by Azalea Ellis
Jacky was closest to them, her body already bigger than Torliam's, with speed to match. She dashed toward Kris’ falling form, her Skills pushing her forward much faster than I could move, fast enough to actually make a difference. She caught the girl before she could hit the ground, the combination of Gravitational Autonomy and Struggle helping to break their fall. They still hit the ground hard, and tumbled from there, but Jacky kept Kris tucked against her chest, protecting the girl with her own body.
Up ahead, Torliam dropped Adam’s stretcher and ran toward the downed duo. He threw up a shield around them, and I let out a gasping sob of relief, almost dizzy from the crazed pounding of my own heart. I hated being so helpless.
The wyrm surged forward and tunneled back into the ground as easily as if it were made of water, the length of its tubular body flowing out of the first hole and down into the second.
I pointed Zed towards Adam, stranded on the blue sled of Torliam’s power, and we met there. At a run, we grabbed the handles of the makeshift stretcher and continued on.
“I’m out, Eve,” Adam said. “Wasted it all on riding around all day, should have saved some strength for when it really counted.”
“Not your fault,” I puffed out, panting too hard to say more. “We’re almost to the ship.” I shot a glance behind us, to the Spire, where the monsters were now attacking the tower with extreme prejudice, falling to the attacks of the guardians without care, their numbers overwhelming both the guardians and the strength of the stone edifice itself.
Sam drew even with Zed and I. “They’re coming,” he gasped.
Birch ran at our heels, his Skill once again creating a much-appreciated thrust of wind at our backs. The cub stumbled over his own feet, but picked himself up and kept running, ears laid flat to his head.
The ship lowered itself toward the ground, a few hundred meters ahead, crushing a few of the larger monsters who didn’t get out of the way in time. Almost there.
But Sam was right. The monsters had been holding back as they waited for the wyrm. Now it was safe for them to attack.
Torliam’s Skill flashed again and again, blue light spearing out in attack after attack, both holding off the monsters from Kris and Jacky while they found their feet and shooting forward toward us to help keep a path open to the ship.
I pushed my legs faster, pulling on the stretcher with one hand as the other made sure Gregor was securely latched to me. We ran around the edges of the wyrm-created craters, but the ground was still broken up and uneven, and I knew by the suppressed grunts and the way Adam’s knuckles were clenched white that the sharp jerks and bumps hurt him. I disregarded it, because we had to get to the ship as quickly as possible. A little pain was nothing compared to our lives.
I felt dizzy, but I wasn’t sure if it was due to lack of air or because of my panic.
At first, I thought I imagined the clopping sound. Then it grew louder, coming from all around like distorted, echoing hoofbeats.
The creature appeared in front of me, barely an outline to my Wraith Skill, till it became visible in a wave, like its body was being filled in with the rushing surge of a dark, misty ocean, from one side to the other.
Some spray touched my lips. It tasted like salt.
The huge horse looked over its shoulder at us, tossing its head, its mane half-ephemeral. It had eight legs, four in the front, four in the back, and its black eyes held a deep malice.
I recognized danger when I saw it. I raised my hand from Gregor’s leg, guiding Chaos out of my depths and driving it toward the creature. My power reacted eagerly, and I could feel it almost gnashing its teeth in the desire to rend.
When Chaos touched the eight-legged horse with tendrils angled like claws, the creature burst apart like water upon a rock, leaving only a splash and a briny smell behind.
Zed’s two bullets, shot a little too slow, blasted through empty air where it had been, and on into the distance. He gave me a sheepish smile, and we ran again.
The clopping sound came again.
“Seriously?” Zed gasped, panting.
I sensed it as the horse ran through us, but I was too slow to move away, too slow to even warn Zed, Gregor, or Adam.
It surged into being again, appearing in the air around us, inside of us. In an instant, my body was drenched, and my stomach, lungs, and throat were filled to bursting with saltwater. It pushed painfully against my insides, as if trying to invade my organs, muscles, and blood vessels. I could taste it, feel it, the sea-spray, the deep crushing ocean, and the moonless night. When the horse stepped forward and away, its water surged with it, yanking at our bodies. The monster broke apart into a splash of water again.
