by J M Hamm
It was dangerous, incredibly so, but I had no more time.
I kicked forward and watched as the door was ripped from its hinges with the earsplitting sound of twisting metal followed by an explosive bang as it hit the far wall. Hopefully no one was standing behind that.
“Well, that might have been a little too much.” I looked down at Gun Girl and smiled. “Sorry about the cleanup. Sebbit’s got the bill.”
She stared up at me with wide eyes, and I couldn’t help but blink in response when her inner eyelids closed. It was just unnatural looking, like the shutter of a camera spiraling closed in slow motion.
She used my momentary distraction to kick upwards with her bound feet. It was an impressive performance of speed, athleticism, and flexibility, but she couldn’t have known that I didn’t need my eyes to see the chain that still bound her limbs.
I leaned backward and turned my body to the side, narrowly avoiding her attack. At the same time, I reached forward with my right hand and grasped the chain that was wound tightly around the back of her legs.
I spun around like an Olympic discus thrower. Gun Girl’s head bounced off both walls before I finally released her to land limply next to her partner.
I ignored her. If she attacked again, I’d just have to deal with it. I was past the point of doing things carefully. I’d have to do this the same way I’d done most of the best things in my life — loud, messy, and over too quickly.
I stepped through the empty cavity that had once been a door. The room behind it was much like my jail cell had been, but slightly larger and the floor was tiled in an unsightly shade of lime green. It was either the color, or the room’s inhabitant, but I found myself holding back a mouthful of bile.
“Gah. What the fuck is that?”
The creature looked like a person had been half swallowed by a blob of rancid, grey flesh. The stench was unbearable, and the way it moved made my skin crawl. It flowed across the room bonelessly, it’s body rippling and undulating as it slowly inched forward like a monstrous slug.
The human half of the creature was covered in ruptured pustules and scale-like scabs. It hung off the back of the boneless ooze of flesh and remained unmoving as it was dragged behind like a useless clump.
I raised the rifle and aimed it at the creature’s head. It seemed unlikely that this would kill it, but I had no idea what to do. As I looked down the barrel of my stolen gun a face came into my sights.
One eye was milky white, and the face was almost completely covered in scales and boils. Its scalp was mostly bare, save for large liver spots and a few sparse clumps of grey, brittle hair. It was a face that would have been unrecognizable if it hadn’t been for one green eye that gazed at me with unblinking focus. I could sense intelligence, and something familiar, behind that unblemished eye.
“What have they done to you?” I rushed forward and took the face in my hands. I ignored the danger around me even as the rancid flesh continued to circle me.
“Troy, can you hear me? Are you still in there?”
A single eye stared at me. His mouth moved but no sound came out. Half his face was split open, but the half of his lips that remained seemed to be silently mouthing the same two words. They repeated over and over, but his eye eventually closed, and his face fell deathly still. Whatever hell he had been trapped in, he had seen the hope of salvation when I had appeared. I wouldn’t let my friend down in his final moments, even if he had once betrayed me.
His last words were silent but clear in their intention.
“kill me.”
It was a request I fulfilled.
Chapter Forty-nine: Pearls of Thought
Some memories are cherished. They are like a splendid pearl kept in one’s pocket to be taken out and gazed upon during moments of reflection. They become polished and made free of imperfections through constant handling. We revel in these recollections and they become the moments from which we define ourselves; facets in the jewel we call our conscious mind.
There are other kinds of memories.
They eat away at us — forgotten but never truly gone. We push them down into the darker parts of our psyche. There we keep them hidden. We bar these remembrances from our waking thoughts through an endless vigil. It is only in our dreams that we confront our demons, as they tear and claw against the hells we’ve fashioned in their image.
They wait in those depths and fester until the day we take them with us into our final rest. Or, we confront them and risk a fate more dreadful still: acknowledgment. In acknowledgment we would see the truth of ourselves, and of the world. We would then be forced to face the certainty that we are weak, insignificant creatures in a vast and uncaring universe.
I had one such memory. I forged another at the moment I took the life of my best friend. This was twice now that I’d watched a man give up hope as his body betrayed him. Troy had asked for death, begged me to kill him. I had agreed, not in anger, but in mercy born from recognition.
I had seen that same look upon the face of my father. I had worshiped the man, even as his body gradually failed him. A strong man had been left a broken husk, nothing more than a shade trapped in a prison of his own flesh. The final time I had seen my father his eyes had held the same acceptance that I saw in Troy’s.
In our final moments together, my father had briefly opened his eyes to look up at me, and even though he had long since lost all power of movement, I felt his hand tighten, slight and brief, around my own.
I had thought it a positive sign, but he never saw the morning.
For years I’d blamed myself. I’d pushed down the memory, completely forgetting that look in his eyes or the feeling of his hand grasping my own. It was the only farewell he could give, and yet I had never acknowledged it. I’d never understood the significance of the look in his eyes or the message contained in the final desperate grasp of his hand.
