The Monolith

by Stephen Roark

  Who would decorate a place like this? I thought as we approached the front door, which was painted completely black and was heavily reinforced with steel bars that appeared to have been hastily bolted into place to prevent the entire thing from buckling in.

  “As you can see,” Gunter explained. “This place went to Hell quickly. We had no time to prepare ourselves.”

  A tall vase stood at the floor beside him. He reached his hand inside and withdrew a heavy bar of steel with a hexagonal socket on one end. He slid it over the head of one of the bolts and tugged. The metal threads screamed but gave way and the door shifted, now supported only by its hinges.

  “Your work?” Altarus asked.

  “Indeed,” Gunter replied, peering through the peephole out into whatever horrors lay on the other side of the battered wood. “We must be quick. Stay behind me and keep close, but most of all, keep quiet.”

  Altarus and I nodded, and I readied myself. We were drawing near the spider now. I don’t know how I knew but I did. It was as though a black hole had formed nearby, its monstrous gravitational pull affecting only me, like a chatter of gnashing teeth in my mind whispering riddles and rhymes of mayhem and destiny. As Gunter opened the door, I felt a keen sense of focus and direction more powerful than anything I’d felt so far. I was reaching the end of my journey—reaching the answers.

  I’m coming, Rey.

  The door opened like a portal from one world to another. The calm, quiet of the home was replaced by the sounds of the city, tortured and warped, filled with screams (both human and beast), gunfire and the sound of steel against steel. Someone was fighting close to us, and from the conversation, it sounded like a group of Seekers. From their panicked cries it sounded like they were losing.

  “This way,” Gunter whispered, leading us right out of the door and down a wide street that must have once been a wealthy boulevard or avenue but was now nothing more than a scene of horrors.

  Bodies cluttered the street, stacked upon each other and heaped into piles by someone who’d attempted to clear a path through the death. Some were burned, charred like kindling, and others still oozed blood and guts from everywhere at once. The gutters on either side were swollen with the red sick, and I felt a wave of nausea swell within me that forced me to look away.

  “What a sight,” Altarus remarked quietly as we stepped carefully through the corpses. All of them appeared wealthy, clad in ornate shirts and coats with frills and intricate weaving, some with designs or emblems across their breasts that I imagined signified their family or house. I glanced up at the silver sky that seemed to beam down on the appalling sight like a spotlight lest anyone forget just what had happened to Quelan.

  But what did happen? I thought as a lifeless hand caught against my ankle. I kicked hard, reacting as you might if a spider latched onto your skin, causing a pile of the bodies to shift and slip over each other and cascade down towards me.

  “Look out!” I hissed, Shadowstepping forward out of the way. Altarus was not so lucky. The sick heap of corpses, lubricated by the semi-congealed slop of blood and organs, swamped over him like an avalanche of horror and despair.

  “Help!” he bellowed, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. His hands tore at the bodies as he fought for the surface. “Get them off me!”

  I moved back to him and tore at the pile, grabbing hold of whatever I could in an attempt to free him, but each time my hand found skin, my grip failed. The bodies were simply too slippery to hang on to. The stench of decay and death threatened to overwhelm me, and I huffed gasps of breath through my mouth to avoid breathing from my nose, and found pieces of clothing to grab and began yanking the bodies away.

  Altarus heaved and retched, then vomited. “Fuck! Get them off me!”

  Something coughed behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see at least five men, so impossibly thin it was a wonder they could stand up, advancing on us from the end of the street.

  “Fresh ones,” one of them muttered in a voice coated with gravel.

  “Chain ‘em up,” one suggested. “Let-let-let them soften up!”

  Around each man’s neck was a rope, and on each end was a slab of meat that clearly came from no beast.

  Quelan Cannibal—Level 31

  “We must get out of here,” Gunter said firmly. “These men are not to be trifled with!”

