by B.J. Keeton
Chapter Twenty-one
Damien Vennar liked what they had done with the place. The last few centuries of renovations had left the interior of Ennd's Academy almost unrecognizable, but most of the changes were nice. He was not sure that he would have gone for the same decor; the steel-gray was unpleasantly sterile, but the beige sandstone was enough to offset that feeling.
The dining hall was behind him, and he was not sure where he was headed now. Once upon a time, the dining hall had been connected to the primary research laboratories, but that was no longer the case. He was amazed that there were no other people nearby, but he was glad for it.
Other people would complicate things, and he felt a twinge of sadness as he thought of Swarley Dann's corpse wrapped in vines on the botanical terrace. He was not sad for Swarley, though; the boy was an acceptable casualty. Years of doing his job and playing the role he carved out for himself had hardened Damien to casual loss of life. One thing he had learned through the years was that some people just got in the way of his plans and had to be removed before they became even greater complications. Swarley had come out of class early and become a complication. Damien did not regret taking a life to fulfill a mission.
Yet, he felt ashamed. He was ashamed because Swarley had been one of his grandson's best friends. He was ashamed because he had taken advantage of one of Ceril's relationships to further his own plans. When he killed one of his grandson's only friends, he had crossed a line.
He did not regret crossing it; he was just ashamed that he did. But if he were in the same situation again, he would do the same thing. Still, he was ashamed of what this news might do to Ceril if he ever found out.
Damien promised himself he would never let that happen.
A voice from behind him interrupted his thoughts. “Excuse me, sir?” said a young girl. She was no older than Ceril had been when Damien had last seen him. She was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, with copper hair pulled back into pigtails, freckles, and blue eyes. Damien was a tall man, and this girl came to just barely above his navel.
He whipped around to meet her, prepared to remove another complication to his plans. He waited a moment and said, “Yes?”
“I'm sorry to bother you, sir, and I know I'm probably going to get into trouble for this, but could you tell me how to get back to the Phase II dormitories?”
“What?”
“I know, sir. It's been the better part of a year already, but I keep getting turned around in the halls and losing my bearings. My mom says I was never very good at finding my way around and that she was amazed I even got through Phase I. I went to dinner in the dining halls with my friends, but I had to leave early because I have to take a final that none of them have to take, so I thought I would cut through this way because I think I remember someone telling me that I could get back there by this hallway, but I'm not so sure. I think I might have taken the wrong corridor from the one they pointed out because I don't remember these colors being in the girls' side. The boys, sure, but the girls? I think I'm lost.” She finally shut up when she had to take a breath.
Damien looked at the young girl and smiled. “I'm not sure I would be the best person to help you find your way back, to be honest, miss. If I had to guess, though, you could continue down this hall until you find someone who could. Maybe a professor or another student.”
“You're not a professor?” she asked, and he shook his head. “I'm amazed at that, sir. You look like you belong here. I don't know why, but you do. Thanks anyway. If you're not a professor, are you a student? Do they take older people—no offense—to be students at Ennd's? If they do, then I haven't ever heard about it.”
“I'm not a student, either, my dear,” Damien said. “I'm a…a consultant. I am trying to find my way back to Headmaster Squalt's office.”
“So you're lost, too?” she asked.
“Not so much lost,” he said, “as I am a little turned around.”
“We should stick together,” the copper-haired girl said. “My dad tells me that when I'm lost to find someone who knows the way, and if I can't find someone who knows the way to just find someone because if you're both looking for the right direction, then maybe the other person will see things that you couldn't.”
Damien frowned and thought of Swarley's body. The skin on the back of his hand began to ripple as the nanites in his blood prepared to Conjure a quick way for the talkative young girl to die. “I don't think that would be such a good idea. We're going to two entirely separate places, miss. Why don't you run along. I'll keep an eye out for the girls' dormitory and you do the same for Headmaster Squalt's office. If we happen to meet again, we might be of some use that way.”
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you say, sir.” She waved and started moving quickly down the hallway in front of him. “Bye!”
