The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  “Come on,” was all Gwen said, pulling Nate gently by the hand, apparently content to leave it at that.

  “I knew you were into some freaky shit, babe,” Todd said, finally finding his voice, “but Arturi? Seriously? He’s a fucking—”

  “Shut up.”

  The words silenced Todd so fast Nate almost didn’t believe they’d come from his own mouth. At first, he wasn’t even sure what it was that’d just set him on high alert. Not Todd’s impending insults. Not just those, at least. It was something else. Something…

  There.

  A low, almost inaudible vibration thrumming in his chest and through his bones. The handful of Liberty patrons huddled around the front windows, frowning out into the State College night. A prickling tingle rising along the back of his neck, and a deep, nearly subconscious certainty.

  “Nate?” Gwen said.

  Something was coming. He felt it in his gut.

  He was whirling to look for Marty and the others when the light spilled in, casting the industrial chic décor with a violent halogen blue and illuminating College Ave in the windows like a waking sun. A car alarm split the night air, then several more.

  “What the fuck?” someone gasped at the windows.

  A scream outside. Dozens of them, multiplying. The sharp cracking thud of cars colliding in the street. The tight pressure of Gwen’s hand on his. And through it all, the electric thrum of something enormous charging, building, like some unspeakable alien death ray preparing to fire.

  Nate’s insides clenched, turned to ice. The sound was spreading, spreading until the entire world was vibrating with it, and it was crushing down on Nate’s entire body. Then the pressure receded with a concussive pulse of sound, and all hell broke loose.

  Windows shattered. The ceiling cracked and groaned, showering them with dust. Outside, it sounded as if entire mountains were collapsing.

  In the blink of an eye, the bar fell to utter chaos, half of the population stampeding madly for the door while the other half clashed against them in a desperate rush to get the hell away from whatever was out there.

  But Nate knew what was out there, didn’t he?

  I see you have decided to start paying attention again. Splendid.

  Gwen’s shouting voice yanked him out of his stupor. Nate grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward the booth, searching desperately for Marty’s face in the screaming crowd.

  They didn’t make it two feet through the mess before another humming charge began to build in the air.

  “We have to…” Nate started to shout to Gwen, before he realized he had no godly idea what they had to do.

  Run?

  Duck for fucking cover?

  The thrumming air thickened, building Liberty up to a low grade pressure cooker, then the wave crested, wriggling Nate’s insides on a moment of bizarre weightlessness, and the better half of the ceiling disappeared with a rending crunch, shooting up into the sky as if drawn by the world’s most giant vacuum cleaner.

  Halogen blue light flooded the room. Nate squinted up through the blinding sea of a thousand tiny suns, and even knowing what he knew, could only gape at what he saw.

  Ships. Alien ships. Dozens of them filling the night sky above, each one a dim outline of sharp, craggy edges behind the onslaught of the lights, like an army of floating mountains, casting their nightmarish daylight down on State College.

  “Help us,” Nate whispered—to the Excalibur, to the Merlin or the Lady, he didn’t know.

  Beside him, Gwen’s eyes were wide, her hand death-grip tight on his. “What the hell’s happening, Nate?”

  Another charge was building.

  Tell her.

  Strong winds slapped at them through the open ceiling. Around them, other buildings were cracking open, the air moaning with a steady stream of those alien pulses, each one ripping up another gout of rooftop debris here, another freaking car there.

  And people too, Nate realized numbly, too shocked to move. Masses of screaming, writhing people shooting into the air from neighboring buildings all around, straight up, straight toward the waiting ships high above.

  Abductees.

  Hundreds of them.

  Tell her how you failed to stop this.

  “Just shut up and help me, goddammit!” he snapped back, prying his eyes back down to Liberty, looking for his friends.

  Gwen gripped his hand and arm even tighter. “Nate, who’re you— What’s—”

  Tell her how you never truly believed.