  “Eat for days…” one of them lusted as he quickened his steps. He seemed oblivious to the piles of bodies that lay before him, and as he progressed, I understood why. His steps were filled with power. Each time he put a foot down, a skull would shatter or a rib cage would burst like a pustule, or a leg would snap from the body of its owner, reduced to puree the color of canned cherries.

  “Get me out of this shit!” Altarus yelped.

  His hand emerged from the mess. I snatched his sleeve and pulled, felt Gunter’s hands on my shoulders adding his strength, and tugged hard. Slowly but surely, Altarus emerged from the pile, coated in deep red slime that clung to him like glue. He fell out of the pile and rolled backwards. His foot slipped, but he righted himself and stood, furiously swatting at the filth that covered him.

  “Sickening!” He grimaced, succeeding in shedding sleeves of the hideous slop onto the cobbled street.

  “Let’s move,” I said, glancing back at the men steadily advancing on us.

  We ran forward the best that we could, leaping over smaller piles of bodies, using the collapsed wagons and barrels as stepping stones as though we were crossing a river.

  “Look tasty!” one of the cannibals called to his friends. In front of us, Gunter came to a halt and turned, drawing back his enormous sword.

  “Get down,” he told us firmly. We both instantly dropped to our knees as he brought the blade forward in an upward, cutting motion. The sound of steel rang out and a curved swatch of light emerged, cutting through the bodies, tearing them to pieces as it streaked towards the men.

  It struck the first one, tore the rope from his neck and sent him spinning. The damage was decent, not enough for a fight, but that wasn’t the objective. The Quelan Cannibal fell back, out of control, and toppled into his friends, causing them to trip over each other, their spindly limbs twisting into knots like a headphone cable.

  “Cursed bastards!” one of them shouted. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to us or his buddies, but it didn’t matter. Gunter’s move had bought us the time we needed—or at least I thought it had.

  A heap of corpses shifted in front of me and countless jointed black legs began to emerge, each sharp as a knitting needle, hard and carapaced, reflecting the silver light of the moon so they almost seemed to glow.

  “What the fuck…?” I whispered to myself as the horrifying crab things slid out from beneath the bodies. Their legs clicked against the stone as they swarmed towards us, clambering over each other with a hungry ferocity. Clusters of eyes dotted their flat shells. The only clue as to where their actual face would be was the mouth, which appeared to be a crack in the thing’s shell more than an actual set of jaws. As they raced towards us, they made swishing sounds, as though they too were ready to dine on our flesh and were whistling to themselves with an eager excitement.

  Corpse Crab—Level 23

  One of them leapt at me, its misshapen mouth opened to expose a sickening hole of pink flesh and bizarre tendrils. I couldn’t understand how the thing would bite me, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  I brought my Blunderbuss up and fired, pelting the God awful thing with slugs.

  43

  The riposte didn’t sound, but the force was enough to deflect the thing and send it scattering to the ground behind me. Altarus fired, and another was sent spinning. I raised my axe and swung forward as the horde closed in on me. Five or six of them ricocheted from my blade and spilled across the stacked cadavers lining the street. One found its mark, and latched into my shoulder and shrieked with a sucking sound as a shot of pain injected itself into my flesh and spread down my arm.
>
  78, 89, 78

  The damage hit in quick succession as the thing’s mouth contracted against my flesh. I tried to swat at the thing to get it off, but the angle was all wrong and it had latched itself onto my axe hand.

  “Hold still!” Gunter cried out. Everything in my body was telling me to run, but I did as he asked and froze in place. Like a surgeon, he raised his enormous blade and cut the thing off me, removing three of its legs. It hit the ground on its back and struggled to right itself.

  Altarus’ gun blared as more of the crabs chattered towards us. Shadowstep was off cooldown, and I could see an intersection at the end of the street, but if I moved that quickly, I’d leave my companions behind. I ducked to avoid another of the pesky suckers, deflected another and fired my Blunderbuss haphazardly into the swarm, sending many of them spiraling into the air.

  I felt one of them stick onto my ankle and begin tearing away at my health.

