by John Kerry
The chattering was getting louder. They were heading in her direction.
Sammy powered on. Dodging mushrooms, jumping over bushes and sweeping creepers out of her face. She couldn’t make out where she was going and might lose the river, but she had to get away.
She ran into a clearing, into the path of a large animal, and screamed as she stumbled backwards onto her bottom.
The animal startled, braying and rising up on its hind legs, bucking off a rider, who fell squawking to the ground. Then it bolted.
Sammy was back on her feet in an instant, ready to go, but paused.
The animal had stopped a little way off, hiding behind a dense thicket of bushes. A large, olive green antelope of some kind.
The rider got up from the floor and dusted himself down. He looked young, not much older than Sammy. He had long black hair, a pale complexion, and wore a stiff leather breast plate with a black cloak over the top.
“Are you okay?” he asked distractedly as he scanned the ground.
Spotting what he was looking for, he walked over to a long white stick and picked it up. Not a stick, but a staff with a black ball wedged into a split in the end. A staff like Hami’s.
He was a magus! And that meant she was saved. Sammy’s emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She felt like crying, but instead a laugh escaped before she could stop herself.
The young guy looked at her, then towards his green antelope that peered back at him from behind a mushroom.
Sammy realised then that she hadn’t answered his question. Hadn’t even spoken yet. “There are crabmen chasing me,” she said.
“I heard them. We’ll be fine if we can get Dohsie back. She can outrun them.” He scampered after the animal as it moved further away.
Sammy walked after him. “It didn’t sound like there were that many. You could probably take them.”
“I doubt it,” the magus replied. “Dohsie?” he cooed, walking quickly to catch up. “We need to get on my greenbuck and get out of here. I’ve not fought crabmen before.”
“You’re a magus though, aren’t you?”
“I am, but even magi don’t take on crabmen if they can help it. Dohsie!” he called, more urgently this time. “Here, girl!”
“Hami fought loads of crabmen.”
“Principal Hootan? I’m sure he did. My powers are a fraction of his. You aren’t trained yet and I bet we aren’t much different in ability.” The magus stopped. “When it comes to crabmen, I’ve always been taught that when you hear them, you move quickly in the opposite direction.”
“How do you know I need training?”
“That’s why I’m here. To collect you. We felt you appear on the network. You heard the enrolment whisper, right? Seek out the path, cross the river of light, descend through the depths … and all that?”
“You know about my dream?”
“It wasn’t a dream. All new magi recruits hear it. It’s how you can tell you’ve been chosen by the Great Ahura Mazda to serve the realm. So they say. The magi felt you connect and as I was closest at the time, I came to make contact and take you to the garrison for training.”
Training? This was fantastic! Then a thought occurred to her. “Will Hami be at the garrison?”
“No. He’s currently out in the field. How do you know him, anyway?”
Sammy was about to reply when the crabmen stopped chattering.
The magus froze. “They know we’re here!” He grabbed Sammy’s hand and dragged her to the green antelope. The animal started back.
“Dohsie!” the man urged in a strangled whisper. The antelope tilted its head, looking at him quizzically, but stayed.
The magus grabbed the reins before it could bolt again and pulled its head to the floor, forcing it to its knees.
He leapt onto the greenbuck’s back and held his hand out to Sammy. “Let’s go.”
Sammy took the hand and climbed on. The man dug his heels in and the animal found its feet.
“Hold on tight!” he said as the sound of vegetation rustling grew louder. “Yar!” he shouted, and the greenbuck launched itself into the air, whipping Sammy’s head back.
The animal landed squarely on top of a mushroom, then with a second jump leapt to a higher one. The third leap launched them above canopy level and they landed atop a large tree-sized mushroom.
Spiky flashes of grey were tearing through the undergrowth below.
The crabmen had reached them.
The magus kicked the greenbuck onward and it bounced gazelle-like from canopy to canopy.
With each leap, Sammy’s stomach lurched as she experienced momentary weightlessness, before they hit the next mushroom with a jerk and rebounded back into the air again.
“They won’t be able to keep up for long!” the magus shouted over the rushing air.
Then a mushroom ahead tilted. The greenbuck skittered on the sloped surface, just gaining enough momentum to leap on.
“They’re ahead of us!” Sammy screamed. “They’re cutting the mushrooms!”
The magus yanked the reins and they veered off at a tangent. The greenbuck leapt successfully to the next mushroom, but the second dropped as they landed.
One moment they were flying through the air, the next they were falling.
Sammy hit the fallen mushroom canopy, bouncing off at an angle and landing on another mushroom, before rolling off the side and hitting the forest floor.
The fall knocked the wind from her. She tried to suck in air but her lungs wouldn’t open. She raised her head as a crabman seized the greenbuck by its throat, holding it in place with a large claw.
The crabman was as terrifying as Sammy remembered. A human-shaped head and torso, jagged spider legs from the waist down and a spiky shell on its back. Charcoal grey all over with pale pink joints. The right arm was long and serrated like a sword, its left like a construction crane’s hook. The creature twitched like a house fly as its stalk eyes fixed on Sammy.
