He says, “You would have liked Captain Tummanoon. He was a good man.”
“I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him.”
Rhys dips his head. “Me too rook, me too.”
On the far wall, there is yet another security door. Rhys tells Vernon to swipe his HaLO. The round door opens as did the others, but this leads to a small chamber and a blast of cold air flowing over them. There was a glass circle on the ground in the center of the room four feet in diameter. The walls were showing exposed rock and dirt behind a large concave display screen. As Vernon enters the room the displays activate with a myriad of runes he had never seen before. Rhys walks over the displays, touching runes as he does. Each light up and begin to fill the circle in the floor, surrounding it's edge. He points to Vernon, and then to the circle in the ground. Vernon walks onto the circle, as he steps on, the floor lights up with a soft blue hue.
Tyler says, “This is a rune jump. Not many even know people can do this. There is a set of runes near the cave that match this pattern Rhys just entered. You put some energy into the runes, and you’re there. We use this programmable rune table to make sure no one uses the permanent ones laid throughout Astrum to get inside here.”
“This is amazing, why don’t we have these all over for people to use?”
“The Astrum Government doesn’t believe the regular population is ready for it just yet. Think about the crimes that could happen if someone had a little bit of planning with this magic. It might seem disingenuous, but it’s the best option for right now.”
“So the government gets to decide what’s best for us?”
“That is what they do, and you are part of it now. Like I said, it isn’t the best option, but it is better than most.”
“I didn’t know any of this when I signed up.”
Rhys adds, “I don’t like most of what the suits do either kid, that’s why I vote. There might be times when I don’t agree with everything the government does, but we can hold them accountable for it. So don’t go thinking this is some fascist government that needs to be destroyed. It just needs good people to change it from within, and you’re now within.”
Tyler says, “Well that’s enough of a history lesson, just remember to draw your weapons after you jump. Kill everything that’s in the cave.”
Vernon asks, “Everything? What if people are in there?”
“Everything, You don’t know if it is human when you’re in there. Drigh are… they’re very dangerous. Even if you think it is a person, there hasn’t been any missing person reports for the area, just kill it.”
“I don’t know if I can do that?”
“You are a Paladin of the Order, assigned with the safety and preservation of the people of Astrum. This is an order Paladin, disobey and face punishment.”
Vernon lowers his head, “Yes, sir.”
He had seen punishment at the Academy. Most of the time it was a slap on the wrist, others it was dismissal from the Order. Only once had he seen it go farther, and it was something he didn’t want to see again. It was a classmate, and he had disobeyed direct orders as the group of them went out for a wyvern hunt. Three were killed, and twenty were injured severely enough to where they had to drop out of the Order on medical reasons.
The trial was short, and he didn’t show any remorse. He believed he did what was right even though it was nothing more than glory seeking. Vernon saw that day that the path he had chosen was going to be more difficult than he ever realized. He never wanted to have anyone killed or injured because he wanted recognition.
He trusted Tyler, and felt he should still.
Tyler nods at Rhys, who nods back. Rhys hits the last rune on the curved display, and the room turns green as the rune table glows brightly, signaling it’s ready.
“Alright rook, better hold on to your jewels, this is going to feel weird.”
Before Vernon could protest or question the runic circle at his feet activate, opening a whole of light below him, washing over him. His stomach twisted and turned, as his body felt like jello being pulled apart. The whole process was over in a few seconds, and he standing next to a tree on top of a stone with the same runes he just saw back in the jump room. They still had a faint glow to them, and he look toward the mouth of the cave.
He could hear the buzz of wings coming from the cave. He only really knew that drigh were small like insects but he is about to go into a cave full of animal sized ones. The rec room he was just in must be filled with all of the other Dragon members right now. They are probably watching him on the displays, and the quicker he gets on with it the better he will look to his new squad. He just hopes he doesn’t find any that look like a human, because he didn’t even know they could look like that.
