by J. R. Ford
Visceral
Book Two of NULLIFIER
J.R. Ford
Copyright © 2021 Jacob R Ford
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Afterword
About the Author
1
Having friends is dangerous. Without them, I probably wouldn’t be in this alley, hoping the Enlightened patrols wouldn’t find us.
Then again, they wouldn’t be here without me. Maybe I’m the one it’s dangerous to be friends with.
Moonlight and glowing blue circuitry illuminated the rippling streets of Bluehearth. Buildings from a hundred architectural traditions rose around us. Ana and Heather were next to me.
The alley was plastered with wanted posters issued by both the Enlightened and the Azure Lance, offering bounties on a couple of rebels, dead or alive. Coincidentally, it was the same alley where Ana and I had once pledged to find Heather the Storm’s Breath. That promise broken, we had a new objective: find the Sanguine Knucklebones and use them to restore my missing hand.
I’d tied my sleeve over the stump. Over the past month, my nausea upon seeing the space where my hand should’ve been had subsided to horror, then mere disgust.
No time for rumination. The Enlightened controlled this part of the city now, and they’d kill us on sight.
Heather looked at me, as if to check if I was all right. Did she know the sight of her yellow eyes made me so?
“Not far,” Ana said, trotting out into the square. “Where’s Farrukh? He run off somewhere?”
I went next and heard Heather’s padding behind me. “Probably nearby,” I said. Why he didn’t stick closer, I wasn’t sure.
The reason manifested as a group of yellow-robed Enlightened apprentices rounded a corner into the square. Ana cursed and charged them, brandishing her Lightning Blade.
A fair strategy — get them before they could go for bows or cast spells. But the suddenness of it caught me on the wrong foot. Heather brushed past me, already in wolf form, loping to flank them. I drew my rapier.
Ana hit them like a lightning storm. One was on the ground in a flash, and the next caught her sword in the gut midway through some cantrip. He shuddered as lightning coursed through him.
Bait. A second group ran toward us. A river I’d swim through when I came to it.
I engaged blades with a scared-looking apprentice, feinted a thrust, slipped around her parry, and stuck her through the chest before she even realized her mistake. Her buddy came for my side and got a neck full of wolf teeth.
Almost time to start swimming. There were about ten in the second group, closing fast. I spotted Yao among them, bulky, wearing orange robes trimmed with green. The full moon glinted on his razor cleaver.
The man who’d severed my hand. Hatred, fear, and revulsion washed over me. I wished I’d been more accurate the previous times I’d stabbed him. Now my left hand itched for a dagger like a ghost with unfinished business. My rapier alone would have to do.
Ana stood stalwart. Heather growled and gnashed her fangs, her large yellow eyes intent on Yao. I swallowed my nausea.
One apprentice came to meet his death with a strike meant to beat my rapier aside. Predictable! My sword weaved under his and thrust into his belly. I recovered with the instinct Ana had drilled into me and, when he kept his feet, thrust again. This one he turned aside, and I stepped in close.
But I had no dagger. I couldn’t even punch him. I tried for an elbow to his face, but he staggered back and slashed my leg. It was only a parting blow, and the apprentice had pulled it, as if training with a partner. Still, the bright red pain shocked me. Since when were these apprentices any shade of competent?
Yao and another apprentice made to surround me. I gave ground, each step making my thigh flare. The last thing I wanted was another encounter with that broad-bladed sword.
Heather had more confidence than I. She leapt for Yao, her fangs bared.
He cleaved her skull in with a grisly crunch. Her blood sprayed across his robes. For a split second, I could see into her ruined skull, a gory mess of blood, bone, and brain, before she glowed yellow and reverted to human. I’d gathered enough insomnia fuel to know when I’d found more.
Her human form was unharmed but reeling from the death experienced. I drew Yao’s aggro with a feint but then shrank away from his stony expression and bloody sword. Fear nearly rooted me in place, but I shook free. I couldn’t die here.
We didn’t bother trying to communicate. Even if I’d known signs, his cleaver had made certain our relationship was one of blood, not words. Past his shoulder, I noticed a mage weaving dancing electricity into a crackling fireball, eyeing stunned Heather. I feinted at the apprentice, then hurled my sword at Yao. He batted it aside, but I was already running past him.
My fingers formed the shapes of nullify spell. Pings rang in my head as I made the first two shapes, stretched into the third, and finally extended my palm with ring and pinky fingers bent. As the mage flung his fireball, a pulsing violet ring poured into existence before my hand.
I stepped in front of Heather just as she shifted into a panther and pounced, right into the back of my knees. I fell backwards atop her and threw out an arm to break my fall.
My stump hit stone, and pain lanced up my arm. The fireball sailed over us harmlessly.
Heather glowed yellow and returned to human form, her hands already racing through incantations. When she pressed a yellow-glowing finger to the street beneath Yao and the apprentice, a square area sloshed into water.
