by A. R. Knight
“We couldn’t take chances,” Anna sent. “If the fire didn’t break the bond with Nara, we didn’t want you up and running again.”
“Right. Instead I get to stay here and fight off spirits with one working arm.”
“I thought you were hiding?”
“Now.” I paused. Listened. Spirits were still running through the streets outside, but nothing pulled them into the lab. “How are you going to last until the Mountain?”
“We will because we have to. There’s no other choice.”
“Nicholas thinks his bomb will work?”
“Same answer, Carver. It has to.”
“Know what’ll happen if it works, right? I’ll be gone.”
Silence from Anna. A tinge of sadness.
“We know,” Anna’s words came slow. “If Nicholas can do what he’s promising, he’ll be swept away too. And Selena. And, really, all of us still here.”
“That’s a high price to pay.”
“Set against the cost of not doing anything?”
“I see your point.”
“I believe you said to me, shortly after we met, that guides have to be prepared to die at any time, right? That we couldn’t expect long lives?”
I nodded to nobody in the lab. It’d been a bravo sentiment to share. Words that made me feel strong and important, especially when shared with a kid on the train into Chicago, or in a quote to Opperman for one of his stories.
“Comes with the job,” I said to Anna. “Only, just because it’s likely, doesn’t mean you have to be all right with it.”
“Tell me. Would you really want to stay here, in Riven? Forever?”
“It’s not all bad.” I surprised myself with the words. How true they were. “With Selena, and all of you, there’s plenty of adventure. Places to explore. Things to do. The scenery could use some work, and the food is terrible...”
Anna didn’t say anything. Not that there was much you could say to someone who’d already died, who was about to die again, if his friends got their way.
“Except,” I continued. “You know what, I am angry. I’m frustrated. I never had a chance to raise a family. To lead a normal life. To fight in a war for my country or find a normal job. By chance, I could become a guide, and before I knew any better I was one. All of the things I could have done, I can’t do.”
“As it is for all of us,” Anna’s reply came soft. “We’re pawns in a game bigger than we are. Carver, even with all the horrors, all the danger, and all the fighting, at least we have the chance to affect the world. You and I, Bryce and the other guides, we’re shaping everyone’s future.”
“I know. Which is why I wouldn’t change this for anything,” I quirked a smile that I hoped made it into my words. “I need catharsis every now and again.”
“Know what you could be doing instead?”
“What?”
“Getting yourself up and coming after us.”
“That might be a good idea.” I tested my legs. My hands and feet. More feeling. I could probably stand, maybe limp. Brave a step or two.
I curled forward, sitting up. Put my right hand on the top of the table, pulled myself standing. My right leg wasn’t thrilled about it, but between the twinges, it held. I leaned down, picked up the great sword. Lifted it with both hands. Shifted the weapon to my right and took a step, left hand ready to catch myself on the table.
I didn’t fall.
Took another step. Reached the end of the table. I could do this.
“Anna, it’s going to be a while, but I’m on my way.”
Chapter 56
The Tar Pit’s factories and warehouses were empty. Its streets bereft of the wandering spirits that I would normally see. The breaches pulled the souls elsewhere, and the guides had kept the city as clear of those as possible.
My limp straightened as I walked. I flexed the fingers on my left hand. Even managed to turn my head from side to side without pain. The miracles of being dead.
Within a few hours I could see the West gate, or rather, its ruins. The long line of rubble where the archway had once stood. The half-crumbled guard tower on the south side.
And the guides fighting a desperate battle outside of it.
I couldn’t quite run, but as my shambling jog brought me closer, I saw the pair of guides outside the tower’s lone door. They were fighting a group of spirits, armed as well. Nara’s army, then, chasing down some stragglers.
The clash of metal on metal confirmed that the spirits weren’t the usual hands and teeth crowd. I slowed as I approached, taking cover in the torn ruins of a guard house. Through its ripped walls, I took in a better view.
I didn’t like what I saw.