He waved at her and wondered if he had made a mistake when he told her the truth about where he was headed. It probably didn’t matter. The girl talked so much about so many different things, if his destination had somehow managed to find its way into a conversation, it would be so buried under so many other tidbits of impertinent information that no one would give it a second thought.
Also, if he were to need to, Damien figured that he would be able to find and kill her with little problem.
He continued down the hall, and he heard the little girl scream. It was a short yell, not an extended howl, but it was full of emotion that made Damien get gooseflesh.
Damien was a hard man. He had seen and done things his entire life—and it was a long life—that would make other people weep in horror or regret. He had learned to steel himself against tragedy and shock, but when he saw the little copper-haired girl's dead body, he got angry.
Not because she was dead. No, he had been ready and willing to end her life. What he had not been ready to do was disrespect her when he did so.
Blood was everywhere. Damien spared a split second to take in just how much blood was in the little girl and how significantly it managed to spread along the corridor's walls and floor. He stood in the center of the hallway now. To his left and a few feet ahead of him, lying in a pile that very much resembled how Damien kept his unwashed laundry, was at least part of her body. What flesh he could see was mangled, and he was tolerably certain that a shoe stuck out of the pile.
He swept his gaze to the other side of the corridor and that's when he gave in to the rage. The girl's eyes were staring at him in horror, her mouth frozen open from her dying scream. Her arms lay at her side, but not in any traditional sense. They were severed, still leaking blood that was forming pools that coated the corridor. This young girl had been murdered and brutalized in less time than it had taken him to walk twenty feet.
He understood killing was sometimes unavoidable, but this kind of brutalization was never necessary. What kind of person would do a thing like this?
Damien realized he was not dealing with a person when something whipped past his head. The realization quelled his anger almost immediately, but opened the door for a completely different kind of rage: the kind that comes when something was trying to kill him.
The old man ducked to the side with a grace he hadn’t expected. He took what cover he could from the slightly curved corridor wall and allowed himself a few seconds to survey just what exactly was going on. He was in Ennd's! How could that little girl have been killed there? She was supposed to be safe there.
What was going on?
The corridor came to an end a few feet ahead. It met at a perpendicular intersection with another hallway whose walls were also gently curved. From both sides of the intersection, Damien saw what had killed the copper-haired girl and had tried to kill him. Vaguely humanoid constructs stood almost ten feet tall, bore the head of either a jackal or falcon, and held either a shimmering stone axe or a staff that arced and crackled with blue-white energy. Security golems, he thought. Great.
Somehow, he must have triggered a security protocol. He would have to fig
ure out how later, but right now, he had bigger concerns than how he got into the situation.
He assumed that it had been a bolt of some kind from one of the golems’ staves that whipped past his head. Judging by the condition of the girl's corpse, he was damned lucky that it missed. He hadn't seen these golems in action for centuries; he hoped that Ennd's hadn't upgraded them significantly since the last time he'd seen them. They were formidable opponents, and this was the first time that Damien had ever found himself on this end of their wrath.
He peeked his head around the corner as far as he dared and tried to get an accurate count of how many of the constructs there were. They came around from both sides of the connecting hall, and he counted five. He expected at least three more, unless the Academy had renovated that protocol, too. Given the level of security they had in other areas, he suspected that the golems were only called in on the most serious offenses.
He was flattered that he seemed to be considered a serious offense. He smiled at the thought. It had seriously been too long since he had done this.
He could hear the golems coming closer. If he remembered correctly, they communicated wirelessly with one another, so there were no audible or visible signals. The team who had created the sentries had designed them from Ferran mythology, and he remembered how exceptionally dangerous they had been in the past.
Now, Damien was hopelessly outnumbered, and he just didn’t know how his body could handle extended or powerful Conjuring at this point.
Their footsteps came closer. He could now hear the electricity crackle from the staves. He could hear the Annuban golems swing their stone axes and strike the floor and the wall. Their footsteps became wet as they passed through the copper-haired girl’s blood.