Yao clambered out with assistance from the apprentice. But when Heather cast the water back into stone, the apprentice realized what his loyalty had cost him, and panic rose on his features. He cried out, uselessly. His legs were encased.
But Yao now approached me with the inevitability of a tectonic plate. My stump and thigh still burned, and worse, I had no rapier. The dagger at my belt couldn’t block his cleaver, so instead I symbolled nullify momentum. My hand was jittery, but another null ring poured into existence in time to stop Yao’s swing dead. I whirled my hand to deflect the blade down to the side. In the corner of my vision, my mana bar filled with bubbling purple: 20/100.
It might’ve been more effective if Yao hadn’t known it was coming. But he didn’t hesitate to bring the sword around for another chop. Again I nullified momentum, then again for a third strike. 60/100. Nausea rippled through my gut with each swing.
Heather seemed preoccupied with three other apprentices. She was a bear, her black fur bloody, but an Enlightened was at her feet with his face rent open. Ana danced with four others, none of whom seemed keen to get within reach of her Lightning Blade. We could’ve used Farrukh.
Yao smashed my guard again, then again. My mana bar filled up to 100. I stopped my somatics and ducked away from him, fear welling in my throat. I couldn’t cast nullify momentum at full mana. I was running out of options.
Mincing words wasn’t one. He would
n’t listen to anything I said — he thought me no more than someone who killed his friends. Not that he was far from the truth.
He stumbled away as Heather swiped at his shoulder, then she had to back off before she took another stroke of his cleaver. She roared, but he stood his ground. The remaining apprentices surrounded us, about eight of them, not counting those battling Ana. Heather glowed yellow and returned to human form — she must’ve been out of mana. But there was a spear in her hands and determination in her eyes.
No way out except through. But Yao seemed an immovable obelisk. My imagination foreshadowed what that cleaver could do to Heather’s human skull.
Footsteps pounded on the street. Great, more Enlightened.
But the newcomers didn’t wear yellow robes. They crashed into the apprentices weapons-first. Our enemies looked bewildered, before they were cut down.
Yao retreated and rallied his remaining troops. One summoned the twin sparks of flash burn before them to buy space, but one of our rescuers, a lean Asian dude, stepped forward while gesturing. His entire body glowed purple, and when the lightning struck him, he seemed to absorb it.
The others charged past, led by a black guy with short dreads and a long sword. He unleashed a flurry of strokes, sending one Enlightened to the ground and another staggering, clutching her arm. He moved like Ana, measured and precise. His companions put up a decent showing too, sustaining no casualties while sending the apprentices scurrying.
Heather took me under the armpit. “I’m fine,” I said, though I didn’t let go. “Are you?”
She shuddered. “We survived. That’s what matters.”
I wiped and sheathed my sword — a task I’d never thought benefitted from two hands, until I’d lost one — then evaluated the carnage. Death’s stench hung heavy over the street. White fletching stood stark in the moonlight; guess Farrukh was nearby after all.
Our four rescuers regrouped. Their leader, the swordsman, stepped forward and clasped Ana in a fierce hug.
I recognized him — Jeremiah Something-Or-Other. Ana had known him before the game. He’d come by our cabin about a week ago, recruiting for their cause: opposition of the Enlightened and the Azure Lance alike. Much as Edwin needed to die, we’d turned him down. We’d vowed to find the Sanguine Knucklebones and use their power to restore my hand. It was his next missive that had brought us here to meet them.
He knew where the Knucklebones were.
He swept his hand over the rest of the party. “Meet our humble resistance: Priyanka, Chen, and Ha-Jun.” No way would I remember all those names. “We can get to know each other better at the safehouse.”
“One sec.” Ana drew her boot knife and turned to the wounded. Some were lucid enough to plead or try to crawl away. “Time to log out,” she said, before setting her knife to any who did not or could not comply. Blood ran rivers over her hand.
Heather blanched. “Must you?”
“We don’t have the time or resources to take prisoners. You think when they recover they’ll be jolly friends of ours? They can regret their choices on the plane out of Luxembourg.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Heather. After each throat, she made sure to slice the straps of the corpse’s purse.
Heather and I gazed down upon those we’d left on the ground. Farrukh materialized. “You going to finish those?” He said it as casually as if talking about food.
We shook our heads. Skulls crunched under his poleax’s tail spike. Farrukh grinned — more likely at the “Kill a player: +5” notifications than the violence.
I saw little difference between the executed and those who’d logged out. Their friends would find corpses either way. It didn’t even affect our points. When the apprentice I’d stabbed logged out, I got a notification: “Kill a player: +5,” and I didn’t pretend I didn’t deserve it. His dead eyes and bloody stomach made sure of it.
Once we’d finished our butchery, the rebels ran off. I struggled after. Blood made my ankle itch.
“Pav, wipe that up,” Farrukh said.