  The pressure built, flattening his insides until the wave crested, and the sense of weightlessness engulfed him once again, more potent than before. Then the effect reversed, and the floor rocketed away, launching him skyward without the faintest warning. He would’ve lost Gwen completely if she hadn’t been flying right next to him, the entire population of Liberty flailing right around them, all zooming toward the hovering lights in a sea of terrified screams.

  “HELP US, EX!” Nate screamed, yanking Gwen closer and holding onto her as tightly as he could even as she screamed her own prayers, clutching him right back.

  The lights were rushing to meet them. Up, down, he couldn’t tell. They zoomed closer, closer. Too fast. They were going to hit.

  Help us, he thought one last time, little more than a feeble prayer. Then came the Excalibur’s reply, cold and mechanical.

  No.

  22

  The Pit

  His head ached.

  Christ, his head ached.

  The world awoke as a dark orange swirl of nausea lurching wildly beneath him, adrift in panicked voices and metallic rattles, his mind grasping feebly at disjointed memories. Blinding lights, rushing closer. The craggy underbelly of… of ships, he remembered in a rush. Alien ships.

  Troglodan ships?

  “Nate!” a familiar voice hissed through the drunken malaise of memories. Darkness as something—a tractor beam?—had yanked them aboard. Jostling impacts in the blind dark, clinging to Gwen for dear life, bouncing around on something like a conveyor belt. Fighting to keep her close as they were dished onto a grimy deck, and… And what? It felt like grasping at a fading nightmare.

  “Nate?!”

  He tried again to blink his eyes open, winced as the first slits of light entered his swollen eyes, and punched him right in the brain. Had he been unconscious?

  The spinning world lurched on beneath him. Rhythmically. Heavy, thunking footsteps. He was being carried. He tried to open his eyes again. Saw the bleary outline of impossibly thick legs stomping along overhead… below? A troglodan, his brain registered. He was slung over the shoulder of a troglodan.

  “Nate, please. Jesus, please.”

  Gwen’s voice. Close.

  Something rattling. Chains? Then the world tilted, and something hit the deck with a groan—Gwen’s voice again, he realized with a sickened twist—and the troglodan lurched on.

  “Nate!” Gwen cried somewhere behind. “No!”

  The panic and pain in her voice hit him like a searing bolt. His eyes snapped fully open. He glimpsed rust colored bulkheads and a field of hip-high posts sliding by. Then he gathered what groggy strength he had and rolled.

  He must’ve caught the troglodan by surprise. Gods knew he caught himself by surprise, when he realized he’d just consigned his poor body to an eight foot drop. He hit the unforgiving deck before he had time to think about it, and scrambled wildly for his feet, barely even noticing the pain, or the dozens of chained students gaping at him on either side of the aisle from the bulkhead and the tether posts.

  Then he tripped on something. Something that yanked his arms down by the wrists. A chain. His wrists were shackled, he realized in groggy surprise. Chained together. He stutter-stepped for balance, aware that people were screaming all around him.

  Something struck the back of his head, and next he knew, he was face down on the deck, half blind with stars dancing through his vision.

  “Nate!” Gwen cried somewhere.

 
He tried to get up—or thought he did, at least—but a thick hand took him by the throat and started dragging him across the grimy deck before he got anywhere. Nate coughed and sputtered, trying as best he could to scramble along with the troglodan before it accidentally broke his neck or choked him to death. The hulking beast seemed to find this amusing.

  It paused, chuckling to itself, then changed course, hefting him around like a plaything and backtracking the way they’d come. A few frantic moments later, Nate was almost shamefully relieved to find himself casually deposited against one of the stout chain posts right next to the aisle—and right next to Gwen. She reached and grabbed onto his hand like a lifeline, gasping his name, their shackled wrists clanking together.