He had to think fast. If he didn't, he wouldn't survive this encounter. Damien knew how the golems worked, but if there were as many of them as he thought, he would stand no chance head-to-head. Even if his body could handle the stress, eight security golems were more than he could Conjure against.
He would have to use them against one another. In the confined space of the corridor, he hoped that it wouldn’t be a problem.
More bolts of electricity whipped down the hallway and scored the walls. He had to act fast, or he would end up being killed where he stood. He took a deep breath, readied the nanotech under his skin, and hoped that his magic would not fail him as he stepped directly into the patch of an Annuban's swinging weapon.
The axe missed, but just barely. It struck the wall almost exactly where his legs had been. Not even a second, he thought. Any slower and you'd be dead, you old bastard. He had to pick up the pace if he wanted to live through this.
The nanites under his skin came to life. They coated his lower arms and hands in blackness. They served no purpose yet, but they were ready. Damien saw the pair of golems who were leading the charge. He had maybe three seconds before they noticed him. The strike that had barely missed him was random, meant as a warning shot for anyone in the vicinity.
And it had nearly killed him.
The nanites in his body went to work. Despite his age, Damien needed to be able to move like he used to. He knew pushing his body this hard would take its toll, but the situation was a little more severe than he had expected. He felt his whole body tingle as he activated the vast majority of the nanites in his system. They surged with power. For the time being, he would be able to move and act and fight like a man a fraction of his age. Damien prayed to anyone who would listen that his method of saving himself from being killed wouldn't end up with him dead anyway.
Even in mid-battle, it made him somewhat sad that the only time he ever felt this good was when he engaged the nanotech inside him. Despite having sworn it off and despising the technology coursing through his veins, using the machines felt like going home after a long vacation.
Damien ran directly at the two golems in front, and their eyes locked onto him. With his nanite-infused blood, his momentum was greater than what it should have been from a standstill. The Annuban swung its axe at the spot where the old man had just stood, while the Horrith golem's eyes glowed a fierce yellow. Its staff spun upright and slammed into the ground. Electricity spiraled from the bottom to the top and then arced immediately to where Damien Vennar had stood, scorching the ground at the moment his companion’s axe struck the same spot.
Damien’s feet dropped from under him, and he slid under the poleaxe and directly into the golem's shins. The force was not enough to knock the golem over. That would have been too much to ask for—a domino effect of killer robots that would have made the situation easy to escape from. Instead, the blow unbalanced the Annuban enough that Damien was able to knock the weapon from its hand with a quick snap of directed nanites. Blackness surged from Damien’s forearm and threw the axe behind him. The weapon was far too large for him to wield effectively, but at least it was no longer in the contruct’s hands. He got to his feet quickly, barely dodging another bolt of lightning from the Horrith’s staff.
The other golems were beginning to notice him now. He ran toward the left wall and pushed himself away from it, using his body as a projectile. He slammed into an oncoming Annuban's chest. Again, the impact was not enough to knock it down, but it didn't matter. He had shoved the giant robot close enough to the Horrith's crackling staff that arcs of energy ran up and down its body, frying whatever was inside.
That’s one, Damien thought. The lifeless Annuban toppled forward onto the Horrith that held the staff. The dead weight of the robot forced the electric staff into contact with the Horrith’s falcon-like head. Apparently, only its hands and arms had been designed to withstand the current from its weapon in anything. When the staff pressed into its body, arcs of current spread through the golem, and killed it. You'd think we’d have thought of that, Damien mused.
He took a mere second to admire his handiwork. The two golems lay on the ground unmoving, the glow in their eyes gone. Two down, he thought and looked toward the remaining six.
His skin tingled as he refocused his anger. The nanites responded well to intense emotion, and he could feel them as they readied themselves for use. Damien looked ahead. He had been right; there were six more golems ready to cut him down. Three Annubans and three Horriths. That meant three more stone halberds and three more electric staves trying to slice, stab, and bludgeon him.