Grabbing the handle of the folding blade on his waist releases the magnetic lock as he wraps his hand squeezes. Pulling it from behind reveals a short tube atop a sword hilt. He twists the bottom of the handle, locking the hilt into place with a quick slam into his palm, and the blade begins to open. It twists and flips apart, forming into a five foot long broadsword.
Vernon tests the blade in his hands. It was similar to the ones that he used at the Academy, but this was of even finer make. It was a lightweight blade, and could be used with one hand. He then presses the middle two fingers of his left hand into his palm, which activates the gunlet around his left wrist.
The handle holding the clip flips into his hand and aligns itself to be held. The barrel forms from what is left of the gauntlet around his wrist curling into shape then flipping over his thumb locking into place. He sticks his sword into the ground and cocks the gunlet. Staring at the cave he takes a deep breath, and walks in.
The entrance is dark, with no light but that from the mouth of the cave. His HaLO turns on night vision. The newly illuminated room is filled with divots on the ground and walls. There is a pungent odor in the air, and sees flies all over a dead corpse of an ixibl. He walks over to the deer like creature, and can see all of the bite marks. No flesh is missing, but it looks like it was drained of its insides.
4
The flies start to buzz all around him now. Biting him all over. He then realizes they aren’t flies, their drigh. Running out of the cave acting on instinct he calls forth mana pushing it into the runes on the blade. He lets out the spell swinging his blade. The downward stroke releasing multiple blades of wind.
It hits the cloud of flies, and disperses. Vernon’s knee jerk reaction made him instantly regret bringing the runes with him. The cloud congeals into a black mass thrumming with energy as a gloss of mucus coats the outside. He could feel the hair on his arms standing on end, from the energy radiating off the pulsing.
He whispers to himself, “Well, that was stupid.”
Rhys’ voice comes directly into his ears. “Yes it was.”
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes rook, it’s me. We’re watching from the camera dust on the tree you appeared next to.”
“Oh….”
“I forgot to tell you one thing before you left, don’t let them spit on you.”
“Ok, I think I might like to avoid that too.”
“Just hurry up and kill that thing before it finishes changing rook.”
“Changes?”
The mass explodes, spreading mucus everywhere around it, falling only inches short of Vernon’s feet. On the ground lay a hairless black animal. With Vernon looking to cats so much over the last few days he was pretty sure it was like a feline, but definitely was not. It’s square eyes open looking around the area, spotting Vernon.
He pulls up the gunlet, and a reticle shows up in his overlay. The gunlet roars out two bullets, before the creature can move. One it’s chest and the other in head. It’s head opens up as if it was a flower opening it’s petals revealing tiny teeth lining the petals, with a tentacle tongue in the center. The blood curdling scream that comes forth sent chills down Vernon’s spine.
It turns spiting toward Vernon, and he dodges out of
the way. Not knowing if the creature was still alive or not, he fires another few rounds into the head, and it falls to the ground with a wheezing of air escaping it.
“See that lieutenant?”
Silence.
Vernon looks back to the tree over his shoulder and see’s it covered in spit. The black liquid oozes down the trunk, and begins to pool on the ground. He thinks to himself, maybe they can’t see me anymore. Vernon shrugs, and enters the cave repeating to himself a few times, don’t use magic.
Once he back inside his HaLO switches back to night vision, and he starts to follow the tracks. The buzzing was now gone, but the smell remained. Each step into the darkness did not offer any relief. He comes up to a split in the path, leading down or to the right. Since he has to make sure the whole cave is clear, he chooses the right path first.
The path is heavily traveled, and he can see different types of tracks the deeper he goes. He notices the walls have a sheen to them, and runs his finger across the rocks. A clear sticky mucus comes back with his finger, and he tries to shake it off. It doesn’t come off, and he sets down his sword to rub his finger in the ground.
Where the mucus was on his finger was numb he could feel his finger move, but couldn’t sense the touch of anything. Vernon looks around, and the walls are covered in this mucus.
