Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5)

by Guerric Haché

  Something was horribly wrong.

  One of the spirits was suddenly cut down by Hail’s hunter fire, two bolts piercing her torso and sending her crashing into Ren and Zoa, who jumped out of the way. Zoa jumped too far, somehow, and slammed head-first into the dome. The dead spirit’s wound was bleeding around imperfect cauterization - deep blue blood. What on Earth was going on?

  She turned around to Erran. “Erran - what -”

  He was sobbing. Crying? Why the hell was he crying? “Isavel - Isavel I’m sorry -”

  “Where -” No time. They were in danger. “We need to go!”

  Another of the spirits appeared and charged her threateningly, shouting, and she lashed out with her warrior’s blade, stabbing him through the chest. He collapsed to the side, his body flopping comically along the floor.

  She looked to the door, and found it was… day? There was a dull orange light outside the door. Gods damn everything - they been transported across the entire globe, hadn’t they? To a place where the sun shone while it set over Glass Peaks. She knew that was how the world worked, but such places were incredibly far, well beyond the eastern wastes.

  There was more shouting outside, too, and more of these inhuman figures entered, ghastly and terrifying in their pallor. They raised weapons - long, thin guns - and opened fire, needle-like bundles of energy slicing through the air. One struck Isavel in the leg and burned like cinders. She yelled, launching her warrior’s sword straight at them, and as it struck the ground at the spirits’ feet it exploded, sending them flying across the dome in all directions as though they were made of paper.

  This was insane. She had to -

  She looked down at Erran, and he was bleeding even worse from the leg. Something had struck him again, and she hefted him up. “Erran? Erran, stop walking!”

  He was shaking his head, wide-eyed and afraid. “I can’t - can’t walk here - no Elysium - no worlds -”

  He would live. They just needed to find a medic. “Let’s go!”

  The wraith was tearing into the spirits that had entered dome. Tanos looked at Isavel in fear. “Where the hell are we? Why is everything so - so -”

  Hail charged the door with unnatural leaps and bounds, blasting out of it indiscriminately, and then froze. “Isavel - wait, hold on -”

  Isavel took a deep breath. All they needed was to escape, to get away. If they were so far from Glass Peaks, perhaps this was a misunderstanding - perhaps they could explain themselves. And Erran would be fine - there were plenty of medics in the world. She rushed out the door, trusting her senses and shields. “Everyone go! Hail, keep them busy!”

  Hail went first, palms blazing, and Isavel followed. They stumbled as they went, tripped up as though they had never learned to walk at all, and found themselves… outside. On a sandy hill amidst a collection of ruins. There was no real city here. Were they in the eastern wastes, then? Did the wastes just wrap endlessly around the world?

  “Erran - Erran you really need to stop -”

  But he was telling the truth. As the rest of them stepped out of the building they spread out, and they should be outside the bubble. But they were not. This was really real.

  The air smelled different here, and the colours… The colours were all wrong.

  There were dozens of ghastly, tall, pale human-like shapes crowding them on either side, shouting at them and pointing weapons and looking both afraid and angry, but not firing - not yet. Good - maybe they had a chance. More half-buried buildings poked out of the rusty sand on all sides. Hail had her back to Isavel’s, Sam and Tanos were close to one side, and the coders were brandishing their own weapons. Everyone else was pointing guns back and shouting, but for a brief moment nobody was getting killed.

  In that brief moment, Isavel looked up to the sky. And fell to her knees.

  Everything was wrong.

  “Erran. Where did you bring us?”

  He was wincing and whinging and still crying, damn him. What had he done? “I’m sorry - Tev, I can’t - I didn’t think -”

  The sky was a dull yellowish olive hue, for all that it was daytime. Evening, perhaps, or morning - it was hard to tell. The sun was on the horizon, surrounded by a bluish haze. The sun was too small . She kept looking. She looked around, in every direction.

  There was no ring around the world. No ring anywhere in the sky.

  Her grip on the walker tightened. “Where. Tell me where .”