The first two he had taken down had been simple enough, if taxing. He hoped the remaining six would be equally simple. The constructs noticed him exactly when he thought they would. Their eyes flashed in unison and maintained the glow that indicated they were focused on their next target. Damien swallowed and stood firmly in place. He hoped he hadn't lost his touch for Conjuring in a fight. He willed the machines out of his body; he needed insulation against the electricity more than anything. He figured he could avoid the axes more easily than arcs of energy.
He figured.
Still, a lash or two with the staff was all it would take to cripple or kill him, so he had to be careful. Once he felt the Conjured machines harden over his skin, he charged directly at the closest Horrith construct.
He dodged the Annuban’s axe to his left, but as he did so, two other Horrith guards spotlighted him with their staves. Blue-white energy surged into his body. If he hadn't insulated himself, he would have died, and barring that, he would have been scorched into immobility where death would quickly follow. The nanites absorbed most of the energy, and he quickly refocused that energy toward the nearest Annuban. He held his hand out and unleashed the blue-white energy from his palm, burning the construct's face beyond recognition.
The construct’s body kept swinging the halberd but without any means of directing it. Damien considered himself safe. If he were lucky, the faceless Annuban would strike one of its peers. Damien dodged the wildly flailing axe as it did just that. The great stone weapon dug itself deep into the gut of another Annuban, locking the two constructs together and severely limiting their mobility. They weren’t go
ing to be as much of a threat for a while. The nearest Horrith shot an arc of energy at him, so Damien sidestepped.
Directly into the path of another Horrith's bolt.
He hadn’t prepared for the shock, and wasn’t able to redirect its energy as he had before. His legs wobbled, and he fell. He lay on his back as he saw a stone blade descend toward his head.
It did not take long for Damien to realize that he had made a mistake. He had lain still for too long, and he paid the price. He tried to roll to his right, but the weapon caught his left arm as he moved. Pain erupted in his side, and he lost feeling from the whole appendage. The nanite exoskeleton had protected the arm from being cut off, but it was still a heavy blow from a heavy weapon. Damien focused his fear of losing his arm into the nanites he sent to the injured arm to get it working again. He hated spending the energy on healing, but it was better than the alternative.
He got back to his feet. The Annuban who struck him was winding up for another blow, and the old man was not sure he could move in time. A sizzle came from his right as another arc of blue-white energy crackled and blackened the floor beside him. The Annuban swung, another arc of lightning came, and the old man dove forward putting himself dead center of the remaining four mobile constructs.
He crouched and swept his gaze around him. One Annuban and three Horrith's surrounded him. The only saving grace he could see in the situation was that the golems’ power and size, while formidable in combat, did not allow them to orchestrate graceful maneuvers and repositioning. Even though he was a large man, he was diminutive in comparison to the golems. His size was about the only advantage he had in this situation. As they were turning to face him, he was already Conjuring.
Damien knew he had to be careful. His left arm was devastatingly injured, and the only reason he was able to move it because he filled it full of nanites that took over his involuntary body functions—muscle control, moving his fingers, not holding his arm as dead weight at his side, that sort of thing.
If he took too long to Conjure his next attack, he'd be dead. If he did not Conjure it with enough power, he'd be dead. If he did not Conjure the right attack, he'd be dead. Conjuring was an art, one that Damien had begun teaching millennia ago as he and his colleagues first found the connection between human emotion and nanotechnology.
But Conjuring took practice and concentration, neither of which Damien had in droves at that moment. He had always been excellent at the big Conjures. Ennd's itself was testament to that, but he had only succeeded in Conjuring that because he had tapped into the pocket of energy, and it had been years since he had done anything of that magnitude. And while he was still technically near that same hotspot, the energy was being channeled away from its concentrated source and utilized all throughout the facility. Damien knew the Instance within the main tower of the building was where the majority of the energy was, but it was blocked off from him. He had introduced safeguards to prevent just this type of incursion. However, he had never expected that he would be the one trying to access it.
