Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  Why?

  Why was this happening? Why my parents? Why me?

  “That thing that attacked us,” I found myself saying. “You said you knew about it. Was that really Adrian Kublich?”

  “Yes, and no. It was certainly General Kublich’s body that attacked you and your parents, but Kublich himself likely had no control over his actions—probably hasn’t for some years now. The General’s body has been commandeered, for lack of a better word.”

  “Commandeered…” What the scud did that mean? “Commandeered by what, exactly?”

  Carlisle gave me a long, measuring look, his eyes lucid and piercing, like he was trying to decide what I could or couldn’t handle—or maybe whether I could be trusted. Finally, his expression dropped to weary resignation.

  “A raknoth.”

  “A what?”

  “A raknoth,” he repeated. “I can’t tell you much about them other than that they seem capable of turning any host they invade into a walking puppet. A heavily modified puppet, as you had the misfortune of observing.”

  I thought back to the red eyes, the claws, and the odd green hue that’d tinged Kublich’s skin at the end. Dizziness swirled through my head. The High General of the Legion, under the influence of some kind of… what? Some kind of demonic super parasite that somehow no one had ever heard of?

  “That’s not possible.”

  Carlisle studied me. “Would you rather I tell you he’s been taken by a demon of the nether?”

  I’d rather be home, asleep in my own bed, life thoroughly un-gropped, not worrying about any of this. Because this was all total bullscud. It had to be.

  And yet I had seen Kublich sprout claws—seen the fire awaken in his eyes. I’d watched the High General of the Legion, a friend and ally to my father, brutally murder both my parents.

  Was I losing it? I clamped a hand over my eyes in a futile attempt to calm my spinning head. It only made things worse. “How the hell could something like that go unnoticed?” I growled. “Those eyes weren’t exactly hard to miss. There’s no way.”

  “The raknoth wouldn’t be very good parasites if they couldn’t hide their existence.” He gave me a peculiar look. “And they’re hardly the only oddity that’s escaped Enochia’s notice.”

  Was he talking about himself? The impossible fall? The arcane snap flare? He pressed on before I could ask.

  “I’m guessing you’d never noticed anything particularly off about Kublich, had you?”

  I resisted the urge to glare at him. “You mean like gropping flaming eyes? No. Not really.”

  He tilted his head. “Just so. And by my guess, Kublich has likely been infected for nearly a decade. Worse, he’s not the only one.”

  My stomach sank, my thoughts drifting back to Carlisle’s impossible feats and the nightmare where he’d sported his own set of red eyes.

  “And you?” I said, inching my hand closer to the gun at my side. “Who’s pulling your strings in there?”

  “I assure you,” he said, tapping at the side of his head, “I’m still me in here. Just another Enochian, more or less.”

  Another Enochian. Right.

  “May I keep driving while we talk?” he asked.

  I eyed the opening ahead, doubt pulling at me from every direction. I needed answers—needed to take stock of my situation, come up with a plan. But where on Enochia could I go? Who could I trust?

  I didn’t even know where to start.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I have a safe place outside the city. Kublich and his servants won’t find us there.”

  I chewed that over. Every bit of rational training I’d ever had told me to take my gun and walk. Get to the streets. Find a node. Call Johnny. Call anyone. Maybe something had happened to Kublich, but the rest of the Legion would sort this out. Right?

  Maybe. But then why had four Sanctum Guard and that odd smirking bastard tried to kill me tonight? And what in demon’s depths had Smirks even done to me back there, with the paralysis and the whispers in my head?

  It was all too much to process. And while my rational mind might be telling me to get out of the skimmer and run, my gut, for some reason, was telling me to do the opposite. Carlisle clearly hadn’t told me everything, but I also didn’t think he wanted to hurt me. For one thing, if he’d wanted me dead, he’d already had two chances tonight to sit back and watch it happen. That was something, at least. Plus, he had answers, even if they did sound like wild bullscud.

