by P. R. Adams
The place must have been huge.
Javika sloshed to his side, holding out his backpack and boots. “Would you walk barefoot in this?”
“I’m not sure pulling boots on with it coating my feet is any better.”
“Perhaps stepping on shattered glass or broken clay—”
“Right. Boots it is.”
His feet made a sucking sound when he pulled them free, and they slid into the boots with a slipperiness that made his stomach lurch. He wasn’t sure there was anything that could clean the insides now, not in a world so backwards.
As he pulled his backpack over his shoulder, someone lit a flashlight. There were walls, black—or nearly so—with algae or stains from whatever they were standing in. It looked like the chamber they were in was at least as large as the house above. There were maybe a dozen of the brick pillars distributed with surprising precision.
Javika carefully crossed to the closest and rapped her gloved knuckles against it. “Solid. Sturdy.” Her voice echoed, even though she spoke softly.
“And convenient.” The whole thing seemed crazily convenient. Like surviving the fire.
Heat intense enough to shatter stone should have cooked them. And the place just happened to have some sort of sewer collection area just beneath it?
And the old man with the scars that had once been tattoos had spoken their language.
How?
Riyun couldn’t hear the giant lizard anymore. “We need some answers.”
Sloshing brought him around: Quil was making his way over, flashlight in hand.
“I heard you, Lieutenant.” The young man seemed completely unconcerned that they were below a building that had been turned into an incinerator.
“How safe is this?” Riyun pointed to the pillars and walls.
“Safer than that blast furnace above.”
“Fair enough. So what is this?”
“It’s part of an old drainage system. You may not have an interest in the architecture of the times, but sewage and drainage was something understood fairly early on. This is a collection area. It extends below that courtyard I mentioned.”
“So, what? We stay here until the fire burns out?”
“There should be passages running to the next collection area. Following those will take us someplace safe.”
Hirvok snorted. “Someplace safe? Did you not see what happened up there? That was a dragon. The sky was on fire!”
Riyun blinked. A dragon? “Quil, this Wholesale Fantasy—?”
The pseudo nodded excitedly. “Yes! Those flying lizards in the forest… Yes! It makes sense. There must have been a significant amount of genetic engineering just getting those lizards to that point in development, and then to take that knowledge to the next level to create—”
“A dragon.” Riyun felt the same disbelief he saw on Hirvok’s face. Dragons weren’t really part of the fairly limited Hurdisti folklore. That was mostly focused on creatures that lived in the mountains and stole babies or waylaid travelers or spoiled crops. The threats his people had faced were too mundane to allow for wasting time on fanciful ideas like dragons. But the people of the Inner Sphere had plenty of time and money to expend on trivial matters like ancient mythology. “You sure that’s what it was?”
“The descriptions vary: reptilian or serpent-like, giant or human-sized, fire-breathing or merely incredibly strong.”
“What about intelligent? Those things had a lot more going on than animals.”
“In many myths, yes—they were said to be extremely clever and treacherous.”
Hirvok looked down at Symbra, who was still unconscious. “Great. Just great.”
Riyun accepted his assault weapon from Javika and slung it over his shoulder, then strapped his knife to his thigh. “Find us a path to safety. Be careful.”
The Biwali warrior pulled her own flashlight out, settling it in her left hand while gripping her blade with her right. She took a moment, probably to get her bearings, then walked past the others with the sort of confidence of someone who’d traveled ancient drainage lines her entire life.
Riyun hung back to check on Lonar, who seemed slightly improved after a night of rest. “Having fun yet?”
A smile broke on the huge tweak’s blockish face. “It’s the kind of vacation you dream about.”
“Not my dreams.” Riyun squeezed the heavy weapons expert’s muscular shoulder. “Try to keep up.”
Javika took them into what amounted to a tunnel, a place where the floor sloped down. After a while, they came to an intersection. She turned right, took them down another tunnel, turned left, and before long they were in another large chamber with pillars.
They’d traveled maybe a mile by Riyun’s estimation. Would that be enough to get them to safety? He would have to climb up, which meant finding another trapdoor or some sort of drain that would provide egress onto a street.
He waved Javika over but froze when something splashed down a passageway they hadn’t used. She heard it, too, spinning around and backing up to a pillar.
It could have been some sort of sewer worker or another survivor, but Riyun was taking no chances. “Cover!”
Splashing came down another of the passageways they hadn’t used.
Who could be down here?
He waited until everyone was out of sight, then drew his own knife. The flashlights were off. Everyone had slipped their helmets on and switched to the tac-net. He did the same, bringing up infrared and feeding that into the shared environment. There was heat, but it was coming from high up in the chamber, along the ceiling and the top of the walls.
Had the fire spread throughout the city? Hirvok had said something about—
The splashing grew closer, but Riyun wasn’t picking anything up. Whatever it was seemed to have some sort of cloaking ability.
Unless…
He turned his flashlight on and pointed it at the closest sound.
The light revealed one of the smaller dragons, like the one that had burned Symbra. This one was up on its legs, mere feet from Lonar’s position.
