Dream III: Wind of Souls (Dream Trilogy Book 3)

by RW Krpoun

  Aside for his concerns for the safety of his friends Shad was having an excellent time; it was at times like these, when the odds were tight and their chances slim that he found a sort of savage, raw joy. There was no dishonesty, no social facades, just skill, physical exertion, and the will to see a thing to the bitter end. No more planning, pondering, or trying to out-think anyone, just steel, sweat, and muscle. There was a purity to it that could be found nowhere else.

  This probably wasn’t the worst melee they had been in since entering the various spheres, Fred assured himself as he used a ranged Heal on Jeff and then bashed in the skull of a wounded naga, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort on the part of the snake-men. The smoke and lights kept them from bringing their numbers to bear effectively, but their individual courage and commitment couldn’t be denied. He hit Jeff with another ranged heal and parried a spear-thrust with his club. Stepping over a dying naga the big Texan picked up his pace so as to keep Derek visible through the dark haze.

  Derek could tell that the venom from his various wounds was overcoming the potion’s defense of his system, but there wasn’t time to worry about that. It seemed like they had been advancing through the swirling, purple-lit smoke for an hour, but he knew it couldn’t have been much more than a minute or so. He had been wounded several times and all his armor charges were dust, but Fred kept hitting him with healing so it wasn’t too bad. He decapitated a spear-armed naga with an expert yokomen and then caught and bound in place a serrated-edged scimitar of another snake-man with a two-handed suriwaza block. While the naga’s blade was briefly immobile he ripped the wakizashi from the back of his belt and plunged it into the sword-wielder’s torso; leaving the weapon (the blade being the one he had recovered from the bones earlier) in the naga he moved on.

  Jeff caught a descending blade with both of his and kicked the naga back; he had discovered that legless creatures seldom anticipated being kicked. He had burned off all six healing charges in his turtle shell, which had also stopped a vicious spear-thrust, and could feel venom starting to constrict his chest, but there was no time to do anything about it. The smoke spells were clearly past their half-way point so if they didn’t reach the pillar pretty quick the archers would turn them into hedgehogs, Fang or no Fang.

  Crushing a snake skull, Fred hit Derek with a ranged heal, bowled over another naga, face-stomped a downed snake-man, and turned to back towards the pillar as he checked their rear. The smoke was thinning, but still hid them from the archers, who continued to pour shafts into the fray, mostly hitting the floor, and less often a naga. The big Texan was concerned about his declining stock of ranged heals, the weariness throughout his body, and the distance left to go. If the Fang didn’t get them into the shaft they would die the instant the smoke faded enough for the archers to see them. Strangely, the healer felt confident in the planning of whomever had set up this whole affair; unlike the Talons’ plans, which always seemed crazy before the fact and stupid afterwards, this operation was working like a Swiss watch.

  Shad parried a curved-blade sword with his jitte, the blade striking sparks off the jitte’s steel rod, and hacked a terrible gash across the snake-man’s torso. As he sidestepped towards the stone shaft, now just a dozen feet away, he felt a hard punch on his lower back as the rest of his armor charms flashed to powder. Burning pain and warm blood running down his back followed a second later, and the warder knew that he was slain: the ivory plate his three armor katari were mounted on was hot against his chest. The arrow had gotten him in his kidney, and but for the katari he would be dead instantly; as it was, he knew that he had only minutes to live.

  For a moment bitter regret washed over him, but he snarled and forced himself to move, to ignore the growing agony in his back and the sorrow that threatened to un-man him.

  Slapping aside a spear-thrust with his sword he forced himself to stagger across the last dozen feet to the shaft, ignoring a slash that scored pain across his ribs.

  There was indeed a Fang-shaped socket in the dense dark stone, and nothing else: no sign of a door, no wards, runes, or even carvings, just a dark cavity in the side of the vast stone pillar. The warder dropped his jitte and fumbled at the Fang’s case with fingers that were losing their dexterity. Leaning his angled sword against the stone he lifted the artifact from the cage on its belt with trembling fingers.