Holding their ground in front of the door, fighting in solid tandem, were my least favorite guides; Polk and Derringer. They barred the door with their bodies, driving Nara’s spirits back. The odds weren’t great; eight against the two of them, and Nara’s spirits seemed to be fine with biding their time. They darted in an out, looking for a quick stick, rather than the reckless charge I’d come to expect from spirits.
Polk and Derringer were human. They would bleed, they would tire. They would lose.
While I wasn’t quite my sneaky self, I hadn’t been noticed. I could wade into the back of the spirits, could take them down. On the other hand, Polk and Derringer had killed me. Took a knife to my throat or put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. What better justice was there than seeing their cruelty matched?
I watched Derringer duck a swing from a spirit’s sword, then saw Polk stab over his partner’s head, driving the point of his rapier into the spirit’s chest, alighting it in blue flame.
A strong move. One that left Polk open.
The hatchet came down into Polk’s back, the spirit wielding it in both hands. The guide collapsed against Derringer, who by reflex or skill threw Polk perfectly back through the doorway while retreating himself to fill the entrance.
One on seven.
Even I’m not that mean.
I stumbled out of the guard house into the dirty street and started shouting. Waved my arms. Trying to draw attention. The spirits, and even Derringer, turned at the noise. Stared at me.
Then Derringer took advantage. Used his swords and stabbed the spirit closest to him. Burnt it up.
Two on six now.
The spirits split in half, three turning to tackle Derringer and another trio facing me. I had hatchet man, another spirit with a pair of long knives, and one holding a spear in both hands. All three spirits looked like shabby ghosts of a hospital ward, clad in stained gowns with pocked faces.
“Nice variety, guys,” I said, drawing the great sword.
The one with the spear had the reach, and he led the attack, darting forward with a straight stab while the other two broke out to either side of me. A good ol’ pincer move.
So I stepped forward. Slid just to the side of the spear’s thrust, and as the spirit started to pull back his weapon, I sliced the great sword across. The spirit wasn’t far enough away to avoid the blazing point.
I kept my momentum, pulling the sword and rotating my feet to the left, forcing hatchet man back. Which left long knives free to jump on my back, stabbing into me with those damned daggers. But I kept turning, and he failed to account for his own momentum, and even as those knives stabbed into me, he flew off and hit the ground.
I lifted my swing, pushing past the searing pain, cut my rotation in half, and brought the great sword over my head and down on the knife-wielding spirit. He wouldn’t be getting up again.
Which left hatchet-man all alone.
“Carver!” Derringer’s pained yelp jerked my eyes back towards the tower. One spirit left for him, but Derringer, leaning against the entrance, had a knife sticking out of his side. One of his swords sat on the ground. The last spirit, holding a big ax, wheeled it back for a deathblow.
So I did the only thing I could. I twisted, put my weight into it, and launched the great sword through
the air. It flew, spinning, and thwacked into the ax-man’s legs. Sliced in and tripped the spirit.
I didn’t see what Derringer did then, because the hatchet man came for me. He swung towards me chest, and I dove forward. Caught his forearm before the weapon could come down, and drove both of us into the dirt.
Unfortunately, this meant seeing the spirit’s face up close; its sore, oozing nightmare a true feast of terror. I responded to it in the only sane way I could imagine - taking my own head and bashing into his nose.
With my left hand, I tried to get a grip on the hatchet. Failed as the spirit moved his arm out of my reach. Ready to slam it down on my back. So I slipped my right arm underneath the spirit’s back and pulled as he swung the hatchet. Pulled the spirit over on top of me, causing his strike to miss wide right.
The hatchet hit the stone hard and bounced off, out of his grip. Leaving us both weaponless. Two spirits clawing and tearing at each other. At least, that’s what I thought would happen, until the spirit, snarling in my face, froze and collapsed as blue fire burned around it.
Derringer’s sweaty, bloody face appeared over the burning spirit’s shoulders, searching to see if I was still alive.
“Barely,” I answered the unspoken question and threw the spirit off of me. My back burned, but compared to Nicholas’ bomb, this had been cake. Nothing to it.
