by Eddie Patin
"But why?!" Morgana asked, slowing her struggle in hopes of seeing an opening for conversation. "Why do you do this to my people?"
"Do you really believe they are your people anymore, girl?" the necromancer asked with a soft smile on his cleanly bearded face. "Why don't you ask them?" he said with a chuckle, then waved his slender hand again at the prisoners stuck on the walls. "No—on second thought, don't. They're all manipulated fools. Let's not waste our precious time."
"How are you still alive?" she asked.
"Ah, yes!" the necromancer replied, moving to press his palms together. When he looked down at the one hand bathed in blood, he decided against the gesture then met the young woman's furious gaze again. "I know that it was you and the other rebels that sent the planeswalkers to kill me. That was very ... annoying."
"But I saw your head!" she shouted. "That very head on your shoulders now! The demon brought—"
The necromancer laughed, cutting her off with a voice that easily sliced through the roar of his death machine. "The demon! Demon, indeed..."
"What do you mean by that?!"
"Do you really want to waste your last moments alive learning of other worlds?" he replied.
Fear shot through Morgana again. She tugged against the perfectly-still bony hands of her captors, but they didn't budge.
"No, then," she said, stammering, her mind racing for words, "my entire town is convinced that you made a deal with my brother, Owen Soloster! But I saw his necklace inside of a gargoyle today," she said, pushing the despair and terror deep into her to help her keep her wits. "Did you really make a deal with him? That's what Lillian ... but she was a traitor! I think it was all a damned coup. Was ... did you make a bargain with my brother? Did you let him live?"
"You mean did your brother betray you, Morgana?" the necromancer countered. He smiled and his pale, blue eyes bored into her desperate, waiting gaze. "No, girl. I made your brother into one of my soldiers a few years ago when he and his squad of Neanderthals attacked my tower."
Anger and tremendous relief flooded through Morgana at once and she felt strongly that she'd known all along. Her poor family had been played and viciously destroyed so that Estren and his people could take power.
She suddenly hated everyone; the whole goddamned town.
"Why did you attack that night, years ago?"
The necromancer smiled thinly then sighed. "That's enough questions, Morgana," he said.
Wild terror flowed through her again. She almost let it all out just then—almost sobbed and fell apart and begged the necromancer for life—then she struggled more instead. As the skeletons carried Morgana up toward the imposing machine belching with green fire and roaring like one of Jason's portals, the young woman howled in furious protest. She lashed out with one long leg and tried to kick the necromancer in the face, but he dodged back easily with a laugh. Morgana fought like hell, but it was hopeless.
A few doomed seconds later, she was being shackled on a round pedestal to black chains hanging from the top of the machine. Around the edges of the pedestal below her, a narrow gap all the way around dug down into the floor like an open ring. Green fire glowed and blazed from within, and as Morgana's terror-filled eyes adjusted to the pale, burning light, she could see grey, liquid stone—or something like it—bubbling several feet down in its depths like boiling, slate-colored porridge on a fire.
This was it.
Morgana looked up again and watched as the necromancer approached an intricate cabinet with several sliding shelves and pulled out a clean, glowing crystal heart. That was to be her new heart.
Would Jason, Riley, and Gliath be killing the gargoyle version of her later and pulling out that very heart?
She sobbed once then shuddered in fear as the dark man drew the sleek, black blade that he would use to cut her open...
Then he stopped, staring up at the ceiling.
The necromancer watched the darkness up there for a moment then narrowed his pale eyes. He placed the glowing heart back into the cabinet.
"They're early," he said. "Too bad." The dark man looked back at Morgana, who strained to understand what was going on. "You may have a few more moments, Morgana Soloster," he said with a thin smile, wiping his bloody hand on his shirt. "Enjoy this last taste of life."
