Along the Razor's Edge (The War Eternal Book 1)

by Rob J. Hayes

  There is very little in this world as cruel as children on the cusp of adulthood and girls are usually worse than boys. At the time, I thought myself clever, manipulating other's feelings to my own ends. But after many long years, some of which were spent with children, I look back with a different perspective and realise that I was a bitch.

  My fame amongst the other scabs continued to grow and I did very little to stop it. I even helped it along a couple of times by planting new stories once the others had gotten stale. I made a point of stating quite loudly that no one had seen the overseer since our last appointment. Before long the scabs were spreading my rumour for me. Some went so far as to suggest I killed him and was hiding out down in the Pit. That rumour eventually blossomed into one about my stay in the Pit being my choice. That I had broken through the garrison and was hiding from the Terrelan military. The scabs had little love for the military, despite mostly consisting of Terrelans, and at least two young men congratulated me on my decision to fight the power. I wonder if those two men were still down in the Pit when I eventually returned. I probably murdered them.

  We still had to dig each day in our little tunnel, ever under the watchful eyes of Prig. He reigned in the violence, at least where I was concerned, and no others died in my place. Both Isen and Hardt suffered regular beatings and even the occasional lash, but they made me promise not to get involved and that was one promise I kept, though it pained me to do so. I always found it so strange when Prig set to beating Hardt. The bigger man never fought back, just covered up his head and let the fat arsehole punch away. Some days I wondered if it even hurt Hardt or if he just pretended to be in pain to appease our foreman. I have no doubt he could have twisted Prig's shit-filled head from his fat fucking neck, but he never did.

  I was down in the Trough when Deko finally found a use for me. I took to gambling daily, playing at dice and chips mostly, as I found the card games they played to be far too random for my liking. I was better at games of strategy, where I could outplay the opponent rather than the game. I lost far more than I won, especially early on, and went hungry more times than I cared to count. The only stakes I had to put up where the food I was given from the Trough. I fared better once I had the measure of the opponent, once I understood why they played and what they were willing to bet and bet on. Gambling is such a strange vice. We so often bet things we need for things we can so happily do without. But then it isn't really about the stakes, it's about the thrill.

  On this day, the other scabs hushed around me and I knew something was amiss. For a moment I thought I was about to be attacked, blind-sided while sitting at a table. No matter who it was, it would be a short fight face to face, even shorter if they jumped me while I wasn't looking. My strength lay in the allies I chose and the reputation I built for myself, not in the strength of arms. I think that was when I made the decision to change that. I realised I couldn't always rely on others to help me. Nor would I always be able to talk my way out of a situation. I needed to know how to fight.

  "Time to make yourself useful, scab." I craned my neck to see Poppy standing behind me. There was a severe look on her pitted face and her scarred arms were crossed as she stared down at me. My audience drifted away from the table, deciding to put some distance between themselves and one of Deko's most brutal captains.

  I thought about finishing my game, telling Poppy to wait. But I was not so stupid as to believe I'd get away with it. I picked my stakes from the table and stood.

  "You forfeit the game, you forfeit your stake." My opponent was a wrinkled old man grey in hair and always grinning. I liked the old bastard, even if I can't remember his name.

  I glanced down at my stake. A small bag of snuff. Worthless to me apart from the price others put upon it. Worthless, but mine. I pocketed it and fixed the man with a stare.

  "You're welcome to try to take it from me," I said. "Or you can try to win it again later. Count yourself bloody lucky. You were about to lose." Another lie on my part. I was one turn away from giving away the last bloody thing I owned to that shrewd old man. The thing about bluffing is you need to be able to understand when the bluff has failed. You need to know when to get out and admit defeat. Perhaps you have noticed, I am not good at admitting defeat. I really shouldn't be allowed to bluff.

  The old man laughed as I turned and waved for Poppy to lead the way. "Later then," he called after me. I was on good terms with most of the scabs by then. If they'd known what I had in mind for them, things would have been quite different.

  Poppy was ever the quiet one of Deko's captains, even more so than Horralain, who communicated mainly in grunts. I knew a little about her, rumours of her past, whispered by the scabs when she walked by. All were bloody, and all painted Poppy in a grim light. But rumours were shit as often as not, I should know, I started enough of them. Still, I always wondered where she got all of her scars. History was written plain on her skin in the ridges and discoloured flesh. She didn't lead me to the Hill, though we passed by it. It was hard to see through the press of bodies, but I didn't see Deko presiding over his empire.

  We stopped at one of the lifts where Prig's friend waited. He leered as we approached but stepped to the mechanism all the same. I hated the way that fucker stared at me, but I refused to let it show. I had protection from Prig, and that extended to the other foremen as well, but I was still a scab. I imagined waiting until he raised the lift and then pushing him down the hole, listening to his screams as he fell and waiting for the fleshy thud as he hit the bottom. I imagined myself as being quite triumphant. I still didn't know how hard it is to look a person in the eyes as you kill them. These days, I don't even blink. That probably says a lot about my eventual reign as queen.

  "Down." Poppy's voice never really matched her grim visage. She looked a right bloody horror, but her voice was sweet as honey.