  77, 81, 78

  “Gah!” I shouted, spinning and slamming my leg into the wall. The crab’s carapace clicked off the wall but it was enough to get him off of me.

  “They’ll take our meal!” one of the cannibals cursed and I spun to see the others had managed to untwist themselves and had resumed their pursuit towards us.

  “Not if we get-get them first!”

  I slapped my axe blade against several of the horrid crustaceans, using the flat side of the head to swat them away like a tennis racket. Another managed to sink its suckers into my knee and get a few ticks before I could knock it off.

  71, 77

  “Let’s go!” I shouted, finally Shadowstepping through the majority of the crabs and taking the opportunity to down a Soothing Syrup. Then, I started swinging.

  87, 99, 105

  The crabs began to turn towards me and away from Altarus, which was the goal. Gunter moved up beside me and began cutting through the mass with his enormous sword.

  98, 101

  I popped my cooldowns, unleashing with everything I had, blasting my Blunderbuss at anything that jumped at me. One of them exploded, cracking open like a mussel and spilling out a scallop-like pearl onto the ground that must have been its entire insides. My body absorbed the Quintessence as I kept hacking away, doing my best to beat a path through the things as Altarus fought to make his way towards us.

  “Our dinner!” one of the cannibals despaired. “It’s getting away!”

  Altarus stumbled and fell beneath a clacking heap of crabs. I dashed in, almost falling over a fallen stack of bodies, and sliced away in an attempt to free him. He howled in pain as the things sucked at his flesh.

  “Go on without me!” he roared as I fought desperately to free him from the furious, hungry horde.

  “No!” I bellowed, my axe blade clashing off hard shells, freeing legs from the bodies of the crabs, loosing their snot-like insides from within. “You’re going to make it!”

  But even as I hacked desperately at the hideous creatures clinging to his body, I watched his health tick down and knew I was lying to him. He threw back another Soothing Syrup as the countless crabs sucked away at his health, but it was only a stop gap. He was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. In fact, if I stuck around much longer, I’d be next in line.

  “This one will taste ripe!” one of the men snarled as he closed in on Altarus, a cord of meat hanging around his neck.

  “String him up!” another cried out.

  “Rand!” Altarus begged, his face twisted in pain. “Kill me! Just do it! I’m not going to make it!”

  He’s right. I knew he was, but that didn’t make it any easier. Every step of my journey was more and more isolating. I’d lost Rey, Jacob, Fujiko and even Rathborne, and now I was going to lose Altarus. But this was no time for pity—no time to hesitate. I raised up my axe, and with every ounce of strength in me, brought my blade down and buried it in my friend’s back.

  58

  The Mouth of the City

  “They’ve taken the docks and the rest of the city will fall. There is little we can do now, but I must keep to my duties, not just because of who I am, but for the sake of my child. If I cannot protect him, how can I call myself a man?”

  —Gunter Glacier, Seeker of Quelan

  Altarus’ body went limp, and I found it hard not to feel terrible about what I’d just done. They’d followed me here—all of them—and what had it gotten them? Nothing but pain. But how many others out there were suffering? What was Rey feeling as part of the Bloodless? Jacob? What were they doing while I fought my way towards the answers? I had no choice but to keep going—no matter how hard it was on me, it was harder for them.

  I stepped back as the crabs, now seemingly uninterested in Altarus’ fallen body, turned their attention on me.

  “Time to go,” I told Gunter as he blitzed one of them in half with his sword.

  “You said it!”

  We spun and raced forward, leaping over bodies and rubble with the crab things hot on our heels, the cries of the hungry men invading our ears like a virus. Brick walls and barred up doors and windows passed through the corners of my vision as I ran. I thought about Gunter’s son and wondered how he’d feel if he knew what his father was up to—the kind of danger he was in. What would happen to that boy if his father died? How did that work here?

  My boot slipped, and I almost fell, but Gunter caught me and hoisted me to my feet without missing a stride.

