by Eddie Patin
With that, the Reality Rifters all snatched up their weapons and—along with Morgana Soloster—ran for the front door.
Chapter 15
Jason and the others ran out of the front double doors with Riley, Gliath, and the young woman Morgana.
There was a woman screaming nearby.
As Jason looked frantically across the courtyard and the exit to the village street with dead, scraggly hedges on either side of the road, the first thing he noticed was the fog. A choking, grey mist had settled through the town, blotting out the night sky and cutting visibility down to a mere thirty feet or so.
"Holy shit!" he exclaimed. "The mist!"
"It comes every night," Morgana cried, dashing past them and sprinting across the courtyard. "Come on!" she called back.
Riley smirked at Jason. "She seems crazy to me," he said, then ran after her. "Go ahead and shift, Gliath."
The leopardwere paused and changed, growing almost twice his size in a few heartbeats. His body stretched and reshaped into his 'warrior form': lean, long, and coated with sleek, black fur. Gliath suddenly had his tail again. His legs buckled and reformed into the bestial legs Jason was now familiar with, and the long, straight Native-American hair had pulled in to become part of the Krulax's thick, black mane as his face and neck transformed into that of a large, dark panther.
A moment later, Gliath was running after Riley and Morgana again, the big Versa Max shotgun held in his black, clawed hands.
Jason ran to catch up, thankful that his knee problems were long gone.
The distant woman screamed and screamed, interrupted by a man's shouting, then the screaming resumed. It was a terrible sound, and filled Jason with icy-cold dread. He was afraid of what he would see when they reached the woman, but the AK-47 in his grip felt solid, and he knew that he could help.
Morgana led them to a simple two-story house down the street from the manor. Jason could hear the woman screaming upstairs and could only imagine that she'd either been abandoned with a grievous wound or was actually being tortured.
There was a strange, high-pitched squeal that gave Jason gooseflesh, and the woman's screaming renewed. She sobbed and made sounds like a desperate animal. The second squealing sound was keen over her own cries, coming in ragged, vibrating bursts...
Dread bloomed in Jason's belly.
He suddenly remembered his night vision and reached down to his left hand to turn it on. This was a dark ages world. There were no electronic lights. The most illumination he'd find in there were candles—maybe torches—but through the thick, grey haze, the inside of the house was dark as hell.
An instant before his image intensifier powered on, Jason saw a shape fly by in the sky with a deep whoosh sound that made him jump.
Then the world was lit up in Jason's right eye with various shades of desaturated green. He could see a little deeper through the shattered windows.
As they all paused at the front door, the two different screams upstairs made Jason's stomach turn. He looked at the others—all illuminated with a pale green sheen; Gliath's feline eyes glowing—then he shouldered his rifle.
"Let's go!" Riley exclaimed. He kicked open the front door with tremendous strength, making Morgana's eyes go wide. Shouldering his Gauss rifle, Riley led the way, taking quick steps into the main room of the house. With the green glow of his night vision, Jason was reminded of his many video games involving modern soldier fire-teams clearing a room.
Gliath lingered—probably intending to take the rear like usual—so Jason went next, flicking the safety off of his AK and putting his nervous trigger finger on the side of the receiver. Morgana went in next to him and the leopardwere followed.
Clearing the ground floor—aside from the cellar which they ignored—was quick. Whatever horror was happening was clearly going on upstairs. Riley led the way up the crude, wooden steps to the second level, confident as hell, and Jason followed. The screaming was coming from one room near the top of the stairs...
Jason followed Riley into a bedroom. When the soldier entered and sidestepped to the left to let the others in behind him, Jason stepped to the right and they both aimed their weapons at the monster perched at the window.