  I couldn’t trust him. Not until I understood why he’d been there to pull my ass out of the fire in the first place. After everything that had happened, I’m not even sure I could have trusted the High Cleric himself right then.

  But for now, sticking with Carlisle sounded better than trying my luck on the streets. So I gave a wary nod of concession to my patiently waiting companion and did my best not to fidget as he guided the skimmer into the tunnel. The tunnel entrance slid shut behind us, leaving nothing but the skimmer’s headlights to illuminate the way through the darkness ahead. The fit was tight, and the angle gradually descended over the next few minutes. We were almost definitely passing under the Red River.

  I tried not to think about it.

  “You’re not just another Enochian,” I said, in part to distract myself from thoughts of a horrible, drowning death in the dark tunnel. “I saw the things you did.”

  The skimmer’s flight shifted subtly as the tunnel leveled out then began slowly ascending.

  “I did say more or less,” Carlisle said.

  “Yeah, because shooting snap flares from your hands and surviving falls from Alpha knows how high are such tiny little extras.”

  “Those things I can explain much more thoroughly than the raknoth.” He looked over at me, brow creasing in a frown. “In fact, I fear I might have to, considering. And sooner than later.”

  “What do you mean? Considering what?”

  “Considering you’re like me. Gifted.”

  I stared at him in the dim lighting of the skimmer’s controls, searching his face for any sign of trickery. There wasn’t any. So instead I looked for the cracks in Carlisle’s sanity. Because, clearly, they had to be there. But the man who calmly met my gaze looked all too sane, and honest right to his core.

  “Is it too late to turn around?” I said.

  Carlisle’s lip twitched upward, and he tilted his head toward the windshield.

  Ahead, the darkness of the tunnel was peeling away along a widening diagonal slit. Another lot, it looked like, probably underground like its counterpart behind.

  “Sadly,” Carlisle said, “I believe it may be.”

  I said nothing, trying to collect my thoughts as we approached the light at the end of the tunnel. I suppose I should’ve been worrying about whether this might be the part where Carlisle led me into an ambush—where I found out he’d been working with Kublich all along, toying with me. But I was too tired. Too confused.

  Fortunately, when we exited the tunnel, there were no armed men or red-eyed monsters waiting for us. Or anything else. The lot was larger than the one we’d come from, but similarly empty. I waited until Carlisle had settled the skimmer to the pavement and killed the power before I spoke.

  “What do you mean I’m like you? I don’t even know what you are, but I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed if I was packing some kind of… gifts, or whatever you wanna call them.”

  “You might have, had your gifts not been dormant.”

  I shook my head, starting to think I’d made a mistake in trusting my gut. The things Carlisle was saying were insane. I should have just found a node and called Johnny, or anyone else in Sanctuary.

  Except Kublich had killed my parents. The Sanctum had tried to kill me. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. But it had happened—was happening. So what if the rest was true?

  What if one of these raknoth things had taken control of Kublich? Twisted him to its will? What if there were more of them? What if the entire damn
Legion was after me, with or without Kublich’s say so?

  No. That was the nerves talking again. It had to be. But what if it wasn’t? What if the entire Legion had been compromised?

  What if there was no one left to fix this problem?

  That was truly crazy talk. Almost as crazy as Carlisle claiming I had some kind of dormant sorcery floating around inside.

  “Look…” I started, unsure where I was going with it. “I, uh, appreciate the help, but I think I need to get to a node and sort this all out for myself.”

  “You could do that,” Carlisle said, bobbing his head thoughtfully, “but I’m afraid you’d quickly find yourself in another situation like the one in the alley.”

  “I grew up in Sanctuary, I know how to avoid their attention.”

  “I don’t doubt that. But what you don’t understand is that you’ve undergone a change. Like it or not, your mind is a veritable spotlight right now for those who know how to look. Go out there before you’re ready, and they will find you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because I’m gifted, right? This is insane.”

