Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘It’s no elemental,’ Lynx breathed, ‘but that’s magic still. Fire and lightning, night magic surrounding it too maybe.’

  ‘So?’

  Before he could reply, the golantha abruptly pushed off from the slope it clung to and threw itself across the rift. A powerful stroke of each crooked limb seemed to propel it a long way before it dropped down on to the bridge, covering forty yards in a single bound. The creature itself was twenty yards long from its broad head to stubby tail, but moved with remarkable agility and Lynx realised the blur of darkness trailing each limb was, at least in part, a leather frond of wing.

  It ran with snaking speed along the bridge, ignoring the great stone bowls of fire, until it neared the far side whereupon it rose up and leaped, again beating at the air with all four limbs to hurl itself on to the rift wall above the bridge. There was a rumble and crack of stone as it landed, followed swiftly by a deafening roar, and they all reeled from the noise.

  As the sound died away Toil looked out over the edge again, soon joined by the others. The slope was such that they needed to lean precariously out to get a good view. Now the ground did shake as the golantha ripped at a gallery with one sweep of its claws and screams came from within. The white flash of icers skipped off its body, making it flinch and snap at the source of the shot. The orange flower of a burner bursting over its forelimb it ignored, but eagerly lashed forward with its flail-tongue at the assailant. More icers struck its flank, prompting another roar. This time its tongue was wreathed in spitting arcs of lightning as it struck back.

  ‘Burners don’t seem to hurt it much,’ Lynx muttered, watching the monster move swiftly across the slope towards the lesser bridge. A figure in black and white was still caught in its jaws as it went, shrieking madly until it bit down. There was a crash and a flash of light. For a moment Lynx thought the Charneler’s cartridge case had exploded, but the body was not ripped in half nor the golantha injured.

  ‘It’s the magic,’ he said with mounting certainty as the remains of the Charneler were allowed to fall, uneaten, from the crackling strands of tongue. ‘That’s what it’s after.’ He turned to Toil, anger mounting inside him. ‘Did you know? Or suspect, at least?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That it fed off magic – when you divided us up, did you mean to keep Sitain away from you?’

  ‘Sitain’s the only other one with a lamp!’ she snapped back. ‘We couldn’t go together!’

  ‘But you put her with the person we’re most likely to leave behind and the hardest hearts in the company.’

  ‘You’ve been underground too long,’ Toil spat. ‘It’s messing with your head, making you paranoid.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Hey!’ Kas shouted, stepping between the two of them. ‘Now’s not the fucking time for any of this.’ A rumble of noise from Reft’s throat indicated the big man agreed with her. Kas went to the edge again. ‘More importantly, it does look like it’s hunting someone down there.’

  Lynx looked out. The golantha was working a diagonal path up the rift wall, away from them but ascending too. If it was after Sitain, it didn’t look like she could get away from it easily. As he watched, it ripped away a section of pillars and drove inside, worming its narrow body into the space beyond. The sound of destruction continued and Lynx realised the interior wasn’t as safe as they’d hoped. He looked around, realising the great support pillars and archways were well spaced – enough for even a large creature to get into so long as it could smash away the thinner parts.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Go?’ Toil said, astonished. ‘You want to go and fucking fight that?’

  ‘I want to see if the others need help.’

  ‘You’re mad! We’ve got to pull back, let it root out the Charnelers then make for the bridge once it’s sated.’

  ‘We’re going,’ Lynx stated, glancing at Reft. The big man nodded, Kas too. Toil looked from one to the other, her face tight with anger, but eventually she swallowed it and shook her head wearily.

  ‘You people are mad. Deepest black, stupid and mad! Come on then, without me you’ll be stupid, mad and dead.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Lynx said through gritted teeth.

  They retraced their steps a short way, heading down with as much caution as they could muster. What had happened to the remaining Charnelers, Lynx couldn’t say. Perhaps they’d all fled into the ruins, perhaps they’d stayed to fight and been massacred. Either way the sounds of gunfire had faded and the quiet was broken only by the occasional muffled crash of stone.

