by Logan Knight
“I am known by many names,” the apparition said. It was still swirling a bit, but not nearly as much as before. Its shape revealed a head with no features, two arms, two legs, and what looked like the right number of fingers and toes. It was as tall as me and appeared to be wearing armor, though the form was too indistinct to see any details.
“Give me one of your names,” I said.
“You know who I am. You have always known me. Your people may have forgotten me, but I have never left. Living things receive a visit from me. They feel my embrace. Your people fear me, though I am not their enemy. Speak my name.”
The apparition’s words hit my mind with the force of a command. The sounds left my mouth as if they were being dragged from me by a rusty hook and heavy chain.
“Ebba,” I whispered. My mouth went dry, and I thought of my grandmother. It was the story she most liked to tell.
Ebba wasn’t death. He was the messenger. Death came to us all, but it was Ebba who ushered us from the world of the living into the great darkness on the other side. I began to suspect I’d already died, and my mind was clutching at memories as a drowning man would at anything floating within his reach—even another person.
“Yes,” Ebba whispered as he stepped forward, passing through and around the bars as if they didn’t exist.
“Am I dead?” I asked.
“Your death is not yet eminent,” Ebba said. “Your time has not yet come. I am here to offer you an opportunity to lengthen your life. All must die, eventually, but I may extend yours beyond what is natural for your kind.”
I was intrigued and allowed my guard to drop. I still didn’t think gods were real, but if I was dying, there was no reason to make the experience any more difficult than it had to be. Also, if Ebba was real, and I did have the opportunity to be spared, it might mean I could make good on my promise to choke the life out of the priest.
“You said you would do anything for a chance to kill more of the Xorians,” Ebba said. His words rattled my bones and made my hair stand on end.
“Yes, anything.”
“Good,” Ebba said. Then a sound began to grow from the apparition. It shook the walls of the prison and made my heart feel like it was bouncing around inside my chest. A second later, I recognized it for what it was: laughter. As Ebba’s laughter rattled the world around me, he approached. I could sense immense power coming from the Messenger of Death, and I instinctively backed away from him until I’d pressed myself against the cold, hard wall behind me.
He stopped when he was only a foot away. The chill of his presence forced me to close my eyes. My skin felt like it was dying and regenerating every second, cycling between the two over and over again. I tasted the grave, loneliness, and an empty infinity of darkness. Death seemed to swirl around the apparition, congealing then exploding into icy vapor.
Another sound seemed to come from deep inside the thing. It was faint, but the more I concentrated on it, the louder it seemed to grow. At first, I didn’t know what I was hearing. Then I understood. It was thousands of voices crying out in grief. It was the wails of the living as the dead were carried away.
I forced my eyes open and found myself floating in an infinite sea of stars. The universe spun around me until I was facing Ebba again. Throughout all of it, I felt strangely at peace.
“You will be my avatar,” he said. “I bestow upon you knowledge and abilities long forgotten. You will command the elements. You will create from nothing. You will destroy, change, move, and make irrelevant all things which stand in your way. You will be the creator and the destroyer. You will be the keeper of my name, and you will teach others to respect me. I charge you with discovering the source of the evil which plagues this world. You must destroy it and return the balance. I will hold you accountable for this task.”
I stared into the featureless face for what seemed an eternity as we floated among the stars. I was beginning to believe what I was experiencing was somehow real.
“Hold your hands to mine to accept your gift,” Ebba said, raising both his palms toward me.
I lifted mine to his, and the universe cracked open like an egg. Shards of reality began to spin around and through me. Images of animals, people, and runes flashed before my eyes. My mind screamed in anguish, and I echoed it with my voice. Then the entire universe went black.
“Go forth and make war,” Ebba whispered as his presence faded.
2
When I returned to reality, I was lying on my face with my right arm pulled uncomfortably behind my back.
“Whoa,” the woman in the next cell said. “What happened to you? Are you okay? You totally just flopped over. It was kind of scary.”
“I don’t know,” I said, though the weird vision of speaking with the Messenger of Death was still fresh in my mind. I lifted myself from the floor and shuddered at how real it had seemed, but when I glanced at my surroundings, I was still in my cell, and still chained to the wall. It didn’t look like a lot of time had passed because all the other prisoners were still there.
Then the first scream echoed through the wall from the courtyard. “The sacrifices have started?” I asked.
The woman nodded solemnly. Her eyes were wet with tears. “It won’t be long now. What I wouldn’t give for a shot at those bastards.” Her eyes lingered on me for several seconds before settling on the stone floor between her feet.
I understood what she’d said, but I still felt a bit groggy. My head was clearing, but my mind was full of images, shadows of thoughts, and words I’d never heard before. One of the last things I remembered from my vision was touching Ebba. When I lifted my hands, I was shocked to see silvery markings on them.
Intricate patterns of runes, circles, and other shapes covered my palms and fingers. They didn’t hurt, even though it looked like someone had tattooed them with pure silver.
“Whoa,” the woman said, peeking through the bars, “what’s that? Are those tattoos?
