by B.J. Keeton
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You’re lying,” Damien said.
“Jaronya was what you called your little playground, am I right?”
Damien was silent, but the nanites pooling under his hands began to edge forward along the desk toward Squalt. If the headmaster noticed, he made no indication.
“From what I recall, the Sigil had some engine trouble, and it just so happened that the hyperdrive gave out in the luckiest spot imaginable.”
“That’s impossible,” Damien said. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe I am,” Squalt said. “But if I’m not, can you think of any other place that would be as good at tracking down the Untouchable as Jaronya? You were very clever in hiding it all those years ago. The chain of Instances was almost impossible to track down. All it would take to get the Sigil nearby was a few minor course corrections and some well-timed engine failure. Of course, without the hyperspace envelope, the ship’s connection to Erlon was severed, but what can you do? After all, the terrorists must be dealt with. Oh, wait. I’m lying, aren’t I?” The headmaster grimaced comically, biting his lower lip and raising his eyebrows.
“Gilbert, you sorry, stupid little man.”
The pools of blackness under Damien’s hands erupted, shooting forward and coating Squalt’s entire head and face. The headmaster tried to suck in air, but couldn’t. After a few seconds, the headmaster’s face appeared and he gasped for breath. Immediately, Damien raised one finger on his right hand, and the nanites yanked the man’s head into the desk face first. A wet crack sounded and black blood fell from Gilbert Squalt’s nose.
The balding man grabbed his nose and screamed. “My nose! You broke my nose!” His breaths were shallow and rapid. His voice wavered. Damien could tell that the headmaster was seconds away from losing consciousness, so, like an expert torturer, Damien recalled him from the brink. The nanites around his head burrowed inward, each one jolting him with a slight electric shock. Squalt’s shoulders sagged, but he would not lose consciousness.
“You son of a bitch,” Squalt snarled.
“I honestly don't remember my mother, Gilbert. You might be right about that. And going back to what you said earlier: you were also right that I was scared that night in my home. However, I was not a coward.”
Squalt fell back into his chair and glared at Damien. “Perhaps you can explain to me how being afraid does not constitute cowardice?”
“I've lived a long time, Gilbert. And I have no faith to speak of. I don't know the old gods; I have no relationship with any of them. My gods have always been science and the Archive.”
“You mean that your god has always been you.”
Damien shrugged. “Maybe. Now, though, after all these years, I'm afraid to let go. Afraid of what comes after this. So I will not go easily, and if that means hiding a few hours while I get the nanites in my blood to completely reactivate, then so be it. But now, they're reactivated, and I am proficient with them again. And you need to tell me what you know about this situation with Ceril.”
“I think we’re done here, Damien.”
Something on Squalt’s desk chirped, and the headmaster said, “I’m going to have to take this call, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead.”
Squalt waved his hand over his desk and a display was projected from nowhere Damien could see. Technology was certainly moving along, he thought. He saw the front-desk receptionist who had stamped his hand earlier. She was looking directly at Squalt when she said, “Sir, there's been an incident.”
“I'm aware of the security drones, Beth.”
“Yes, sir. I know. There's been a…discovery. Two, actually,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sir, I don't mean to pry, but are you okay? Your nose—”
“It's fine, Beth. What discoveries are you talking about?”
“Bodies, sir. Two of them. They're dead, and they were students.”
Squalt's eyes jerked toward Damien, who still stood in front of the desk. “Who were they?” Squalt asked.
“The first one we found was Arla Smith. She was a new Phase II student this year. Cleanup details found her body…mutilated…near where the security drones were found.”
Squalt nodded, but kept his eyes on Damien for a shimmer of reaction. There was none. “And the other?”
“Swarley Dann. His body was found on the seventh floor botanical terrace inside of the arboretums.”
Squalt blinked. “Was his body mutilated like Arla's?”
“No, sir. First responders couldn't find any indication of a struggle. No bruising was apparent, and no marks of any kind. It looks like he just sat under the tree and died.”
“Thank you for letting me know, Beth. Keep me apprised of any details that come through. I'll prepare statements for the families and contact them myself once we have a clearer picture of what's going on.”
“Yes, sir,” the receptionist said, and the screen disappeared.
“You killed two of my students before you murdered Nary Thralls.” It was a statement. Not a question.
“One, actually,” Damien said. “Swarley was…a mistake.”
“So you had to kill a kid?” Squalt yelled.
“He was in the way, and he wasn’t a kid. A student, but not a kid,” Damien said. “The girl, however, was killed by your security golems. Designed to protect the school, huh? They kill kids?” Damien took a deep breath before the rage boiled too hot. “That seems like a pretty big problem in your security. You'd think someone would have noticed this before now.”
“Like I believe that.”
“Believe what you want. But it's the truth. She met me in the hall, was lost and looking for her dormitory. When I couldn't help her, your golems mowed her down like a weed in a garden. I would have tried to help her, but she was dead by the time I knew what was going on.”