  “I remembered the stories.” Erran’s eyes were focusing now, in a pitiful mixture of confusion and tears and regret. “He taught me the symbols. He didn’t tell me - he couldn’t have known.”

  It was Sam, uninjured, who figured it out first, gaping at him. “You fucker. You stupid fucking fucker. You sent us to Mars.”

  Chapter 3

  Mars? Where the hell was Mars?

  Might as well walk to Mars , some said, when they thought some journey would take too long. Everybody from here to Mars can hear you , others said, when admonishing someone for being too loud. Man acts like he’s been to Mars and back , they said, when somebody pretended to be more worldly than they were.

  It was a metaphor, an idea, a meaningless sound that meant something impossibly distant. Those were not common expressions, but they echoed in old stories and in those sometimes affecting an old voice. But it wasn’t a real place. It couldn’t be.

  “Isavel. The sun -”

  “I saw.” She stared around at the strange people all around her, shouting and pointing weapons, stopping and starting, as though Isavel and her party were dangerous. Of course they were. “Erran, what did you do? ”

  “He told me Mars was where walkers go to hide. He said they would come for me too -” He was looking around even more wildly, like he was lost. They all were. “But I didn’t - Isavel, I can’t walk .”

  She knew what he meant. There was no ring in the sky - their gods, and the thousand worlds they dreamed, were not here. Old stories never actually ventured to Mars - they simply let its name fall, an old, dusty word with the smell of something star-touched. No wonder.

  It was entirely possible there was no way back.

  And these… people? Surrounding them on all sides, shouting, pointing weapons. They had the stiff stances of ungifted, trained in their weapons but without the grace of one whose body was a weapon of its own. And they wavered back and forth, as though afraid but trying to stand their ground. Afraid of her? No - their eyes jumped between all them. Afraid of these interlopers from Earth.

  They did spare the wraith more than its fair share of glances, though; the thing had clawed its way up the ruin, suddenly indifferent to the fighting, almost casually soaking up the sun like a fat cat in summer. She was, briefly, tickled by the idea of not being the strangest or most threatening thing in the scene.

  But she didn’t know their language, and had no sense of what they seemed to be waiting for. After a moment of tense indecision on all sides, she made to stand and stumbled with the horrifying ease of motion. One of them shouted at her sudden movement, but when she brought bright white wings to bear she quickly drew more of their attention - and aim. But they still didn’t fire.

  What were they? Not spirits, if they truly weren’t in the walk. But clearly not humans as she knew them. “Do you understand me?” She tried to meet their strange, pale eyes, keeping her hands outstretched but pointed down. “We’re lost. We didn’t mean to come here.”

  Several of the nearest strangers glanced amongst each other and exchanged incomprehensible words, and as Isavel scanned the scene her eyes fell suddenly on something amiss.

  Clothes. There were dozens of strangers here, but the clothes hit her all of a sudden. The strangers with guns wore bronze-coloured armour underscored with blue cloths or paint or something, but there were others. A group huddled near cover suddenly stood out, and she realized they weren’t huddled - they were bound. They were dressed differently, unarmored and simple-clothed; they did not have the bravely determined looks the armed guard
s did. They looked certain they were about to die, like Isavel and hers were just another complication in the means of their death. Their faces sagged with dread and defeat all at once, and she realized, for a brief moment, that they had stumbled into an existing situation that had nothing to do with her at all.

  As she locked eyes with one of these - prisoners? traitors? slaves? - he seemed to recoil, even though she was at least ten meters away. What was she, in their eyes?

  A shout from Tanos broke her from that stare. “Isavel! They’ve got humans!”

  She spun around. Two humans, specifically - one, she quickly realized, was a medic. The armored guards were forcefully shoving him towards two of the others Isavel’s party had left wounded, and his healing green glow soon started to mend their wounds.

  The other was being dragged towards Isavel, a particularly fierce-looking guard pressing the muzzle of a gun into her back as she stumbled forward, barking short sentences at her that Isavel could barely parse. She locked eyes with the Earth woman, brown-haired and lightly freckled, her face a strange mix of fear and… annoyance?