  For a brief second, taking in the rows of fellow prisoners all around them with Gwen’s hand crushing his, Nate remembered past his spinning head that he was supposed to be a goddamn Knight. That he was supposed to be strong enough to do something about this. Then the beast who’d carried him over bent down, stuck its beady-eyed face inches from Nate’s, bared yellow teeth that looked like they could’ve chomped through human bones, and roared.

  By the time the ferocious sound abated, Nate was shaking in a numb stupor, too afraid to move as the chuckling troglodan first patted his cheek with a pair of forearm-sized fingers, then casually plucked the chain from one of his shackles—like it had some kind of magnetic release—and reached back to fix it to the post. Another chain clicked into place on the thick collar Nate hadn’t even noticed he was wearing, then the troglodan returned its reach from behind Nate, trailing one last chain, which it fixed to the shackle of the hand that was still tightly gripped in Gwen’s.

  Definitely magnetic. Or something like it. Hard to think straight with a sneering troglodan breathing hot, fetid air in his face.

  “Gargoot,” the beast rumbled, tilting its thick, lumpy gray hillside of a head toward Gwen and patting Nate roughly on the cheek once again before it stood back to its full eight-and-a-half feet and stomped off for the next prisoner, chuckling to itself.

  Nate watched it go, not understanding what the hell had just happened—or, even more importantly, how in all the unknown universe the Merlin and the Lady had ever thought he could hope to take on even a single one of these monsters.

  Ex? he thought, almost cautiously, as if he might somehow make things worse.

  Nothing.

  “Are you okay?” Gwen whispered beside him.

  Ex, we need your help. Please!

  Nothing at all.

  “Nate…” Gwen was whispering.

  Nate turned to her, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t okay. None of them were okay. But at least seeing her in one piece brought a feeble flicker of relief. “What happened?” he tried to ask. The words barely came out. Christ, his mouth was dry.

  “I thought they hit you with some kind of sedative when you, you know…” She searched his face, then, seeming to realize he might not know, she added, “You struggled when they tried to separate us.”

  Dim memories stirred, tinged with a druggy haze. Nate and Gwen, huddling like a pair of frightened bunnies, dished onto a grimy deck. Fellow bar-goers scrambling in the darkness around them. Brutally strong hands shoving them along. Screams and groaning mechanical assemblies, and something enormous trying to rip Gwen away from him. Away into the darkness.

  He had fought. Fought right up until something smacked into his neck like a striking viper. And that was it.

  “How long ago?” he asked, glancing around the room—the brig, he supposed—where at least eight troglodans were thudding up and down the gray aisles, checking on chains here, dragging in another terrified prisoner there.

  “Not long. They put us through some kind of… processing. Outfitted everyone with shackles. Decontaminated us too, I think.”

  That probably explained why he felt so goddamn sticky, at least, and why the mysterious goopy residue was wafting such a strong alcohol scent, and burning at the sites of the several abrasions he’d collected in the shuffle.

  “It all happened so fast,” Gwen added quietly, “but I managed to keep you with me.”

  He looked back to her. Something about the way she said it, and the way she was watching him now. “Gwen,” he whispered, not really knowing what else to say.

  She held his gaze, and he could practically hear her thoughts racing. “You didn’t go down like the others,” she finally said. “Not completely. You just kinda…” She shook her head, apparently lost for words.

  Nate turned and scanned the brig more closely, not sure what to make of that. He needed to find Marty and the others. There might’ve been close to two hundred captives in the room, a third or so lining the chain rings on the rust colored bulkhead perimeter, and the rest, like him and Gwen, chained to the rows of hip-high chain posts spaced evenly across most of the brig.

  He saw a few other students completely zonked out, mostly larger guys. Hit with the same drugs they’d used on him?

  “Must’ve been a faulty dose,” Gwen said quietly, apparently tracking his gaze. “Lucky. Still scared the hell out of me, though.”

  A faulty dose.

  Maybe.

  He squeezed Gwen’s hand, not knowing what to say.

  Do I have you to thank for my early arrival to hell? he wondered silently at the Excalibur, but still there was nothing. No reply. Nate wasn’t even positive he could still feel his unwilling companion there at all.