The gargoyle was fearsome and full of demonic points and spikes. Its wings were folded in behind its lithe, muscular back, and it regarded Jason and the others with a twisted, malicious face that seemed carved from stone with a variety of horns jutting out from its forehead, cheeks, and chin. Its eyes glowed bright white in Jason's right eye. With his left normal eye, he saw that the glow was crimson-red. The gargoyle's entire body—head, limbs, wings, tail and all—looked like solid, rough stone, but it moved like a fluid, living creature. It was about the size of a man, and stood near the window over the broken-up remains of what might have been a baby crib. Held in the monster's right hand by long, cruel claws was a bloody doll, dangling and decorated with blood, dark gashes, and little bits of viscera. The woman they had heard screaming was on the floor, leaning up against the wall, sobbing and insane with desperation. With wild, crazy eyes, she reached out to the demonic creature, but she was disabled; her legs were shattered and twisted. Jason saw the woman's ropy entrails half-spilled out on the rough, wooden floor.
With a sudden jolt of fear and nausea, Jason realized that the doll the gargoyle was holding wasn't a doll. It was a baby. It was that baby that had been making those strange squeals.
"Oh my God!" he exclaimed.
In the next instant after they barged into the room, the gargoyle grinned, revealing stony fangs, and quickly lashed out with its tail, impaling the screaming mother's neck with the rocky barb on its end.
The screaming stopped abruptly.
"No!" Morgana screamed, trying to rush forward, but Gliath caught her to keep her out of the line of fire.
"Zap it!" Riley shouted, and he and Jason both opened fire.
Jason aimed at the creature's center mass by instinct, fired off two thunderous shots, then he raised his sights and aimed at the creature's head instead. Riley's Gauss rifle was a lot quieter than his AK-47, but the hyper-sonic bolts that it launched through the air made loud cracks as the soldier let off two three-round bursts.
Morgana screamed and immediately clamped her hands around her ears as the bedroom was filled with deafening rifle-fire and muzzle flash.
The beast took many hits. Some of the shots punched right through the stone. Others created bright sparks. The monster's left hip was shattered just as its right arm (holding the baby) was severed at the elbow in an explosion of rock fragments. The baby, clawed hand, and forearm that held it all fell to the floor. As the gargoyle collapsed onto the wrecked crib, Jason fired two more shots, and—between his and Riley's assault—the creature's head exploded.
Rock shards and chunks of stone showered down around the room.
"It's dead!" Jason shouted, taking his finger off of the trigger.
When Riley stopped firing, Jason moved to rush up to the creature, but the soldier stopped him with one strong hand.
"Wait," he said, watching the partly-crumbled body, keeping sights on target. "Hold on a minute."
"Why?"
"Might not be dead."
"We shattered its freaking head!"
Riley held his sights firmly on the fallen creature's body. "Just a few seconds, Jason. Hang on. Remember—these are golems, right? Maybe they don't need a head to keep moving."
Good point.
Jason stopped, shouldering his rifle again. His eyes drifted to the dead baby and a wave of horror swept over him. He saw the little infant's guts coming out from a tear in its round belly. It was bleeding from several cuts in its soft, helpless skin. Now, it was covered in rock dust.
"Oh God..." Jason muttered, suddenly sick and trying not to throw up.
Morgana screamed and cried, then ignored Riley and broke free from Gliath's grasp, running up to help the woman. The mother on the floor was so terribly wounded and mutilated, though, that Morgana didn't see
m to know what to do, and stopped just short, falling to her knees and sobbing, looking down at the broken woman.
Jason figured that the gargoyle had disabled the mother and forced her to watch while it tortured her baby to death.
Fucking terrible.
What a terrible world.
Morgana scrambled over to the fallen infant, seemed afraid to touch it—hovering over its tiny body with trembling hands—then she turned away and sobbed some more.
"Okay," Riley said, suddenly clapping Jason on one shoulder. With Morgana crying in the background, he said, "Let's get the heart. Maybe these golems need their brains to operate."
"This is fucking monstrous," Jason said, taking two steps forward on shaky legs.
Riley smirked then—glancing back at Morgana—quickly stopped himself and met Jason's gaze solemnly. "They're monsters," he said. "They do terrible shet. Now come on and help me with this. Let's figure out how easy or hard this job will be." The soldier handed his Gauss rifle to Gliath, who took it as he stood silently and stoically in the bedroom doorway, then pulled Jason's mini sledge hammer from his belt.