  “Gods I hope you speak my languages.” The human’s voice was more of the same deathly exasperation. “Just answer. What are you doing here?”

  Isavel blinked. “I do - I - my name is Isavel Val-”

  “No, no, fuck off with your name - what are you?” Her words were rushed, no doubt by the gun at her back. “They don’t care about your name. What are you doing here? Why? You’re obviously not the walker, I -”

  Suddenly her eyes met with Erran’s and widened, but she didn’t elaborate soon enough, and the guard at her back shouted and pressed the weapon harder into her back.

  “Fucking answer you butterfly-winged idiot!”

  Isavel stammered. “It was an accident! I didn’t want to come here. We were fighting - Erran, what -”

  “Erran?” The Earth woman scowled. “That’s not - wait a second -”

  The ghost walker grimaced, still wounded. “I didn’t know - I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought Mars was an island or something -”

  The woman scowled and started barking back at her captor, and for a few moments they exchanged obviously heated words in the local language. Isavel did not like being out of the loop. “What’s going on? Why -”

  “They think you’re scouts for a fucking invasion. Same story every time.” She shook her head. “They never believe we’re just stupid enough to walk through one-way fargates. It’s almost flattering.”

  One-way. Isavel looked at the others, and she briefly met eyes with Sam and Tanos, who were huddled just beside her, in the middle of the group. There was something odd in Sam’s eyes, like she was experiencing an entirely new kind of bewilderment. Then Zoa was suddenly lunging forward. “What do you mean, one-way? We can’t stay here - we have to go back.”

  “Too bad. No going back. I -” A sharp jab from the gun made her wince. “The martians are going to bind your hands. Don’t fucking freak out, there are at least a hundred of them -”

  Isavel flickered the hunter’s gift in her hands, and several martians shouted and pointed their weapons, two of them firing into the rusty ground around them in warning. The human captive’s eyes widened.

  “Don’t! You idiot - do you see a ring up there? There’s no Elysium here.” She glanced at Erran. “I’ve checked. I bet you’ve figured it out, too, haven’t you Erran? ”

  The ghost walker opened his mouth and closed it again a few times before he sighed. “Ghost.”

  She gritted her teeth, staring at them all. “Fucking knew it. Pieces of body-snatching shit, I -”

  “Lorra, just tell the same story.” The medic was being prodded over - to Isavel’s surprise, towards Erran. “They never fucking believe you otherwise.” He glanced at Isavel. “Fancy wings. Don’t start shooting. They’re serious.”

  Isavel nodded. “So am I.” She looked to Hail, and the hunter nodded at her silently, her eyes wide but her palms ready.

  “We’re not ghosts!” Zoa was getting more agitated. “Just this fucker - and her.”

  Sam grimaced. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “We need to get out of here - Isavel?” She looked cautiously at the Herald, batting blue hair from her face. “You’re a killer. Kill them out of our way.”

  As ready as she might have been to do so, she tensed at the suggestion. “What’s -”

  “Shut up!” If Lorra had been prodded again, she missed it. “Just calm down and let them -”

  “No.” She didn’t know what was going on, but captivity was never an appealing option. “Can’t you just tell them the truth? We don’t even want to be here -”

  “They have no idea what Earth is really like, Isavel. They think -”

  “I don’t care what they think!” Zoa was standing now too, and almost knocked into the medic as he finished healing Erran’s wounds. “We can’t stand around -”

  The shouting grew louder, and in a moment of panic Isavel looked through the dozens of guns aimed at them, over to the prisoners again. Those were martian prisoners - clearly there were divisions here. If there were divisions, there were different ideas. If there were different ideas, some people must be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt than others - maybe even help them.

  The path to those hypothetical people, she decided, was more likely to lie with the people not currently threatening to kill them. As the medic moved for the small wound in her leg, she pointed at these others. “Lorra, who are they?”

