a black and red raven, grabbing him by the belt, towards the planet.
I must be dead, again, because this doesn’t make any sense.
He landed in a grass field in front of a woman with long black hair and Kuni features, clad in demon hunter armor with large shoulder fins and spaudlers. She was sitting on a big limestone rock.
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