As if it could sense them.
Other flashlights came on, revealing more of the small monsters.
“Don’t let them breathe on you!” Riyun charged toward the one nearest him.
The chamber was a nightmare for gunfire. No clear line of sight, a good chance for ricochets, the way the little dragons had slipped in among them.
It was down to melee.
One positive Riyun noted immediately was that the dragons had just as much trouble with footing as his team did. He barreled into his target, knocking it away from Naru just as it spat fire. The thing went face-first into the dark water. Its flames flared for a moment and even lit a small pool of water, then winked out.
Riyun didn’t wait for the monster to get back up. He hacked at its wings and kicked its legs out from under it.
At one point, the beast spun around and glared at him furiously. When it made the strange gulping noise that came before it spit fiery death, he stepped aside and kicked its leg out from under once again. Fire bloomed underwater, creating a dome of slime-wrapped flame.
While it struggled to regain its footing, Riyun dove in for a cut at its neck. His blade scraped at first, then found purchase.
The smaller dragon screeched and batted at him with a wounded wing.
Riyun scooted to the side and swung again, this time hacking at the back of the neck just above the point where the wings met.
Once again, his blade caught, but this time the dragon collapsed.
It thrashed and squealed, but it wasn’t able to get back up.
He waved the hacker over to the others and ran toward Lonar.
The big man was on his back, hands wrapped around the throat of the monster. The thing desperately swatted at him with its wings and tried to bring its beak down to spit its fire. Lonar was having none of it.
“Hold it!” Riyun closed, adjusting his grip on the knife for another hack at the b
ack of the neck. Was it a weakness, an evolutionary mistake?
Before he could swing, the thing desperately brought a leg up onto Lonar’s chest and intensified its struggles.
The big man roared and twisted the dragon’s neck completely around.
A crunching snap echoed over the shouts of the rest of the team, and the thing went limp.
Lonar grunted and tossed the corpse aside. “Not the victim today.”
He accepted Riyun’s offered hand and got back to a standing position with a little effort. The sound of struggle was gone.
Riyun turned to check on the others. “Anyone wounded?”
Hirvok snorted. “Tawod’s pride. He got a mouthful of—”
More splashing came down the tunnel closest to the sergeant’s position. Riyun braced Lonar against the nearest pillar and hurried to join the others. Their flashlights lit the tunnel, revealing shadows and then a slender, robed figure.
An elderly woman with white, frizzy hair. She leaned against a staff similar to the one Beraga had held up in the big glass room. Her right hand was covered in burn scars, and the pinky and ring fingers had been melted into one. The copper skin of her throat was similarly scarred with slashes. Pale, crystal green eyes glared past a prominent nose at them.
She glanced down at the dead dragons. “It’s a good start. Hardly the end of your struggle.”
Riyun nearly stumbled. “I…can understand you.”
“And I can understand you. You speak the language of the Outworlders.”
“Out—” Of course. The game. It would have to be some sort of fantasy term for the people from his dimension. “Who are you? What are you doing down here?”
“I am Tarlayn, and I am down here for the same reason you are.” She shuffled forward and prodded one of the dragon bodies with her staff. “Because of them. Because of what they’ve done to the city above.”
“And what’s that?”
“They’ve destroyed it, same as they’ve done to every other city that’s been in their way.”
Yagath. They’d destroyed Yagath? “Why? Why destroy the city? It was just a bunch of simple people.”
“Simple people, yes. But they were between Meriscoya and his target.”
Meriscoya. Hadn’t the escaped slave…? “Who is this Meriscoya, and who is his target?”
“He is the dread wizard, the one who would see this world destroyed. And his target?” She pointed her staff at Riyun. “Is you.”
23
It was hard to accept: A city that had the night before been alive with simple folk who posed no threat to anyone else now lay in ruins. But that was the truth before Riyun’s eyes. In the early afternoon sun, the charred wreckage of buildings that had been homes, businesses, and fortifications stretched as far as he could see in all directions. Black columns of smoke rose into the sky, which rained ash like snow that clung to clothing and hair but didn’t melt. In that horrific but silent rain, his team’s movement was eerily quiet—boots scraping over blackened stone like whispers. Only the sagging tower of melted stone remained, shimmering in the heat.
Lonar settled against a pile of crumbled rock that had been part of the marketplace wall. “Worse than a firebombing. That cooked body smell…”
“Yeah.” Riyun had seen skeletons thick with broiled muscle and some burned down to the bone. How many had been completely obliterated to ash? “At least it must’ve been quick.”
“You think? It was a pretty big city. How many of those things were there?”
How many had there been? They hadn’t made any noise, not until the big one blew in the wall. “Maybe she knows.” Riyun nodded toward the woman who’d introduced herself as Tarlayn.
“You trust her?”
“Do you?”
The tweak scraped a forearm across his face, dragging away soot and leaving a black trail of grime. “No. I guess not.”
“And yet it makes no sense not to. What’s she get out of warning us?”
“About this Merry guy?”