  All he could do was stare at the troglodans moving casually about, checking chains and shackles even as Gwen ran through a quiet breakdown of what they knew and all the whos, hows, whats, and whys they needed to start figuring out if they were going to survive this thing. Nate was still caught up on the big one.

  What in holy hell had he done?

  Nothing, he could’ve sworn the troglodans replied as they stomped about, trading gouts of their booming, guttural speech. Not a goddamn thing. And now he was trapped.

  At least they weren’t ruthlessly murdering everyone, right?

  Not yet.

  Not that there was much stopping them.

  “—said shut up!” Nate heard someone hiss nearby, as he surveyed their surroundings for any hint of hope.

  Most of the troglodans in the brig were smaller than the monstrosity that had chased him in the park a few weeks ago, but any one of them still looked like they could’ve handled multiple NFL linebackers without breaking a sweat. Also unlike the park berserker—which he realized now must’ve been naked in all of its knobby gray hided glory—these troglodans wore plated dark armor that might’ve actually looked sleek and sophisticated if it hadn’t been so scuffed and battered. Not that that really—

  “Nate!” hissed a voice behind and to the right, from where a bigger troglodan had just come stomping past.

  Nate straightened in surprise. Marty.

  He glanced carefully to the right, trying not to rattle his chains or draw any attention. The troglodans couldn’t have cared less anyway. They were busy hauling in more prisoners. He turned as fully as the chains let him. Relief flooded his chest at the sight of Marty and Kyle chained up side-by-side on the bulkhead. Relief, quickly followed by a burst of manic guilt that he could ever feel anything other than horror at such a sight.

  At least they looked unharmed, though, and lucid. More lucid than Nate felt anyway, though his brain did seem to be burning through the druggy haze pretty quickly, all things considered.

  “Are you okay?” Marty whispered as loudly as he dared, glancing nervously toward the troglodans at the front of the room.

  “Where’s Zach?” Nate whispered back.

  “Back here,” came another whisper somewhere behind Nate. “Kelsey too.”

  Gwen perked up at that, trying to crane around to see, not making it far before her chains pulled taut. Around them, the whispers were multiplying, emboldened by the fact that none of them were immediately eaten for taking their hushed roll call.

  “Shut up, you assholes,” someo
ne growled, louder than all the rest. “You’re gonna get us all killed!”

  Nate ignored the voice and strained against his chains, first testing them, then twisting around as best he could to try to get a look at them. Which was how he just so happened to be looking in the exact wrong place when a big guy chained up a few posts back and to the left exploded from silent fidgeting to full on losing his shit.

  “LET ME GO!” he screamed suddenly, thrashing forward against his restraints at the nearest troglodan. “LET ME FUCKING—”

  There was a rushing thrum of sound like a miniaturized version of the pulse waves that’d ripped them out of Liberty, and the big guy’s head disappeared in a cloud of red mist.

  Half of the room screamed. Nate could only stare at the girl who’d been sitting beside the big guy. Her eyes had gone blank. Just vacant. Her cheek spattered with blood. Her trembling jaw the only thing moving on her entire body.

  A thud from ahead drew Nate’s eyes to where one of the other troglodans had shoved the shooter against the dirty bulkhead. The shover growled a sharp string of what sounded like rebuke. The shooter brandished his gun, replying in kind, then gestured toward the headless prisoner. A few of the troglodans laughed at whatever he’d said. The one who appeared to be in charge shoved the shooter toward the door, then barked an order at another. The room watched in dead silence as the alien unchained the headless body and dragged it from the room by a single leg, like it was nothing but a freaking defective mannequin.

  The rest of the troglodans paid the grisly scene no mind as they finished chaining down the last of their loose captives. Once they were done, they stood and left, leaving their leader alone at the head of the room, surveying them with a deadly calm, sweeping his massive head slowly from side to side.