Note to self, he thinks, don’t touch the walls.
He picks up his sword and continues down the path. He comes to a open chamber larger enough to fit two of Dragon’s garages inside, and found the source of the smell. Piles of corpses of all different types of creatures from around the surrounding area were laying on the ground.
The smell was stronger than at the entrance, and hung in the air like a heavy fog. Vernon takes the tip of his blade, and sticks it into a small pile that is next to him. Which he immediately regrets. He barely holds back from vomiting, as a new putrid smell comes out of the hole he just poked open. There is a film of ooze on his blade of things that will surely haunt his nightmares. He shakes it off.
Calm down, just calm down. I have trained for this, and I’m more than confident in my fighting skills. Just take a deep breath and relax. He thinks to himself taking in a deep breath and closing his eyes. The deep breath was a bad idea as he lets out a cough. A rustling noise happens close by. He opens his eyes to see the larger pile of corpses in front of him had begun to grow, and turn in place. Bodies fall off the stack, as Vernon’s heart sinks. Two large tusks the size of his legs turn to face him. Past the tusks are a eight beady eyes in the shape of a circle, each shining gold.
He tries to take a step back from the creature, but it screams out face opening as did the cat creature. It’s tongue was split into three tentacles, and each started to whip at Vernon. He starts to fire off rounds of the gunlet. Three, four, five shots later, the creature lets out a wail and stands up.
Vernon looks at the fresh holes in the creatures body, oozing white liquid, and tries to find an opening to attack. At the tips of the lips, it spits at Vernon. He isn’t able to dodge it all, and gets covered in spit.
Everything goes dark.
Vernon can hear the creature breathing heavily, but he can no longer see it. He didn’t feel anything on his eyes, so he tries to pull up his overlay menu to adjust the settings. Nothing happens. He tries again, and nothing.
It dawn on him, drigh eat magic. Everything in Astrum is powered by runic power plants, science and magic mixed together to make unlimitedly renewable energy. The spit must eat that energy.
The creature breaths in Vernon’s face, and his heart skips. He doesn’t want to die. There is a power he has that he tries not to use. He doesn’t understand it, and doesn’t know where it comes from, but this would be the time for it. He reaches into the center of his body with his mind, hoping the spit doesn’t effect it too. He finds a door, and opens it. White light pours out, and into him. He pushes it into his blade lighting up the room.
The creature is inches away from his face squints at the light. It’s face opens as it wails, swiping at Vernon. He jumps back with tentacles slashing open his shirt. He returns the attack with a swings down of his blade across the mouth. It’s white blood is set ablaze, and it screams in pain whipping it’s head around.
A tusk heads for Vernon, and he swings upward cutting through it. The creatures head swings back the other direction, Vernon with his blade still in the air, swings down. His blade meets the tusk, and begins cutting through. The creature pulls backward snapping the folding blade at the hilt.
The light dies down some, not having a larger surface to flow over. Vernon can no longer see the creature, but can hear it moving out in the darkness. He tries to extend the light beyond the hilt, and it creeps out an inch past but no further.
He thinks. Great, this is just what I need. In the dark with gigantic spitting tentacle monster.
The ground starts to shake, and Vernon looks in all directions to figure where it’s coming from. He gets a glimmer of white broken tusk before it rams into the center of his gut. It plows him into the wall, taking away his breath.
He reaches deep and pulls forth more light turning the light black as he does, extending it back to the length of the sword, and shoves it into the face of the creature. Pulling out the blade of light, exposes a burning hole, with smoke billowing out.
The creature takes a few steps backward, as the light allows Vernon to see it. A hard black carapace covers the outside, it’s legs start wide at the body, and come to a point as they touch the ground. The creature looks like a beetle with huge tusks that could pass for a rhino.
