Spear of Destiny

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Look... a long time has passed, and you seem fragile after everything that happened,” Temu said, as if speaking to an upset child. “Come with me, to my home. We can have some tea, catch up on everything that’s happened. Just like old times.”

  He offered Vash his hand again.

  “No, Temu.” Vash’s eyes clouded with old pain before he turned his back to face the fire. “No. Not like old times.”

  “B-But I’ve been waiting for years to see you again. Here! Please, come back!” The young man came forward, as if to chase him, and nearly ran into my chest as I sidestepped between them. “Vash! Why do you turn your back to me? Is it the temple? What did those loveless religious bastards do to you?”

  “You are a shadow of the past.” Vash shook his head, and set off at a purposeful walk. “Come on, Dragozin. Karalti.”

  Temu tried to lunge past me, and I shoved him back. He stumbled a step, then sneered. “You dare-”

  I fixed him with my best Resting Bouncer Face. “Look at me in the eyes. You will not win this fight, Temu.”

  Temu’s handsome face contorted into a bestial mask of fury.

  “Curse you all and your bitter, joyless god. Where were you while we were suffering?” he spat, turning and stalking off between the tents, back toward the outside of camp. Once I was sure he was gone, I broke into a jog, catching up to Vash and Karalti. As I passed by the singers, all four of them silently tracked my path, heads turning in unison.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” I hissed, once I fell into place beside Vash. “Who was that guy?”

  “Temu Laanzin.” Vash looked as unsettled as I’d ever seen him, his shoulders mantled, his fists still balled. “It was an innocent love, boys of the same age as one another learning how to love away from the prying eyes of adults. On the days I shepherded the herd, he would ride from the Laanzin lands out to our pastures to see me. We joked that we would both marry the same woman, so that we could stay together.”

  “But that dude wasn’t your age. No way. He was like two decades younger,” I said. “What did he mean about you being sent away?”

  Vash pulled a necklace of prayer beads from a pocket of his trousers, and hung the blood-red amber around his neck. “It means the demon wearing Temu’s face is capable of lying.”

  Chapter 51

  The camp grew darker and more eerie as we headed toward the center. I rapped every barrel and touched every tent as we walked past, but if the environment was an illusion, it was a really solid one.

  “Everyone here’s alive, right?” I asked Vash quietly. “Could Tsun-”

  “No. Do not speak her name.” Sweat was beading on Vash’s forehead despite the growing chill. He reached down to grip the hilt of the knife that hung on his hip. It was his kamonocha: the sacred bone-bladed dagger carried by baru to euthanize the dying. “You might have been right about the mage. There is some fell magic over this place, Dragozin. I’d stake my balls that these people are being held in thrall. A witch or a dark shaman, drawn to this haunted land and using it to entrap people.”

  Another sharp gust of wind blew between the yurts, rattling anything left loose on the ground. I flinched as a speck of cold touched my cheek. Snow. I looked up, frowning. The camp was now covered in a very low, very dark ceiling of clouds, thick enough to obscure the light of the moon and reflect the firelight from below.

  “The sky was clear before.” Karalti batted at a snowflake as more of it began to swirl down around us. “Everything still smells nice, but...”

  “But this place is giving me some serious Silent Hill vibes, yeah.” There was a soft, throaty growl from behind us. I glanced back, but only saw the shadow of the dogs as they slunk behind one of the darkened yurts and out of sight.

  Every fire circle was bustling with activity. Goats bleated, chickens clucked, children played... and yet, the closer we got to the center, the more unreal everything seemed. The people and animals stopped whenever we passed by, staring at us with blank, expressionless eyes. When I looked back, all I could see was clouded darkness, our tracks obscured by the snow now falling over us like a soft, smothering blanket.

  Vash came to a stop beside a drystone shed stacked high with dried dung, staring at it incredulously.

  “What?” Karalti sniffed the air anxiously. “Wow. That’s a lot of camel poop.”

  “This shed was in this exact place when I was a child. It’s like it never aged. The roof is still intact, everything...” he trailed off as he stumbled forward. “These tents. Hector, these are my family’s tents.”