  As they neared the sounds of its progress, Lynx realised the golantha had worked itself a long way into the interior now. The broad tunnels and grand scale of the Duegar ruin apparently worked in the monster’s favour, easily accommodating its lithe body. Once they’d closed on it Toil led them deeper into the ruin, trying to skirt around the creature rather than attack it directly. Rounding one great natural pillar Lynx glimpsed a group of Charnelers on a high walkway, fleeing from the golantha.

  He raised his gun, ready to fight, but only the last of the group spotted him. Instead of shooting he just yelled a curse and carried on going, no doubt saving his ammunition for the native horrors. Lynx was happy to do the same and followed Toil in a long arc around the monster. As they neared whatever it was hunting, he felt a jolt in his guts. The sound of gunfire rang out once more, this time from somewhere close at hand.

  Rounding the next corner he almost fired at a figure across the chamber until Toil raised a hand in front of him. Lynx looked closer and realised it was Anatin, the greying mercenary commander bent over and exhausted. He was cradling his left hand, which looked like it was wrapped in a rough bandage.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Toil called.

  Anatin yelped and looked up, clapping a hand to his heaving chest as he realised who they were.

  ‘Fuck!’ was all he said at first between panting breaths.

  Lynx’s eyes widened. Anatin’s hand wasn’t bandaged – the stump where his hand had once been was. A belt was tight around the arm, keeping pressure on it, but somehow the man was still going despite his injury.

  ‘The others?’ Toil repeated.

  ‘Ashis fell behind,’ he shouted with a shake of the head. As he made to continue, a larger figure appeared behind him, emerging silently from a tunnel; Teshen.

  ‘About time,’ he called as Lynx’s group hurried over. They reached the pair just as Varain and Sitain also appeared, both looking exhausted but uninjured. ‘Damn thing’s chasing us.’

  ‘Charnelers?’

  ‘Sure, them too maybe. Didn’t seem so important all of a sudden. One put an icer through Anatin’s wrist as Ashis went down, but no one’s so keen to stop and fight right now. A couple tried to pin us down and got munched for their efforts.’

  ‘Ashis’s gone?’

  The man’s face was blank and hard. ‘We won’t get back to her. Either the Charnelers have killed her or she’s eating a burner right now.’

  Lynx nodded, though he felt a sickened feeling in his gut. Seeing someone die was something he was used to, but leaving them to die alone in the dark cut him to the quick.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said, forcing himself to focus on something else.

  Teshen pointed back behind them. ‘We ducked through the smallest doorways we could find. It’ll be looking for a way round.’

  ‘It’s not giving up the chase?’

  ‘No chance.’ He cocked his head in Sitain’s direction. ‘Reckon we’ve got something it wants.’

  Lynx nodded. ‘Looked that way from where we were; any magic it can sniff out.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ Teshen looked first at Anatin then Toil, but neither spoke immediately.

  ‘We give it what it wants,’ Toil said slowly, looking straight at Sitain.

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ the young woman gasped.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What? Tie me down and leave me lik
e a sacrifice while you run for it?’

  Toil gave her an evil smile. ‘Could be worth a try. You a virgin?’

  ‘We’re not doing that,’ Lynx broke in, half-afraid Toil was serious. ‘But you’re good bait, better than our cartridge cases even.’

  ‘Plus we need those if we’re to kill it.’

  ‘I’m not sacrificing myself so you can get a clean shot! In case you’d not noticed, the damn thing’s been shot at a few times anyway.’

  Lynx shook his head. ‘I’ll do it. Burners didn’t seem to have much effect so hand those over, they’ll smell like magic all the same.’

  He opened the looted cartridge case that hung at his waist and pulled a handful of icers from it. These he put into his own before swapping in most of his remaining burners and sparkers. ‘Cough up all of you, burners and sparkers – grenades too if we’ve got any left. The golantha looks like it’s made as much from fire and lightning as anything else under that armour. A bag of tasty treats for it might make me the best option.’

  ‘Golantha?’ Teshen asked as they all complied.