“I'm sure you would have,” Squalt said.
“Now that that piece of unpleasantness has been taken care of…” Damien’s voice trailed off, but he stood with a smile that mocked Squalt.
Gilbert Squalt had taken quite enough. The headmaster stood up from behind his desk and stared into Damien’s eyes. “I hate that it’s come to this, Damien.”
“I've regretted every second.”
Squalt lunged across the desk, a Flameblade materializing in his hand. The blade glowed a faint orange-brown as Squalt stabbed it forward, attempting to impale his hopefully off-guard opponent.
He had no such luck. Damien easily dodged to the side, which threw Squalt off balance, but he regained his footing quickly.
“Do we really have to do this, Gilbert?”
“Did you really have to kill those kids and that professor?”
“It was a necessary part of getting to see you, old friend. And I only killed one of the kids. I told you that.”
“And I told you that I didn’t believe you,” said the headmaster as he slashed downward with the sword. Damien saw an opening and kicked Squalt squarely in the solar plexus. The blow knocked him down. Squalt recovered more quickly than Damien expected, so he released some nanites from his foot to entangle the headmaster, but recalled them when Squalt rolled out of the way.
“Get up,” Damien said patiently, and Squalt shambled to his feet.
“Don't patronize me,” said Squalt.
“Then don't do things that call for it. Why my grandson? Seriously. This doesn't have to be this messy. There’s something you’re not telling me, Squalt.”
“I’ve said everything I’m going to.”
“Something doesn’t sit right about all this. You know so much about these terrorists, about me, my book, what it could be used for. You’re holding out on me, Gilbert.”
“Think what you want.”
“I will.”
Squalt teleported his Flameblade to the other hand and slashed at Damien. At the same time, he opened his mouth, but instead of speaking, he used his nanites to shove an almost-solid
wall of sound toward Damien. The quickness—and uniqueness—of the attack took Damien off guard; he had never experienced anything quite like it. His head hurt, and his ears rang. For a moment, his vision was doubled. The force of the Conjuring pushed him backward, and he tripped over the arm of the couch and then lay face down on the floor.
Squalt took advantage of his stumble and rushed Damien. The headmaster gripped his Flameblade in both hands and stabbed downward toward his opponent’s back. Had Damien been a fraction of a second slower in recovery, the encounter would have been over. As it was, he had moved in just enough time, and Squalt's stab caught only the outside edge of his shirt. It cut away from the headmaster’s blade as Damien moved away and repositioned himself.
Damien knew that he could only do so much dodging before Squalt got lucky and wounded him enough to slow him down. Then he would be dead. He had already tired himself out just getting to Squalt’s office; he knew that he could only push himself so far.
And without his own Flameblade to fight back, Conjuring was his only weapon. He didn't begrudge Ceril for bonding to the sword, but he certainly regretted it right now.
He had to do something—and quickly—because Squalt kept coming. Damien barely ducked a sidearm slash as he Conjured nanites to coat his arms and harden them in an exoskeletal sleeve that went all the way over his hands. When Squalt rushed him again, Damien blocked with his left arm, and Squalt’s Flameblade flared brown-orange as it bounced off of Damien’s nanites. The impact tossed Squalt off balance, and Damien saw it, so he took advantage of the opening. Damien slammed the back of his fist, enhanced by the hardened nanite sleeve, into Squalt's head. The blow forced the headmaster onto his hands and knees.
As Squalt hit the ground, he slashed backward. The attack was wild, unpredictable. It caught Damien's shin, but the cut was shallow enough that he could send a minimal number of nanites to the wound to patch it up as they fought. He might not be so lucky next time, and he couldn’t coat his whole body in armor the way he had his arms. The loss of mobility would be deadly.
Damien had always been a cerebral Conjurer. He could do brute force when he had to, but his magic had always been more about detail than scope. It was that attention to detail that helped him construct Ennd's Academy out of the pocket of electromagnetism so many years ago, and it was that attention to detail that he hoped would give him the advantage now.
He kicked at Squalt, trying to knock him over, but found only air. Squalt had rolled away and now stood ready, waiting for Damien to attack. He wanted Damien to attack him physically; his stance told Damien that much. But if he charged Squalt, there was a good chance he would be rewarded with a sword in the gut. Instead, he concentrated for a few seconds as Squalt stood tense, and then he looked up.
He smiled. Yes, the ceiling was high enough.
The nanites rushed into Damien’s back, and they exploded from the skin just over his shoulder blades. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. He had gotten past the pain long ago. He loved how Conjuring felt, how the nanites came alive and worked with his body to create something that didn’t or couldn’t exist otherwise.
The nanites he Conjured built upon themselves until Damien stood before Squalt with two gigantic, shimmering, black wings coming from his back. He stretched his arms, rotated the stiffness from his neck, and began to flap the wings and lift off the ground. Flameblade or not, he was going to take control of the situation.