I dropped to the ground, convulsing as the brine spewed out of my nose and mouth. I scrabbled desperately at the ground, trying to spit up enough water from my lungs that I could draw breath again. My body screamed for air, my head already throbbing.
Eventually, I got enough space to draw breath, and from there to cough up more of the saltwater. My insides burned, and I knew there was damage. Hopefully nothing too bad, nothing Sam couldn’t fix.
I stood up, still hacking up fluid, and turned Gregor upside down so the liquid would exit his body more easily. The ship was so close. But still too far.
Adam and Zed were both still conscious and my brother stumbled to his feet, grabbing the handle of the sled. We pulled, straining toward the ship, only a couple hundred meters away now.
Ahead of us, a bird half the size of a man, with talons longer and more segmented than my fingers, dropped toward Sam.
Birch bared his teeth at it, creating a gust of wind sharp enough to knock it into a tumble. It crashed into another monster, which immediately turned on the bird and tore it apart for the offense.
The clopping came again.
Adam scored a line into his forearm with his butterfly knife and mumbled “Animus,” and the blood spilled out into a mass of crimson tentacles, just in time to catch on the eight-legged horse as it formed around us. The tentacles detached from Adam’s arm, hanging in place in the air behind us, the sea horse caught within their grasp. Adam slumped, his eyes rolling back in his head.
I thought he must be conscious still, or his Animated construct would have disappeared, but he didn’t even have the wherewithal to try and stop the blood running from his arm.
Behind us, the creature struggled with the tentacles. Then it splashed into nothingness, only for the clopping sound to come once more.
Gregor sobbed in my ear.
I ran for the ship, every other breath ending on a wet, ragged cough.
Beside me, Zed stumbled.
I felt it as the creature’s incorporeal form began to move through us again, but there was nothing visible outside me yet, nothing for me to attack, no way for me to protect myself.
Gregor released his hold from me. His legs kicked out at my back, sending me sprawling to the ground, and him backward through the air. He slipped into his Shadow form halfway through the jump, his body rotating as the horse formed around him. Hands as dark as midnight drew twin daggers.
He switched back into corporeality while inside its belly, the daggers rending as he whirled. He hit the ground hard.
The creature burst apart all around him, but this time spewed more water than it seemed its form could have contained, a gushing fount that crashed down on him.
I scrabbled forward on my hands and knees into the rushing water, grabbing the back of Gregor’s shirt and pulling him away, lifting his head into the air. I turned him upside down again, holding him by one ankle and pounding on his back.
Liquid spewed out of his mouth, this time tinged pink with blood. He began to breathe again as soon as his lungs had cleared, but his eyes stayed closed.
I laid him down next to Adam on the blue half-stretcher, then Zed and I ran for the ship again.
Sam killed a monster ahead of us, and Zed and I had to swerve to avoid its carcass.
A flash of blue light accompan
ied a clap like muted thunder to my right, as Torliam used his Skill to literally crush a group of monsters into the ground on one side, while on the other side battling a striking snake bigger around than he was, with his bare hands.
Many of the monsters, eyes wild and bellies distended, had turned on each other, attacking and feasting on the flesh of other members of the horde, but too many were still focused on us, chasing after us as we hurtled toward safety.
At some point, Jacky’s enlarged form had passed us again and reached the ship, holding Kris in her arms. Blood was streaked over them both. I wasn’t sure whose. A door on the side of the ship opened, and they disappeared inside. Torliam stayed outside to keep a path open for us. Sam and Birch shot through, and finally Zed and I, with our two passengers.
As soon as the end of the sled was through the door and Torliam had backed inside, Jacky slammed a hand into the panel beside the door to close it.
Dull thumps reverberated through the hull as monsters slammed into the side of the ship.
