Soulrazor

by Steven Montano

  As Cross stood all of the way up, he realized he was still trapped.

  The sea was vast. Churning black waves crashed against a distant rock formation in the channel, and the red sky bled against the horizon. The rain was cold and heavy, but he could still clearly make out distant derelict ships that drifted on the noisy waters, and he could tell by looking at the galleons they were abandoned, and had been for a long time. The creaking vessels slowly floated closer to the shore. Tatters of black sail rippled in the ice wind.

  He walked up the beach. The land beyond the dark sand was brittle grass covered in icy kelp. Old bones littered the ground, black and brittle.

  In the distance, plumes of smoke rose from clusters of dead trees and ruined villages.

  I’ve seen this before. This is familiar.

  His legs ached with every step. Soulrazor/Avenger was sheathed across his back, but otherwise he was unarmed.

  He was alone. The utter silence in his mind was unnerving. It had been so long since he’d been unable to hear the voice of his spirit.

  His arms trembled. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was well and truly afraid. The memory of what he would find in that village shook him – he didn’t want to be right, but he knew that he was.

  You can’t go home.

  It was much as he remembered it: the sheet-metal walls and clay molding that held the ramshackle buildings together, the low perimeter wall guarded by men with rifles and shotguns, woefully inadequate protection against the horrors of the wilderness, but they were soldiers, and they would die defending that little slice of the world, a place more important to them than anything else. He recognized the watering hole and the pig pen, the donkeys, and the camel.

  It was easy for him to find the house he grew up in before his family had relocated to Thornn. He knew it wasn’t real. It didn’t matter.

  Nothing had changed. It was if they still lived there, even though all the people were gone.

  His bed was the same. He saw Snow’s dolls, and his mother’s wooden figurines, fat round elephants and hippos, the only things she knew how to carve. One of them still bore her tear-stains from when she thought that he would die.

  That was the day they’d found out he was a warlock.

  Cross stumbled into the hut and collapsed to his knees. Tears ran down his face. His body convulsed with sobs. Emptiness filled him, so utter and cold he thought it would smother him.

  All he wanted, right then and there, was to be a child again. To go back to a time before the sickness, before the old mystic had come to save his life.

  Before Cross found out what he would become.

  “Mom,” he sobbed. “Snow…”

  He fell against the wall, and stared into the dark room that was his past.

  Time went by. The sun fell, and rose again. The air was bitter cold, and the wind from the sea grew loud.

  Cross didn’t move. He was wracked with sorrow.

  Get up, he told himself, but his body wouldn’t listen. He just leaned, uncomfortable, against the metal wall. His skin had chilled to the bone, and he shivered in place. His legs were numb.

  Cross thought he heard something, voices in the distance, men talking, children playing. A flute. A woman singing.

  I’ve lost my mind, he thought. Slowly, he turned his head.

  He saw the people he’d grown up with. They were all there, an impossible montage, a mirage saved for him and him alone. A gift from his new oblivion.

  It was as real as anything he’d ever experienced. He saw them, smelled them. He heard them. The air was bright. The world was saturated with color.

  He saw Jannik, a workman with short black hair and a leathery face, a man who’d always liked his mother, maybe had even loved her, but who’d always been too desperately shy to say anything (but they all knew, everyone knew, even she, and the fact that his mother never said anything either was, to Cross, even more sad).

  He saw Marissa, a teenage girl charged with watching the young ones, part schoolteacher and part nanny, really too young to be burdened with so much responsibility.

  He saw Kalos and Jeen, two soldiers who tirelessly watched the perimeter of their nameless little town, friends who acted like brothers, big and loud and frightening in their own way to a small boy.

  He saw Havek and Kyleara and June and Tyrus, kids his age, none of them even ten years old, alive and full of mischief, but not unmarked by what had happened to them, as they already bore their own scars (Havek only had one hand, Kyleara had seen her parents killed by the Sorn, June and Tyrus had been abused before they’d been rescued from a band of slavers).

  The more Cross looked into his crowded memory, into the cinematic scene that unfolded before his eyes and reminded him of his youth, the more imperfections he saw, the more reminders of the real, of the pain that had always been there.

  I was young. I couldn’t see it.

  He was almost afraid to keep watching. He knew what he would see.

  Finally, Cross stood up.

  Snow emerged out of the crowd. She was the only thing he could make out clearly; the rest of the village faded to a blur, a shifting mess of form, a smeared painting in the rain.

  She looked just as he remembered her.

  Her short black hair had been pushed back from her face, and her pale skin was radiant even in the failing light. She wore a white cloak and dark boots over a simple blue dress. Her leather choker bore a small cross.

  Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled at him, and when she smiled she tilted her head sideways, just the way she always had.

  Memories flooded his mind.

  He remembered her, walking by his side with a doll in her hand, or sitting by his bed when he was sick and she thought “Her Eric” was going to die.

  He remembered her years later, after they’d grown older, when he barely saw her anymore. There she was with her own life, someone he barely knew, and even though he tried to reconnect with her, even though he tried to become close to her again before she was assigned to Viper Squad to go on the first and only mission of her life, it was too little, and too late.