  "How far?" asked Prig's friend.

  "All the way," said Poppy.

  I felt a nervous flutter in my stomach. I had never been to the bottom of the Pit before. Back then, I didn't even really know how many levels there were. The furthest I had been was the twenty-sixth level where the arena was located, but that was only halfway to the bottom of the Pit.

  Just four days before Deko first put me to work, I went to see Isen fight. I had thought it would be a bare-knuckle bout of pugilism with the combatants taking turns to thump at each other. I was quite wrong on that. I watched on with Hardt as Isen, bare chested with wiry muscles straining, clashed with his opponent. There was a brief exchange of blows and then Isen threw the other man to the floor and leapt on him, wrapping his legs around the midsection and pushing the man's arms away from his head as he rained down blow after blow, his knuckles painted red. Isen never killed his opponents, and he left the man bleeding on the ground.

  Hardt had said it was a clean win. It looked messy to me. Both men scrabbling on the floor, wrestling for dominance over the other. Since then, I have been in a few fights of my own and I have never won any as cleanly as Isen did that match.

  I noticed Poppy was watching me as the lift ground its way down. Her eyes were bright despite the gloom and she had a slight smile on her face. She did not look away when I noticed. It was the same way Prig's friend looked at me. I have never been one to shy away from a staring contest, and went to it with a passion, meeting her hungry stare with a cold one all of my own. Most people couldn't weather too long under the scrutiny of my pale eyes, but Poppy managed it. Her smile deepened. I will admit that was one of the few contests I have ever lost. I looked away, strangely embarrassed and unsure why. Some people might have laughed, gloated at the little victory. But Poppy said nothing. Even when the lift bumped to a halt at the very bottom of the Pit, she said nothing.

  I sometimes wonder if Poppy saw something in me even then that I didn't. Perhaps I wasn't ready to see it.

  Even down at the bottom of the Pit I could hear digging. That constant bloody echoing tap of metal on stone floated along the stale air, reassur
ing and maddening both at the same time. I didn't know it then, but down at the bottom was where the real digging took place. Further up was where us scabs worked our life away and that was the face Deko showed to his Terrelan masters. But down in the belly of the beast, his best workers, craftsmen and artisans, worked at turning the Pit into a palace sunk deep underground. The scabs that worked on Deko's palace were treated far better than those of us that toiled above, but they weren't allowed to mingle with us. Deko wasn't willing to risk word of his endeavour leaking out. Part of me is still amazed he let me return above, knowing what I did. But then I wasn't just any other worker. I was useful.

  We found Deko along with Horralain waiting at the mouth of a cavern that opened out into an inky darkness. Deko watched me approach with a smile that made my skin crawl and I felt my hatred of him stoked hot. He might have been my protection, but I hated that he owned me.

  "It's about time my little Sourcerer arrived," he said with a sneer. "I finally have something for you to do. A way to earn your fucking keep." Deko liked to do that, remind me that my protection was entirely dependent upon him. Bastard! He liked to remind everyone just what they owed him. I have always hated him for that. I hated myself almost as much, when the time came for me to copy his tactics.

  "What happened to your last Impomancy expert?" I asked, acutely aware that I was surrounded by Deko and six of his captains. I was the only scab nearby, and quite a bit smaller than all of them. I was vulnerable and afraid, and determined to survive whatever they were about to throw at me. After hatching my plan to escape, I found I no longer harboured any suicidal thoughts. I wanted to live again. I wanted to live, and I wanted to escape, and I wanted to rub those victories in the faces of every fucker who had tried to keep me from them.

  "He mistook a ghoul for a ghast." Deko grinned at me. "But you know the difference, right?"

  I let out a dramatic sigh and rolled my eyes before answering. "One is a mostly harmless incorporeal horror that feeds off fear and can do little more than scare us. The other is a monster of sharp teeth, razor claws, and a lust for dead flesh. Not easily mistaken. Your last expert was a fucking idiot."

  Deko shrugged and laughed. Most of the others joined in but both Poppy and Horralain remained silent. "He's a dead idiot now," Deko said. "Let's hope you don't repeat his mistakes. I like you, girl. Poppy does too. I hope you don't die in there."

  A hooded lantern was pushed into one hand and then Horralain gave me a hefty shove that sent me stumbling into the dark cavern. My heart raced, trying to beat its way out of my chest and I turned to find Horralain's giant body almost blocking the entrance.

  "Don't even think of coming back until you've figured out what the fuck it is." Deko's voice drifted around his captain and was followed by a nasty laugh.

  I turned back to the dark cavern and tried to calm myself. That was when I realised the laugh wasn't coming from Deko or his captains. It was coming from the cavern.

  Chapter 17

  I was twelve when the academy started training me in the school of Impomancy. Even so I think I was too damned young for the horrors I faced. I'm not sure there's ever a good time to learn those arts. The Other World is a dark place without sun, moons, or stars. There's nothing above but fathomless black. It's no wonder so many of the creatures summoned by Impomancers ended up down in the Pit. Horrors and monsters looking for familiar ground.