Torliam ran ahead to the control room, and we followed at a slower pace, ignoring the screams of fear traveling out from the room where the passengers had strapped themselves in. Hopefully they hadn’t caused any problems for Blaine in the time we were gone.
Blaine had moved aside immediately so that Torliam could take over the main control seat, and was hovering over both Kris and Gregor, muttering frantic recriminations against himself, and me, for allowing them to be placed in danger again. How could I have known this would happen? How could anyone have predicted this?
We strapped our injured into the bolted down seats of the control room so Sam could tend to them without any danger of them further injuring themselves if the ship was badly jostled.
The ship rumbled beneath us as it slowly lifted off.
I collapsed in a chair next to the big viewing window, looking out onto the Spire as it collapsed on itself. Stone crumbled and crashed, dust billowed, and the remaining guardians tore through the space it had once occupied as if maddened. Below us, monsters teemed around, some of them still attacking the ship.
Then, they scattered.
My back stiffened. “Wyrm!” I snapped. “Below us!”
The ship lurched as Torliam forced it higher, and Kris cried out in pain.
The wyrm burst upward, its thousand-toothed maw gaping open, growing larger and larger as it approached us. I knew it was impossible, but it seemed as if it would swallow us whole, ship and all. Instead, it grazed the bottom of the ship, its teeth hooking in, piercing and tearing at the hull.
Alarms sounded inside as the ship lurched. The passengers and flight crew screamed again. Torliam’s hands flew across the controls, and we lurched once more, then began to rise again as the wyrm fell back to earth, pieces of our ship in its mouth.
We were all silent, waiting to see what would happen.
“Nothing vital is damaged,” Torliam grunted, most of his attention still on the controls.
Those of us still conscious let out a collective sigh of relief.
Then, the ground below us burst upward again.
“We’re too high now,” Jacky said, her hands pressed against the glass. “It’s not gonna reach.”
The creature kept coming, more and more of its body shooting out of the ground, till it was fully extended. It still didn’t reach us.
A sigh of relief gusted out of me, and I felt lightheaded. I’d forgotten to breathe, in my worry.
YOUR AGILITY HAS INCREASED!
Then, both of the wyrm’s sides burst apart in a sprawling eruption of flesh and fluid, all down its length. Hundreds and hundreds of wings ruptured outward, each of them too small to lift something of its size. But they flapped together, at first frantically, and then with a synchronized rhythm. The wyrm’s fall halted.
Below us, the monsters tore ravenously at the flesh falling from it, and then at each other.
The wyrm began to rise.
“Of course it can fly,” I said, slamming my head against the glass.
Chapter 7
The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
— Anton Chekhov
As the ship got up to speed, we drew ahead of the wyrm, displayed now on a screen which showed the rear view from the ship. “Even this great cow of a ship should be faster than the wyrm. We may not completely escape it, but it shall not catch us,” Torliam said. “For the moment, in any case.”
“What do you mean, for the moment?” Sam said, his hands on Gregor’s chest.
“A wyrm never stops growing. They adapt to the needs of their situation, constantly. If it cannot keep up, it will become faster. Our ship cannot do the same.”
I bit the inside of my lip, letting the pain help to push me past exhaustion. “So we need to escape quickly. Can we go back through between those two trees, to return to Estreyer’s main level?”
“That door is not open from this side. There is another, but it will take longer for us to reach.”
“Let’s not waste any time, then.”
“More importantly, how badly are my kiddos injured?” Blaine said, leaning over Sam and the kids with his hands twitching like he wanted to be doing the healing himself.
“Gregor’s condition is the most critical, but he’ll be fine. He’s got some, umm, internal bleeding. I’ve already relieved him of the injuries, and now I’m just forcing the blood clots around his abdomen into his stomach for digestion. He can cough out the blood in his lungs,” Sam said.