  Fred was slapping a couple touch heals on himself to close up a nasty gash on his leg when he saw Shad hobble ahead of the group to the pillar, an arrow standing out from his back. “Shit!” the big Texan mumbled, parrying a spear-thrust with his club. “Double-time!” he bellowed and trotted through the dispersing smoke after the warder, smashing a naga prone with a savage sweep of his dragon bone weapon as he went.

  Shad looked very bad, the healer saw as he joined the warder at the base of the pillar: pale and visibly shaking as he awkwardly hefted the Fang. The warder was on the verge of a system failure brought on by stage IV shock; the arrow must had hit a kidney, throwing the Texan’s system into a cascading failure reaction that would inevitably lead to his death unless aggressive corrective measures were taken.

  The medical challenge before him caused Fred a split-second’s pause, and in that brief moment Shad brought the Fang to bear and slid it into the socket. As Fred pulled un-ranged healing charms from his pouch and reached toward the slumping warder the world closed into a warm black nothingness that swept the healer’s consciousness away like dust before a broom.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The afterlife was remarkably like lying on a dusty concrete floor, Shad discovered, which while not great news, was certainly not as bad as it could be.

  Then someone kicked the bottom of his foot and he heard Jeff say, “Get up. You’re not dead.”

  Shad rolled over and sat up, realizing that he didn’t hurt anywhere and didn’t feel the effects of venom anymore, but he was still tired and thirsty. “Where are we?” he asked, rubbing his face.

  “You’re not going to like this,” Jeff offered a hand to help Shad to his feet.

  “I generally don’t like much of anything.” Shad took in his surroundings: the Black Talons were in a rectangular chamber carved from living stone that was illuminated by four crystals set into the ceiling. At one narrow wall was a door that was simply a slab of stone with a lever next to it; at the other was crude wooden shelves stacked with gear. A rough wooden table and a half-dozen simple chairs completed the furnishings. An etched jade plate the size of a playing card on a simple black iron frame stood in the middle of the table.

  Fred and Derek were already seated at the table. As Jeff and Shad joined them Derek gestured towards the jade plate. “Touch that and you get a recorded briefing. You were out longer than us, so we listened to it twice already.”

  “I figure you were down so long because you were the worst hit,” Fred added.

  Shad realized he was wearing combat boots and dun-colored battledress, the latter very much like the old rip-stop jungle-weight BDUs except for the color. The others were dressed likewise. “OK, being inside the pillar I get, but what is with the battledress?”

  “We’re not in the pillar,” Jeff drummed his fingers on the table. “We’re in a different sphere.”

  “What?” Shad was shocked. “How? The Fang was powerful, but not that powerful.”

  “The Fang was just the match that lit the fuse,” Derek explained. “The pillar was the artifact. It housed the Lance, which acted like a focus for power drawn from the Tree, and zipped us here.”

  “Wait a minute: we didn’t get the Lance?”

  “The Lance was destroyed by the effort of getting us here. Midori was right, the Lance could banish someone, but she didn’t realize that it was already pre-addressed.”

  “So we’re trapped?”

  “No, but we are screwed.”

  Shad sighed. “We’re always screwed, but trapped is something else entirely. So the plan is still underway?”

  “Yeah,” Jeff shook his head.
“The jade plate is a recording from the original group. They changed the Lance to work with power stolen from the Tree. That’s why the Death Lords couldn’t find it: it was buried next to one of the most powerful things on the Isle. The Fang needed to be exposed to the World Stone to complete the spell because the original group’s plan wouldn’t work until the Stone was in play.”

  “So we know the plan?”

  “The endgame is all that is left,” Fred muttered. “We are supposed to knock out the Rift itself. That is the big secret they were guarding: they weren’t not looking to win a battle, they were looking to win the war.”

  “OK, I’m getting confused,” Shad confessed. “Somebody take it from the top.”

  “The original group changed the Lance and positioned it next to the Tree,” Derek explained. “Undetectable on several levels, and the naga had no clue what was afoot. They stashed the Fang and useful gear well-hidden from prying eyes, and told their successors that when the World Stone started to move to get the Fang. They also told their successors to train outside the levels systems because when the final push came they would need to be outside the class system.”