  ‘Ask Toil,’ Lynx said with a shrug. ‘Mebbe another day, though. Let’s move from here before it finds a way through, hey?’

  ‘How’s this going to help us?’ Anatin demanded as they started walking. ‘You’re taking all our most powerful cartridges – icers aren’t doing much more than beestings to the bastard.’

  ‘Enough beestings and it’ll go down,’ Lynx said, ‘but I’m not waiting for that. Can we lure it somewhere and collapse the roof on it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Toil said. ‘The Duegar built their cities to last centuries. To take down a large stretch would be damn hard.’

  ‘Okay, so we lure it out to a bridge, kick it back down the hole it crawled out of and hope the fall slows it up enough to get ourselves across. The Charnelers guarding the far side are dead I reckon.’

  ‘Burners and sparkers don’t hurt it,’ Toil said, ‘but earthers will. Nothing shrugs off the force of an earther impact easily. That’s why icers sting it; it isn’t the cold that hurts.’

  ‘How many earthers do we have?’

  Reft held up a splayed palm, Anatin volunteered two and Varain had another three. Like Lynx, the others didn’t often bother with earth-bolts and they knew without looking that their plundered cartridge cases wouldn’t contain any. He took one now, as did Toil and Teshen, one shot each proving scant comfort but better than nothing.

  The group were walking fast through chambers, looking left and right as best they could to try and work out where the golantha was. There was no sound of breaking stone to follow. The halls here were larger so, while it might have been forced on to an oblique path by the odd bottleneck, it wasn’t having to smash its way through.

  ‘Shattered gods!’ Varain yelled suddenly, pointing through an archway.

  They all turned and froze as flickering light illuminated the far side of the neighbouring chamber. For a moment they just stared until dancing trails of light cut the gloom and the scrape of claws on stone seemed to fill the air. A dark, broad head with huge tusks rounded a corner and that broke the spell. The mercenaries all broke into a sprint in the other direction while a roar of fury boomed through the tunnels behind.

  Lynx heard it coming but didn’t pause to look back. It was large enough that it couldn’t run through most tunnels and arches, but if it reached them out in the open he knew it would chase them down easily. Just as he thought that they came to a massive domed room, the Duegar lamplight picking out great friezes of geometric shapes and strange beasts soaring amid the clouds. The dome itself was specked with glowing shards of crystal, casting a clear-enough light over their predicament.

  ‘Make for the far side and cut back,’ Lynx yelled, glancing behind. He couldn’t see the golantha yet but could hear it coming. ‘I’ll go this way, try and find my way to the bridge.’

  ‘Follow the light,’ Toil replied as the others fled without a second thought. She pointed through the archway he’d spotted, beyond which a faint glow gave some texture to the dark. It wasn’t much, but the smooth floor seemed to gather all the meagre scraps of illumination available and he knew he’d worked long hours in no better.

  ‘Head that way and let the bridge lamps guide you.’ She paused. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘We’ll soon see.’ Lynx’s attempt at a smile became more of a grimace, but even that was lost to the dark. All the same, Toil gave him a slight nod before she turned on her heel and sprinted away after the rest.

  Just as he was about to run Toil slewed left, away from where the others were making for. Lynx felt his heart stutter as he watched her head into the darker depths of the ruin’s interior and soon become swallowed by Shadows Deep.

  Away from Sitain, away from me. Oh, shattered gods, was this her plan all along? Were we the ruse?

  Lynx felt his guts turn to ice as he stared after her. Ahead of him, the strange light of Sitain’s lamp vanished as the rest of the mercenaries turned a corner and a wave of numbing, irrational terror struck him like a fist. He staggered back, gasping as the black closed in around him and his chest seemed to tighten with every feeble effort for breath.

  I’m going to die in the dark.

  The words seemed to float through Lynx’s mind, a jack o’ lantern that somehow worsened the darkness of terror enveloping him. Heart hammering, muscles wavering, he almost fell to his knees. Sour fear welled from his stomach to choke up his throat, his head swimming as phantom shapes twisted before his eyes. But, even as he felt himself stagger, a flame of rage was kindled, the shackles he fought every day to keep on it falling away. As the darkness tried to consume him, a blind beast reared up and faced it, aware only that what it hated was all around.