Without the energy reservoir from the site, Damien had to make do with the energy his own emotions created. He was still angry at the brutal nature of the copper-haired girl's death, and he was scared. After being alive for so long, he had heard word of many of his colleagues taking their own lives when they could not die naturally.
They were braver men than he was. He had always been afraid of the oblivion that he expected to come. Now, kneeling between four security constructs that had once protected him, he was scared that he might die and find out if his thousands of years of atheism had been the right path. He thought it was, but if these were his final moments, a part of him hoped that even one of the gods was real, that science was not the only truth.
If his Conjuring failed, he would find out shortly.
Damien knew that his abilities were not at their full power, and the best bet he had was to make an escape. He ducked as low to the ground as he could, feeling the whoosh of an Annuban's halberd sweep just above him. Energy crackled as the Horrith guards turned their bird-like heads to focus on him. He needed at least one of them to strike him, to pour at least as much energy into the nanites coating his body as he had used to maim the Annuban moments before. He hoped, though, that only a single strike would hit him while he prepared the Conjuring. He could probably—probably—withstand two strikes at once, but if he got a triple dose, his nanites would be too busy attempting to protect him from the attacks that they couldn’t do what he needed them to do.
When it came, the shock hit him like nothing he had ever felt. Maybe it was the close range. Maybe he was already expending too much energy keeping his arm from being a liability. Or maybe it was just that the Horrith stopped pulling its punches.
The reasons why didn’t matter when Damien felt the arc of electricity strike his back. As the energy began to burn into the nanites, he knew that he had one chance, one shot, one opportunity to live through this and find out who broke into his house and wanted him dead. For a brief second, he was thankful he had been able to Conjure himself invisible that night at his house. If he had been confronted with a situation like this as he first reintegrated his nanites, he would have been a dead man.
He saw the halberd crushing his left arm. He saw the two golems crashing into one another and convulsing as they died. And he saw Ceril's face as it was the last time Damien had seen him. When he had just been Gramps, and the world had finally been a simple place, at least for a little while.
He held onto that. He felt that sense of loss, of happiness, of anger and regret. He grabbed it, focused it into his nanites, and pushed outward. He redirected the energy from the Horrith staff weapon outward in all directions. The current kept coming in, and he felt the nanites in his back start to give way as the energy became too much for them to take. When he unleashed it, he felt that the force would never destroy his attackers. He was not strong enough yet. I’m sorry, Ceril, he thought. The pain from his failure, all his regret and anger, was picked up by his nanites. The tiny machines fed on his emotion, and Damien found himself surrounded in an arcing dome of purple-green energy that deflected all of the Horrith’s lightning and the Annuban’s axes.
Damien stood up. He was completely protected inside the dome of energy. Somehow, his rage, his fear—all of his emotions—were replaced by tranquility and calm. He held his hands out to his sides, palms up, and the purple-green shield pulsed once and expanded outward from the elderly technomage.
It was enough. When he had seared the Annuban's face off, it had been a directed strike, focused. Now, it was an omni-directional power play, and it was just enough to knock the constructs out of his way. The Horrith who had struck him got caught in a feedback loop and dropped its staff. The lone Annuban in the group stumbled backward as its axe buried itself deep inside its chest.
The other two Horrith sentries’ eyes crackled with electricity; Damien had given them matching scorches across the face, hindering their vision, if not completely blinding them. Electricity arced randomly around him as he ran past his attackers.
Smaller arcs of electricity fell from his feet as the nanites coating his body attempted to ground whatever residual current was in his system. He knew the golems would follow him, and he knew that he might run into more.
But he had survived—barely. The old man felt young again; he had not fought like that in quite some time. His feet carried him down the left-hand corridor from which the constructs had come earlier, toward—he hoped—the Library and Headmaster Squalt.
He heard heavy footsteps behind him; the security drones were coming after him. They had recovered. He knew that his attack wouldn’t kill them, but he marveled at the speed of their recovery. Damien could not tell how far back they were or how long it would be until they caught up with him. He never looked back to see, either.