  “Thanks,” I said quickly as I vaulted over a stack of planks, crushing a dead man whose eyes seemed to have burst from their sockets from a buildup of internal pressure. The sickness of the city was beginning to overwhelm me, but that feeling of purpose, of gravity, the sense that I was closing in on my goal, was growing inside me like a warm spring capable of washing away the filth and despair of the once great Quelan.

  “Right!” Gunter called out from behind me as we reached the intersection. I turned, this time expecting my feet to slip in the muck, and braced myself against the wall and propelled myself forward in the new direction.

  A flight of stairs lay before me, crooked and falling apart, covered in Blood Mollusks and some sort of dark purple plant speckled with countless tiny orifice-like holes that flexed open and shut as I approached. As I grew closer, I saw bits of flesh hanging from the pulsating shrub—something that resembled the tip of a finger was swallowed up like a toddler gulping down a bit of soft carrot.

  Carnivorous plants, I thought as I leapt over the mollusks to land on the rail that led down the center of the steps. It was well coated in the awful oozings of the city so that when I hit I slid quickly towards the bottom. Gunter shouted behind me and slashed at something but kept moving. I hit the ground at the base of the stairs and raised my Blunderbuss just in time to riposte some kind of enormous man, his body bloated and muscled, mutated with an extra arm that dangled grotesquely from his stomach.

  Dooooooom!

  12

  The damage was useless, and I saw why.

  Mutated Dock Worker—Level 31

  “Keep moving!” Gunter shouted as he raced up behind me. The goliath dropped to his knees in front of me, dropping a barrel he’d been holding over his head to strike me with, and groaned like a horse getting ready to die.

  I planted a foot on the taut muscles of his enormous shoulder and threw myself high into the air, soaring above him like a well-thrown football.

  “Oh, shit!” I shouted as I realized what I had done.

  Beyond the man was a balcony—a balcony that overlooked a river and a series of docks and small boats and rafts rocking lazily atop the waves. Around the boats were more of the dock workers, some even larger than the man I’d just escaped, and as I reached the top of my arc and began to plummet down towards them, each and every one of them raised their head to me.

  I’d been so eager to get away from the enormous man that I’d leapt without looking and thrown myself off the edge of the balcony and was now plummeting down towards the docks like a plane that had lost b
oth engines. It was a long fall too—long enough for me to scan the faces of all the men looking up at me. Their expressions were a mixture of angry malevolence and sheer shock and I couldn’t help but think it was them wondering just how someone could be so damn stupid.

  “Rand!” I heard Gunter shout behind me as I fell. The crowd of men raced towards my landing spot, moving like a single organism, their feverish excitement plastered all over their faces. My heart sank faster than I plummeted down like a meteor.

  I’m going to die, I thought as my eyes moved across their faces. I saw their weapons: chains, axes, sharp sticks and planks of wood with nails sticking out at odd angles—all of them meant for me. I had no chance against them. Hell, even if they were all even close to my level I’d be overwhelmed before I had a chance to get a single hit in.

  You are going to die!

  I cried out as the ground raced up to meet me, the outstretched hands of the countless dock workers waiting to snatch me out of the air and bludgeon me into oblivion, but just as I was about to hit, an idea burst through my mind like a ball of lightning.

  I swung my eyes away from the horde and their deadly weapons and fixed my gaze on the river sweeping through the center of the city—and activated Shadowstep.

  I’d never used the ability in midair before, and wasn’t even sure if it would work, but as my body wraithed and rushed forward with the familiar burst of speed, I couldn’t help but smile.

  One of the men cried out as I streaked past them like a banshee.

  “Hey! That ain’t fair!”

  I roared with laughter as I solidified above the water, my triumphant cackle cut off as I plunged into the river, so cold it was a marvel it hadn’t turned to ice. It seized me with its oily grip. The chill was like a steel toed boot to the gut. I kicked hard and broke through to the surface to a chorus of jeers and angry cries from the men on the dock.

  “The fuck was that?!” one of them shouted.