by Chad R. Odom
After Damrich had dispatched Corvus, he’d left the camp leaving Lykas to finish the rest. That was for the best. Lykas wanted Oryan for himself and felt a smack of pride knowing he had kept such a vital secret from such a ubiquitous man.
He ordered the charge to take Oryan, reminding the leaders of the cost of overzealous violence. He watched them close in, watched Oryan hold his ground. Lykas was slightly confused by Oryan’s actions. Why didn’t he move?
Then, it happened. A sound like a massive jet turbine roared to life. How Corvus had hidden this weapon from him for all these centuries was a mystery. Lykas screamed to the leaders to turn back, but it was too late.
One after the other, four concentric rings of intensely hot white flame split the earth and shot some thirty feet into the air, filling the camp with heat so intense, Lykas shielded himself from it even from his lofty perch. Before the soldiers had time to scream, they were incinerated, leaving only polished white bone behind.
There was another rumble that Lykas could only slightly hear, but which he felt deep in his stomach. As with the flames, only his distance saved Lykas from the blinding effects. A brilliant white light seemed to descend on the obelisk, even though the obelisk itself produced it.
After its discharge, no trace would remain of the Archides home save the weapon itself, which could only be activated by a survivor who still held the trigger. For its final act, a white ring of untold energy burst from the obelisk. The scene was beautiful, silent, and utterly devastating.
Lykas recovered and looked at the peaceful aftermath of what only moments ago had been a killing field. The valley was a fine, multi-colored sand and nothing else. He drew his binoculars to his eyes and found what he was searching for. There, still standing clean and erect was the obelisk like a spike of pure silver. The fountains gleamed as well, unscathed by the events of the past several days. And there, best of all, lay Oryan. Somehow, his proximity to the obelisk had saved his life.
Lykas’ army of mangy slobbering dogs was gone, but he was left with the prize. A smile crossed his lips as he filled his lungs with the sweet air of victory. But, like a candle in a storm, his victory was fleeting.
“Sicari,” said the voice of his master from behind. “What have you been hiding from me?”
The Architect of Chaos
Oryan opened his eyes, or at least he believed they were open. He focused on his eyelids, squeezing them tightly closed until he felt the trickle of a tear down his temple. With equal vigor, he forced them open but the view had not changed.
“That’s the downfall of such an elegant weapon,” said a voice. The voice was horribly distorted through Oryan’s throbbing ears. A steady, high pitched ringing served as a constant reminder of just how little he knew of the power of the obelisk.
“Even if you aren’t in the kill zone, there are still repercussions for its use,” continued the voice. It sounded distant but Oryan could not yet tell if that was the truth or if his hearing was that traumatized. “The effects on your vision and hearing are temporary but this should help speed the healing process along.” A hand pressed on Oryan’s bicep and he felt the distinct prick of a needle enter his shoulder. Whoever was here was right beside him.
He tried to move his limbs but could not. “Why can’t I move?” he asked. Even his voice sounded strange in his ears. He could distinguish the vibrations in his throat more than he recognized the sound.
“That’s a personal touch. It’s a little serum I invented which gives you the illusion of muscle control without actually having it. It’s actually quite infuriating for the person affected and quite comical to the one who administered it. Like most things, it wears off from the chest out, due to the heart clearing the toxin from itself first. The fools try to do anything to walk. They use their hands to move their feet, they crawl on their bellies, and they shout and curse.”
Whatever this person had injected him with was working as promised. Oryan could hear the voice come in and out of clarity. Even his vision was rapidly moving from black to a hazy shade of gray. Whoever held him had one of two identities. It could either be Sicari or Damrich.
“That would be amusing to someone like you,” Oryan mustered the best response he could.
“A rather unfair judgment. To my knowledge, you and I have never formally met. At least, not as our true selves.”
Sicari’s response would have been different. Most likely, it would have been a pathetic apology or an attempt to give some explanation as to why he had become such a coward and a traitor. Still, the voice was familiar. There was a silken flow to it that Oryan recognized but could not place. With all of his senses impaired, it was best to keep the man talking to finally put a name to the most ancient evil known to man.
