by Molles, DJ
A round pocked the earth to the side of his boot, and Stuber scrunched in tighter.
Things were getting a tad hairy.
It wasn’t that Stuber didn’t feel fear. It came on him the same as everyone else—vision tightening, heart slamming, breathing elevated. It was just that there was really no point in wallowing in it. Wallowing in your fear only decreased your survivability.
So you let the fear move through you.
Death waits in the wings, after all.
Was tonight the night it would descend on him?
And where in the fuck was Sagum?
Rounds clunked against the other side of the tree.
Stuber centered himself. Took a big breath. Released it. Then leaned out, low.
One shape, coming down the side of the ravine. Stuber let him have it. But he was also aware of many others, taking the top, firing at them, then diving over. Five. Now ten. Now a dozen.
Stuber put two more down before his bolt locked back on an empty mag.
He ducked back into cover, swapping mags. He had two more left after this. He regretted having to let them fall—they were a finite resource—but he didn’t have time or space to retain them.
A glance up showed him that Teran and Whimsby were crouched behind trees, taking shots at the assaulting praetors. But for every few rounds they fired, a dozen more forced them back into cover.
Swirling movement far on their right flank. Shadows in the darkness.
“Whimsby!” Stuber yelled out. “Right flank!”
Whimsby pivoted and fired on the flankers.
Stuber ducked out again, picking a target and firing on the praetor as it climbed onto their side of the ravine. Along with about twenty of his comrades.
Stuber’s chess match with Death had taken a bad turn. But that’s the thing about Death. That bastard always won in the end.
“Petra, my love,” Stuber murmured as he leaned out and fired again, his voice only audible to his own ears. “I’m sorry if this is how it goes down. It’s not what I wanted.” He punched rounds into a praetor’s hips, then the top of his helm as he fell. “Not for me, and not for you.”
A sudden scream split the night. For a half a second, Stuber thought it was Teran, but it came from the wrong direction. It was just so high-pitched…
Stuber glanced out from cover again, and saw fire blooming from a muzzle, but not directed at him. It came from the side—and just behind—the line of praetors. In the strobing, yellow flash, Stuber saw Sagum’s face, his mouth wide open, issuing a scream that should have come from a woman.
But it was fierce.
Sagum strode straight into the thick of the praetors, his rifle slamming at their backs. Stuber had no idea where the skinny fucker had been hiding, but he rammed it straight into the praetor’s backsides, and that was a wonderful thing to Stuber.
He shouldered his rifle and added to the crossfire. Bodies dropped. Rounds sparked across praetorian armor, and found the flesh between the plates. Blood filled the air in puffs of mist and swirling ribbons.
But the praetors were not peons to devolve into panic. By the time their ranks had been cut in half, three of them hit the ground, slamming the trees with unrelenting suppressive fire, while two others focused their fire on Sagum.
Stuber bolted out of cover, despite the hurricane of bullets flying all around him. He cut an angle towards Sagum, firing on the two praetors that had focused on him. He managed to punch holes in the helmet of the first one before he could track his rounds into Sagum, but Stuber wasn’t quick enough for the second.
He watched Sagum jerk, and the screaming came to an abrupt end. The skinny, young man crumpled to the forest floor.
Stuber started to yell for him, but the breath was knocked out of his lungs as a flurry of bullets slammed into his chest plate, knocking him off his feet. The spalling shredded the flesh of his chin and upper arms. He lost his footing, coming down hard on his side.
He registered Whimsby coming in hot, sprinting at the four remaining praetors and leaping into the air as he fired on them.
Stuber fired on the praetor that fired on him. His rounds slammed into the helm and spaulders, obliterating the praetor’s upper body, but not before he got two bullets into Stuber—one punching into Stuber’s right calf, and the second straight through his thigh.
Whimsby’s rounds lanced the one standing praetor that had shot Sagum, and then he landed on the ground behind the remaining two that were prone. They tried to whirl on him, but a quick sweep of pin-point-accurate fire ripped their legs out from under them and crushed their helms in.