They walked up to the mess. The beast was ghastly; a frightening and downright demonic-looking creature that looked like it was carved by a twisted, gothic artist. The ruined baby crib was splattered with blood, and Jason tried to avoid looking at the corpse of the infant on the floor nearby. He assumed that the blood was from the baby until he noticed dark red fluid seeping from weird meat that was bonded with the stone in the areas of the gargoyle's body where they'd penetrated.
"What the fuck?" Jason asked, leaning in and pulling a bloody chunk of hair off of a shard of stone. He was immediately swept with revulsion and shook his hand to get rid of the offending horror. At least this time—after learning his lesson on Maze World—Jason was wearing gloves.
Morgana was staring at the dead woman and crying.
Jason wanted to somehow console her, and he approached. He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder—God, he just wanted to make her feel better—but he pulled his hand back instead, unsure of what to say.
When Riley suddenly smashed the body with his sledgehammer, the impact made Jason jump.
The soldier bashed at the gargoyle's stone torso again and again until a big crack appeared and spread and a chunk toppled to the floor.
"Gross," Riley said, hammering on. Jason looked over and saw strange, coagulated blood oozing out through cracks and voids in the stone body. As Riley broke up the torso, it became even more disgusting, eventually revealing bizarre stinking flesh and bones that was fused with the rock; even an obvious ribcage, which Riley shattered with the hammer.
"Oh my God—we have to do this thirty times?" Jason exclaimed.
"Just think of all that gold," Riley replied.
"Maybe this is why the Corsairs bailed."
"I reckon so. That, or the necromancer totally kicked their asses and they couldn't keep doing what we're doing now."
There was a lot of blood and strange, part-stone/part-flesh meat and entrails. As Riley worked on the monster, trying to get to its heart with the sledge hammer, Morgana eventually calmed down and rose to her feet, glowering with hatred and radiating sadness. She quietly moved to the back of the room to stand by Gliath, watching Riley work with a sneer on her face. She regularly brushed the hair out of her eyes with shaking fingers.
Jason looked back and saw a glow from within the carnage.
"I see something!" Jason exclaimed when a bright pinpoint of light appeared, magnified in brilliance by his night vision eye.
Riley stopped. "Yep. That's it," he said, then resumed chipping away at the stony chest enough to get in at the glowing heart inside.
It was as if the gargoyle had a thick stone hide, but a weird, meaty interior full of organs and bones. Once Riley had cleared away enough of the rocky armor from the chest cavity, he was able to push his gloved hand through the broken breastbone. Then he grimaced, pulled, and removed a glowing, bloody stone the size of a human heart! It was like a big, yellowish quartz rock illuminated by a strong and warm internal fire that flickered and undulated constantly. It lit up the room like a glowing nightlight.
"Wow!" Jason said. "Was it hooked up to any arteries or anything?"
Riley shrugged. "I just pulled it out." He handed the bloody thing to Jason.
Jason looked down at it with a frown, then put his rifle onto the floor and removed his backpack. He pulled out an extra shirt, wiped the blood off, wrapped up the golem heart, and shoved it into his pack.
"There's number one," Jason said with a frown.
"Thank you," Morgana quietly said as Jason geared up again. "We could not have saved—"
She was interrupted by a loud swooshing sound outside the window, and a heavy crunch of something landing on a nearby roof, breaking several tiles. Jason and Riley both climbed over the body and looked out of the window.
Another one of the fiends was perched on a roof two houses down to the south. It had landed on the ridge, almost concealed from sight by the thick fog from where they were. The night vision in Jason's right eye wasn't helping much with the mist—the thick fog was mostly a bright blur—but he hoped that it had helped him see the distant monster a little better than he would have with his naked eye.
Jason shouldered his rifle. "What's that—about fifty yards?" he asked.
Riley put a hand on his shoulder. "Let me."