  “Just like Fu Hao told her Black Assembly.”

  “Yeah. Well, the descendants took the easy path, and when the Stone came into play they were caught flat-footed. That’s why they needed us: we exist both inside and out of the class system. Other than that all Midori and her group knew was that the Lance was a ticket off the Isle.”

  “So all the hell we went through was to get to here? And why didn’t we go through a library to set classes and skills?”

  “That’s the interesting thing,” Jeff beat a tempo on the table top. “We’re in the Dead Lands. A dead sphere. There isn’t any classes, no levels, no options. Here, we’re just us.”

  “Which is why Midori and her buddies were supposed to learn old-school,” Fred noted. “This room was set up to equip whomever came through with suitable gear. It didn’t matter who came through, they would find equipment suited to their natural skills.”

  “I think Midori and her people got the message a little jumbled in the handing on from generation to generation,” Derek said thoughtfully. “I think they thought that you needed the normal training outside the level system to recover the Fang and its activation.”

  “That makes sense,” Jeff nodded.

  “Anyway, we’re here instead of the expected people, but the room’s enchantments adjusted, so it doesn’t matter. The original group’s planning has remained top-notch.”

  “OK, end game, our own skills, just ourselves,” Shad mused. “So how do we kill the Rift?”

  “The good news is that it is simple: just smash a crystal rod. The bad news is that there are a large number a psychotic beings between us and the crystal,” Derek grinned.

  “Just smash a crystal? No hocus-pocus?”

  “Frodo just had to drop a ring into a big hole,” Jeff pointed out. “The key to this is timing: the World Stone has to be in play to create the conditions where we can pull one fuse and shut down the whole machine. They planned this tightly.”

  “The key to this is the secret of necromancy,” Derek explained. “We already had some of the pieces. See, the Dead Lands are yet another escape attempt from the Prison, the first one, done with the Old Power. It failed, as all the others did. The ones behind the escape attempt were really bad and really powerful, from way back in history. They started tapping the power of life forces, drawing off plants at first, then creatures, finally people. There was a lot of drama and sorcerous activity, but their goal was to gain eternal life while keeping their power, the core concept being to get the time to figure out how to break out.”

  “But it didn’t completely work,” Jeff picked up the explanation. “They turned their world into a desolation, so they created the Rift as an effort to break through to a healthy sphere. But they waited too long and big bosses died off in the effort. The smaller lights became the first Death Lords, drawing life from the Rift while they looked for a way to use the Rift to gain the sort of power their bosses had. The answer for their problem was the World Stone; the Wind of Souls would open up the Isle to the effects of the Dead Lands, allowing the Death Lords to harvest the life of plants, animals, and sentient creatures as magical power.”

  “OK, I’m getting it,” Shad nodded. “So the minds they were embedding in their Undead creatures came from here?”

  “Yeah,” Derek nodded. “The Dead Land is described as a barren wasteland populated by the restless souls of the original population’s dead, trapped here by the Rift and driven mad by the passage of time. Not that they were nice people to begin with. The Death Lords use them as operating systems for their creatures, and most return here when they get ‘killed’.”

  “Most do,” Fred corrected. “Some get put down for good by warders.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, they’ll form bodies of dirt or sand and defend the Rift if they realize what is going on.”

  “So why is the Rift vulnerable now, and how do we get home?” Shad checked his wrist: the two ward tattoos remained, but the line that indicated experience was gone.

  “It is working at full capacity so any damage will create a cascading failure. More importantly, every Death Lord here moved to the Isle, meaning that they will have no damage control capability.”

  “If we kill the Rift every Death Lord, or at least every ranking Death Lord, dies, because they are drawing life from the Rift,” Shad nodded. “Sending us home.”

  “Yeah. The tile had information on how to use the collapse of the Rift to get back to the Isle, but we don’t need that.”