The greenbuck’s eyes were wide, white all the way around its irises. It made a strangled bleating and tried to buck, but the crabman held firm.
Then the claw closed and the greenbuck’s head came off like a rose bud snipped from the stem. Its lifeless body dropped to the ground while blood pumped from the stump of its neck.
Time seemed to slow as panic shorted Sammy’s central nervous system. She was unable to move. She tried to lock on to the crabman’s mindset. Sense what it was planning, but she couldn’t. It was like no other living creature she’d encountered. No intention, no desire and no empathy, as if it were soulless, just a biological machine. That’s what made them such formidable enemies. And why most magi couldn’t fight them.
The crabman jerked towards her. And its head exploded.
Blue goop splattered the surrounding area and the crabman’s body dropped to the floor revealing the magus stood behind it, the orb of his staff glowing white.
“Climb the mushrooms!” he shouted. “Get to the top of a large one, lie down and hope they don’t find you. You can’t outrun them!”
Sammy ran. She leapt onto a small mushroom, then another, using each one as a stepping stone to take her higher. She zigzagged back and forth to pick out a path of mushroom stepping-stones that would lead to the forest ceiling. The higher she went, the wider the mushrooms became and the wider the distance between each one.
The chattering increased as Sammy neared the top.
She slowed up to check after the magus while she caught her breath. There were four crabmen circling him at a distance. One broke off from the others and rushed him.
“Keep going!” he yelled, as he blasted the crabman in the chest.
It screamed and fell as another leapt over, swinging its sword arm down at him. He caught it on his staff and batted it away.
The remaining two crabmen weren’t attacking. Their heads jerked upwards in unison to look at Sammy.
Sammy turned and ran.
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nbsp; She took a running jump to reach a larger, higher mushroom. Her foot landed close to the edge and she slipped. She landed on her stomach, just managing to hang on by digging her fingers into the fleshy surface of the hood, while her legs dangled over the edge.
The crabmen were coming, scaling the mushrooms, closing in. She heaved herself up, gained her feet and made a run for the next mushroom. She made the leap easily this time, but as she landed a crabman rose to its feet on the mushroom she’d planned to jump to next. She doubled back as the second crabman crested the mushroom that had been behind her, closing off her escape route.
She was trapped on either side with no weapons. Why hadn’t she stayed on the ground where there were plenty of stone bullets? Now it was all over.
The first crabman leapt at her. Instinct took over and Sammy held out her arm, guiding all her energy at the crabman’s shell breastplate. In her mind’s eye, she saw it not as a mixture of compounds and tissues like the pig-dog had been, but as a solid structure of repeating molecules, like stone. She concentrated on that structure, slowing its velocity.
The crabman didn’t make the jump and dropped down the gap to the forest floor.
The second crabman landed behind her and thrust its sword arm as she turned. Sammy locked on, slowing it, but not quick enough.
The tip entered her abdomen.
There was no pain at first. Instead, a detachment like she was looking down at someone else’s body. She watched the blood blossoming from the point of entry, felt the wetness of it soaking into her t-shirt.
The sword arm twitched, trying to force itself deeper, and she felt the first spasm of pain. She was going into shock. Her body was threatening to give out and already she could feel Perseopia drifting away.
Sammy held the sword arm steady with her mind, but she was losing it. She had to get back to the forest floor, collect some stone ammo. It was her only chance of beating these things. Her only chance of survival.
With tremendous effort, she staggered back, sliding off the spike and falling backwards. She landed on a canopy below, collapsing the mushroom, simultaneously breaking her fall and tilting her onto the mushroom below that. The impact brought her round, jolting her back to life. Her brain was scrambled but she found her feet and hopped down the last several mushrooms to the forest floor. Her lungs were screaming, she was bleeding, but she was still alive. She’d stopped the crabmen from killing her and now she had a readily available supply of ammo.
She was powerful. She could win this.
Stones flew to her wrists as she ran towards the flash of the magus’s staff light. He might not be able to take on the crabmen, but she could.
Sammy rounded a dense clump of mushrooms to find the magus struggling against one of the crabmen. She let rip with a barrage of bullets. Some ricocheted off the creature’s carapace but several tore into the softer abdomen below the breast plate.
The beast slumped to the floor.
The magus turned to face her, laughed nervously. “How did you do that?”
Sammy had no time to answer.
The fallen crabman was still alive. It shifted, lashing out with its sword arm, swinging it through the magus’s shins, severing him from his feet. He cried out as he flopped down, spraying blood from the stumps.
Sammy was momentarily shocked into inaction. She stared at the magus’s legs, the shortened ends where his feet had once been, dark red flesh and circular bone exposed. His blood was emptying into the dirt, staining the soil.
The wounded crabman watched her. She was too far away to reach. It was waiting in the hopes she strayed close enough to kill too, and that tipped her over the edge.
She loosed her remaining stones into the dying crabman’s head, tearing it to pieces.
As its body flopped over and fell still, Sammy found herself surrounded on either side by the last two crabmen. The two that had chased her to the forest canopy.