The gunfire didn’t cease. It was now coming at them from the flankers on the right.
Stuber struggled to his feet. The pain in his leg was dim at first, but growing rapidly. He felt his pants clinging to his skin. He fired in the direction of the flankers, not seeing targets, but aiming for muzzle flashes in the darkness. He went empty as he staggered towards Sagum’s fallen body, and reloaded with his last magazine.
Teran was up and running, screaming for Sagum, while Whimsby dropped his empty rifle and stole a second from one of the dead praetors. He began firing into the flankers, amplifying his voice: “We need to back up! Go to the river!”
Stuber’s wounded leg dragged, but was still able to bear some weight. He staggered up to Sagum, as Teran slid on her knees to his side.
“He’s alive!” Teran yelled. “Sagum! Where are you hit?”
Stuber knelt on his good knee, firing into the woods as Whimsby beat a hasty retreat to their current, coverless position. He took up the suppressive fire and Stuber turned to Sagum. He writhed on the ground, his eyes wide, teeth white in the moonlight. His hands clutched his belly, wet and dark.
“He’s got a gut shot,” Stuber said. “We need to get to the water! Whimsby, keep that suppressive fire!”
Whimsby didn’t respond, but he kept shooting. The air around them whistled and whined. A round slammed through Whimsby’s shoulder, throwing sparks. His left arm made an odd flailing movement, but seemed to still be operable.
“Help me with him!” Teran shouted, grabbing Sagum by the strap of the pack that he wore.
Stuber lurched to his feet, grabbed Sagum’s rifle where it hung from its sling and planted it in Sagum’s chest. “Shoot at them!” he shouted.
Sagum groaned, but took the rifle in his shaking, blood-slick hands, and began firing into the woods as Stuber and Teran each grabbed a backpack strap and began hauling him towards the river.
The pain in Stuber’s leg came on strong now. The hole in his calf was a distant throb compared to the wrenching feeling in his thigh. Like the worst cramp he’d ever felt, as though his muscles were twisting on themselves like a ball of snakes. Stuber clenched his teeth and forced one foot in front of the other, forced the unwieldy leg to do its job. He was still alive. He was still in control of his body.
Stuber saw the river ahead of them, less than twenty yards. The moonlight glimmered over the surface of the water, twinkling through the trees.
What were they going to do when they got there?
Get in the water. Let the current carry them downstream. Head for the opposite bank. They’d need to lose their packs, and Stuber would need to drop his armor.
As they approached the bank, Stuber looked behind him, firing off a scattering of rounds from the hip. Whimsby took even shots, probably able to see and target despite the darkness. He backed up as he fired.
Stuber let his sling take his rifle, then reached up with his spare hand and began working the clasp of his left spaulder.
They were so close to the water…
Then the surface of the river did something strange.
At first Stuber didn’t make sense of it—the way it began to boil in a wide circle—but then the sound of it reached him over the chatter of gunfire. The roar. The rumble.
Five more skiffs descended to the rocky banks of the river.
The gunfire from the flankers behind them ce
ased.
Stuber and Teran pulled up short, their chests heaving, their stomachs dropping.
“Skiffs!” Stuber managed to call out between breaths.
Whimsby whirled around. “Oh dear. This is a poor turn of events.”
The five skiffs were arrayed in a line, end to end. Their sides cluttered with praetors, their rifles addressed to the four battered fighters on the ground, but not firing.
A shape descended out of the air. A shimmering ball of dimly-glowing light. The silhouette of a demigod, dressed in all black. The paladin alighted upon the ground, the energy shield becoming a dome. The red eye slit of his helm glowed out from the black figure. The longstaff sparked green.
Stuber did the only thing that made sense in that moment, though perhaps it didn’t make sense at all. He grabbed his rifle in one hand and fired the last of his bullets at the paladin. They sizzled and sparked harmlessly against the shield. Then his rifle went empty.
