Spiral of Silence (The Unearthed Series Book 3)

by Marc Mulero

  Mulderan kept his back to the Aura on his casual stride far away from the ensuing battle, far away from focus. “A problem for another day. An opening presents itself, Eldra. Take to the sky and drop Geldhooks at my directive. If there’s something of value in that vapor, we’re taking it, now. Vistice, with me.”

  Eldra nodded and booked to the carrier that landed them atop the highest step, and rounded up the small force that awaited her return.

  Vistice was on a different path though, hobbling toward the forbidden quadrant that Asura tried to lure them away from on their tour, the very one that he had suspected when in flight. This curiosity dragged the scientist toward Rol like a slave chained by the neck. His head was hunched, eyes forward and bulging with broken vessels climbing them. Crazed. And so he plunged himself into the smolder without a second thought, relying on Hiezer technology to keep him lucid, so he could study hell without being burnt by its fire.

  Mulderan, on the other hand, halted just out of reach of the smoke’s clamor. Not because he was apprehensive, but something told him to stay. A sound. A flash of light. It was Asura. He was compelled to turn once more to the far away battle to see her conjuring something unearthly. Rol’s heart was priority, of course, but he just couldn’t resist this preview. Perhaps it was an answer to his question:

  Can she draw blood? He mulled over his question regarding the crimson god. We will see.

  Not even the Quake’s fireworks could outperform this spectacle. There was nothing else like it. A portal of scarlet matter bolting with electricity twisted before Asura as her foes climbed to short-out her network. And the Highest Lord had a front row seat to the show… his brother’s day of reckoning. Since he’d sentenced Blague to banishment all of those years ago, Mulderan had been testing to see if he was fit to inhabit this New World. This was his brother’s true audition.

  Spawned chemicals from beneath gave the warring factions abilities unlike any other, but the question remained - who would share the dying planet with the elite? The red goddess or the exiled leader?

  Mulderan’s carrier took flight. It took the attention of no one, not even its owner.

  The Highest Lord’s eyes were now glued to the Cryos comet descending from the sky. It was a feeling closest to awe that he’d ever felt, watching as it raced to meet Blague before Asura’s hell was unleashed. Two literal superpowers about to clash.

  Boom.

  He took a step forward in anticipation. Smoke and dust everywhere, but as it cleared, it was Orin that rose from the hollow ground. The old man was wounded. Weak for his likes. But his emergence was glorious - he was the armor to fend off the madness.

  “Twice now our father chooses to protect you. You are nothing without your guardian angel, little brother,” Mulderan spoke aloud to himself.

  All resonances of war were suddenly drowned out. Soundless bullets whizzed far away as the Hiezer jet hovered in silence. Clashing metal, cleaving of flesh, it was deaf to all ears in this moment. Only the sonic boom of raw force could be heard. Only Asura’s shriek could pierce through as the red smoke sailed.

  It was an impossibly unstable line of plasma so bright that it reflected through his hazel eyes. How could this be? The blast disintegrated Orin’s barriers before peeling through his flesh, ending the rebellion in a snap. Asura was the weapon needed to fight the ancients. A goddess among men. She had won.

  For the first time in decades, Mulderan’s breath escaped him. Asura succeeded where he’d failed. His father crumbled before his eyes. He then watched as Blague dropped to his knees in horror. All was unraveling for his enemies. Both sides would suffer damages, but the Sins lost their protector and their leader. It was over.

  “Making dust of a man with no equal… this toxic smoke has my attention.” He took a long gaze at his fallen kin, internalizing him as he stepped closer. His brother’s body convulsed in agony. “Your DNA will be erased. Elaina’s life force will leak from your wounds. You were not prepared, undeserving of what I’ve bestowed, and now you will suffer your fate.”

  Mulderan rotated the dial on his belt to amplify the repellent tech. “You were never much without those around you. Farewell, Blague.”

  He turned away from the war and faced the substance he came for. Rushes of smoke became engorged, beckoning him to enter. It continued to breathe, thinning and fattening in its flux. This is where the Heart of Rol lay, he could feel it. The cloud parted as he entered.