With that, as the young woman watched with fear crawling through her heart like spiders, the necromancer's eyes rolled back into his head, showing nothing but white for a moment. Then—feeling like she was seeing things—Morgana stared in awe as he began to vibrate back and forth. All of his edges became blurry in a way that hurt her eyes. With grim determination and shocking speed, the dark man strode away from Morgana and the green fire machine toward a distant shelf, returning a short moment later with a large, gleaming steel skull in one hand. The necromancer then moved rapidly to a wheel of some kind sitting on the floor nearby and stepped onto it, straddling the center with his boots placed carefully around the—
Then Morgana heard it too. She looked up.
Over the loud noise of the green fire machine roaring and chugging around her—beyond the bubbling of the molten stone below her feet—she heard what sounded like thunderclaps outside. There were several loud ka-pows in quick succession on the other side of the ceiling, followed by several louder booms.
They were the deafening battle sounds of the warriors from the stars.
The Reality Rifters were up on the roof...
Chapter 29
"It's down!" Jason shouted. He swapped magazines, accidentally brushing his rifle's blazing hot barrel with his hand. "Ooh—shit!" Immediately feeling the heat push through the thin cloth protecting his hand, Jason was relieved that he was wearing gloves. He glared at the slumping form of the gargoyle on the roof. He'd just blown up its head like a cinder block from a few feet away.
As soon as the rift from the skeletal horde had snuffed out, the three of them were cast into darkness. Now, Jason had his night vision on again—bathing the gravel-covered roof with pale green. He'd also flicked on the IR Illuminator on his rifle's handguard and a brilliant spotlight lit up the dark and horrific world of the necromancer's monsters wherever he aimed. It wasn't very misty up on the roof.
"Gliath!" Riley shouted. "Get the door over there!"
"Yes, Ranaja."
Riley's Gauss rifle cracked through the night. Jason wondered why the soldier was using his advanced weapon instead of the lever gun—the Marlin with those hard-cast lead rounds was proving to be more damaging against the gargoyles.
Well, the necromancer was just inside, Jason thought.
As he turned to face the swooping sound of another gargoyle assaulting them from the sky, Jason saw Gliath's black form dashing across the roof toward what looked like a heavy, metal hatch built into a cobblestone area of the rooftop. Jason leveled his AK-47 at the incoming beast, who landed on the crenelated edge of the wall with a thud, crouching and preparing to leap. The monster leered in the brilliant spot of Jason's weapon light. He fired as fast as he could at its center mass. He didn't care about golem hearts anymore; not when their lives were on the line and they were here to rescue Morgana. His AK-47 boomed and belched fire.
The loud, triple snap of a burst from Riley's Gauss rifle rounds joined in and several pieces of the gargoyle's body, limbs, and one wing were blown away into flying chunks. The beast fell backwards off of the wall toward the steep mountainside below.
Then Gliath growled loudly, straining with all of his considerable might as he pulled the iron hatch door off of its hinges with a clattering crash. The leopardwere threw the door off of the side of the roof, pulling his shotgun to bear again. Jason saw bits of metal chains falling into the gravel that coated the flat rooftop.
"Good!" Riley exclaimed. "I'll lead! Jason—behind me! Ready with your rifting!"
With a quick check of his Gauss rifle's magazine, Riley dashed to the top of the stairs, waited for Jason to catch up, then headed down into the darkness.
Jason paused
for a moment to consider his night vision as they went inside. The unknown depths of the necromancer's tower were dark, but a bright green light flared like a bonfire somewhere down there. There was a massive machine of some kind chugging like a generator; it roared and crackled a lot like his rifts. Jason picked up Morgana's sword from the gravel where he'd dropped it and let the magical weapon fall into the strange, sideways dimension next to his hand. With his image intensifier on, Jason scrambled down the stairs to catch up to Riley.
