House of Falling Rain (Eyes of Odyssium Book 1)

by C. A. Bryers

  “This is crazy. You haven’t seen that thing. We’re dead if we try to fight it,” Ota said, breathing hard already.

  “Would you feel better about getting out alive knowing you left those people in there to die?” The swinging double doors were coming up fast, the sounds raging from within almost deafening. Salla slowed, and Ota seemed only too eager to follow suit.

  “Why are you doing this? No one stood up for you when Lochmore decided to shut you down below. I don’t get it. What do you owe any of us?” Ota asked, scrutinizing him with those almost black, narrow eyes.

  Salla shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I found out the people in the Order were just people. People that can have as much broken about them as I do. I just know turning my back is something I couldn’t live with. Not anymore.”

  Joht staggered to a halt, caught up at last. A terrible, screeching roar sounded from inside the commissary, followed by something heavy smashing into the doors, sending all three men reflexively back a handful of steps.

  “That sounds like it came from something bigger than whatever Lochmore turned into,” Joht said, his once strong and confident features now pale and slack. “Come on. Let’s get in there.”

  Salla nodded, steeling himself before he threw a shoulder into the right-hand door. It swung open, unveiling a scene similar to what had unfolded upon their entry to the foyer. Bodies and severed limbs were scattered throughout the commissary, slung over tables, against walls, and smashed into the floor. There was blood everywhere. This time, of the perhaps dozen students within, there seemed to be no chance any were left alive. The room was the site of a massacre.

  “Where is he?” Joht whispered to nobody in particular, his bracer arm held aloft, though visibly shaking. “Or, where is it?”

  Salla scanned the room, but all he saw was the carnage Lochmore had left behind, and no signs of movement. Suddenly, to his left, from the passage that led to the kitchen, a monstrous cluster of thick, blackish-green tentacles burst forth. They fell upon the nearest victim of the rampage, a woman…Ranna was her name. Closing about her legs and waist like a host of snakes working in unison to constrict their prey, they pulled her body into the passage in a swift rush.

  “What’s it doing?” whispered Ota.

  “Probably draining whatever’s left in the body it needs. I told you, he was feeding on that rho of yours, feeding on Ciracelle, maybe all of us. There’s nothing left we can do here,” Joht said with a tug on Salla’s sleeve. “We need to go now, before it hears us.”

  The mention of Rainne hit Salla with another wave of grief that further sapped away at his focus and resolve. But looking at the carnage and bloodshed, Salla had to agree. These students were all dead, and there was no telling if they would have any better luck attacking the creature than Ota had. But as Joht and Ota began their stealthy retreat, Salla caught sight of a flash of movement. It was barely perceptible, a small, dark shape that stirred underneath the serving counter. He hunkered lower to get a better view, face almost pressed against the floor.

  “Come on,” Joht hissed. “What are you doing?”

  Salla did not respond. Instead, he started a slow crawl across the room, eyes fastening to the shadowy passage leading to the kitchen as he went, willing those tentacles not to reappear. As he neared the counter, he heard a tiny, almost imperceptible thump, followed by a stiff, frightened intake of breath.

  There’s someone there, he thought, though he still refused to pry his gaze from the kitchen hallway. Muffled snorts and growls belched from the darkened recess, but thus far, nothing else emerged…until he was a matter of feet from the counter. Something flew out into the mess hall, limbs flopping this way and that like a doll discarded by its owner. When it came to a rest a handful of feet away, there was little left to identify the corpse as Ranna’s, but he could see that Joht’s guess had been correct. She was a desiccated husk, bloodstained gray uniform hanging loose over a drained body, the exposed skin like rotten wood.

  Limbs began to slide out into the room from the kitchen hall again, repeating the process as it ensnared another limp form. Tug by tug, Wescusi slipped from view.

  He must be replenishing himself, Salla imagined, staring into the darkened void of the kitchen hallway. That’s why he hasn’t come out again.

  Whether that was true or not, it made sense with his limited understanding of the beast Lochmore had become. Though he still had no idea of the nature of the transformation or even what the source of his power truly was, it seemed that Lochmore was burning through his energy fast while sustaining this destructive form.