  There was a large ring of yurts here, insulated with white felt and covered in draping covers of beautifully painted leather. The firepit was blazing, but the light didn’t seem to properly penetrate the darkness. A delicious smell wafted from a pot bubbling merrily on a tripod over the flames.

  “Momos!” Karalti chirped, eagerly brushing past me.

  “No! Eat nothing here.” Vash caught her wrist and halted her in her tracks. He was breathing hard, the cords of his neck standing out in sharp relief. “We cannot trust what we see, here, smell or feel here. That’s my mother’s cooking. My mother’s tent. And this...

  Vash walked numbly to a stone slab. An iron hatchet lay on it. Both the stone and the axe were brown with dried blood.

  “This is the axe she used to disfigure me,” he finished, reaching out to touch the door beside it. “Placed outside of the yurt in which I lived with Saaba and my father.”

  I flinched as the snow suddenly picked up, the wind blowing it so hard and so suddenly that the sky above us moaned. “Uhh, I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but my spook-o-meter is ringing pretty hard right now.”

  Vash didn’t seem to hear me as he caressed the red wooden door. It was painted with pictures of birds. The ones higher up were painted with incredible attention to detail. The ones at knee-height were colorful M-shaped scribbles, drawn by a child’s hand. Vash’s father had stained the door around those pictures, so as not to hide the birds drawn by his children from view.

  “Our father was an artist. He sold and painted furniture so fine that the Vlachian lords would send camel trains on a month-long trek here, just to fetch a set of his chairs or tables.” Vash unlatched it, and opened it ahead of him.

  “Vash, I’m not sure this is a good- aww fuck.” I hadn’t even finished speaking when he stepped inside.

  The yurt was cozy, warm and dark. Rich rugs lay spread across the ground. A lantern hung over a beautifully decorated chest of drawers, carved and painted with meadow flowers and fish. Vash went over to it, his shoulders slumping as he lovingly ran his hands over the top. He picked up a tea cup, then looked back, to the large bed that he’d shared with his family. “The bed, the stove, the tea cup… all of it, it’s exactly like how it was before my sister went on pilgrimage.”

  “Hey!” I tried to catch his eye, but he ignored me and stalked over to the bed. The red and purple quilt spread over it had been embroidered and beaded with great care. Vash lifted it to his face and breathed in deeply. “Our grandmothers made all the children quilts like these. No. This exact quilt.”

  “Earth to Vash.” I hung behind him, waving by the side of his head.

  “I can’t tell if this is real, or if…” He hugged the quilt to his chest, his usual cockiness and self-composure pushed back by old grief. He looked—and sounded—much younger than he was. “I can feel the cloth, I can smell my family here, I-”

  “Vash!” I caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back from the bed. “Remember what you just told us? We can’t trust what we see or smell. It’s all a lie. This is… fuck. I don’t know what it is. Whatever it is, it’s not real. Not after thirty years.”

  Vash’s eyes were wild and hazy. Just when I thought I was about to have to slap him, he bunched the quilt and threw it back to the bed. Then he drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

  “The Five Hinderances,” he muttered, eyelids fluttering. “Sensory desire. Ill-will. Torpor and sloth.
Anxiety. Indecision. Everything in this place evokes the hinderances for me, as if it were made to foul the senses and the mind. Mine, in particular.”

  Karalti, who had stayed by the door, sniffed loudly. Then she turned and sniffed again.

  “What?” I let go of Vash and called the Spear to hand, pulse pounding in the side of my throat.

  “The smell changed,” Karalti said. “It’s like… metal now.”

  A thin scream wailed from outside. Then more of them: high, keening cries raw with agony, interspersed with short bursts of wind. I felt my pulse jump. It was the wind, driving through the cracks between the doorframes and leather walls. As the yurts outside shook in the gale, it sounded almost like the distant snapping rapport of semi-auto fire. The combination of noises made the world zero in in: my vision narrowed; my heart kicked to life. All of a sudden, I really missed the comforting, solid weight of a rifle over my shoulder.

  “Fuck.” Vash drew another steadying breath, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his neck. “I fear I have led us into a trap from which we will not escape. Come, Dragozin. If I am not mistaken, it is time we meet my sister.”