“I don’t know,” I said while flexing and opening my fingers. I was having trouble believing my vision had been real, even though the evidence was under my skin.
I also became aware of a powerful heat burning somewhere deep in my mind. It felt like hot coals, ready to ignite anything that got too close. There was no pain, but it was as intense as a campfire.
I stood and carefully dragged a finger across the silver markings on the opposite hand. It felt normal. There were no raised bumps or scarring. When I rubbed my hands together, though, sparks erupted from between them, and I stumbled into the wall in surprise. It was real.
“Um…” the woman said, “what was that? Was that magic? It sure looked like magic. Since when can you do magic?”
I ignored her and closed my eyes, searching for the source of the power I felt in my mind. It came to me easily, and again I saw the shapes, images, and runes I’d experienced in my vision. Then I understood. I was going to make good on my promise to strangle the priest. But first, I had to unchain myself from the wall.
I tugged hard as the woman watched, but I felt no stronger than before. I tried rubbing the chain between my hands, but aside from a few sparks, nothing interesting happened.
When I reached into my mind again, a single word rose to the surface, like a bloated body rising in a lake. I’d never heard it before, but I knew what it would do.
I lifted my unchained palm toward the cuff at my other wrist and spoke the phrase, “Sustu Fragili.” The tattoo at my palm tingled, and when I pulled the chain again, it and the cuff turned to powder and drifted lazily to the floor.
“Holy shit,” the blonde whispered. “That was awesome. Quick, do mine!”
I turned to my cell door next, lifted my hand, and spoke the word again. When I pushed on the door, the hinges and lock turned to powder, the wooden boards separated, and the whole thing rattled and crashed to the floor.
“I wasn’t kidding,” the woman whispered. “I’m a great cook. Really great. Better than great. I can cook all kinds of t
hings. Quick, let me out!”
My mind became filled with thunderous laughter that washed over me from far away. It was Ebba. For a moment, dread settled in my gut, and I wondered at the deal I’d made with the Messenger of Death. He was pleased with my efforts so far, it seemed. It passed a moment later, and I returned to my task.
I stared at my hands and understood. Gods existed, and magic was real. It meant at least some of the stories my grandmother had told me were true as well.
The sound of a door opening to my left snapped my attention back to the present.
“Hey!” a guard bellowed at me. His eyes quickly took inventory of the other cells as I stepped out of my own. Then he drew his sword and charged me.
I raised my hand. “Sustu Fragili!” The man lifted his sword to strike me, but when he did, his weapon turned to powder in his hand, and he looked at it in confusion.
I kicked the guard hard, and he gasped, clutching his chest with both hands. The armor that should have protected him had dissolved and vanished.
Then I proceeded to kick the man in his face repeatedly. His helmet disintegrated with the first blow, but I stomped on his head until his screams stopped. Dead or unconscious, he was no longer a threat, unlike the next two who walked through the open doorway a second later.
One was a guard. The other was the priest. The goateed man’s expression shifted from confusion, through outrage, to terror in less than a second.
“Kill him!” the priest squealed before darting from the room.
The guard drew his sword but approached more cautiously than the first one had. He glanced down at his partly naked comrade, probably wondering where his armor had gone and how the piles of dust got onto the floor.
I closed my eyes and reached into my mind again, this time coming up with another magical phrase that seemed more efficient than the first. When I raised both hands and said, “Sagit Tenebris”, an arrow materialized between them. I released the quivering projectile, and it buried itself up to its fletching in the man’s throat. He was dead before his body hit the floor.
The effort of speaking the magical words seemed to tire me, though. I felt a little ill and realized I needed to pace myself if I was going to escape. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I used magic too often, but I knew it wouldn’t be good.
“That was awesome!” the woman said from her cell.
All at once, the other prisoners began yelling for my attention.
“Let me out!” one demanded.
“I need to escape!” another said.
“Please don’t let me die in here!” a third pleaded.
I ran to the guard I’d just killed and after a few seconds of searching, found his key. The woman’s cell was closest, so I unlocked hers first and then uncuffed her from the wall.
As soon as her wrist was free, she wrapped both her arms around my shoulders and hugged me tightly. I noticed the soft pressure of her breasts against my chest and regretted not having the time to enjoy it longer.
“I have to free the others,” I said as I extracted myself from her arms. “I can’t leave them here.”
“Do it,” she said. “I’ll watch your back. From here on out, I’m with you. My name’s Alena, by the way.”
“Reese,” I said.
Alena left the cell, picked up the guard’s sword, and slammed the door shut at the end of the hallway. She leaned against it and watched as I hurried between the other cells, freeing the prisoners within.
None of them, however, waited for anyone else. After the first one opened the door at the other end of the hallway from Alena and bolted, the rest followed as quickly as they could. I’d done my part, I knew. Their survival was in their own hands.
When I’d freed the last prisoner, I put the key in my pocket and hurried to Alena. “Give me the sword.”
“No way,” she said. “I’m probably better with this thing than you are.”