“Thanks.” Derringer helped me up. “Came out of nowhere.”
“Still not convinced I should have helped you.” I leaned on him as we walked back to the tower.
“Polk and I were the guards.” Derringer showed me into the tower, and I saw, lying there in various states of injury, were a dozen guides or more. Most leaned against the walls. A few sat on the ground. A couple were on their backs.
I felt faintly ill. I’d almost abandoned all of them to their deaths, just for my own grudge.
“Hurt too bad to go on,” Polk coughed as he stood to shake my hand. “Bryce sent us back with them. Circled around that band of spirits you were leading. Guess you aren’t doing that anymore?”
“Changed my mind,” I said. “The rest of the way shouldn’t be too bad. A breach, but it’s not crowded.”
Derringer nodded. “Suppose you won’t want to escort us?”
I shook my head. “Have to catch up to the rest of them. If they don’t succeed, it won’t matter if you get back alive.”
None of them protested. They all knew.
Chapter 57
Derringer walked up to me as I stared at the ruins of the West gate, already coating over with ash flakes. The breaches in the woods, and the spirits pouring forth, were likely chasing after the guides. Nara’s army. A rare moment of quiet for this part of Riven.
“Polk and I can go with you. We can help,” Derringer said.
“You won’t be able to keep up,” I replied, not bothering to look at him. “I won’t get tired. Any spirit that catches me, I’ll heal up in minutes. You’re already hurt. Polk can barely walk.”
Derringer didn’t say anything for a second. Then I felt his hand land on my shoulder. “We’re with you, Carver. I know you have no cause to like us, and that’s fine, but we’re behind you. All of us want you to go back to that Mountain, take care of Nara, and save Riven.”
“You say you’re behind me?” I looked at Derringer, then spread out my arms. I think he thought I was going to wrap him in a hug, but no, I had a better idea.
“Anything we can do.”
“Give me your coat.”
“What?” Then Derringer looked at mine, which wasn’t a coat so much as a pile of cloth scraps. “Oh.”
In Derringer’s coat, a little loose in the shoulders but otherwise solid, I left the guard tower and headed west. Beyond the gate and into the clearing before the forest. As I neared the trees, I paused and turned back. Looked at the ruined wall, the fractured gate, and the city that lay beyond. I would never go back there. I knew this as much as I knew anything.
Either we would succeed, and the Cycle would wash over and burn me from existence. Or we would fail, and Nara would bind me to once again become her thrall. And we would wait the end of everything there in the Mountain.
I hadn’t felt sadness thinking about how I wouldn’t see my apartment in Chicago again. A smile at the thought of Ezra’s, never tasting another glass of their frothy beer or warm coffee on a cold winter morning. Riven had none of those charms, but I realized, standing there, that it was more of a home to me than any place had ever been. I knew its streets, its breaking buildings, it’s endless breeze and ash flakes. Riven was never safe, but it was home.
Now to protect it, I had to destroy it.
With the great sword held out in front of me, my back still sore from the hatchet, I moved into the forest. The gray trunks rose high into the air, the dark canopy filtering out the fogged sky. Sounds of spirits fighting each other gnashed their way through. Echoing off of the trees, the ground, to make it seem as though all the world around me engaged in a deadly struggle.
I knew which way was west, and that is where I walked.
I reached out to Anna, to see that she was still there. Confidence fled back to me. A slight bit of sadness. Perhaps they were losing guides. Perhaps they were understanding that this might cost them their lives as well. Resignation to a necessity.
Several hours into the walk, or at least that’s what I guessed, the constant crashes and growls and chatter burst forth closer to me than before. I could see movement beyond the next tree and I steadied myself. Waited for something to come crashing through. The sounds turned away at the last moment, a sharp change. They were loud, a struggle between more than just spirits.
I shouldn’t investigate. No reason to be curious now. Should just keep going. Except I didn’t know if it was like Polk and Derringer. A friend in need of help.