  Taking the opportunity presented, Salla crawled around the side of the counter. In the shadows beneath, a figure huddled with knees pressed to its chest, head turned unerringly toward the muffled sounds of Lochmore feasting from the kitchen hall. The sound of the second body being spat back into the room forced the figure to flinch, and Salla saw a braid slide from its shoulder to rest alongside its back.

  “Iriscent?” he whispered into the tight space between the counter and the wall.

  The head turned, and Iriscent spun to face him. “Salla?” Her eyes were wide, cheeks wet with tears. “Salla, I can’t move.”

  He crawled closer, his hand patting her legs and arms for some sign that she was pinned down somehow. There was nothing.

  “No, Salla. I’m scared. I’m so scared.” Her voice trembled, and he felt her body shaking under his touch. “What is that thing?”

  “Lochmore. Somehow, it’s Lochmore.” He climbed to his knees, meeting her frightened gaze. “I don’t know how much time we have right now before he comes out again. I need to get you out of here, and now.”

  Iriscent shook her head. “I can’t. I—I felt something a few minutes ago, this whisper, this urge. It was terrible. I don’t want to come out. Just go. Please. I…Salla, I might try to hurt you.”

  His assistants…they came first. That was how Ota had begun his tale of blood and death—Lochmore’s assistants had somehow become puppets for the Adjutu of the House. Iriscent, it seemed, could have been summoned to kill just as the others had.

  “How did you stop yourself?”

  She shook her head in a panicked flurry. “I don’t know. I got so afraid—afraid of the voice telling me what to do, to kill them all. I was paralyzed.” She shuddered, hugging herself tight. “I heard what was happening out there down the hall, and then that noise…that noise started coming this way. I ran inside. I wanted to tell everyone to run, but something wouldn’t let me. I hid, and a second later it was inside.” Her hands went to her temples, pinching her eyes shut as if to block the memory. “It was so close, Salla. So loud. And then it was over. They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

  Sounds from the kitchen hall were intensifying, the growls growing stronger, the thrashes from within the confined space more powerful.

  Salla nodded gravely, finding it difficult not to look in the direction of the clunks and bangs in the kitchen every few seconds. “We need to go. Now.”

  She shook her head more fervently. “No. No, I can’t.”

  “Come with me or you won’t live past the next minute, Iriscent.” He did not blink as he stared long and hard into her eyes. “You can do it. Come on.”

  Her face pinched tight in a wince as she visibly fought back the urge to refuse.

  Salla grabbed her by the arms and began pulling her toward the side of the counter. “We keep low. If it starts coming for us, you don’t freeze, got it? You run.”

  New tears began slipping down over the old. She shifted onto her hands and knees, and Salla guided her with a tentative hand out into the open.

  “Don’t look over there. Keep your eyes on the doors ahead.”

  He could hear her sobs, see the terror ratcheting up and down her body in each stilted movement. Keeping close, Salla slid an arm around her waist as an added assurance.

  “Don’t stop, Iriscent. Don’t—”

  The creature burst from the shadows suddenly
in an explosion of whipping limbs and seemingly hundreds of razor-rimmed jaws that snapped from the ends of each tentacle. There were no apparent arms or legs any longer, only a handful of gathered masses that acted in a similar fashion to propel Lochmore forward. Worse, the thing was now monstrous in size, at least twelve feet in height and five in width. With a maddened screech, two bundles of lashing, flailing appendages reached forward like arms. Salla’s grip tightened about Iriscent’s waist, hurling the two of them clear of a certain, crushing death. The next moment, they were on their feet and careening through the double doors like battering rams.

  Back in the corridor, Salla fought the urge to look back. Iriscent ran alongside, eyes wide and horror-stricken as if frozen in some state of shock that whittled her faculties down to the bare essentials that would permit her to survive. Salla could hear the swarming mass that Lochmore had become slam through the double doors. Whipping his head about for only a matter of seconds, he saw the tentacles contort and reshape their bulk to squeeze through the opening until more and more of the creature started spilling out into the corridor. Eyes forward again, he spotted Joht and Ota at the mouth of the corridor, urging them faster before darting from view. At the threshold of the foyer, Salla brought Iriscent to a halt. Ota and Joht were heading left, toward the barracks and the Iron Grounds.