  “It doesn’t - they’re going to shoot!” Her pitch increased. “Gods damn you, don’t you know when you’re outnumbered? Stand down! Tellac, get away from her unless she -”

  The medic didn’t listen, though, and Isavel felt the strange sensation of her wounds patching up as Zoa stepped forward. “No, this is ridiculous - listen, Isavel, if you aren’t going to kill them then maybe we can make ourselves useful -”

  One of the martians skittered forward, unsteadily, as though expecting the coder to explode in his face. He brought the gun a hand’s span from her head, and this was apparently too close for her brother’s taste.

  Ren sprang into action, darting forward and yanking the gun aside. The wielder fired, Zoa screamed, and suddenly half a dozen needle-like bolts cut through the air and passed through Ren’s dark tunic and body like sand. He collapsed onto the ground, thrashing and turning towards his sister, and for a horrifying moment Zoa stood frozen in place. Then she dove down to him, grabbing him and screaming.

  “No! No, no -” She spun around and latched onto Tellac. “You! Heal him, medic! Heal him!”

  “I don’t -”

  “ Do it! ” Zoa balled her fist and started striking him on the shoulders and back. “ Do it now! ”

  Lorra moved as well. “Hey! Hey, hands off him! I fucking warned you -” She lunged, her captor grabbed at her arm, and when she hit him and tried to struggle free he instantly shot her through the head.

  She died before Ren, actually. Not long before - as he weakly grasped for his sister’s knee while she struggled to force the medic on him, Isavel saw him shudder and still.

  They had said no Elysium, but already there were two dead bodies lying in front of her. Horribly close. The imminent threat of gunfire was turning towards Zoa now, horrible shadows of jagged peaks moving in time with the sun.

  Had she brought them all here to die? Had she brought herself here to die?

  Or… why had the path to Mars shown itself to Erran, even? While they were walking in the dreams of gods?

  This was not her doing. It was not Erran’s doing. There was no cosmic justice in this - only cruelty and suffering. And in a split second she decided she was going to fight this fate tooth and nail, because to do otherwise was to concede cruelty and suffering were not worth fighting. She could die, but she would die ablaze rather than snuffed out.

  She took a deep breath and set the ground on fire.

  Her dragonfire burst out around her feet,
heat scraping her skin behind tiny warrior’s shields, and in the lightness of Mars dust and ash flew all around them almost instantly. Even as the fire left her jaws, she shouted. “Down!”

  Gunfire zipped through the air, and she brought up shields to ward it off, but the dust and ash had blinded them all, and as she stepped forward she roared again, fanning the smokescreen.

  “Follow my voice!”

  She ran, then, towards the martian captives, dragonfire and rust shrouding out the paling, distant blue sun. She fired blindly towards where she thought the martians were shooting from, explosive blasts that rewarded her with the sounds of screaming and rocks cracking, and nothing she could see at all.

  Then she was out of the smoke and fire and dust, bearing down on the captives, and they howled and seethed and tried to crawl away from her in terror. They remained bound into a knot, though, so she reached them and grabbed the one man she had locked eyes with earlier. The tiny blade she called up in her hand that made him whimper and struggle, but she cut him loose all the same. Then she pulled her hands back, and hoped he understood.

  He froze in confusion for far longer than she would have liked, and she raised her shield to ward off shots from two martians who had circled around the smokescreen. Gunfire was coming from within, as her party started firing wildly, and Hail was quickly behind her, picking off the offending martians.

  She looked back at the captive and tried to force herself to smile. “Hey. I can help you.” She pointed away - out into the world she knew nothing about. “Sam? Tanos? A little help!” She set to work cutting the others loose.

  The two ungifted rushed up beside her, Tanos wide-eyed but Sam staring down these martians and gesturing wildly. “Can you take us anywhere?” She gestured to encompass both groups. “Together. We need to go! Now!”

  Tanos fired at something that caught his attention. Erran staggered forward out of the dust, without the medic; he seemed healed enough to run, at least, and he threw down beside the captives. The free ones recoiled, and one stood to flee, but the man Isavel had been trying to talk to suddenly barked something out that made her freeze.