  Chapter 52

  The color began to drain from the brightly painted chest of drawers, the trunks and the quilt and the rugs on the ground. As we headed for the door, a subtle force, like soft hands, tried to push us back. Each step forward seemed to require more effort than the last.

  “... Go back...”

  “...Get away from me!”

  “… You can’t stop me here, this isn’t a checkpoint...”

  “Please, please, please...”

  “NO! Stop staring at me!”

  Small, whispering voices peeled from the air as Vash struggled to the door and opened it inwards. I gripped the Spear tightly and followed him out into the cold.

  The lights of the camp were gone, the camp now nothing but a smoky void beyond a single ring of firelight. The snow swirled in gusts, blasting at us on the bitter winter wind. I could still hear the doors of the yurts, popping and rattling like distant gunfire.

  “I tried to send you away, brother.” The voices condensed into one—young, sweet as a flute, piping around us from every direction. “I told you, I work in Intelligence... it’s dangerous for you to be here, in no-man’s-land. The demons are here.”

  “Tsunda... there are no demons,” Vash said tiredly, as if he’d repeated the same words a thousand times before. “The only demons here are the ones in your mind.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” Tsunda’s ghostly voice turned patient, like she was trying to explain something to a very young child. “I was going home with my father and two other people when our sled turned over, and then they caught me. I was caught and tied up and arrested for going AWOL, which is a lie, of course, because I always stopped for the checkpoints and let them search me. But they arrested me and took me here under escort anyway. Don’t you see? They were afraid of me, Vash.”

  I frowned. “AWOL? That’s-”

  “One of her favorite words when she is in the grip of her delusions,” Vash sighed.

  “No.” Shaking my head, I advanced against a gust as the wind tried to drive me back. “That’s a modern word. From my world.”

  Vash shot me a penetrating look as I struggled against the supernatural inertia radiating from the centerpiece of the camp: The Mother’s Tent, the largest yurt, home of the matriarch and her parents. The yurt’s door was missing. There was nothing but a rectangular void gaping against the white leather.

  “Tsunda, I’m a friend of your brother’s,” I said. “I know what AWOL means. It means ‘Away without leave’. Who arrested you?”

  “The beetle-headed men, of course.” The ghost’s voice seemed to hiss against the edge of my ear. “They had every reason to want to punish me. I’m a known killer, for one thing. I killed hundreds of people. Murderers, rapists, pointing holes in each other’s faces, throwing eggs that turn into flowers tearing people apart... but they didn’t know I could hear their thoughts. That’s the main reason they wanted to stop me. They didn’t want me warning people about the metal demons. Look!”

  An invisible hand forced my chin up, and before I could jerk away, I glanced into the empty doorway. It was darker than black, sucking away the weak light from the campfire.

  “Ss! Oww!” I hissed and jerked back as a flash of pain stabbed through my left shoulder and into my chest. The Mark of Matir was pounding on the back of my right hand.

  “Why aren’t you turning back? You should have listened to the dogs. You should have gone with Temu.” Tsunda’s voice was becoming fearful as Vash waded toward the unseen door, heading around the guttering fire toward the tent. “I’m the only one who can hear the metal demons, brother. They want to ruin this place. They’ll hurt you with their seeds. They point a hole toward you and fill you with seeds, but the seeds are bees, and they sting you all the way through and come out the other side.”

  “Tsunda, sister, be at peace.” Vash lifted his hands, fingers loose, palms up. “You have suffered enough. I hear you, I see you-”

  “Liar.” The girl’s voice settled over us like a clinging wet cloth, and my skin crawled under my armor. “Brother. Mother. Sister. Always LYING! I see your metal fingers. I see the holes where the seeds come out. Gods help me. You’re one of them. Saaba put that metal in you. All those holes.”

  “I am not a metal demon. We are here to soothe you-”

  “LIAR!” The wind snapped like a whip, lashing Vash in his artificed shoulder so hard it twisted him at the waist. “Metal roaring, metal screaming, filling people with black seeds! Killing them! Destroying the trees! DESTROYING EVERYTHING!”