  If the Aura make their way to Nepsys, I will fight fire with fire. It is there where they will see, even gods have creators.

  Eugene stared at one of the most harrowing intervals of his life replaying in the abyss around him. The vision consumed his surroundings, forcing him to be an invisible onlooker to his past. His luminescent guide inched up beside him to watch. She shook with a battered victim’s flinch, folding her arms and grasping herself nervously with spiny, shimmering fingers. Fear was evident in her expression. Bringing the sniper back from an otherwise endless slumber did not bode well with him.

  “You awaken me to haunt me? Are you my enemy!?” His emotions spewed through his cracking voice, fists balled tight.

  The anxious being clenched desperately onto her illuminated arms, hugging herself and hoping that Eugene wouldn’t strike her for dragging him into this punishing scene. She pointed a trembling finger that begged for him to watch.

  Eugene scoffed and reluctantly stared ahead. Against his wishes, he was drawn right back to that roof, where he, Sabin, and Lito combatted the Aura what felt like a lifetime ago. His eye was plastered onto the scope of his rifle, where his crosshair presented a clear shot at the woman he’d shared his past life with. A shiver crawled down his spine now as it did then. His body tensed up, locked in a motionless state of doubt. If only he had the power of foresight, he would be able to see the truth: that she’d played him like a fiddle. Eugene flexed his trigger finger a dozen times while watching with a clenched jaw. She betrayed every ounce of his being, and he was too naïve to accept it, then.

  “Pull the trigger!” he shouted to his past self. “No one else has to die!”

  But the sniper was stuck, frozen in time while Jen once again sensed the mark on her head. She released a vortex of crimson smoke from her pores to cloud her existence, but as the cyclone enveloped her, something happened. A change in events, a change in history. Eugene’s body thawed from the ice that encased his veins and his trigger finger was relieved of paralysis. Before Jen’s head became shrouded by the fog, he fired.

  Within the fallout of the blast, he witnessed her reddened eyes roll into the back of her head and blood burst from the open hole above the bridge of her nose.

  A euphoric sensation was felt by Eugene as he observed an event that surely did not take place. He was entranced by this alternate reality, invested in seeing himself succeed where he’d once failed.

  The Sin sniper watched her collapse before the enormous cloud of smoke clawed in their direction. Sabin stood up in shock, smacked to attention by the sound of the rifle’s roar.

  “Yes!” the hunter cheered as he hit Eugene’s back in excitement. “You got her!”

  They both looked on as the Aura’s goddess fell, but then ducked to find cover from the advancing smolder. It was coming in quick, clamoring to consume the roof, and what’s worse, in between it all Eugene glimpsed a figure in his peripheral.

  The sniper remained still, only following the ghostly embodiment with his eye. He was worried that it would notice that he’d caught on. But uncertainty left when he’d realized what he’d done. There was nothing left to fear, and so he turned to face his foe. An ethereal Jason Brink was clear amongst a smoky fog, hovering off of the ground and baring his fangs. His thick, crimson-tipped locks flowed around him as if he were underwater.

  Eugene stared down his adversary who smiled back at him with conceit.

  Straight-faced and unblinking, the Sin sniper knew that he’d already won the battle, Jason just hadn’t yet caught up. A feeling in his
heart told him that Jen was the key to the Aura. If there were some form of god, she was it. And with her murder, Jason Brink’s existence was just a hazy fume, a shadow of his former self who was vacuumed back to the source of smoke as quickly as he came. His face twisted into a canvas of rage while he was unwillingly pulled back toward Asura’s fallen body. He grasped at the roof’s ledge on his way down, but his ghostly hands passed right through the tangible structure. Eugene followed the rewind of smoke in his solemn moment of triumph, standing tall next to an ecstatic Sabin, and a very much alive Lito.