The soldier stood in the window, aimed with his Gauss rifle, and fired off a three-round burst. Each round cracked when it split the sound barrier outside, echoing across town and the mountains beyond. Jason saw the gargoyle react, stunned, as each round punched it in the face. Several pieces of stone went flying off of its features down to the ground below. Riley fired another burst, and this time the gargoyle's head exploded. It reminded Jason of shooting cinder blocks back on Earth.
The body toppled off of the roof ridge, bouncing once as its leg smashed the overhang, then the gargoyle crashed into the street below.
"Let's go outside," Jason exclaimed. He turned, excited again, then paused when he saw Morgana watching them with a mixture of emotions on her face. "Come on," he said to her softly. "They only come out at night, right?"
"Yes," she replied, pulling hair out of her face. Her cheeks were smudged from tears.
"Let's kill as many as we can before morning," Jason said. "Maybe we can save some people."
Morgana allowed the briefest smile.
The four of them ran back outside and approached the dead gargoyle that Riley had sniped from the window. As soon as they reached the headless creature—it lay in an impact crater in the road as a twisted heap of stone limbs, wings, and a long, vicious-looking tail—Riley put his rifle down, pulled his hammer, and went to work.
As the soldier bashed on the gargoyle's torso, breaking open its chest cavity, Jason kept his AK shouldered and looked around in the mist, covering the team in case another decided to attack in that moment. When he looked at the house next to the dead gargoyle—the one whose roof had been landed on—with his night vision eye he made out the pale figures of two adults deep in the darkness of the ground level, watching them through the gaping breaks in the front window's barricade.
"People stay inside at night?" he asked as Riley pounded away.
"They try to, yes," Morgana replied." The Chosen patrol near the Crossroads, but otherwise do not help with the gargoyle attacks. "Not all of these houses are occupied anymore, and many offer no real barriers to the beasts."
"That sucks."
When they were done with the same lengthy, grisly task, Riley had reached into the monster's bloody chest cavity and pulled out another yellowish quartz-like stone that glowed with the same warm light. Jason wiped the blood off and tucked it away into his backpack with the other.
From there, the Reality Rifters began walking aimlessly through town, watching for more gargoyles, which flew by from time to time in the shadowy edges of the thick mist. For a while, Riley encour
aged them to stay close to the buildings and largely out of sight, looking for attacks of opportunity. Later, they changed their tactic to offering themselves up as bait, strolling down the middle of the street.
The main roads were empty and quiet other than the sounds of their boots, breathing, and the occasional cries and crashes in the distance deeper within the fog.
At one point, Jason caught sight of two gargoyles swooping down from the sky, emerging from the mist like demonic ghosts and flying down into an alley.
"There!" he called, pointing with the muzzle of his rifle, but Riley had already noticed.
Riley fired off a quick burst at one of the monsters. His cracking shots panged off of the beast's stony hide, and it paused in the air while its buddy disappeared into the alley.
Jason seized the opportunity and raised his rifle, putting his sights on center-mass and carefully firing off shot after booming shot. Most of his shots hit the gargoyle dead center, and one round broke the base of a wing. The creature plummeted into the alley, landing out of sight with a crash.
"Yeah!" Jason exclaimed, grinning at the others.
"Be careful," Riley replied. "Try not to hit it in the chest."
They ran to catch up. Jason swapped magazines.
"How are your ears?" Riley asked as they slowed down and approached the writhing body of the gargoyle in the alley. It was still moving, thrashing around with its stone claws, gouging the ground and leaving scores in the stone brick wall next to it. It glared at them with murderous eyes and opened its grey, stone-like mouth as if to roar or hiss, but made no sound.
Gliath stepped forward, raised his big shotgun, and shattered its rocky skull with a magnum slug and a boom that shook the alley.
Jason hadn't thought about it. He'd fired his AK indoors, and they'd all fired many shots since the night started. The shots—especially his—were loud, but he had no pain. There was no underwater sound or piercing agony like icepicks being shoved through his eardrums, like before.
"They're great!" he replied with a grin. "I can hear great, and the shots are loud but they don't hurt. So cool!"