Gregor did just that, sitting up and coughing harshly till a few mucous-red globs came up, then breathing normally again. “I saved you, Eve.” His voice was smug at first, but then he jerked and looked around till he saw Kris. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, her lower lip trembling a little. “Sam already healed me. Just some cuts, and my arm was broken so I have to be careful with it now. But I just realized I left Moose back in my room in the castle. I forgot to grab him when we were leaving!”
Gregor exhaled, then rolled his eyes. “Your stuffed animal will be fine. It’s not like it cares that you abandoned it.”
She glared at him and turned away with a huff.
Adam was still unconscious, because there was nothing Sam could do about the backlash from overusing his Skill. Sam had already healed the minor internal injuries and the new damage Adam had done to his back wound with all the jostling.
“Do the guardian-things feel pain, do you think?” Sam said. “I wish we could have helped them.”
“We would have been eaten just to help some tadpoles made of light,” Gregor said. “Do you want to get killed?”
Zed waved his hands at the two of them dismissively. “I think the more important question is, what just happened? Why did all those monsters decide to suddenly attack?”
“Those creatures are not native to this level,” said Torliam. “Very little made of flesh and blood can survive here.”
“So how did they get here?” I asked. “And why?”
“The Oracle planned this,” Blaine said.
I hesitated, but shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. She did send us here, but when the monsters showed up, she immediately gave me a quest to escape.”
“She can see the future, Eve,” Sam said.
“Exactly,” Blaine said. “Every time we listen to her, she leads us into danger. We might already be on Earth, if not for this diversion.”
I snorted derisively. “And there isn’t danger on Earth? Aliens just started a war there. Besides, I don’t think the Oracle can actually see the future, the way you mean. She told me she sees possibilities, likelihoods. Maybe this wasn’t supposed to happen. Because what’s the point of leading us here, just to get us killed by monsters?”
Jacky pursed her lips. “I don’t think the monsters were there for us. They attacked the Spire. Maybe we just happened to be in the way.”
I touched the crystal at the base of my throat. With a few mental commands, I brought up the VR chip description of the Voice
Skill again.
VOICE (SOVEREIGN CLASS): INCREASES CHARISMA. ACTS AS A BEACON FOR BEINGS OF POWER. ALLOWS PRESENCE AND WILL TO BE IMPOSED ON SURROUNDINGS. SKILL EFFECTS WILL EXPAND AND STRENGTHEN WITH PLAYER IMPROVEMENT.
“You may be right. Remember, part of my Voice Skill is to act as a beacon to ‘beings of power.’ I mean, they might have attacked us anyway, but we know it makes nearby monsters more likely to attack. Still, the timing of this, and the total destruction of the Spire, is really strange.”
Blaine rounded on me. “The question of what exactly went wrong can be discussed at a later date. I am more interested in what transpired before your untimely interruption. Was this detour worth it? Did you learn valuable information, or anything that will help us cure the Sickness?” His tone was aggressive, but I could tell by the set of his shoulders that really, he was just desperate for a positive answer, but waiting for disappointment.
I ran my fingers over the warm crystal melded with my skin again. “I…don’t know.” I turned to Torliam and raised an eyebrow. “There were others with this same symbol before me, though the Skills they got from it seemed to be varying magnitudes of power above my own. I saw a few things that I didn’t really understand the significance of, as well. For instance, it showed me someone using Chaos, and I think he might have been the mortal Behelaino gave a piece of her Seed to before me. I also saw other, stranger visions that might have been real, or might have been symbolism like the visions I get from the Oracle. I was hoping you could help decipher them.”
He frowned. “The Spire was brought with us from the old world, in the exodus. It has been outlawed for generations. I had thought it would give us clarification of the path we must walk to complete the prophecy, but I, too, received only visions of the past and other’s failed attempts to cure the Sickness. I believe I know of the woman who held my symbol, previously… Heldra the Victorious? Her Skill always lead her to the answer she sought, and yet she failed all the same. I believe you humans call this a Pyrrhic victory. There is mention in the history books that some believed her to be the subject of prophecy, destined to destroy the Sickness, but it is considered a myth. What else did you see?” He looked around at the others.