Now I spoke farewells to someone else. Mortality claimed my friend, and as it took him it left behind memories that resonated with pain long repressed.
I had torn Troy’s head from a pool of pulsing flesh. At that moment, it was the face of my father that I had seen. The face I held in my hands was that of a man grateful to meet his final rest. I should have mourned him, and I would, but for a short time I clung to feelings of joy at having been able to release him from his prison.
I had failed once, but not this time.
Troy would not have to suffer a slow, torturous death as my father had. I refused to push down either memory. Instead the two memories became linked inexplicably as I made a new realization about myself. I would hold onto these memories and take them out when nothing else could give me strength. I was not broken, and I was not weak. I could kill, but I could also build and protect.
Perhaps I was going mad. If the Fisher was to be believed I already was. So, what? If I was crazy, then so was everyone. It was no more rational to love the memory of my father than it was to hate or kill. I could do all three. I held the proof in my hands.
I lingered in the room for a moment, but I had more work to do. I set the only recognizable piece of Troy on a small bed in the corner of the room and covered it with a sheet. I didn’t look back as I walked out into the narrow passageway.
I was full of conflicting emotions. Memories of my father filled me with joy, but I also felt regret and mourned the death of my friend. These thoughts brought with them feelings of guilt and reminded me that I had failed to find my mother. I’d barely even thought of her in days. I might still have a family — something to cling to from a world now lost.
And Liv. She was my first love, and her husband was now dead at my hands. I feared she was caught up in this mess as deeply as Troy had been. I had to find her, or what remained.
A pragmatic corner of my mind whispered that I should have forced the creature to speak. Troy had left me with many unanswered questions.
I set those concerns aside by focusing on what I needed to do next. Clumsy and Gun Girl were still bou
nd on the floor and appeared to be unconscious. I searched them and found what I was looking for on Clumsy’s belt.
She had been carrying two explosive satchels identical to the ones Catayla had used to bring down the bridge. It had only been a hunch, but it seemed that if the scout had been carrying them, then they were probably standard issue.
I fumbled with the device for a moment, but I had seen Catayla use them and I had a near-perfect memory. After depressing a small black button for several seconds, a sharp beeping sound alerted me that it was armed. A shape made of interlocking curves appeared on a small display. It looked almost like a stylized drawing of a knot that was slowly unraveling.
I tossed both charges into the room behind me and slammed the hatch shut. I wanted to be gone before they detonated but I took the time to bring the two guards with me. I couldn’t be sure that the explosion wouldn’t be larger than I expected. Fire or smoke could also spread out of the room and kill the Peacekeepers. I was going to negotiate with Sebbit and being responsible for killing two of his subordinates probably wasn’t the best opening gambit.
Once the two women were cocooned in chains of eldritch energy, I began retracing my steps back through the aircraft carrier. I dragged the two soldiers behind me while ignoring the occasional thuds as armored heads collided with unyielding steel.
The middle level of the Yorktown opened to a wide aluminum ramp that led down to a narrow wooden pier. I propped the two Peacekeepers against a post at the bottom of the ramp and released their restraints. Once the chains had fully dissipated, I turned and prepared to leave.
I felt a moment of unease, scratching at the back of my neck. I expected my entrance to be easy, as there was most likely only a skeleton crew left behind at the Yorktown. My escape, however, had gone unexpectedly well. I hadn’t so much as seen another soldier.
That didn’t always mean they weren’t there …
Before the thought was finished the explosives I had placed detonated. The sound was a muffled thud, but it was loud enough to draw my gaze. As I looked up a bright flash filled my vision.
In the same moment something heavy collided with my skull. Closely behind the impact was an air cracking boom. My vision filled with swimming lights, and my skull reverberated like a bell.
The hit had launched me forward. My head landed first, and I bounced and skidded across the pier. I came to a stop inches away from the guardrail, one hand extending beyond the edge of the pier. My arcane shield was still active, but that one shot had depleted over eighty percent of my mana.
One more shot like that and I was as good as dead.
Reacting on instinct, I threw my hands forwards and a wall of swirling shadow and fiery embers grew up in front of me. This caused the pier to explode into splinters of concrete splinters and the section I was laying on fell into the cold water of the Cooper River.
Bullets broke through the surface of the river, creating dozens of spiraling tails as they cut through the water around me. A nearly overpowering rage burned inside me. I had gone to all that trouble to spare the lives of those two guards. Whoever was attacking hadn’t even waited till I was clear of their unconscious comrades before opening fire.
I held back the anger, using it to focus myself. I couldn’t control it; my emotions were still too raw from all that had happened. All I could do was aim the rage in a useful direction.
Behind me were two injured guards and who knew how many guns aimed in my directions. In front of me were answers and freedom. Tiller was with Sebbit, fighting an army of monsters. It was also likely that the cultists were behind the army, just like they had been the cause of the dome and the herd of behemoths.
I couldn’t get answers from Troy, but if I could get my hands on another cultist, I might be able to learn what had happened to him. They might even be able to give me information about Liv, if she wasn’t with them.
