by J M Guillen
Before she could answer, the splintering of wood cracked from behind us.
Simultaneously, we all started, and our heads jerked in the direction of the trap door.
It had broken through.
“Elizabeth!” The Houndsman’s voice boomed through the darkness.
“See?” Alicia held up a small coin, silver with a band of gold around the center. It had been engraved with Empyrean sigils. “She was hidden inside, until I said her Name. She showed me. Made me understand.”
I stared at the coin and my eyes grew wide. Inscribed into the center of the thing gleamed a single word, written in the Empyrean tongue.
Abriel.
“Liz?” Rehl still held the chair and looked back and forth between Alicia and me. “Are we doing this?”
“Maybe.”
“No.” Alicia smiled at me, a guileless sunny smile. In that moment, I thought perhaps it was the happiest I had ever seen her. “Abriel.”
That single syllable was like sunlight in the depths of the world.
Alicia turned from me and gazed into the darkness of the far side of the room.
I saw nothing there but shadows.
“Come. Bring truth. Show us what cannot be seen.”
I had never heard Alicia’s voice echo like that, a soprano sweetness that cast itself out into the darkest corners of reality. Other than Simon, I had never heard anyone speak the Empyrean tongue.
Abriel…
Came.
She tumbled into the attic like the primal concepts of secrets, of hidden things. I felt her in my mind, the elemental embodiment of mysteries man was never meant to grasp.
She wasn’t something to be seen. Her presence felt like a wisp of silk, like a dream that one had forgotten. I knew if I really looked, perhaps while I grasped my power, I might see something.
I also knew that what I saw might drive me mad.
She was like the breath of a ghost. She was the shadow on the far side of the moon.
“Oh.” Baxter blinked and glanced around us. “Um, Liz?”
I turned, ready to tell Rehl take out the window. But the moment I turned away from Alicia, I saw what Bax meant.
The Aegis of Dudael.
It burned beneath our feet, a furious, eldritch blue flame which drove back the shadowed darkness. The charm on my bracelet glowed as well, mirroring that cobalt glow.
“Look.” Alicia’s smiled radiantly, beatific. “Look at Abriel’s light.”
“I have chosen kindness,” the Houndsman bellowed from the far side of the room. “I have done as the Gaunt Man would have me do.”
The room shook again, that familiar quake. I knew what that had to mean, knew that the creature had summoned even more of its eldritch hounds.
“Perhaps I made a mistake,” it continued as the quaking went on. “Perhaps you are one who must be taught.”
His words held a visceral threat that made my skin crawl and my heart pound.
“That our guy?” Baxter turned from Rehl to me.
“Yeah.” I gave him a nod. Yet in that moment, the abomination couldn’t hold my attention.
Abriel’s light had changed the room.
No longer did the attic look like one of the Gaunt Man’s sideward worlds. Nor did it appear to be a conglomeration of my father’s detritus and garage sale garbage.
Beneath that brilliant glow, the attic unfurled like a flower. Now I saw what I was certain had to be the truth. Had always been the truth.
The attic was a damned war room.
I peered around in the airy, open space. The room opened to the rafters, which were far further above my head than I’d assumed previously. Against the far wall, a few standing targets had been set up under track lighting that must have been specifically installed just to highlight them. Maps of the city covered the desk.
All manner of weapons lined the walls, or the ones I could see, at least.
Racks of swords with more tastefully hung on the wall, gleamed and winked as I gaped. Long and short knives, throwing stars, a machete, canes that probably concealed blades inside their hollow depths, a freaking bat’leth, wooden stakes—really?— and guns of all sorts waited.
Grenades. I shook my head in wonder. We have grenades.
A weapons room. A God damned weapons room. What the hell did my Dad—did anyone—need a weapons room like this for?
What in the hell?
I snapped out of my reverie as the horrific scent of the hounds washed over me. The sheer elemental earthiness of it, a wet raw musk, made me gag.
“Liz!” Baxter stared off into the shadows where one of the malformed horrors lunged toward us.