  “Not that way!” he shouted, bringing the two Majdi to a halt. He then pointed to the stairwell. When the pair rejoined them, his voice was lower as they began moving quietly down. “The Iron Grounds is a dead end. Both levels below run a full circuit around the central cell block. Harder for him to trap us.”

  Above, the sounds of Lochmore’s monstrous, indescribable form had fallen eerily silent. At the landing between the main level and the first prison level, Salla gestured for them to stop, staring up as if trying to determine by his senses alone why the creature had gone still.

  After a few moments, Joht broke the silence. “What’s it doing?”

  Holding a hand up for quiet, Salla listened. “I don’t know. Feeding again, maybe. We did lead him right back toward a room full of bodies.”

  “Feeding?” Ota wore an expression of revulsion. “On those people up there? Our brothers and sisters?”

  Salla nodded. “That’s what it was doing when I went to get her.” He set a hand on Iriscent’s shoulder. It still shuddered beneath his touch. “That was what was happening to Ciracelle.”

  Joht was down on the landing, head resting against the railing. “Had to have been. After what I saw when he turned…” He shook his head weakly. “Makes sense. Better than any explanation I have…why she was so tired, couldn’t use her tephic. He was sucking it all right out of her a little at a time. Makes you think.”

  Ota’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think?”

  “All those others who just disappeared over the years.” Joht gave a faint, coughing laugh, his body sinking to one knee. “He waved it right under our noses, what he was doing. He was proud of it. Told us once if he decided the Majdi Order wasn’t right for you, he’d lead you out in the middle of the night so the parting wouldn’t disrupt the rest of the students.” He drew a long sigh, eyes looking as if they were ready to fall shut and never open again. “But they didn’t get out, did they? Some, maybe. But most?”

  Salla shivered. “He told me that too, or something like it.”

  “Now none of us will get out.” Ota’s expression was bleak. “Will we?”

  Salla faced Iriscent. “We’ll get out. How do we do that, though? How do we disarm the lockdown mechanism?”

  Iriscent continued to stare, but the almost paralytic terror that had been coursing through her seemed to be dissolving away at last. She blinked, eyes finding his. “The lockdown controls are in the old prisonkeeper’s quarters.”

  “Lochmore’s office,” groaned Joht from the landing.

  She nodded, gazing up the stairs again. “I can’t go up there again. I don’t know how I made myself move to get out of the commissary.”

  “You did it because you had to. He would have found you if you stayed.” Salla gave her arm a squeeze. “But no, you don’t have to go. Down here is the safest place right now. Too many places to get cornered up there.”

  “Like in Lochmore’s office.” Joht gave a long, weary sigh. “He’ll trap us, and that’ll be the end. Best we can do is unlock the place so at least she can get out. Tell the others.”

  Ota’s eyes went wide. “Wait, so we’re all that’s left? Just the four of us?”

  Salla shrugged. “Hard to say for sure. Maybe one or two are hiding.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you, Saar?” Joht’s head rolled against the railing, his pale face turning to Salla. “We’re Majdi in here. All of us, to one degree or another. If you’re worth the word you gave when you pledged yourself to the Order, you don’t hide. You fight.”

  In the darkness of the stairwell, Iriscent hugged herself, eyes averted from everyone about her.

  The dying would-be archsentinel grinned, blood showing on his teeth. “No offense, girl.” With a wince but without letting so much as a grunt of pain escape, he rose to his feet. “Speaking of fighting, I don’t have all day.”

  “Literally,” said Ota under his breath.

  Joht’s face tightened into a withering glare. “I still have enough left in me to break you in half and feed what’s left to Lochmore up there, Ota.”

  “Joht—”

  He pushed Salla away. “No, I want to hear what this little Shozoan scag has to say.”