As soon as they'd emerged from the protection of the narrow walls along the top of the stairwell to the roof, Jason saw a huge, vaulted room open up before them. Several amazing and terrifying things became visible at once as he careened down the stairs behind Riley and past the stairwell walls:
Gargoyles perched waiting for them on the stairs, ready to meet them halfway to the lower floor. The machine-thing making all of that noise was in the center of the room; a ten-foot-tall bizarre contraption with something like a smooth, stainless steel disco ball rotating around the top of it. Chains and shackles hung down from a manifold near the ball and the round platform at the bottom was surrounded by a fiercely dancing green fire that blinded Jason's enhanced vision. Along two walls of the huge chamber were people hanging in chains. The other walls were stacked with stuff on shelves like a warehouse with other heavy equipment and unknown things covered in huge, dusty sheets. There was also a woman hanging inside the blazing ring of green fire of the machine. A tall man—blurry and hard to see—stood before her.
As soon as Jason considered the blurry man, he saw a shining, steel object the size of a head floating across the room—directed by the blurry man's pointing finger—to land on a table. Then, Jason watched as the man—he was standing on a floating, flat disc like a manhole cover—started rising into the air.
The blurry man suddenly shimmered and spread out, creating fuzzy copies of himself! It was like a freaking Mirror Image spell from DnD! Several duplicates of the man on the floating disc fanned out—divided—as if Jason's eyes had relaxed and he was seeing double, there were six!
Then, all six necromancers pulled a shining pistol from their right hips and aimed at the Reality Rifters at the top of the stairs.
"Look out!" Jason shouted.
Riley was already on top of it, pivoting with amazing reflexes and putting the flying, blurry, multiple men in his rifle sights. With a sound that was tremendous inside the tower interior, Riley fired a burst at one of the six images. While his Gauss rifle wasn't loud in itself, the hypersonic bolts speeding through the inside air cracked so loudly that Jason's ears would have probably been damaged if he hadn't already replaced his eardrums with synthetics.
All three of the soldier's shots seemed to impact an invisible shield like the one that the flying orange skull had used before. Jason saw each of Riley's shots make a visible impact on something like a force field; each making a blue burst of light that rippled around the necromancer's form like the shields on a starship on TV.
The necromancer fired back almost immediately, just as a dark moaning sound filled the room. Each of six mirrored versions of him aimed a pistol and one fired a streak of bright, bluish-white lightning at Riley, which cracked and snapped as it instantly streaked across the room. It happened too fast for Jason to tell which of the six images was the real man.
Riley dodged with amazing reflexes—Jason saw the crackling bolt impact the wall next to them—then grimaced when tiny, branching arcs of electricity scattered across his jacket and rifle.
"Jason!" a woman screamed from below. The noise in the room was insane between the green fire's roaring and the machinations of the large device, the gunfire, and the growing low moan from below. But Jason recognized Morgana's voice.
She was alive!
"Morgana!" Jason shouted, suddenly concerned about the growing, low moan filling the room. It seemed to vibrate his bones, and Jason's head started pounding just like it did whenever he had a terrible sinus headache. That terrible sound was getting louder and louder and it hurt like hell. "Where are you?!"
Riley shot at the necromancer again. As Jason watched his friend fire—focused intensely on the flying blurry man—he saw several gargoyles rushing up the stairs toward them. Gliath was above them, battling more gargoyles that were invading from the open hatch above. The Krulax's long shotgun boomed again and again, filling the room with thunder.
Necromancer first, Jason thought. He aimed at the six flying blurry men with his AK. They all hovered on their discs, each aiming that lightning pistol at Riley. Jason saw Riley's shots impacting the invisible shield of one of the six, and immediately shot at that image as well. If they didn't take the guy down with these shots, they'd have to stop and deal with the charging gargoyles.
Jason's shots mostly missed. He saw two rounds impact the necromancer's shoulder and hip, sending a ripple of blue light out around the shield like phasers being diffused over a starship's shield in Star Trek or something. Then, two shots from Riley's three-round-burst did something different. One of the soldier's tungsten bolts seemed to slow to a stop in midair in front of the necromancer's right shoulder; strange, because the others before them had merely deflected away. Then, another bolt finally managed to languidly punch through in slow-motion, striking the man in the bicep.