Small red spots start to appear on its body as it stumble left and right before falling to the ground. The spots begin to spread connecting with one another and the beetle lets out a vibration. Vernon can feel it shake his bones. The smell that emanates from the massive beetle overrides the putrid smell that was filling the space. Vernon couldn’t place it, but it was a burnt smell. The creature’s shell just burns to ash, like embers burning out.
Vernon checks himself, and it doesn’t find anything is broken. He was lucky he cut that tusk off, but he’s still going to have a bruise there tomorrow for sure. He walks over to the tusk on the ground. It was sharp along one side, and where he thought he cut it clean, there was a piece sticking out. He tries to put away his gunlet, but it doesn’t activate. So he drops what’s left of his folding blade, allowing him to take off the gunlet, and grabs the tusk.
His hand was still bathed in light, and as he wrapped his hand around what felt like metal, his light flowed over the tusk. It illuminated the room, as if someone had turned on a light switch. Vernon looks at the tusk. Wondering what the hell it was made of. He spent four years at the Academy trying to figure out what metal or material was best for this light he had. With too much exposure, the light would always shatter whatever he was using. Which might have been why his folding blade shattered when the beetle pulled backward.
Looking back toward the ash where the beetle once was, showed a crystal within the pile. It was clear as a diamond, and the size of his forearm. He picks up the crystal and just looks at it. The hair of his arm starts to stands on end just holding it. This would be the something that his lieutenant said might be here. He places it into his coat pocket to take it back to base and then grabs his gunlet, putting it into another pocket. Searching around the rest of the chamber he only finds animal corpses, or what he hopes are animal corpses. That means he now has to go down deeper into the cave.
He takes in another deep breath, letting it out slowly. He can’t believe that this is something he might have to do again. He just wanted to be that blur of motion on the video he saw of the Paladin taking out the behemoth. He didn’t want to go deep into caves filled with death, and kill the reaper inside.
Maybe I can still be that, this is just a stepping stone. He thinks.
He shakes his head, clearing any doubts he has, and starts to walk back to the fork in the cave. As he’s holding the tusk, he feels the burden of h
is light lessen, but the light emanating off is greater.
Well, at least I have this going for me right now.
5
Reaching the fork, he looks back toward the entrance, but can’t see any light. It was almost mid-day, and there was only one tree near the entrance, so there shouldn’t be anything blocking the way. A clicking noise fills the way back to the entrance. He swings the tusk in that direction, seeing what’s blocking the way. Two more beetles are headed toward him. One on the ceiling and the other on the floor. He pushes light into his left hand, and his wedding ring flares engulfing in light. He looks at his ring, not expecting the blade of light to have come off it.
The effort it takes is the same as the tusk, but he wasn’t going for a blade. That little bit of information gets filed in his need to come back to file, and he lines up his fist. Gathering a ball of light on his fist, and lets it fly toward the beetle on the ceiling. It lands in the center of it’s mouth, or what Vernon thinks it mouth would be, stopping it in its tracks.
The other beetle picks up speed, and rushes Vernon. Opening its mouth, spitting at him. He swipes at the spit, and as it touches the light it ignites. This stops the one on the ground, but the other runs across the ceiling, digging its pointed legs into the roof.
Again Vernon tries to fire a ball of light at the beetle, hitting it in the face, but it doesn’t slow down. It only gets angry. It’s back separates revealing a scorpion like tail with mucus dripping down. It falls to the ground, tail in the air, and begins to strafe around Vernon.
Vernon takes a step back down toward the way he came. The fork in the path was too wide to fight both of the beetles. He wanted to bottleneck them, hoping he could fight them one at a time. Both beetles start to slap their tusks together.
He starts to hear a clicking noise from behind him, as more beetle show up from the chamber he was just in, each with their tails out. Vernon tries to call forth mana, for use with a speed rune he has in his boots, but nothing comes forth.
Cypher Theorem Series Box Set: Books 1-3, The Zero Class, Shadow Moon, Dragon Fire: A Science Fiction Fantasy Page 41