“That explains why you’re still alive,” Oryan quipped.
Damrich burst out with laughter and clapped his hands. “Marvelous! Even now! Confident, bold, and uncompromising. You, my boy, are simply marvelous! Sicari was right to choose you.”
Oryan’s first impulse was to inquire about his family, but he had many uncertainties about that course of action. Sicari had betrayed them, but how much he’d actually revealed to Damrich was still a mystery. Damrich might know nothing of Celeste or Asher and, if that were the case, Oryan had to keep it that way.
He was beginning to discern light and shadow, and his hearing improved by the second, but there was no time to waste. If Damrich wanted, he could stop this conversation now and leave Oryan with the ever-lingering mystery of his true identity.
“I’m dead already,” Oryan reminded Damrich. “It’s not hard to be defiant when you have nothing to lose.”
“Oh, come now, don’t be so disparaging! It doesn’t suit you. You, who never could bear the thought of losing. You who wouldn’t let yourself lose, even when you had no reason to win. Now, you’ve suddenly become fatalistic?
“It must be hard being you. You can’t escape your reputation, even when you’re a dead man! That’s the wonder of being me. When no one knows you exist, you never have anything to live up to.
“That’s what makes you something of an anomaly. You know who I am. You know my reputation. You’ve now seen my…artwork in the camp. Despite all that, you’re keeping your spirit. Even your fearless leader was less defiant.”
“Get on with whatever it is you’re going to do.” Oryan was so close. He could almost put a name to the voice even though his eyes seemed to be recovering slower than his hearing. The voice was persuasive and eloquent, as someone who had been seducing mankind for thousands of years. Yet, it was also calm and collected—the sum of infinite patience and complete control.
“What were you expecting? Some kind of torture? A man like me has far more…cultured ways of getting what he wants. You don’t live this long without being very persuasive.”
“What did you promise Sicari?”
There was a smile in the man’s voice. “You seem to think he needed convincing. He felt so very responsible for the death of Andromeda. It was terrible to see him like that! I couldn’t let his last legacy be regret. So, I opened the door. The same door I held open for you.”
Oryan’s blood froze. How could he have been so blind? He had heard that voice before. It had been slowed down slightly, the tone was deeper, but the methodic rhythm was the same. The inflection was different, but it was still the same voice concealed behind steely black eyes and a crisp military uniform.
“Lucius,” he said in a whisper.
Kovac laughed behind closed lips. “Yes, Lucius! What a marvelous specimen he is, too. He almost beat me, you know. Thousands of years and hundreds of lives and it was him, this simple soldier, who almost beat me. His will was stronger than anyone I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Had I known…I probably still would have proceeded. I must say, his life has been the most intoxicating elixir I’ve ever tasted.”
“Until me.”
“Yes, you. That was rather slippery of Sicari to keep your family a secret from me
for so long. He is a clever man. I’ll have to watch my back.
“Actually, I-rather Lucius-was the greatest man I’ve ever known until your father. Now, there was a man! I was in awe of him. He was everything a soldier and a general should be. He was everything an Arkon should be—another detail I somehow missed. But, he had one fatal flaw: He loved your mother.
“If there were a man to vanquish the mighty Lucius Kovac, it should’ve been him. He’s been dead for over a decade and even now, he continues to amaze me. How we tortured that man! Navarro used everything at our disposal to wring information from him! How, after all of that, he managed to keep his involvement with the Archides a secret, is nothing short of miraculous.”
Oryan’s hearing was almost completely restored. He could see the man Kovac before him, though the details were still blurred. He seemed now, not as the mountain of a man that was General Kovac, but as evil incarnate. His features were somehow stripped of humanity, leaving only the hellish echo of what Oryan imagined an Agryphim should look like.