The necromancer's six selves reacted in pain, lowering their pistols and wavering in the air on their floating discs. Then five of the six images shimmered like a released rift and vanished.
"Yeah!" Jason exclaimed. Then, "Gargoyles coming up!"
Jason fired at the necromancer again with his AK-47, but the man was still blurry and descended quickly to the floor, leaped off of his disc, and streaked across the room as if under the effects of a Haste spell. Jason missed again and again before losing track of the blurry man next to a stone wall and a tall shelf.
Riley was firing at the incoming gargoyles. One of the beasts was staggered by a burst of Gauss rifle bolts and tumbled down the stairs, crashing into another and sending them both rolling in a mess of stone wings, claws, and tails to the bottom.
"A little help?!" the soldier shouted.
Jason stepped down a few more stairs and stood next to Riley, opening fire when the soldier was clear. He shouldered his rifle and shot at the demonic stone faces of gargoyles that rushed up the long stairs at them. One beast that had avoided the tumble leapt up into the air, beating its wide wings clumsily in the enclosed space. That one—and the two recovered at the bottom of the staircase—made for three immediate threats. Two more were down below on the floor of the main chamber.
"Where's the necromancer?" Riley shouted above the gunfire. The lead gargoyle's face split apart like a shattered rock and it tumbled off of the un-railed staircase to the floor fifteen feet below.
Lots of fucking gargoyles, compared to fighting them one or two at a time before. At least with those two falling down the stairs, Jason and Riley had a few seconds.
"He disappeared!" Jason called back. "How did you know which one of him to shoot?"
"Thermal vision," Riley said. "You stay here! Gliath, help Jason!"
"Yes, Ranaja!" the leopardwere bellowed, shoving more slugs into his shotgun's mag tube.
With that, Riley turned and jumped off of the stairs—his hellhound-hide duster fluttering around him like a cape—and landed agilely on the floor below with a loud thump. He immediately brought the buttstock of his rifle around and smashed through the upper body of a skeleton down there.
Jason turned back to face the two gargoyles rushing up. One was sprinting up the stairs on all fours—almost in his face now—and the other vaulted up into the air, positioning itself to swoop at him from near the ceiling...
"Shit!"
Dumping several shots into the nearest gargoyle's center mass, Jason felt his rifle's stock kicking him quickly in the shoulder and saw his brass bouncing off of the wall as the beast's shoulder exploded, causing it to stumble again. Then he blew its head apart.
The deep, bone-vibrating moan from below made Jason feel like his head was going to explode! He growled and tried to focus. Aiming up at his next target, he tracked the flying monster with his front sight and fired just before it dove at him. He put two hits on the gargoyle—chunks of its rocky shell blew away with puffs of dust—then two booming shots from behind Jason shattered the beast's horned head with heavy shotgun slugs. As the monster plummeted and glanced off of the stairs on its way down to the floor, Jason looked back and up to see Gliath behind him, shoving more shells into his mag tube. The stairs above the leopardwere were choked with shattered bodies of more stony beasts that had tried to follow them down from outside.
Jason searched the main chamber for Riley and saw the soldier dashing around the floor, no doubt searching for the necromancer.
"Jason!" Morgana screamed again. Jason scanned the floor and the bright, green fire that dazzled his night vision for the source of her scream. The moan was making it really hard to concentrate, causing his synthetic eardrums to buzz and tickle like hell. Then, Jason finally identified the young woman hanging above the green flames of the loud machine.
There she was, shackled and almost naked again. Morgana was wearing nothing more than a loincloth just like back when he'd first seen her hanging on the cross. Her writhing and exposed body was painted black and her hair ran wild as she struggled at her shackles above the blazing green light of whatever the hell was going on below the platform.