  “Wait: how did the original planners know that all the Death Lords would leave?” Shad demanded.

  “They didn’t, but they left arcane systems in place to track the Rift and its power flows when the Fang activated. This place was intended to prep any group,” Derek explained.

  “You would think the Death Lords would have noticed this place.”

  “Not really,” Derek shook his head. “Other than tracking the power flows this place was inert, and the area, in fact the entire world, is dead and magically ‘hot’. Hard to detect much of anything, at least with arcane powers.”

  “Derek thinks they pulled all the Death Lords in and used a lot of them to effect temporary plugs to the Tek’s leech points,” Jeff said. “If the campaign progresses fast enough it could work; it’s a strategic risk for the Death Lords.”

  “If we kill the Rift the Tek are screwed,” Fred said thoughtfully. “Collateral damage of the positive sort.”

  “So how do we find the Rift’s weak point?”

  “The jade plate,” Derek jerked a thumb at the device. “It will lead us there. Supposed to be a few hour’s walk.”

  “Do the Death Lords know we are here?” Shad asked.

  “Depends if they figure out what the power surge on the Reach means. The area is unreadable to most arcane effects, but the Lance frying itself stealing power from the Tree ought to have created a massive power flare,” Derek rubbed the small of his back with both hands. “I would like a nap, but it isn’t advisable given our time crunch. If the Death Lords figure out what we are up to they’ll flood back into this place.”

  “Damn.” Shad pondered the news. “It is awful sudden. We keep trudging along, one thing after another, and suddenly we’re on a last run to the finish.”

  “It went fast in the Prison, too,” Jeff nodded. “A critical mass of events, the way I figure it.”

  Shad sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “We had better check out the gear and work up a mission concept.”

  The shelves held a pile of empty assault packs, stacks of tactical gloves, a number of dirt-brown tactical vests, neatly arranged ceramic ballistic inserts, a dozen old-style US Army steel helmets, an entire shelf of MOLLE pouches marked with a subdued Red Cross, gray cartons, Leatherman tools in brown nylon pouches, and a row of firearms. Water bottles and canned rations filled the bottom shelf.
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  “This is MOLLE gear, but it is the same color as our clothes,” Jeff examined a vest. “No maker marks.”

  Shad grabbed a gray carton and opened it. “Twelve gauge, three-inch shotgun shells, triple-ought buckshot. Smooth bases, unmarked carton, and twenty-five rounds to the box. This isn’t real world stuff; I bet they just grabbed one example and duplicated it. They didn’t bother with the markings.”

  “Makes sense,” Derek dragged an unmarked flat of label-less bottles of water and ripped away the plastic cover. “At least they thought of water.”

  “We can die happy,” Jeff grinned, holding a water bottle up in a toast. “We have seen Shad unable to identify not one, but two firearms.” The other two Talons solemnly bumped his water bottle with theirs.

  “Bite me,” Shad said without heat as he studied the disassembled weapons before him. “This one strongly resembles the Kel-Tec second-generation KSG, but with additional features. The other one is very much like the Atchisson AA-12 Assault Shotgun, only with a much more ergonomic layout and better balance.”

  “Helluva spell they put on this place,” Fred observed.

  “With the limitless power of the Tree to tap, the sky was the limit.” Derek pointed out.

  “But R&D on modern weapons?” Jeff shook his head. “Sounds unlikely.”

  “I don’t think they did any R&D,” Shad started re-assembling the weapons. “I think they drew in the plans and specifications for the best combat shotguns extant, only they confused ‘best’ with ‘prototype’. I think these are copies of models under development. The KSG in particular has been subject to user input and complaints.”

  “Great, weapons without practical testing,” Jeff sighed. “I heard a lot of bad things about the KSG.”

  “Kel-Tec isn’t the Cadillac of firearms,” Shad agreed. “But the company put out a second generation model that addressed the complaints, and refitted first generations to second generation standards for free. They may not be number one, by they are trying hard with the KSG. The AA-12 has seen a lot of testing over the years. Anyway, it’s what we have. Fred, what about the first aid kits?”