They stood there twitching in their mechanical manner, mandibles chattering. Blood was drying on the sword arm of the one that had stabbed her.
Sammy was going to make them pay. She plucked a stone from the ground and sent it hurtling at her attacker, but the monster caught it in a heavy claw and crushed it.
The magus whimpered at her feet. He grasped for his staff, failed, then slumped and fell still.
Sammy had lit Hami’s staff last time she’d been in Perseopia. She could do it again.
The staff flew to her hand. She caught it as the first crabman lunged. The black orb appeared in her mind’s eye, she saw the particles floating inside, accelerated them, and the forest lit up with a burning white light.
Build power … aim … release!
The beam hit the crabman that had stabbed her, blasting it backwards through the forest, crashing through bushes and creepers, and leaving a trail of devastation behind it.
The other crabman went for her. She raised the staff as its sword arm came down. The blow knocked her to her knees and she nearly lost the staff. The crabman had a significant strength advantage, but she had abilities it didn’t. By simultaneously slowing the crabman’s limbs and accelerating her staff’s movements, she batted away the creature’s attacks and soon began to dominate the fight. A powerful jab to the crabman’s stomach sent it sprawling backwards, giving her time to level the orb, power it up and explode the beast’s head.
Now for the last one. The one that had dared to stab her. Sammy charged through the undergrowth following the trail of torn bushes and scored trunks. The crabman came limping towards her. Its chest black and smoking, dragging its sword arm, broken and useless.
Sammy powered up the staff and obliterated the offending arm. It spiralled away into the mushrooms.
“No more stabby stabby for you.” She spoke the words quietly, through gritted teeth. She sounded strangely maniacal to herself. She laughed. She couldn’t believe a moment ago she was about to let this pathetic creature kill her.
The crabman made no move to attack so she took off its other arm with a second blast. The heavy claw hit the ground and slowly opened and closed where it lay, twitching and moving independently from its body. The crabman remained upright, displaying no visible signs of discomfort. It was then Sammy’s mind cleared and she realised how she was torturing the animal to get a reaction. Her behaviour was disgusting. Regardless of what the crabman had done, treating a living creature this way was sick.
Sammy fired a searing column of lightning through the crabman’s chest, splattering her and the surrounding forest blue.
She spat out the filthy blue gloop that had found its way into her mouth.
She’d glimpsed a darker side to herself. A primitive savage trait that had revealed itself before receding back into her subconscious. How quickly she’d gone from killing small mammals to giant crabmen. At least she’d put this creature out of its misery, which was more than she’d done for the rabbit. Sammy’s strength gave out then and she collapsed to the floor. Her hands shook and she dropped the staff. She closed her eyes and concentrated on not puking.
The magus. She’d left him by himself. She snatched up the staff and ran back to where he lay.
Sammy double-checked all the crabmen were dead before attending to the magus. She’d seen enough movies where baddies had found the energy for one last attack. She wasn’t ready to lose her own legs, too.
The young magus was bleeding heavily. It looked like he’d attempted a tourniquet on one of his legs but had passed out before finishing. Sammy pulled the leather straps from his sandals while trying not to look too closely at his severed feet. She tied the laces around his stumps, staunching the blood, but his skin was already white. He’d lost a lot of blood.
She shook him. “Wake up!”
The magus grimaced and his eyes flickered.
“Can you hear me?”
He croaked a word that Sammy took to be yes.
“What do I do with you? Where do I take you?”
&nbs
p; The guy groaned in response.
Then she remembered. “Connect to the magi network!” she yelled at him. “Contact the other magi and call them here!”
“Can’t …” he mumbled. “Can’t concentrate. Can’t …”
“What do I do with you?” Sammy screamed.
“Marzban. That way.” He indicated with the barest movement of a finger. “Follow … river. All the way … Get help …” And he went limp.
If he didn’t get medical aid soon, he’d bleed to death. She tried to focus her mind on moving him. She could move a rock, a crabman, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able to shift a human. She gave it a go anyway. She concentrated but couldn’t picture any molecules past the skin layer. What else could she try? She could wedge something solid underneath him and move the object, but she couldn’t see anything large enough and time was running out. It made more sense for her to get help and bring them here rather than to slow herself down by dragging him with her. And he wasn’t the only one that needed medical attention. Her t-shirt and the top of her leggings were soaked with her own blood. If she didn’t make it to safety, then the magus had no hope.
Sammy pulled several weedy-looking bushes out of the ground and piled them up around him in an effort to conceal him from other threats. He didn’t seem particularly well hidden after she’d finished, but it would have to do.
She took one last look at the guy. He was still breathing, barely, sucking in ragged breaths and shivering. She didn’t even know his name. Blood was on her hands yet again. She’d killed the rabbit, and if her first instinct hadn’t been to run, then this poor guy wouldn’t have lost his legs. She was responsible for his life now. If something happened to him, it was because she’d failed.
She collected the staff and ran in the direction he’d pointed, and in what she hoped was the direction of someone that could help.
–ELEVEN–
HELP
The river had been easy to find. The Marzban, not so much.