  Somehow it gave him the strength to move, to fill his lungs and turn towards the scrap of light still visible, through the archway. As he did so, the menacing click of claws on stone cut through the air behind him, unmuffled by stone walls.

  Lynx turned and saw the glowing strands of the golantha’s tongue flicker at the edge of the chamber entrance, seeming to caress the corners of stone as it sought him. Fresh panic jolted him into movement and Lynx started off for the light ahead of him, barely remembering to pull a sparker from his cartridge case and drop it gently on the ground.

  A trail of breadcrumbs! he thought, feeling drunk with fear. Shattered gods, mebbe I’ve finally tipped over the edge.

  Hoping the monster would follow the scent, he fled down the short tunnel that led off in the direction of the rift. At the apex of the tunnel’s curve he set another cartridge down just as the monster roared and set off in pursuit of him. A muted cracking sound followed and Lynx felt a moment of hope then a surge of panic as he realised it must have taken the bait of his discarded sparker.

  Means a horror from the deepest dark is following you, he reminded himself, so fucking run!

  It wasn’t far to the rift, he soon discovered, a vaulted hall spanning most of the distance he had to cover. There was debris of shattered stone littering the floor of it, the thirty-foot-high columns that looked out over the rift mostly a brutalised mess now. This was where the monster had broached the ruin and on the periphery of his vision Lynx thought he glimpsed pools of blood and broken bodies.

  He didn’t stop to check. The imagined horror was enough to spur him on and ignore the stitch building fiercely in his chest – years of a generous appetite catching up with him again. The golantha was close behind and he hadn’t reached the rift-side avenue on the other side by the time it forced its way into the hall. Lynx tossed the burner in his hand behind him as far as he could, hoping it would buy him a few more seconds. He turned the corner and started the sprint to the bridge, realising with a jolt it was only fifty yards off.

  That was when he noticed the bedraggled squad of Charnelers – eight or nine of them, all with their guns pointed his way.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Run, you fools!’

  Lynx sprinted towards
them, yelling as loud as he could but not slowing when their guns twitched. If the monster hadn’t roared as it entered the wrecked hall behind him, they would have likely shot him dead. As it was the Charnelers simply paled and looked past the running mercenary, frozen with fear by what was following him.

  Lynx decided he didn’t care and raced on, chest burning and knees screaming, but terror kept him moving. The light of the great oil lamps on the bridge shone out through the darkness, filling him with hope despite the fact they’d make him a clear target. He craved the light all the same, as much as he feared the shadows behind.

  The Charnelers were close to the mouth of the bridge, just a dozen yards short of it, and Lynx gave them a wide berth as he ran past. His cartridge cases flapped madly at his side and he was forced to run with one hand holding them for fear of setting the contents off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Charnelers shrink back. A whimper escaped more than one as there was a thump and clatter of rubble behind him. The golantha heaved itself out on to the wide road leading to the bridge, scattering fragments of stone.

  Mage-guns rang out almost as one great sound, the sharp report of icers echoing out across the rift as Lynx raced past. He didn’t see what followed, but he heard the sinister rasp of the golantha’s tail as it swept forward and a deafening roar of fury. He rounded the great pedestal that bore one stone lamp bowl and kept running, legs barely able to keep going as his strength wavered. The full expanse of the great bridge shone before him, bathed in yellow light. Had he had the strength, Lynx would have howled at how far it now looked to the other side.

  One last shot cut through the air behind him then there were only brief screams, followed by the crackle of ice-bolts succumbing to the golantha’s strange hunger. Lynx lowered his head and willed himself on, black spots appearing before his eyes as his lungs screamed for air. After twenty yards he could stand it no longer and tugged the spare cartridge case free, dropping it on the ground as gently as he could manage before running on. He hoped that would buy him time to get clear, time enough for the others to arrive and save him.