  I had seen pictures of many of the creatures found in the Other World; the Orran Academy kept detailed records on each and every one of the monsters they found over there. But some of those things should never be brought over to our world. Some should remain forever trapped in their dark home.

  Tutor Windlass was the foremost expert on Impomancy at the time, though in truth she was a bloody fool whose knowledge was rudimentary at best. She worked with each student privately, however, I was the only one of my age group to have an attunement to the school. I think this made it worse somehow. I could talk to Josef, or even Barrow or Tammy, but none of them could understand the feeling of being connected to the Other World, the constant draw into the darkness within. There is something oddly addictive about that place. None of them could understand the nightmares that plagued me every time I closed my eyes. The dreams of creatures too horrifying for most to even believe exist. And none could understand the strange compulsion I had to visit those nightmares again and again like picking at scab and refusing to let the wound heal.

  It's a strange sensation bringing something over. Tutor Windlass ordered me to start small, and I thought I did. It's not like opening a portal. There's no shimmering disc of light showing the other place. An Impomancer uses themselves as the conduit, to drag the monster from the Other World. Their own body becomes the portal. And the creatures of the Other World don't always come willingly.

  One thing I will say for the Other World: it's a beautiful place full of grand cities that shine in the darkness. Wonders that boggle the mind. I have seen a waterfall that flows upwards, vast mountain ranges far too ordered to be natural, a forest with trees of clutching skeletal hands. I understand now why the Other World is that way. I know how the things there came to be as they are, but to a child's inexperienced eye, I was awed by the beauty and scope of that world just as I was repulsed by the things that inhabit it. I remember wondering how such monsters could build those things. But of course, they didn't. They merely claimed what was already there. We are all living in a world built by ancients. And just as we do, they often struggle to comprehend the meaning of their world.

  The creature I selected to bring forth into our world was a tiny thing. It looked like a slug no larger than a mouse. Its skin was grey and membranous, and it slithered along the ground leaving a thick, viscous slime. I watched it for a while. To be an Impomancer in the Other World is to be a disembodied spirit. We can float around, seeing all there is, but we're not really there, and the creatures of that world don't see us. Well, most of them don't see us. And trust me when I say, you would rather not garner the attention of those that can.

  I reached out with my spirit and touched the little slime and it quickly faded from the Other World. Then I began to gag.

  Tutor Windlass panicked and called for help. I remember not being able to breathe. Feeling something deep inside slithering up my throat. I tasted bile and something far worse and retched as a grey tentacle reached out from inside my mouth. The thing was larger than I had thought with tentacles thrashing as I vomited it up. It was already as large as a cat once it was out and the thought of it inside of me, the taste of it as I brought it up, made my stomach turn. I stumbled away from it, retching and gagging while it thrashed around the floor, growing larger and larger until it occupied more of the small room than I did.

  That was when I noticed I was no longer connected to the Other World. The little monster stole my Impomancy Source as it slithered its way up and out of me. Once an Impomancer's connection to the Source is severed, so too is the command they hold over whatever they have summoned, and that command can never be regained.

  Tutor Windlass' assistant picked me up and carried me from the training hall even as I watched the thing continue to grow, thrashing about as more tentacles erupted out of the pallid, membranous flesh.

  The monster I summoned continued to grow until the training hall was nothing but rubble and debris beneath it. My mistake that day cost two people their lives, and another six were injured before they killed it. As far as I know I am still the only Sourcerer to have ever summoned an Abomination. The first and last. It was quickly put on the banned list and the Orrans and Terrelans both respected that list for good reason. To this day, I sometimes dream of that disgusting monster and I always wake up retching, the foul taste of it strong in my mouth.

  Not all the things from the Other World are mindless animals, though hellions and khark hounds might give that impression. Many, like the Abomination, have a strange intelligence to them. It knew I would use the Source to control it and it dragged the shard of
magic from my belly as it passed into our world. Others have an even greater intelligence and some few can even speak our languages. But it's important to remember that they are still fucking monsters.

  My hooded lantern cast a beam of light into the cavern. It was a poor source of illumination and I wondered why Deko hadn't ordered the room filled with torches to keep the darkness at bay. Glancing back, I saw nothing but Horralain staring at me from the doorway and knew I'd get no answer. Whatever had taken residence in the cavern was mine to deal with. It dawned on me then, how foolish a situation I had gotten myself into. I was a Sourcerer without any Sources. I didn't know how to fight, even if I had a weapon. The creatures of the Other World were called monsters and horrors for a good reason. Even a mostly mindless hellion would tear me apart and there was nothing I could do to stop it but tell it to fuck off.

  I took each step slowly, cautiously, shining my meagre light around me. The cavern was empty, save for rubble strewn about the floor. It was hewn straight from the rock that surrounded us, but even in the darkness I could see the walls were too straight and uniform. The craftsmen Deko kept down in the belly of the Pit had been carving the cavern with greater skill than us normal scabs could ever have managed. We were blunt instruments, not fine tools. As I ventured further in, I soon found there was a throne at the far end. The Pit boss had created a throne room for his palace and some unnatural beasty from the Other World had claimed it for itself. The thought brought a chuckle to my lips. The laugh that echoed back at me was mocking and harsh and most definitely not mine.