  This was the man he yearned to be deep down in his heart. Here… right here, it was all he needed to see – that lingering image of victory atop the roof. He was at the cusp of this epiphany back when he witnessed the other fairytale endings, mainly the one where he overcame the Hiezer guards holding him hostage and rescued Jen, but the shadow of guilt overpowered the realization then. It was only now, when gazing on himself and his brothers-at-arms in an alternate history, that he realized who he was meant to be.

  The sniper was stunned as the image flickered, until it finally disappeared. He was stiffened by his thoughts, his mind racing to comprehend what he’d just discovered. Goosebumps filled his skin and a spark of life returned color to his essence.

  “It’s not over…” his voice trailed.

  The guide’s face expanded in surprise, stunned that all she was showing him finally took. She paused in her astonishment, and then nodded excitedly.

  Eugene looked down at her with a lighter expression. “I can still be the hero. Not to Jen, but to the others that relied on me, those who I vowed to protect.” He leaned in with determination in his eyes. “This isn’t death, is it?”

  The being of light tilted her head to one side, hesitated, and then shook it. That was good, right? He wasn’t gone for good yet.

  She then ducked away from Eugene, slithering past him, abandoning her humanoid form and recomposing behind him again. What was she doing?

  Eugene watched as she spun her arms around in an exaggerated circle like she was performing a magic trick with a wand, until an opening was revealed. Another one. Displaying yet another scene.

  Eugene turned to follow, and was quickly disturbed by what the image revealed to him. Something was unique about this vision. This wasn’t a skewed memory or any part of his past. It was less of an alternate reality and more of a window into his own physical eyes, somewhere beyond the realm that he resided in. He tensed up upon seeing his old leader, his old friend, Blague, fall to his knees. Held up by bruised knuckles digging into the ground, his body trembled in place. Blood ran down his arms and shot from his mouth when he coughed. The cloths of his father were tattered and spread on the floor before him. He was, in every respect, defeated.

  The window shifted to the woman that had betrayed him, and the shell of himself standing beside her.

  “That idiot sacrificed himself to save his son,” Jason scoffed, gazing upon Orin’s rags. “How noble. Too bad he was the only one who could have stopped us. Now all that’s left is to eradicate his lineage. End him, Asura. Finish the brainless man who thought he could best gods!”

  Eugene’s enlightenment drained from his soul and was replaced with strife. Adrenaline kicked from his ethereal heart, numbing his phantom body and focusing his mind on what had to be done. “Now is the time. If this isn’t death, then I have to return. Get me out of here!”

  The being shared his sense of urgency, moving her hands nervously.

  He felt his center of gravity shift, fully confident that he could run up a wall. A sensation of inertia tugged at his stomach, as if he were thrust into a free-fall.

  The mute creature ran forward, diverting her attention away from Eugene to crane her neck toward the ceiling that was pressed shut by fluid tendrils of black matter. The blockage above appeared to be alive and with a forbidding nature, but the being of light was the sniper’s last chance at redemption. Her arms shook as rays shined from her extremities, concentrated toward the begrimed barrier that choked their way out.

  Eugene didn’t know how, but he knew that the only solution was to climb the vortex tunnel that lay beyond. His plunge into this place was through that grueling pit of his past, but he could no longer float in what little memory gave him joy, not when those that needed him most were about to meet their end.

  The guide’s light was more than just a lantern. Far more. It worked to grip the darkness in a fight to release Eugene from his cage.

  Whipping sounds and ungodly screeches protested as she tugged at the tendrils clawing to keep shut. She was stronger than she appeared - yellow flares sparked from her arms as she pried, exuding strength beyond the physical. But still, the resistance she met was crippling.

  The plane of consciousness that they existed in could sense Eugene’s realization, and his longing to escape. It didn’t like it. The space became alive - walls grew thicker and worked harder to sink its trespassers. It wanted them to stay. Was it an agent of Jason’s will?

  Their surroundings were pulsating and spectral whips writhed in place. It was a nightmare come to life. Everything was turning on them, and fast. The being trembled while ghostly matter lashed at her back, punishing her, making her curl in agony until she was jolted down to her knees. But throughout it all, her arms still remained high above her, and from them, bursts of radiance overwhelmed the enclosure. She pushed harder, harder to present an opening, however slight.