Damrich wagged his finger at Oryan as a new thought passed in his mind. “You could’ve been. You had everything he had save one thing: nobility. He held a vision of the world as something to be cherished, tended, and cultivated.
“You, on the other hand, you understand what matters. You saw even those you called friends as what they really are: stepping stones, obstacles to be discarded from the path of true exceptionalism. You reminded me of him in your ability to achieve victory no matter the odds. But when it came to perfection, judgment, death, ambition…” Kovac closed his eyes and smiled as he let out a sigh of satisfaction. “You remind me of….me.”
The words were bitter to Oryan’s ears. Not because they were insulting but because they were true. Not even Oryan could know how close he had been to forever becoming like Damrich. Oryan felt a swell of gratitude for shining stars like Celeste and dear friends like Ethanis who clung to the last gasp of sanity he’d had until he’d embraced the light.
“Well, the question now is: what to do with you? Slow death? I considered it. But, there’s still that lingering bit of Kovac that I could never shake. It’s what saved Armay.”
Damrich laughed again as he stood, casting a shadow over Oryan that seemed as if it would utterly blot out the sun. “I killed you once and somehow you were resurrected. I think perhaps, fate has another destiny for you. I won’t kill you, son of Armay, but then again, I can’t risk your interference.
“You let me go when others had me bound so I’ll return the favor.”
Kovac stooped and injected Oryan’s arm with a new needle filled with a green fluid. It burned as it entered his system. Oryan’s finally clear vision faded again as his eyelids became heavy. He tried to keep them open, but the effort was ultimately futile.
Damrich thought back on his accomplishments as Kovac. Infiltrating the military and rising to its highest position. Instigating a world war. Destroying a dynasty of emperors that had been in existence for hundreds of years. Putting one of his Agryphim in a position of complete power when peace was declared. Most recently, the death of the Arkons, revenge on the traitor Corvus, and the complete annihilation of the Archide way of life.
“No, I can’t have the interference. Not from you, not from anyone. It’s about time the world remembers who I am.”
Destabilization
Lucius Kovac sat alone. His chiseled physique took up the entire chair, and his powerful hands were in command of the console in front of him. The screens played videos and stories of political powerhouses and puppets, financial gains and losses, and every possible needful thing. They beamed their vast wealth of information into his dark eyes.
What a sad little stage these fools danced upon—many going about their concerns, living and dying without accomplishing anything significant. Billions had left this world, and within a hundred years, no one remembered their names. How pathetic.
Even in their putrid state, he felt a great sense of pride at being so expert in pulling the strings. It had taken millennia for him to set the stage just as he wanted. Soon enough, he would claim this world from the Archides, just as he had Andromeda, and rebuild the empire stolen from him.
All he needed now was a little chaos—plunge the world into complete disorder, then swoop in, promising the opposite. His long years taught him people don’t surrender their freedom unless it was their choice. He would bathe them in fear, despair, and pain. It wouldn’t take long before they were willing to give up anything for even a moment of respite.
Not only did his plan require patience beyond what any mere mortal could fashion, but it also required him to avoid detection by even those closest to him. It was soon to be carried out, and in its execution; he would ensure their complete and abject failure. A dark smile spread across his features.
As he used his classified access, not only had the wheels he set spinning been doing very well, but other concerns had taken care of themselves. Before he could make his true rise to power, he needed to remove the Agryphim—a task not easily accomplished, especially when it came to Lykas.
Lykas was a difficult problem. Much like himself, Lykas had his hands in many places both in his role as an Agryphim and as Sicari of the Archides. Dispatching the rat Corvus, had been easy. Stripping Sicari away until there was nothing left, had taken a long time. Over the millennia, Lykas kept Corvus off Damrich’s scent, kept his secrets, and buried his victims. He had proven his loyalty, but he was still an Archide at heart. Because of that, he had to die.
Lykas kept Damrich’s secrets, discovering how to keep secrets from Damrich. He was hiding something. The moment the Archide camp had been liquidated, Lykas disappeared. Lykas could prove as dangerous as he had proven useful. Having a rogue Agryphim out there was something he couldn’t afford.