  “You’re an idiot, Joht. Always have been. You want us to go up there, pin ourselves in a corner while we tear through Lochmore’s office trying to find the unlocking mechanism, and then have that thing up there smear us like it did everyone else? Because that’s what’s going to happen.” Ota held up his tephic bracer and gave it a shake. “These are all we have, and they’re useless. I saw that myself.”

  A flicker of movement in the air above the stairs caught Salla’s attention. He peered into the darkness overhead, but saw nothing but the underside of the old metal stairs and the empty shaft containing them.

  “Coward.” Joht sneered at him, holding himself upright with the railing. “Do you have a better idea? Hide down here? Sit and wait to die, is that it?”

  Salla saw it again for only the briefest of glimpses. It was there and gone again, an apparition that might well have been nothing more than a figment of his imagination. But considering what he had witnessed thus far tonight, he left nothing to chance. Most of the students in the House of Falling Rain were dead. Placing an arm across Iriscent’s chest, he slowly guided her off the landing and down the stairs.

  “Joht!” he shouted sharply.

  Both men ignored him, but Joht continued his hobbling advance toward Ota. The air above both men wavered, the wall behind it warping as a familiar feeling took hold. There was a presence there, and as he made a slow retreat down to the prison levels, he was able to place that feeling of recognition at once.

  It had been his first night in the House of Falling Rain. He recalled waking to the feeling of being watched, of being no longer alone in his cell. His mind, prejudiced and untrusting of any and all Majdi at the time, had disregarded it as some sort of Majdi trickery, a tephic probe perhaps sent to spy on him. But now that it had returned, he knew it was anything but a mere intrusive probe.

  The air shimmered above Ota and went still. A tremor, barely perceptible to the eye, coursed through his body. The Shozoan man blinked, and then rubbed his arm as if to warm himself.

  “What’s happening?” Iriscent whispered, the softness of her body tensing in his gentle grasp.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I have a bad feeling it isn’t anything good. Go down below. Stay there.”

  31

  “Well? Answer me!”

  “Stop it.” Salla stared purposefully up at Joht Tavross from the foot of the stairs, hoping the other man might finally set his aggression aside and take notice of him. “Get do
wn here, Joht. Don’t ask questions, just do it.”

  At last, Joht did cast a look down at him, his drained face irritated. “Why?”

  Salla didn’t want to say more, didn’t want Ota to know he suspected something might be wrong. But as Joht continued to look quizzically down the stairs, Ota gave another shudder, like something had crawled inside of him, twisting and shifting to take control of his limbs. Tight eyelids slid open, revealing dark eyes glimmering in the dim lights of the nearby sublevel. If he was angry with Joht any longer, his face did not show it. It had gone blank, his lips parted in a slightly dazed look.

  His eyes met Salla’s and, perhaps seeing suspicion there, he turned his attention sharply back to Joht. An instant later, it was as if he’d been catapulted from the stairs, hurtling through the air to crash down upon the weakened Majdi. Joht Tavross folded at once beneath his weight and momentum, and the two became a tangle of limbs cartwheeling down the stairs.

  “Look out!” shouted Salla, pushing Iriscent out of harm’s way.

  He lunged at the pair as they came to a rest, hands fastening upon Ota in an effort to wrestle him away from Joht. It was of little use. They were like two frenzied dogs gripped in a fight to the death.

  Despite his fragile state, Joht seemed to be tapping into a hidden well of strength. He managed to overpower Ota at first, only to have his head jammed hard into the metal railing. Joht roared in pain and fury, kicking Ota away, only for the Shozoan to bounce back just as quickly with redoubled ferocity.

  “Salla…”

  It was Iriscent who spoke, her voice brittle. But Salla barely heard her as he struggled anew to pry Ota free. He had an arm wrenched back, but Joht, the stubborn mule he was, only used the opportunity to smash his bracer into the side of the other man’s skull. Ota reeled from the blow, the tautness slipping from his body, allowing Salla to pull the possessed man further away. But Joht was kicking again, clawing his way back to his feet in order to reengage in the scrap.

  “Salla…”