  “Crazy, maybe. But not insane. You already encountered another practitioner of the art. The Seeker back in the alley. Tell me, did he speak to you when he had you under his control?”

  It was several seconds of staring at Carlisle before I realized I’d stopped breathing.

  “I…” I raked a hand across my buzzed scalp, thinking back to the terrifying stint of Smirks playing puppet master with my body. “I don’t know what I felt.”

  But I did know. It just didn’t make a single iota of sense.

  “I understand,” Carlisle said. “It’s a lot to take in. Especially after everything that’s happened tonight.”

  “It’s bullscud!” I cried, and I was surprised by the anger in my voice.

  “I could give you more tangible proof.” He gave me an apologetic look, and I nearly cried out in surprise when his voice continued on in my head. “If that would make any of this easier to process.”

  “Sweet Alpha,” I whispered, pressing back against the skimmer door.

  His lips hadn’t even twitched, but I’d heard him all the same. And it was damn creepy.

  Carlisle held his hands up in peace. “It’s okay. You’re safe here. I just needed to show you that this is real. It’s why they were able to find you in the middle of a crowded city. You might have even felt them looking once you escaped the trunk.” He frowned at the skimmer’s console. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

  “It’s, uh…”

  What? Okay? Okay that he’d kidnapped me?

  That was real healthy thinking.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m just another Legion tyro. That’s all.”

  Carlisle studied me for a long moment then turned to climb out of the skimmer. “Come. There’s something you need to see.”

  I grabbed the pistol from the door compartment on the way out. Carlisle was waiting for me by the skimmer’s trunk hatch, which was still ajar from my earlier escape.

  “Did you at any point stop to wonder how it was you managed to open a locked hatch from inside without the remote?”

  I hadn’t.

  Between the escape itself and everything else that’d happened that night, I’d been far too occupied to even think about that miraculous little detail. Carlisle waved me closer, holding the dangling hatch open for my inspection. I leaned in for a look, a funny feeling creeping into my gut.

  It didn’t take a trained mechanic to explain why the trunk’s lock had failed. The latching mechanism wasn’t broken as I’d expected. It wasn’t faulty. It hadn’t been jarred loose.

  It just wasn’t there anymore.

  It had to have been there when I’d woken up. The hatch wouldn’t have been closed otherwise. But now, in the place where it should have been, there was only a disfigured lump, as if the latch had simply melted into the composite material of the trunk hatch.

  “It appears,” Carlisle said, watching me closely, “that I’m not the only one who broke the rules of what is and isn’t possible tonight.”

  I stared at the too-smooth surface where the latch had previously been, trying for several seconds to think of some explanation as to how it had simply vanished. It had to be a fluke. Or a trick—Carlisle manipulating me into believing this story of his for… for what? It didn’t make any sense. None of it.

  Was it possible I’d done this?

  It couldn’t be. It was impossible. But that very thought was starting to lose meaning for the sheer number of times it’d passed through my head that night.

  “Let’s say I chose to believe you about any of this,” I said, looking at Carlisle. “How, by the light of Alpha, have I never heard a whisper about… people like you? Or the raknoth either?”

  “Probably because the existence of people like us has been one of the Sanctum’s most vehemently suppressed secrets for the better part of a millennium. And as for the raknoth, they seem quite adept at blending in, though I believe their arrival here was also much more recent.”

  “Their arrival to Divinity?”

  Carlisle gave a polite smile and shook his head.

  He couldn’t mean…

  “You’re not saying…?”

  He gave an almost apologetic little nod.

  “To Enochia? You’re saying the raknoth came from another gropping planet?”

  By way of reply, Carlisle placed a hand to the skimmer’s rear hatch and closed his eyes, and I stared on in disbelief as the lump of the would-be latch wriggled to life—twisting, stretching, and readjusting until it had reformed into a passable if not perfect latching mechanism. Then he slapped the trunk closed with a light thud.