This turn of events alerted Damrich to another problem. All these years, he’d managed to stay invisible by stealing the lives of others. No one could track the man who could be anyone. Stealing bodies meant preparing for the possibility the body he stole might end prematurely. Damrich’s Agryphim were his insurance policy.
Each Agryphim had a device implanted in them called a cache. A cache was designed to temporarily house the Damrich’s consciousness in the event his host suffered a heart-attack or fell victim to a tragic accident. Once the consciousness was moved to the cache, Damrich took control of the Agryphim long enough to find a new host and transfer himself permanently.
Caches were trackable across the world from Damrich’s lair, a place only he and Lykas knew about. The only teleportation node left in this world not controlled by the Archides was on a secluded island disguised as a robust willow tree. Deep beneath its roots laid the secret to Damrich’s immortality and his perfect masterpiece of chaos.
When he tried to locate Lykas using his cache, it was nowhere to be found. That technology was from Andromeda, which was indestructible and designed to last forever. The only theory he could devise was that the weapon which obliterated the Archide Camp, had side effects. One being it had the destructive ability to short a cache. Damrich remembered much from Andromeda, but the cache technology was beyond even him. He knew how to use it but not how to repair it. Even if he found Lykas, there was little hope he could restore the device.
Even more troubling was that Lykas’s cache wasn’t the only one no longer traceable. Therion’s was gone, too. His device going dark meant he was at the Camp when the weapon detonated. Somehow, Therion knew Damrich was Kovac and was following him. Two could play at that game—Therion’s alter-identities of Doran Balsa and Briscoe Books made him easy to find.
The final destruction of the Archides should be something he celebrated, but it was a short-lived victory. These unexpected turns were forcing him to accelerate his plans. After he dropped Oryan in the middle of the most unhospitable place on the planet, he immediately set wheels in motion that shouldn’t be turning yet.
The door behind him slid open. “General,” a soldier said, “we’re pr
epared to do a test run of the weapon. We need your final approval before doing so.”
Damrich took a back seat, letting Kovac drive for a moment. “Very good, Colonel.”
The colonel’s eyes risked a darting glance at the over-sized table in the shadows of Kovac’s office. It was a steel slab supported by heavy posts designed to bear extraordinary weight. On its surface was a hulking creature whose chest subtly rose and fell beneath its gray skin. The colonel couldn’t make out much, but he could distinguish hands and feet several times the size of his or even Kovac’s.
Noticing the slight breach in military discipline, Damrich took advantage. “Is there a problem, Colonel?”
The colonel stiffened and cursed himself for the lapse. “No, sir.”
Damrich turned his gaze to the table. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” he mused.
“S-sir,” the colonel stammered hesitantly, “what is he?”
Damrich beamed. “He’s my masterpiece. You have my permission to proceed. Once we know the weapon works, make sure the development team is disposed of.”
“Yes, General,” the colonel’s eyes were glued on Damrich’s masterpiece.
“Is there anything else?” Damrich asked.
“No, sir.”
“Then get out.”
He saluted and left. Damrich watched him depart with malicious glee. It had taken less than fifteen seconds to make the man sweat. Through his deeds as a soldier and a military commander, Kovac made others respect him. Damrich made others fear him. Of all the lives he had stolen, this one was one he would lament seeing slip away, but the shell had to be discarded soon. Pity.
Pausing the screens, Damrich rose and walked to the breathing corpse that was Roanoke. There he laid the pinnacle of cloning and programming from a long-forgotten past. This thing was the terror of the ancient world. Damrich had commissioned Roanoke when a scientist on Andromeda discovered how to design clones whose blood was mixed with the Archide’s healing salve. It allowed him to make a creature three times the size of a man with skin, bones, and organs that could repair in an instant. No weapon anciently could keep Roanoke from filling his creator’s will. Damrich could only imagine what horror he would be to the inhabitants of this one.