Liv couldn’t be my only priority. I had friends on both sides of this conflict. That included Catayla. The blue-scaled scout was still my friend, and I had promised her it would stay that way. Whatever happened, I needed to make sure I protected those I cared about. During moments of rage it was easiest to think about the simplest motivations.
I split off a small portion of my focus and a shadow doppelganger rose up above the waves and began charging towards the Yorktown. The copy was created from pure eldritch energy, which meant I could control it like any other construct. I used this ability to propel it through the surface of the river and I launched it directly towards my attackers.
It wouldn’t be able to fly for long. My control got weaker the faster it went or the further it got from me. I had given it the rifle I plundered from Gun Girl, and it strafed the Yorktown with covering fire. With luck, the Peacekeepers would be caught off guard by an image of me flying through the air like Peter Pan’s homicidal shadow. The surprise wouldn’t last long, but it might buy the clone a small amount of time before it was inevitably cut down.
Hopefully enough time for me to escape unnoticed.
I decided to ignore the fight behind me, and instead swam south towards the larger battle. I could sense the opposing armies as a vortex of eldritch energy. It was like a reverse tornado, a wide base of swirling energy that fed upwards into a narrowing cone that ended about fifty meters above the ground.
Whatever was at the top of that cone was absorbing energy at an unbelievable rate. Even the near unlimited energy released by the dungeon core would only be the tiniest fraction if compared to the energy that was concentrated at the top of that cone.
Thousands fought within that ever-growing storm. I couldn’t make out any individual shapes, but the frantic nature of the energy surrounding the battlefield told me the fight was much more pitched than I had anticipated.
I had expected the Peacekeeper to be mopping up when I arrived. Instead, it seemed as if they had found a real fight.
Chapter Fifty: Charge of the Dark Brigade
My head was still ringing when I pulled myself onto a narrow, rocky beach. My stamina was full, though my mana was still less than half. Perhaps losing all that mana at once was the cause of the pain, or some injuries just weren’t serious enough for the system to register. I laughed at the thought. If I had felt like this before the world had gone to hell I probably would have taken the day off. The most strenuous activity I would have engaged in was heating up Cup Noodles and streaming cartoons — now I was preparing myself to face an army of eldritch abominations.
It wasn’t far now. I was already at the edge of the vortex of energy. I could feel it in the air as it passed over my skin. Anything involving eldritch energy always felt off; it was tinted with dark emotions and the feeling of truth hidden just beyond perception. The energy of the vortex had something else to it. It was somehow … less clean.
It stank of grime and felt like oil on my skin. It seemed to coat everything it touched in a layer of filth. It felt like death and decay, if the concepts were expressed as emotion. It was as if the idea of death, the feelings we associate with the concept, had somehow manifested in reality.
The force of the vortex pulled at me like a raging river as it threatened to catch me in its current. This was made worse by the reaction it had on the eldritch energy I stored within myself. It was like half the molecules in my body were all being pulled in the same direction, and if I didn’t move with them, I would be torn apart.
I was able to create a thin shell of black and red energy around myself, allowing the pull of the vortex to pass over me. The feeling of discomfort lessened but didn’t disappear entirely.
The barrier was almost completely translucent, but everything I saw was tinted slightly red. I had never considered myself an optimist, but I couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle when it occurred to me that I was looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.
What is wrong with me? It was as if every little thing — every random observation, or internal comment was hilariously funny. The world looked as if it were
burning and smothered in ash. I just laughed.
Far to the east a pillar of light ignited the sky beneath a dark and growing cloud. Together they drowned out the sun, creating a perpetual day beneath a firmament of rolling black. It was like a gleaming pillar was holding up a canopy to shade a dying world.
If that was what the heavens had become, perhaps Hell was the better option.
The only ones with the strength and knowledge to set things right were fighting for their lives and the lives of everyone I knew. Even New Charleston would be engulfed if the vortex continued to grow.
It was absurd that I was here charging forward like some mythical Calvary to save the day. There was no three-foot alien or bearded sage to hand me a magic sword or give me advice that would only make sense in the final moments. No one had chosen me for some grand quest or had even expressed confidence in my abilities, to be honest.
Hell, even the annoying parasite that lived in my mind was missing.
I was just one man. Perhaps I couldn’t make a difference. I would still charge forward. I was determined to see this through. If I was going out, I wanted it to be without regrets. That meant finding answers. It meant saving my team, my own little corner of the world — even if I had to let the rest of it burn.
I looked up to where the top of the disturbance was, the point where the energy was gathering. I could sense the energy, but my mundane vision was blocked by a tall ledge crowned with gnarled bushes and sparse yellowed grass. Whatever was on the other side of that ledge was gathering enough energy to flatten everything around it. It might even be capable of undoing some of the crazier changes to the local geography.
As my irrational laughter and amusement subsided it was replaced by a sense of unease and nausea. My entire body shook, and my legs felt weak.
I knew I had to climb that ridge, I wanted to. My legs wouldn’t move.