Right, didn’t want to leave a trail. I dabbed it with my cloak’s hem. I’d donned an inconspicuous shade of brown rather than my favored green and didn’t mind sullying it. We all wore newbie grays beneath our cloaks, disguises that had gotten us into the city through a gate guarded by Azure Lancers.
The rebels took us into the thickest of the urban jungle, where blocky Alchemist-built stone manors crowded among buildings that looked stolen from all over Earth. The massive Citadel loomed over them all, its embellished circuitry bright against the dark sky. An alley between a wooden temple and an adobe-brick fortress led to a door set into one side of a stone cube.
We pressed into the small room beyond. A map of Bluehearth clothed the table.
“Thanks for the assist,” Ana said. “I’m Ana. These are Heather, Pavel, and Farrukh.”
“We know,” the youngish Indian woman said — Priyanka, probably. She wore a welcoming smile and an orange sari.
Jeremiah nodded. “Good to have you, and not just because you’ve left Enlightened dead on the streets.”
“Y’all got chairs?” I asked, gesturing at my cut leg.
The back room was crammed with straw pallets, a couch, a sink, and a keg. I took the couch and dropped my trousers so Heather could bind my leg. “Just like old times,” I said. “You need me to get Ana to do it?”
Heather glared at me, but her touch was sure. Though we hadn’t kept hands off each other five minutes since confessing our feelings that night in Tyrant’s Vale, her fingers still sent fire through me hotter than any wound.
I should’ve been able to relax. We were safe, alive, and together. But imagination is a television, and mine had frozen on the memory of her head caved in.
“You didn’t really answer me earlier,” I said. “You okay?”
She rubbed the side of her head, as if reassuring herself it was still intact. “Yeah. Normally, when I’m injured, I have to make the symbol to transform back. It’s not hard, just extending a foreclaw, but the longer it takes me to make it, the longer I’m in pain. But Yao made it quick. I revert automatically when I’m killed.”
“Stay away from him,” I said. “Let me take him. I have the reach advantage.” Being honest with myself, I didn’t even want to be within rapier’s length of him, especially not when I’d promised Heather I wouldn’t seek death. I just wanted her near him less.
“I can handle him,” she said, though her hand was lingering near her temple. But arguing would be belittling. Who said I wasn’t getting better with girls?
She resumed binding my leg. After a moment, she said, “And sorry for knocking you over. How’s your arm?”
The mention of it brought a pang of dull pain from where my hand should’ve been, but it was a welcome distraction. “No worse than normal,” I lied. “It isn’t your fault, anyway. Just a miscommunication. Next time, let me block the spell.”
“I can’t always rely on you. Maybe you should trust me to avoid it.”
“I’ll be there,” I insisted.
“And if you’re mid-duel? Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” She tied the bandage off, perhaps more roughly than she had to. “You know, you make it hard to trust you sometimes.”
“But you do?”
“You know I do.” She seemed sincere.
“Your prerogative.”
Someone knocked, and after I pulled my pants up, we answered. Priyanka popped in. “Can I get you two anything?”
“What do you have?” I asked.
“Not much,” she admitted. “Water, beer, bread. We’ve been lying pretty low. The gangs caught wind of our efforts.”
I remembered the wanted posters, bounties promised separately by the Enlightened and the Lance. Not like I was high maintenance anyway. “Water.”
She leaned past us to fill a couple mugs from the tap. Heather took our leather canteens and topped them off.
Travel experience had instilled in us the im
portance of stocking up whenever we could. Though Heather could transmute stone to water, it came out salty.
“So, Priyanka. Where are you from?” I asked.
“Hyderabad,” she said, a bubbly smile on her face.
“Oh, I think Farrukh is from there,” I said. “What neighborhood?”
“Prakash Nagar.”
Don’t know why I’d asked. I had no idea where in the city Farrukh was from. “We’ll have to ask him if he knows the area.”
“Sure! You want to head back through?”
I nodded at Heather, who helped me up. My leg wound ached, but not badly, and I was mostly steady going back through to the map room.
The air was hot and wet with the press of bodies. I unclasped my ugly brown cloak and used my left forearm to shimmy my right sleeve up to the elbow. Jeremiah must’ve been feeling the heat too, as he’d rolled up his long sleeves and undone the laces on his shirt’s neckline, revealing muscular forearms and a broad chest.
Priyanka took her place with her companions. Heather and I stood near Ana and Farrukh, who were looking over the map.
Ana said, “So, let’s get to it. What do you know about the Sanguine Knucklebones?”
“We aren’t certain, but we think they’re in the Citadel,” Jeremiah said.
“Why?” Farrukh asked.
“Hear us out. Magic is associated with colors. Yellow for Alchemy” — he looked at Heather’s yellow eyes, then indicated my purple-tinted palm — “purple for Null.”
“Edwin’s throat went blue when he consumed the Storm’s Breath,” I said.
“Yao’s alarm cantrip uses green paint,” Heather said. “It’s a Hex.”