  Tsunda’s voice built to a roar of pure rage as the ground rumbled, the surrounding yurts tore, and a familiar double rapport cracked through the camp: a sound like ripping canvas dialed up to max volume, then an ear-splitting BRRRRT that vibrated through my teeth.

  “DOWN!” I grabbed Karalti and threw us both to the ground on pure instinct—only realizing what I’d done and what I’d reacted to when we were rolling in the dust.

  “I am here, Tsunda. I’m here with a song that will help you.” Vash, naïve to the sounds and sensation of an airstrike, reached up and pulled his necklace of prayer beads over his head. “I know a song that will still the voices and the violence. It will bring you comfort.”

  “NO! Get away from me!” The sound of the sky tearing, followed by a second deafening BRRRRT slashed out from the mother’s tent. It sounded exactly like a Pacific Alliance ATX laying down a close support strike. There were no bullets, no clouds of dust or shredded trees, but the sound was so true to life that every muscle in my body tensed.

  “What the fuck...?” I let go of Karalti and scrambled back up to a crouch. “Karalti, I don’t know what’s happening, but stay low.”

  She looked back at me—and when her eyes met mine, some of the fear subsided—hers and mine both.

  Vash came to a halt just in front of the doorway, eyes closed. He stood fast as the wind lashed at him, welting his bare skin, and began to drone a chant in our shared tongue. “Medlur tzenturr burkhad namyaig sonsoor...”

  “Beloved soul, listen to me; walk with me on the Path of abundant compassion. When we are wandering in the darkness, may the bands of heroes, the knowledge holders, lead us forward.” I joined in, blinking as I picked up the mantra from some deep memory. “May the bands of mothers be our rear-guard. May they spare you from the fearful illusions of purgatory…”

  As Karalti haltingly joined in the prayer, a passage from the Tuun Book of the Dead, the Mother’s Tent bulged, a huge hand pressing up against the leather from the inside before the whole thing ruptured. An amorphous, shadowy figure spilled free, towering over us. It blurred and sparked with white noise, just like the things in the Chorus Vault. But as it strained toward us, pieces of it came into focus. First a heavyset leg, with vine-like ‘muscles’ writhing over a naked steel skeleton. Then a chassi
s resolved, plated in impact-absorbing ceramic armor and scrambled lettering, neither Tuun nor English. Arms ending in rounded ‘hands’ that resembled sealed rosebuds struggled out of the white noise, before a clear glass cockpit erupted like a bubble in front. Inside of it was a girl, her face hidden against her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. Ropes anchored her to the inside of the cabin.

  It was powered armor. Kind of. I recognized parts and pieces from different models. The prawn-suit like shape and clear cockpit was from the Pacific-Alliance Taipan line, but the back of it was square and boxy, like the UNAC Patriot Walker. I felt the blood drain from my face. “Vash! MOVE!”

  Tsunda leveled her arm at him with a harsh scream. The monk stopped his chant, teleporting as one of the bud-like hands opened into a flower and spewed a precision blast of high-speed rounds. They slashed the dirt where he’d been standing, cutting through the campfire and everything else in its path. I dragged Karalti up and to the side as the half-machine, half-tortured mass of writhing souls struggled against some unseen force that rooted it to the spot. It swung its other arm out, tracking us with a BRAAAP that could have cut us in half.

  “Holy fuck, holy fuck...” I tried to get a bead on Tsunda, but HUD didn’t seem to want to highlight her properly. One second, it read [Tsunda’s Nightmare] before briefly flashing with a different name: [FETCHERROR: NULL].

  Just like it had when I read the quest description, the sight of sent a chill of fear through my chest.

  “What’s going on!?” Karalti, normally fearless, heaved with terror as the Nightmare moonwalked in place, abruptly spun around, and tried to gun down Vash as he flitted from cover to cover.

  I didn’t know how to answer her. The noise, the commotion, the sounds of battle... they were alien. Out of place in Archemi. Echoes of a real world, a real war, that weren’t supposed to be here. Tsunda was laughing from somewhere—a wild, utterly insane sound somewhere between hysterical mirth and screaming.