“New plan.” Rehl dropped the chair and jogged over to one of the walls. He snatched up a pistol, checked the magazine, and chambered a round like he’d done it a million times.
Which I supposed he had. The military had taught him something after all.
“There’s far more here than you have guessed, Elizabeth Shepherd.” Alicia gazed at me, her eyes white as the moon. “We aren’t in the danger you might have thought.”
Before I could speak, the hounds descended upon us.
The beasts moved like an insectine pack, their deformed, wolflike heads lunging forward. They crawled on those spindly, inhuman limbs, yowling unearthly cries.
“Back!” I gestured to my friends.
Rehl and Baxter immediately moved with me. We stepped away from the Aegis and watched the shadows around us.
“Back. Back,” one of the hounds drawled.
I took a breath and relaxed. Mentally, I reached for an infinity of screaming Wind.
Rehl began to shoot.
I didn’t think he had trained as a sharpshooter in the military. I didn’t even know how much he had enjoyed his time and training there. However, when it came to protecting his friends, Rehl happened to be a force of nature.
His gun cracked four times and three of those shots must’ve been natural twenties. I absolutely knew those three struck a single hound in the head.
The miscreation wailed, stumbled, and fell into a pile of liquid awfulness.
A slow, madwoman’s grin crept across my face.
Maybe we could win this.
I fell into the thunderous tumult that rested within my heart.
The Wind cascaded around me, and blew some of the papers into a spiral even as it whipped at the silks of the canopy bed.
As I held that storm within, I focused upon my memories of Simon’s Empyrean Seals. I rarely used this one, but under the circumstances, I felt we didn’t have time to play around.
In less than a breath, they burst blue around me.
“There,” I hissed as another of the hounds bounded from the shadows. “Strike.”
The Wind whistled as it poured from my hands, a torrent of sharpened devastation. The force of a hurricane leapt from me, concentrated into a blade no wider than a pencil.
It blasted through two of the arachnines as if they were no more than tissue paper.
Wet, black ooze exploded from the hounds, and they screamed as they went down.
Baxter screamed along with them.
I hadn’t been watching him, but another of the hounds had come up from the side, scrabbling along the floor on those inhuman, uncanny limbs.
It leapt across the table and landed squarely on my friend’s chest. Those sharpened fingerlike claws raked at him, shredding his Star Wars t-shirt.
“No!” I spun toward the thing and brought one of my knives to hand. I heard Rehl fire behind me and then again, but I didn’t see his target.
“Liz!” Baxter squirmed to one side as the misshapen canine-head snapped at him, gurgling wetly.
“Liz. Liz,” it panted.
“That’s my geek, asshole.” I lunged forward and swiped with the blade. I struck home and buried the blade in the oozing flesh.
It squealed at the strike and scurried back. Another scuttled up next to it, and the two eyed us warily.
Then, at
the worst possible moment, the building quaked again, shaking at its very foundations.
I gulped. My friends didn’t know what that meant, but I sure as hell did.
The Houndsman had called in more goons.
“Baxter!” Rehl exclaimed as he shot at the one I’d wounded. “You know how to use one of these?”
In his off hand, Rehl held a shotgun out to Baxter.
“No!” Baxter took the weapon, horrified. As he turned, I saw blood through the ripped shirt.
“Point and click.” Rehl fired again and cursed. “A Mossberg’s pretty easy. You still have to aim, but you have a wider shot than a pistol.”
I watched the two that circled us. I didn’t like the animal canniness of their movements. Also, I hated that I could see others behind them, forming from dark pools of pungent ooze.
Waiting.
“Aim. Right.” Baxter took the weapon and held it gingerly.
“The magazine’s full. Eight shots. Although there’s plenty more ammo if we need it.” Rehl turned to me. “Maybe I should get one for you too.”
“I should be fine. Grab more ammo though.” I gazed at Alicia, who still stood where she had been, unmolested. Not one of the hounds had taken so much as a sniff at her.