  Eugene wasn’t sure why his guide existed here with him, but at this moment, he was grateful that she did. He was replenished with purpose as the stakes were raised, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be able to escape this dimension alone. The time he spent sulking had passed. All that was left now was to act. He swatted the matter that clawed onto him and took a hesitant step from the floor up onto the wall, and then another, defying physics as he understood it. The guide bestowed him a gift to shift gravity, but he nearly hurled from the vertigo that accompanied it. There was no certainty that this body was real, but every feeling that came with it was.

  Eugene peered over his shoulder to glimpse the quivering ground snaking to drag him back. He may have missed the entire Quake back in the real, but that didn’t mean he’d escaped hell. Teethed faces made of bubbling ichor roared below, contorting with rage, demanding him back! What else could he do but peer forward – whatever forward was at this point - to the opening that was held by his luminescent guide, his world spinning about. Drunk without a drink.

  He tried his best to overcome this feeling of dizziness, to ignore warped physics, the insanity of it all, and so he sprinted up the wall toward the cross-section of light struggling with dark.

  Sounds of thunder clashed from the titans sparring, creating an aftershock that made him falter in his step, nearly bringing him down. His hand dipped and was swallowed by the wall. Help, he wanted to scream, but then gritted his teeth, tensed his muscles and wrestled his hand back to the surface.

  He was going to do this. He was going to break free.

  His stride lengthened. Unknown heights awaited him. He had to trust his silent partner. The dark matter stretched to stop him, but at the last second, he dug his heels and dove through the opening, singeing himself on the luminescent edges.

  Before he could realize what had happened, he found himself spinning amongst a galaxy of ether. Round and round he went before finally spreading out his limbs and slamming his fists down beside him. They screeched in the oddest way, like metal on metal, as he dug them deeper into these invisible elements surrounding him.

  It was seconds before he came to a halt, but eventually his spiral into nothingness ceased.

  Now he was just a fixture within it, staring into what felt like outer space. This place was as strange as he remembered when he had fallen in. It built up a pressure inside him to move.

  Go, he thought. But where? There was no ground. Nothing.

  Some good news, though. The vertigo was waning, granting him back his internal compass.<
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  “Okay, where am I?” He looked north to see the cosmos funnel endlessly. A recollection sparked of free-falling for an eternity to get here, and a realization that he no longer had that time to spare.

  His dirty blond hair was tugged down and the skin on his face rippled from the force of an invisible energy keeping him from ascending. But that was all ignored as a memory appeared before him.

  Eugene’s father materialized. A more burley man than he, but the resemblance was still uncanny. His dirty blond hair was as messy as Eugene’s, and he carried two rifles at his back instead of one. A mountain of supplies stretched through belts running around his torso. He was packed for a long journey.

  His father extended a hand downward, like he was reaching for a child’s. “When I’m gone, there will be no one else to look after your mother but you. You must be the man that I raised you to be. Make me proud, son.”

  His voice echoed through the cosmos and caused grief to wrench at Eugene’s heart. He sighed, feeling vulnerable and alone. The memory was so vivid that it brought him back, before the wheel of time reminded him that the moment had long passed. A tear escaped his eye. “I did all that I could, dad.”

  A weight lifted from his body and he found himself able to make his first strides up the astral plain. Once he gained his footing, he began to jog, looking down at the recollection as he passed it. The opening of the tunnel that he dove out from was now at his rear, where it flickered as blackness overran it.

  “That... creature. She sacrificed herself to save me,” he said to himself. “I can’t let it be in vain.”

  The Sin faced forward and trucked on.

  His boots fell into the dark tangible vapor that provided him footing to journey upward. The realm of bizarre gasses and dancing light wound slowly above him, dizzying him every time he thought about traveling through it. Another memory pressed through the purple and black molecules clouding his path. He heard Sabin’s voice echo above him, but couldn’t make out the words. Eugene lowered his head and ran faster.