“Doesn’t sound like she cares for him much.”
“If he’s really done this before to other cities…bastard must die.”
“I don’t want us getting involved in something that’s not our fight. I just want to find Zabila and get home.”
Lonar teased a small rock from the pile, looked it over, then tossed it at the tower. The rock fell well short. “I wouldn’t mind finding her, assuming she’s still here.”
“She’s worth a lot.”
“But you think she’s dead?”
“How could a spoiled young woman survive for more than a minute in a place like this?”
“You mean like Symbra?” A sly grin slipped across the big man’s face.
Riyun blushed, not that it would be seen beneath the soot covering his face. “Symbra had an assault weapon. She’s trained for combat and survival.”
“Just giving you a hard time, Lieutenant.”
“I get it.” It was good seeing the heavy weapons expert breathing easier. Some of his strength seemed to have returned. He had to feel at least a little better to be dishing out what he was. “Keep an eye out. I need to see how scavenging’s going.”
Lonar patted the stones beneath him. “I won’t let these go anywhere.”
The old, frizzy-haired woman stood upon a high pile of debris about halfway between Riyun’s position and the section of the city his team was searching. In the gray of the smoke and ash, her choice of dark robes and black boots seemed appropriate. White flakes settled on her shoulders uncertainly. She did nothing to shake off the burnt remnants of the city.
He shuffled over until he was a few steps behind her, boots scuffing as soft as a ghost. “You knew this city?”
Tarlayn glanced over her shoulder, crystal green eyes brimming with tears. “I spent some time here. These were good people.”
“How many were Outworlders?”
She wiped tears from her cheeks. “Some. Not many. But a lot of those who survived the Tongalon Green found Yagath had more to offer than anything else nearby.”
“Tongalon Green? Is that the thick forest to the north?”
“North of Dyrkwon.”
Riyun snorted. “I wouldn’t shed a tear if that was gone.”
The woman straightened. “You’ve heard about Dyrkwon.”
“We were ambushed by some escaped slaves.”
“They can be desperate people. Slavery is a terrifying thing.”
“We were desperate, too. We arrived in the woods. I’m assuming you know that?”
“Most Outworlders do.”
Most. Not all. Riyun pointed to the tower that still stood. “What is that place? How’s it still standing?”
“Olun’s tower. It was from an era before the warlords and the merchant princes, and the queens. It stands because his magic hasn’t faded yet, years after his body returned to the earth.”
“Magic?” Of course there would be magic. Wholesale Fantasy. It was another horrible complication. “What do you know about magic?”
“I knew Olun. Well, one of his students. He taught me everything there is to know about magic, and I taught everything I knew to Meriscoya.”
That name again. “So who is this Meriscoya? What does ‘dread wizard’ mean?”
“It means that he is the most powerful wizard to ever walk these lands, and he intends to destroy them.”
“Destroy them? You mean burn everything to the ground like this? What’s the point?”
“To bring suffering. To show what he can do. He has set fire to the Plains of Votathka to the east already, yet many people still don’t understand the threat he represents.”
“And that pisses him off.”
“Yes—it ‘pisses him off.’” She chuckled. “That is one of the charming things about your language: It is flowery.”
Riyun had never heard his language called that before. The language was no different from hers, really—a scientific construction to create a satisfying compromise
for the various cultures brought together when the first world dreamed of expanding to the stars. There were so many inefficiencies in maintaining multiple languages and the cultures those languages represented.
A piercing whistle caught his attention. Hirvok waved.
They’d found something.
Riyun adjusted his weapon strap. “I need to check on my team.”
“I will accompany you.”
For an old woman with some pretty hideous scars and a limp, she did well keeping up. She wasn’t even breathing hard when Riyun reached the others. They seemed excited, moving quickly as they pulled stones from a pile of rubble that must have once been part of a large building. Quil was off to the left, bent over something.
Not something…someone. Riyun jogged over. “Who is it?”
Hirvok beamed and fell in at Riyun’s side. “A survivor. There are more down there, in the basement of that place.”
“That place” was a mound of charred beams and segments of stone walls. It must have been quite a large structure. The survivor was a young woman—younger than Symbra. Similar burn wounds ran the length of the survivor’s arms and along the side of her face. Quil talked to her softly, reassuring her that everything would be fine. But the injuries—burns—destroyed the flesh and left the victim susceptible to infection. Surviving required rapid response.
And specific medicines.
The pseudo looked up, and the question in his silvery eyes was obvious: Do we save her and the others?
It would mean using up the salve that would salvage the damaged skin. Riyun had an obligation to his people. He had to preserve their critical resources. And these were just simulacra. Creations for a game.
But they were innocent. What sort of human would Riyun be if he didn’t care for them?
He hung his head. “Do what you can.”
Tawod and Naru brought over another young woman, this one better off. She had a broken arm and some cuts, but there were no burn wounds. She could survive with Quil’s care. Riyun hurried over to where Javika was crawling out of a hole. The assassin had a skinny little boy cradled in her arms. Blood matted his hair.