“We don’t have time for this. Give me the sword!”
“Nope,” she said, “this one’s mine. You can have the next one.” Then she opened the door she’d been leaning against and decapitated a surprised-looking guard on the other side. The man’s blood sprayed onto the ceiling and droplets of it landed on her face.
She turned to me with a smile and said, “See?”
I shrugged. “Okay, let’s go.”
I picked up the headless guard’s sword and hurried down the hallway with the beautiful and dangerous Alena close behind. I wasn’t afraid, but if the guards had any sense, they would be.
Two of the prisoners I’d freed ran down the same hallway behind us. The direction they’d chosen at first appeared to have been the wrong one. One of them had managed to acquire a sword, and I was glad to have them along. There was strength in numbers.
We passed at least a dozen doors, but I kept rushing forward. The air seemed to be growing cooler and smelled less of filth, so I guessed we were going the right way.
One of the men behind me screamed. When I turned to look, I saw him holding his guts in his hands. When the other man bent to pick up his companion’s dropped sword, a guard stepped out from an open doorway and lopped his head off with a single stroke of his blade.
Then the guard turned to me and charged.
I raised both of my hands and uttered a magical word. An arrow, black as night but glowing with magical residue appeared, shot out, and buried itself in the man’s neck, just below his chin. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees, barely ten feet from us, choking on his own blood. A second later, he fell to the ground, silent and dead.
“You have to teach me that trick later,” Alena said.
“I don’t know if I can. Let’s go.”
As I turned, another door opened barely six feet in front of me. A guard stepped out, but he was looking the other way, so I kicked the door with all my strength. He grunted and spun completely around before he dropped his sword and fell to the ground.
When the guard lifted himself to his knees and reached for his weapon, I slashed his throat. I didn’t bother waiting to make sure he was dead. The gurgling sound of drowning in blood was unmistakable.
We continued running until we got to a door at the end of the passage. When I tried the lever, though, I discovered it was locked.
“Use your key,” Alena whispered.
I was already reaching for it, and when I tried it in the lock, I was relieved it turned. Rapid footsteps from behind us caused me to turn and lift my hand as I prepared to release another arrow.
What came toward us down the hallway, though, were three more of the prisoners I’d freed. The men were running with everything they had. The crazed look in their eyes made it clear that they had no intention of stopping to chat. I swung the door open and stepped out of the way to let them pass. Then Alena and I went through, and I locked the door behind us.
The three prisoners turned right at the end of the hallway, barely thirty feet away, and one of them screamed. The sound was followed by the echoing twang of swords clashing together and shouts from both prisoners and guards.
I still felt ill from the last spell I’d cast and wasn’t sure my companion and I could take on what sounded like at least three more of our enemy.
“This way!” Alena whispered, pointing to a door. She jiggled the lever, but it was locked.
I pulled my key out, unlocked it, and both of us quickly snuck inside. The room was well-lit and full of curious items, but I turned away from the sights and locked the door. I heard Alena wandering further into the room as I pressed my ear against the door.
“That’s three,” a guard said. “Let’s see if there are any more.”
The sound of at least four sets of booted feet grew closer and stopped in front of the door. I froze as a hand jiggled the lever from the outside.
“This one’s still locked,” the guard said. “They’re close, though. Really close. Let’s keep looking.”
The footsteps continued, and I heard another lever jiggle down the hallwa
y.
“This one’s still locked, too,” the same man said. “Where could they have gone?”
“I don’t know,” another guard added. “Maybe they’re in the next passage. You’re right, though. They’re close.”
“Remember,” a third man said, “we need to capture as many as we can. The priest needs his sacrifices. Be on the lookout for the one with the beard. He definitely wants that one alive.”
“Does he have to be able to walk?” the first guard asked.
“I never heard him mention it, so I guess not,” another guard answered.
The men laughed. I waited until their sounds faded completely before I turned away from the door.
“They’re gone,” I whispered to Alena.
The room was thirty feet in both directions with block walls like the rest of the fortress. More than a dozen small oil laps sparkled off hundreds of bottles, jars, and glass funnels stacked on several tables. Shelves containing more curious items lined the walls. One entire shelf was filled with small creatures floating in amber liquid in glass jars. Alena was at the back of the room inspecting books crowding a shelf that spanned the wall.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“It’s a kitchen,” Alena said as she replaced the book she’d been looking at and pulled another from the shelf.
“Doesn’t look like any kind of kitchen I’ve ever seen,” I mused.
“Well, it’s got cookbooks,” she said, opening one to show me.
The paper looked to be high-quality, and though the drawings and writing inside were neat, I didn’t understand what kind of meal it was supposed to represent.
“Oh, quit making that face,” Alena scolded. “Look at this thing. Look at the paper. This is an expensive book, so whatever these recipes make, they have to be delicious. People don’t write cookbooks like this unless their stuff is amazing. I’m taking one. This one.”
She set it on a nearby table and pulled two packs off a bottom shelf, then she stuffed the book inside one and handed me the other.