  It held.

  Carlisle met my eyes.

  “Welcome to the secret war for Enochia.”

  7

  Temporary Lodgings

  I eyed the bowl of food Carlisle offered me with what must have been a dubious expression.

  “If I had ill intentions,” he said, waving the bowl for emphasis, “I wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep you alive tonight.”

  The thought had already occurred to me more than once, but I was still off balance in the face of his seemingly good nature. I took the bowl and mumbled thanks. As far as I could tell, Carlisle was on my side for now—I felt more confident about that than about what side I was actually even on at this point.

  Allegiances aside, I was surprised to find I was starving despite having had a good helping of my mom’s meat and gravy pie only a few hours ago. The last helping I’d ever have, I realized. Our last supper together.

  The thought hit me like a falling brick, pushing any thought of food from my mind. My stomach, however, deftly ignored my inner turmoil and rumbled unapologetically at the smell wafting from the warm, cheesy pasta concoction in my bowl. Apparently my escape had taken a lot out of me.

  I picked up the fork mostly to appease Carlisle. My first bite was minuscule—partly out of some pretense at caution, but mostly because it somehow felt wrong to concern myself with something as insignificant as food after everything that’d just happened. Then the wave of savory flavor hit my tongue, enlightening me as to just how hungry I really was, and I dug in voraciously.

  “I’m sorry the best I have to offer is from the fab,” Carlisle said, as if he hadn’t noticed me attacking my food like a wild animal. He returned to the fabricator in his rudimentary kitchen station and began extruding another helping into his own dish. “You probably won’t be surprised to hear it’s not so easy to keep a secret hideout well stocked with fresh groceries.”

  “I grew up in Sanctuary,” I managed past a mouthful of pasta. “I’m used to it.” I took another look around Carlisle’s self-proclaimed secret hideout from my perch on the corner cot.

  The room was fairly large, half of it housing a modest living space and the other half mostly empty floor space—which actually might have been the most interesting part of the room. Instead of the p
ermacrete that was nearly ubiquitous in modern Enochian architecture, the floor was made from slabs of dark, almost black stone, the like of which I’d never seen outside the Sanctum’s White Tower. That alone was enough to make me wonder where on Enochia I was, but there were plenty more oddities around the room.

  Most of it was benign enough—the tiny kitchen space, the household hydrocycler unit, the pristinely ordered desk and its three large displays on the opposite wall. Some of it, though, was much more interesting. Like the small workbench to my right, with its haphazard collection of tools, odd, mismatched trinkets, and—most interestingly—multiple ingredients I knew could be used in homemade explosives. Then there was the miniature armory past the foot of my cot—a mismatched amalgamation of blades, batons, a few odd firearms, and related supplies.

  Taking the sum of its pieces, the room looked like the hideout of an apostate terrorist, or maybe some kind of idealistic—possibly deranged—vigilante. Or maybe both, I thought, looking at Carlisle. Though I was still uncertain about the deranged bit.

  “And you’re sure about the secret part?” I asked.

  “This place has served me well for some time,” he said, looking around the room with a subdued fondness. “We’re as safe here as we could be.”

  I had no delusions that safe as we could be meant truly safe. Not with my people probably looking for us. But I kept my mouth shut about it. Whatever this place was, it beat a Divinity alleyway for now.

  “Been hiding out for a while then?” I asked.

  “Most of my life.”

  There was a subtle sadness to the statement.

  “Because of the raknoth?”

  Carlisle collected his own dish from the fab and went to his desk chair before answering.

  He moved with the grace of a dancer, or a master martial artist—smoothly enough that I wondered if I’d been overconfident in assuming I could handle him in a fight.

  “More because hiding out is simply what Shapers do,” he said as he sank into his chair.

  Shapers?

  Before I could ask, Carlisle continued. “Though the arrival of the raknoth certainly hasn’t helped my situation.”