“Lay down your weapons and surrender,” came the deep, booming voice of the paladin through the helm’s modulators. The command was loud, but calm. Controlled.
Stuber’s wounded leg buckled, but he caught himself before falling. Better to die on your feet. His pants leg felt sodden now. “It’s empty anyways,” Stuber called out. “But if you want it you can come take it from me.”
“As you wish,” the demigod replied. In a flash, he extinguished his shield, and fired three bolts of energy so fast that Stuber couldn’t track them. All he knew was that the first one struck Teran’s rifle, the second one Whimsby’s, and the third shattered Stuber’s.
Teran screamed, clutching her hand to her chest. She’d dropped Sagum, and he slumped to the ground, gone unconscious.
Stuber simply gazed as his own hand, his ring and pinky fingers bleeding and scorched.
The paladin doffed his helm casually, revealing what looked to be a fine-featured man in his thirties. Without the helm, his voice came out normal. Cordial, even.
“Any other suggestions, deserter? Or can we dispense with the bravado and move on with your surrender?”
Stuber’s gaze shifted from his ruined hand to the demigod’s eyes. They were cool and collected. The mouth turned down with a look of dissatisfaction. Stuber smirked and clenched his hand, feeling the blood dribble between his fingers.
The world did a sudden turn in his vision. Tilting in an odd direction. Stuber blinked and stretched his eyes wide, trying to stabilize himself, but reality didn’t match what his eyes told him, and he felt his balance going the wrong way.
“Stuber,” Whimsby’s voice came in weird and muffled in his ears. “Your blood pressure has dropped to dangerous levels.”
“Godsdamned blood loss,” Stuber mumbled, before he pitched sideways and landed in a heap.
The last thing he saw was the paladin approaching them, Teran and Whimsby on their knees with their hands up.
***
Perry tore up to the scene, gasping for breath and leveling his longstaff at the demigod standing over the bodies of his friends. There were too many targets to fire upon—dozens of praetors on the ground, restraining their captives, and dozens more on the skiffs, who were now aiming a battleline’s worth of rifles at him.
And his shield was still not regenerated.
Perry froze, not knowing what to do.
The paladin watched him carefully. He’d activated his shield the second Perry had arrived, and had formed it into a wall that covered both him and his squad of praetors on the ground. His longstaff was held out, the muzzle pointing at a body that looked like Stuber.
Oh, gods! Stuber!
“And you must be Percival McGown,” the demigod commented. “Our little wayward halfbreed. Where have you been for the entire battle?”
Perry blinked sweat out of his eyes. He worked his sweaty grip on his longstaff.
So this paladin didn’t know about Mala, it would seem.
The demigod tilted his head. “If you fire upon me or my men, I’ll turn every one of your friends to pulp. Am I clear on that point?”
“Clear,” Perry ground out between gasps of air.
“I am Inquisitor Lux,” he said. “You will lay down that stolen longstaff and surrender to me.”
Perry’s eyes darted to the skiffs. There had to be a way out of this. Didn’t there? His heart beating out of his chest, his lungs aching for air, his legs burning—all of these sensations were nothing compared to the fear that gripped him.
Failure. He was failing.
Could he fire on the skiffs? Destroy their transport out? It wouldn’t do any good. There were other skiffs. Perry had seen them as he’d run through the woods that stank of gunsmoke. And the second Perry tried anything, the demigod that called himself Inquisitor Lux would disintegrate his friends.
Maybe they have to die, Perry thought desperately. Maybe they have to die so that the mission can be accomplished.
But it was a cold and forlorn thought. It had no basis in reality. Perry could no more let them be killed than he could find his way to the East Ruins all alone.
If he surrendered, the mission ended anyways. But at least that way, his friends would not die due to his actions.
“Forgive me Father,” Perry whispered. “I’m not the man you thought I was.”
And he let the longstaff fall from his fingers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE CLOUDS
Perry was in hell for eternity.