Had we made a mistake by stepping away from the Aegis?
“Got it.” Rehl grabbed the ammunition and shoved it into every pocket in his cargo pants. “Now maybe merge up? Get to Alicia?”
“Good idea.” I noticed that the moment gunplay began, I hadn’t had to come up with all the ideas anymore. Rehl, at least, had some concept on how to handle himself.
It was a relief, honestly.
“You okay?” I gingerly pulled at Baxter’s shirt.
He winced but gave me a sideward grin. “Tis but a flesh wound.”
“Good.” I jerked my head toward the desk. “C’mon.”
Baxter eased toward Alicia, and I followed.
7
“There are seven of them,” Alicia’s tone still sounded distant and very soft. “Eight. There are eight now.”
“What?” Baxter turned from me to Alicia. “There are eight of those things?”
“At least,” I confirmed. “And there might be more soon.”
“Well, we’ve got the ordinance.” Rehl tracked the closest, an insectine horror trying to slip up on us from the opposite side. He took three successive shots.
The creature fell, its slender, gangly legs splayed out beneath it before it began to dissolve into pungent, tar-like goo.
“How does she know?” Baxter turned from Alicia to me.
“I don’t.” Alicia turned to gaze at him, her light eyes wide and guileless. “Abriel knows. She knows everything in this room, knows everything that has ever happened here.”
“That’s…” My eyes went wide with possibility, but then I shook my head. Focus, Liz. “Does she know where that creature’s master is?” I gestured to the mess on the floor.
Blam!
I started, my head jerking to the left as Rehl dispatched another of the supernatural nightmares. “These are just his hounds. He’s the one we need to find.”
“There is a presence, near the trap door.” Alicia blinked and canted her head to one side as if she listened to something I couldn’t hear. “It is significantly different than these beings.”
“That’s my huckleberry.” I fiddled with my charm bracelet, uncertain what I should do. Had I already called the Wind too much? As we sat here fighting for our lives, was my favorite shy and silent Gentleman preparing to pay me a courtesy call?
“Liz! Um, Liz!” Baxter’s yelp cut, suddenly urgent.
I turned in time to watch him aim the shotgun, pull the trigger, and obliterate one of the spider-dogs.
The courser had been so close it would’ve been difficult to miss even with a normal weapon, but Baxter’s shot absolutely shredded the thing and splattered pungent ooze across the floor in a fan shaped spray.
“Rehl.” I stepped close to the young man. “I gotta talk with Alicia. Can you and Bax keep the six of these things busy while we confer?”
“Eleven.” Alicia’s distant tone did not waver.
“Eleven?” Baxter stared at her, incredulous.
“Eleven, whatever.” I waved a hand. “Can you watch my back for a second?”
“Watching your back is all I ever do, Miss Lawson,” Rehl drawled in a fair approximation of one of the characters from our Weird West game.
“Perfect.” I reached for the Wind and grasped that glorious tempest in my mind. I held it steady as I stepped over to Alicia.
“So you’re saying Abriel knows everything about this room. She knows everything that Simon did here, everything my father did. She knows about the Aegis.”
“Yes.” Alicia’s head cocked sideways again, as if she listened to something very faint. “The Watcher holds perfect knowledge about everything she has ever experienced.” Alicia’s words were clear, proper in a way I had never heard from her before. “That includes the things that have happened in this attic.”
The Watcher? I shook my head. I didn’t have time to get sidetracked.
“And you know everything she does?”
“Everything she will tell me, at least,” Alicia gave me a lazy smile.
“I’m worried about calling too much wind here.” I peered into the shadows, and noticed five of the insectine horrors clumped together to together and on the prowl. “Simon taught me that calling the wind could bring the wrong kind of attention.”
“You want to know if the Aegis will shelter you from prying eyes.” She considered for a minute. “From the Iron-Wrought.”
“Iron what?” I grimaced, then got Baxter’s attention and pointed to the hunting spiders.