So instead of running from the noise, I went towards it. Went into a clearing, one that hadn’t been there before, but now, through the felling of trees by blow and body, a broken circle appeared. In it, their large and thick arms swinging at each other, stood Mali’s golden ghoul facing off against another, stranger one.
This ghoul, made from the molded bodies of consumed spirits, had six arms, and used them as legs and anything else that needed. It grappled with the golden ghoul, and they alternated throwing each other around the clearing. I couldn’t tell who was winning, both battering the other in equal measure.
The monster stood on two of its arms, and grabbed the golden ghoul’s paired hands with two more, and then with its uppermost pair snatched the golden ghoul’s head and began to twist. To tear the golden ghoul the pieces.
Mali’s creation had been my friend.
I ran forward and slashed with the great sword. Caught the back of the monster and bit deep into the dark, swirling flesh. The blue fire from my blade danced along the edges of the cut, but failed to take hold.
The ghoul, however, noticed. Broke off from its grapple and cut loose with a high-pitched howl that came from, I realized, a mouth in the middle of what I’d taken to be its chest. The ghoul turned and kicked with its lower left leg. Hit me square in the ribs, though I managed another cut from the sword in the process. I flew back, landed on broken branches.
What was another bruise anyway?
The attack gave the golden ghoul a chance to regain its footing. It bashed down on the six-armed creature, driving it into the ground with the force of its golden fist. However, from its new position hugging the earth, the ghoul grabbed and threw Mali’s creature’s feet out from under it. The golden ghoul tumbled to the ground.
The monster used its advantage; scrabbled on top of the golden ghoul and began to hammer on it with four of its six arms. Beating and breaking down my monstrous friend.
“Mali should have made you better,” I muttered as I stood up. Adjusted the sword and charged with it, leading its point like a spear.
As I came close, the monster slowed its beating with its middle left arm, and swung it out to meet me. I stepp
ed left, around the swing, and then brought the sword around and down on the arm. With the added force, the sword sliced through and severed the ghoul’s limb.
It shrieked, and stumbled back off the golden ghoul. This time, the blue fire from my sword burned away the severed hand and licked at the stump. As the ghoul fell back, I followed in. Slashing every time the ghoul tried to drive me away with its arms. It had no defense against the sword.
Or so I thought.
The ghoul paused and I drove in for a stab right into its mouth. And then all three of its remaining arms, the ones it wasn’t using for legs, came in at me from different angles. I adjusted my swing to aim for the right one, slashed across the ghoul’s reaching hand, but it kept coming.
The ghoul pressed the sword into my body and accepted the blue burning flame. I felt the pressure on all sides. Crushing, grinding. In a moment I would break apart entirely. Flattened to nothing more than dust.
Until Mali’s ghoul, the thing that had nearly killed me back in her temple, dove headlong into the beast’s midsection. Knocked me out of its arms and drove its golden fists over and over into the other ghoul. I hit the ground and stayed still for a moment, trying to find which parts of me worked.
Thanks to Mali’s ghoul, I could feel my arms and legs. Wasn’t destroyed like after Nicholas’ bomb. I creaked to my feet, hefted the sword up off the ground, walked around the golden ghoul as it continued to bash the thrashing beast, and then jammed my blade into the top of the six-armed monster. Let the blue fire run down the sword and into the creature, burning away the ties that bound together.
Mali’s ghoul stood as the fire finished consuming its foe. Stared at me with a nod. And then turned back to the burning remnants.
I saw why. As the ghoul burned, spirits emerged. The source of its power and its rage. Tose spirits were those of the Right and Left Hand. Cheo’s warriors, torn and confused. Bound together in lost anger.
“Cheo,” I said when I saw the leader emerge from the fire. He was not, however, the man I’d known. Like the others, the ghoul had torn apart any connection he still had to sanity. If I’d still been human, still had life, I could have bound them. If I knew how to use Nara’s technique, I could’ve done that as well. But I saw the calm on that face, the steady, clear eyes, and I rested my hand on his shoulder.