  I spent my life protecting you, he thought. Cold tears stung his face, and his stomach shook with pain. You were all I had.

  She kept walking. After a moment she disappeared into the crowd, and Cross was left alone. He couldn’t stop crying, no matter how hard he tried.

  It had been so long since he’d seen her. He’d barely been able to remember what she’d looked like. Almost every memory he had of Snow was of her death.

  “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m so…sorry…”

  “Go easy on yourself, Eric,” a woman’s voice said.

  She stood next to him. Everything about her was solid, more real than their surroundings. When she placed a hand on his shoulder, it burned. She seemed so familiar.

  “You tried to save her,” she said. “You try to save everyone.”

  Cross looked at her face. As his eyes traced the dark cloak and leather armor, the long gloves and pale skin, he realized that he knew her, and from more than one place.

  She is the woman from the keep. The silhouette from my dreams, where I struggle aboard a black ship on a black sea.

  But that wasn’t all. There was something far more familiar about her. They bore an intimate connection between them: a bond.

  She gently put her hand on his cheek and caressed it like he was some long-lost lover, and that was when he recognized her.

  She was his spirit.

  Not the original ghost who’d saved his life, the one he’d grown up with and had come to love as much or even more than his own sister.

  It was his second spirit. His volatile spirit.

  She was the gift from the obelisk prison, the caustic presence who always battled him like a caged and feral tiger. His friend, and his enemy.

  They’d come to trust each other, of course, over the passage of those short years, but it had been hard-earned, and in the end she’d abandoned
him, left him to his fate when they’d battled Jennar in the ruins of Thornn’s tomorrow.

  But she was something more…someone more, and he felt a fool for not having seen it before now. He’d always suspected she’d been someone he’d known in life. For a time, he’d hoped his new spirit was Snow, or maybe even Cristena.

  The sight of who it was sent a jolt of panic through his body. Fear and anger burned inside him, but she held him firm, and she wouldn’t let him go. She had some power over him in that place, some dread hold over his soul that she wouldn’t relent.

  “There, there,” she said. “Poor baby.” She leaned in close. Her hair brushed his face. “I’m going to make you pay, Cross. For everything you’ve done.”

  Cross’ strength drained beneath her touch.

  Margrave Azazeth – Red – smiled at him.

  EIGHTEEN

  RETURN

  She falls.

  Tears rain down and freeze into drops of swollen snow. The sky rips along the seams. The claws of night tear through the skin of the pale horizon. The rain turns black and stains the blanched landscape like ink on paper.

  White explosions fill the air. Drifts of dust fall like wounded angels.

  Again, she feels herself slip away from time.

  They are on the road. The crater is miles behind them. She sees herself, a small figure amongst her comrades, but not all of them are there. Loss burns inside her.

  I failed.

  Danica looked up at the sky. Dusk approached fast: they only had an hour or less to reach Wolftown. She considered the notion of going all of the way to Fane, but there was no longer any point to do so. They’d kept the item the Ebon Cities sought – the dark blade, the sword called Soulrazor – out of their hands.

  She wasn’t sure how she knew the sword’s name. She barely even remembered leaving the crater.

  They walked. Everyone was battered and weary. Ronan carried Maur on his back. Kane walked next to Danica and supported her weight since she’d injured her leg. She couldn’t recall how that had happened.

  Wolftown was directly ahead. Its ramshackle iron walls and smelted gates still showed marks of damage from the deadly Bloodwolf attack from just a few days earlier.

  It felt like it had been much, much longer since that happened.

  Flamecannons turned in their direction as they approached, and the men at the sandbags beyond the gate watched them with trepidation. The plains were barren and dry, and the sun was disturbingly bright. Clouds as thick as clay hung in the distance.

  “Where’s Ash?” she asked.

  Kane was silent. Ronan turned, and give her a strange look.

  “Ash is dead, Danica,” he said. He and Kane exchanged glances. “You don’t remember?”

  “No,” she said. “Cross?”

  Ronan said with his eyes what he wouldn’t say with his mouth. Maur looked down at the ground, miserable and exhausted.

  “You okay, Dani?” Kane asked.

  “No.” Her head hurt. She looked at the town as they drew closer, confused. “Mike…what the hell happened?”

  “We found him. We were in the future, I think, after Thornn was destroyed. Only…we stopped it. We had to, because we’re here now.”

  “Wait…that happened before…I went and told Pike about the attack on the city…”

  “Yeah. Well, we went to the excavation, and passed through the gate, and that was how we knew about the attack. That’s how we were able to tell Pike.”

  “But…in order for us to be able to tell him…” The pounding in her head intensified. She barely remembered telling Pike anything. She remembered a battle, and she remembered Thornn, both before and after the attack. She remembered flying into the sky.

  She remembered Cross. She remembered a battle in the ruins of the city, and she remembered watching Korva die.

  No. This isn’t right. Somehow…this isn’t right.

  They entered Wolftown. The sky over the city was filled with the smoke of cooking fires and smoking meat. The people of Wolftown turned their aggressors into meals and commodities, broke them down to their useful components. The air tasted of wolf flesh and smelled of burned hair.