“The Aegis set into the floor here is far stronger than the one you wear.” Wisps of red hair drifted around her head, toyed with by a whisper of the wind. “Simon worked very hard to make certain that the Iron-Wrought would never find this place.”
Behind us, four shots followed by a blast from Baxter’s shotgun sounded. I started at the sudden noise, but Alicia did not.
“I really hope you mean the Silent Gentlemen. Facility Assets.”
“Simon hates them.” Alicia did not meet my gaze but continued to stare at the shadows, as if appraising the things that stalked us. “The Aegis will keep you hidden from any who seek you, as long as you remain in this place. It also weakens baleful creatures that come hunting you.”
It might keep me better hidden if my friends didn’t lead the bad guys to me, I thought.
“This is why the creatures remain distant.” Alicia turned to me, and for the first time in the conversation, I noticed the color of her eyes.
White. Not a cold whiteness or even emptiness. Those haunted eyes shone, lit with a light that welcomed, that warmed.
“B-because of the Aegis?” I stammered.
“They dislike its power. It weakens them, as does Abriel’s truth. Notice you no longer feel the fear they emanate.”
That was a fact, now that she mentioned it. Since I had seen the first of the unearthly hounds, I had been caught in the otherworldly terror that they carried with them. However, once I stood in the light of Abriel and then the Aegis, those emotions had vanished.
“How many now?” Baxter and Rehl had begun to walk around us, forming a small perimeter that stared into the shadows.
“Seventeen,” Alicia whispered.
“Fuck!” I frowned.
“There’s no need for that language,” she chided.
“What?” I gaped, completely taken aback by Alicia’s scolding. It sounded exactly… exactly like something Simon would’ve said.
“What’s the plan?” Rehl spoke to me, yet his eyes remained on the monstrosities scuttling in the shadows.
“We’re going to have to take this to the big guy.” I glanced from Baxter to Rehl. “If we stay in this room, he can load up the attic with dog-headed spider horrors. They don’t like getting too close
to our ward here.” I tapped the Aegis with my foot. “But I think they have the advantage. If he can keep gating in those things, then we eventually lose.”
“We have a ward? Is that what this is?” Rehl studied the Aegis curiously.
“We do.” It was a good enough explanation for now.
“I don’t like that idea,” Baxter’s voice sounded very small. “The full frontal attack thing. Do we still have the window as an option? The whole ‘running away’ plan sounds a little healthier.”
“We do,” I confirmed as I glanced at Alicia. “But once we take that retreat, we can’t make our way back to this location.”
“We lose the bonus from the ward,” Rehl agreed. “There probably isn’t a better place to make a stand.”
“He’s right,” I turned back to Baxter. “And the longer we wait, the more of those things he’ll bring in.”
“Dammit!” Baxter checked the shotgun, trying to make certain it was fully loaded.
After a moment, it became obvious he didn’t know what he was doing, so Rehl stepped over to show him.
“Twenty-five now.” Alicia’s otherworldly tone seemed entirely unconcerned with the growing horde of monsters. “Also keep in mind, even though we cannot move the symbol on the floor, Abriel will remain with us.”
“It’ll have to count for something. Is Mr. Big-bad still in the same location?”
“He is.”
“Okay then.” I took a deep breath and reached with my mind for the power contained within the bracelet I wore.
The Wind answered, cascading around all of us, teasing my hair, caressing my face. As always, the sensation thrilled me, the unimaginable pleasure of a secret, a power that fully belonged to me.
“Say the word, Liz,” Rehl invited.
“Let’s treat this like a siege, because that’s basically what it is.” I gazed at each of my friends. “We need to punch through this so we can get to the boss of the dungeon. He’s on the other side of the room.”
“So a wedge,” Baxter mused. “Just like The Orcs That Came to Dawncastle.”
“Something like that, Bax,” I confirmed. “I’m thinking put Alicia to my right, and you behind me. We can put Rehl behind Alicia.”
“Casters out front?” Rehl grinned but watched the edge of our perimeter.