It was nothingness. He didn’t seem to exist anymore. He felt nothing but a crushing separation from reality, an infinite loneliness. There was no sight, no sound. It was neither dark nor light in that place. It was simply an absence of everything. Time did not even exist there, and so it may as well have been an eternity.
He came out of it as suddenly as he’d been plunged into it.
He gasped. Felt air going into his lungs. Felt terror—but at least it was something. His eyes stretched wide to take in his surroundings, but everything was overbright and stark and chilling. He bent at the waist, coughing violently, and realized that he was seated.
Restrained. Magnetic locks over his wrists. And his ankles. And the ones on his ankles were affixed to the floor with what looked like a solid arc of electricity, like it should have been insubstantial, but when he attempted to move his feet, they could not rise more than an inch off the floor.
He reared back, feeling panic in his gut now, dark and cold.
His eyes cleared enough to see his environment now: A blank, white room that seemed forged from a single block of bone-colored stone. The object on which he sat was a piece of that stone, rising up from the center of the room like a squat column.
The only other thing in the room was Inquisitor Lux, a tall black stain upon all the whiteness.
The demigod turned something over in his hands that Perry recognized. He’d seen it already, just before it had been clamped onto the back of his head, sending him into the hell he’d just emerged from.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Perry croaked.
“It’s an Immobilizer,” Lux answered, his voice mellow and casual. “It only works on the Gifted. It uses the same pathways in your brain that Confluence does, but rather than giving you power, it takes it all away. Isn’t that interesting?”
Perry grunted, bearing down on the fear inside of him that had become an almost physical sensation.
“The disorientation will pass,” Lux said, clipping the Immobilizer to his belt. “You may feel some panic. That should pass as well.”
“How long did you have that thing on me?” Perry managed, finding intelligent speech difficult. His thoughts felt ragged still. Not quite whole.
“Long enough to get you here,” Lux gestured about the room.
Perry breathed in and out, trying to steady himself. His lungs and diaphragm seemed determined to hyperventilate.
Think. He needed to think. To have his wits about him.
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“You are currently i
n the House of Inquisition,” Lux answered. “In The Clouds.”
The Clouds. Perry had heard of it, but only ever spoken of as a sort of mythical place that no one was sure existed. Of course, it had to exist, didn’t it? The demigods had to live somewhere, and why would they live on the scorched earth with the rest of humanity?
But it was difficult to believe in a floating city in the sky that you’ve never seen. And to be told that you were suddenly there, when your last memory had been on a dark river bank in the Crooked Hills? Well, that only sent Perry’s mind into new paroxysms of disorientation. Like he was breaking from reality. Like none of it could be real.
That’s just the fear talking, Perry told himself. Let it move through you.
Lux watched Perry with moderate interest as he got his breathing under control. After a few moments, Perry started to feel marginally better, though the concept of being imprisoned by a demigod wasn’t a fear that Perry thought would magically dissipate.
When Lux seemed to have judged that Perry was in more control of his faculties, he gestured to the only door apparent in the room—a large, steel thing, with a mirrored surface, and not a rivet or welding point in evidence. Like it had been cast from a single piece of metal.
“Are you hungry or thirsty?” Lux asked.
Perry shook his head. His mouth felt pasty and dry, but the thought of swallowing anything made him want to gag.
“Then let us begin.” Lux clasped his hands behind his back. “You are Percival McGown, who goes by Perry in human circles, orphaned son of Cato and Fiela McGown, are you not?”
“You already know that.”
Lux tilted his head a degree or two. “Please, just answer the question, yes or no.”
Perry’s mouth worked, trying to conjure a smartass response, but all his smartassery seemed to have fled him. He couldn’t even begin to think of something biting to say. “Yes.”
“From the death of your parents until your enlistment into the Academy at Keniza, you were under the care of your father’s manservant, whose name was Servius, but who you called Uncle Sergio. Is that correct?”