  The cold air gripped the team as they stumbled through town and found Roth and Creasy, who were surprised to see them.

  “Did you find your friend?” Roth asked.

  “Yes,” Kane answered. “But we couldn’t bring him back.”

  “And we lost another,” Maur grumbled. “Ash.”

  Black’s throat felt like she’d been breathing chimney fumes. Flashes of the battle played out in her mind. Blazing shadows, and dripping fiends. The black sword…

  Soulrazor. It’s a piece of The Black. Just like The Sleeper was. It’s what they were after.

  “What happened to the sword?” she asked.

  Time had passed. To her it felt like only seconds, but in actuality it was hours later. The sky was dark and thick with blood clouds. The wind rattled Wolftown’s metal walls and pelted them with stones and branches. The song of the gale played like predatory howls. Bonfires curved and rippled in the wind. Licks of fire vanished into the black night like runaway fireflies.

  A tin plate covered in wolf meat sat on Danica’s lap, and she held a mug of beer in her hand.

  When did I get here? What the hell is happening?

  “Sword?” Creasy asked.

  He and Roth each had a pair of women with them, and they sat with Danica, Kane, Ronan and Maur in a circle around a wide fire. Other fires illuminated circles of hunters who drank and caroused, celebrating life.

  “Cross broke it,” Ronan said. His eyes shone with concern. So did Kane’s, and that worried her. “Then he fit it together…”

  “…with Avenger,” Black nodded.

  She put her face in her hands. A terrible buzzing sound echoed through her skull. She felt like she’d been drugged.

  “Dani, what the hell is wrong with you?” Kane asked. He set down his plate and drink, moved in front of her and took her shoulders in his hands. “Are you all right?”

  “NO!” she shouted, and pushed him away. Wolftown fell nearly silent. “No, Mike, God dammit, I’m NOT all right!!! Ash and Grissom are dead, and Cross is trapped back there!”

  “Dani,” Kane said quietly. “Cross is dead. He vanished through the ground, and then that explosion…”

  “He’s NOT dead,” Black said firmly. “And I can prove it.”

  She stood up and found her belongings, stacked close to the fire with the rest of the team’s equipment. She stumbled for a moment, as she was dizzy and weak, but she shook her head and righted herself and rummaged through her pack.

  Temporal displacement. That was what it was called. Humans weren’t meant to travel or exist in different times. They knew that it was possible – The Black had ripped creatures and locations through time as well as space when it violently re-wrote the world – but humans had never learned how to do it, and to good cause, since by all accounts it was incredibly dangerous.

  Theories on whether manipulating the time fields was possible or not were irrelevant in light of the undeniable fact that the human mind was simply not meant to undergo severe temporal pressure. That was especially true of mages: the bond with their spirits left them susceptible to the arcane anomalies present in any sort of time shift or dimensional fold.

  Black’s spirit clung to her drunkenly. His normal burning rage and desire had been quelled, and he’d retreated into hiding like a scared animal. Her mind was so disheveled she only just then noticed his absence.

  That explains why I’m so out of it. I wish I could remember things more clearly.

  She kept digging through her pack. She knew there was something there she needed, even if she wasn’t entirely sure what it was. She felt Kane’s eyes on her.

  “Dani…you gone cuckoo on us, Hon?”

  She found it. The moment she touched the object as it fell out of the cloth Elias Pike had wrapped it in, she understood.

  “Her
e,” she said, and she tossed Cross’ pistol to Kane. He looked at it in surprise, and she knew he was about to say something flippant and give it back to her when he noticed something. He held the pistol up closer to the bonfire to get a clearer look.

  “Where the hell did you get this?” he asked.

  “Pike gave it to me,” she said, “when I told him about the attack on Thornn. It was recently dug up in a survey, and it only come into his hands that very morning.”

  “It…looks old,” he said.

  “It is old. Almost twenty years old, and it’s covered in carbon scoring and arcane residue of the variety used by the Ebon Cities. Pike said Laros used magic to have it dated as soon as it was brought in. He also tested the arcane residue. Just guess who that pistol belongs to.”

  Kane stepped closer to her. Fear burned in his eyes.

  “And this?” he asked, pointing at the inscription. “What do you make of this?”

  Danica looked at the scrawled message: HELP ME.

  The fact that it was Cross’ handwriting was not in question. Both she and Kane gave him endless grief about his horrible penmanship. They’d know his hand anywhere.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.

  A wolf called in the distance. A few men rose and meandered towards their weapons, but the wolf was too distant to pose any immediate threat.

  “No,” Kane said with a nervous laugh. “My guess sucks ass compared to yours. So let’s have it, lady.”

  “He’s alive,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Think about how things happened…more importantly, think about the order they happened in. Cross fell into that goop and became temporally unstable. He goes on the mission alone, and we chase him. In the original timeline, everyone failed. The Ebon Cities attacked before we even left the city, and Cross blew up and took half of reality with him. But we changed that.”

  She paused to let that sink in. Kane looked a bit lost, but he nodded for her to continue.