He rose higher into the air, and euphoria washed over him. Damien might as well have forgotten about Gilbert Squalt. For just a moment, at least. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself this pleasure.
Beneath him, Squalt almost dropped his Flameblade. The headmaster roared impotently. Regaining control of his Conjuring, he opened his mouth and shot a sonic burst at Damien. The attack didn’t knock him out of the air, however. Instead, the shimmering wings folded toward the sound, and Damien used the force of the sound burst to rise higher into the air and even further out of range of Squalt’s Flameblade.
Squalt held his blade in his left hand, its orange-brown glow shining even in the golden afternoon sun. It was not a fiery glow, but a steady one. Damien looked at it and smiled. He wanted that sword. He would need it by the end of this.
As his wings steadily beat, the two men were at a stalemate. “Why don't you join me, Gilbert?”
The balding man was silent. Damien shrugged and held out his right hand, a slight bump on the back of it now, where it had been perfectly smooth before. He shifted his weight, and the Conjured wings flew him directly over Squalt’s head. The headmaster tried to move, but he was too slow—Damien Conjured a jet of flame from the small bump.
Conjured fire was not like normal fire. It had substance, mass. It was almost a liquid, almost a solid. It could strike an object and cling to it like gel, and the Conjurer would have complete control over every nanite creating the heat. Damien sprayed the flame toward Squalt, who was taken by surprise. He was crowned with flame, and he fell to his knees, burning.
Damien dropped from the air, but he let the stream of fiery nanites continue. He recalled them slowly as he descended, and the connection between his arm and Squalt was taut. When he landed, he flapped his wings one final time, and the gust of wind pushed Squalt flat on the ground. Damien recalled the fire and wings back into his body, and grabbed Squalt by the shoulders, tossing him against the desk. The headmaster sagged against it, his legs spread-eagle.
In the headmaster’s left hand, the sword glowed dully. Its orange-brown glow still present, but fading. Damien walked toward him and kicked him in the stomach, but Squalt still held tightly to the Flameblade. His face was a mess. Squalt had been able to Conjure partial protection from the flame in the instant it came at him. He had protected his eyes and maybe a third of the rest of his face. The unprotected sections were charred black and red. Moisture was already beginning to seep out and bead along his face.
Half of Squalt’s mouth wasn’t charred, so Damien asked him again, “Gilbert, who is behind all this? It couldn't have been you. You're too stupid to be the brains behind anything, but you know who is.”
“I—”
Damien cut him off. “You were in on it, if nothing else. So tell me, old friend. Or this is going to get significantly uglier than it already has.”
“I don't kn—”
The headmaster's words were cut off by Damien's fist slamming into his temple. “Don't lie to me again. You may make it out of this alive, yet, Gilbert. But only if you tell me what I need to know. Where can I find the people who invaded my home?”
Damien could see the defeat in Squalt’s eyes—nevermind the damage to his body. Damien had been the original Untouchable, a man with enough hubris and power to create pocket universes and life to populate them, and that man would never allow Squalt to live after all this. Damien had once set himself up as a vengeful and unforgiving god.
And from the look in his eyes, Gilbert Squalt remembered all of that, too. Gilbert Squalt understood that he was about to die.
“You're right,” Squalt said. “I'm not…in charge. I wouldn’t…want to be…” The half-seared part of his mouth obscured part of his words, but Damien could make out what he meant just fine.
“Then who is?” Damien asked, trying to sound like a friend. It might have worked, too, if he hadn’t just burned off most of Gilbert Squalt’s face.
“The Untouchable.”
Damien kicked him in the side.
“Not you! I don’t know…don’t know his real name. When you find someone connected that’s the only name you need.”
“What does he want?”
Squalt laughed and blood dribbled down his chin from his mouth. “How…how should I know?” Damien punched the other side of his head, and Squalt screamed. “What does…anyone want, Damien?”
“Power, money, family, love, a good dog, nice clothes, a hot breakfast, a warm bath?” Damien was falling back into his old self far more quickly than he would h
ave imagined. He was enjoying himself today, in spite of—no, because of—the things he was doing.
“Yes,” Squalt said. “But more than anything, people want life.”
“Life?”
The headmaster nodded. “That’s the one thing the Charons have…that no one else on Erlon…or any other Instance,” he coughed and more blood came from his mouth, “has access to. We live damn near forever, Damien. Everyone else lives and dies before they even have a chance to experience…life. This new Untouchable wants to fix that.”
Damien blinked. “How?”
“By Riting them.”
“Who?”
He looked directly into Damien’s eyes. “Everyone,” he said.
“And by doing so, he’s exposing the Charons.”
Squalt nodded. “He already has.”
“Then why,” Damien continued, “not just do it? Why go through the trouble of stealing my history, my book, Ceril? Why not just go public to begin with? Why all the cloaks and daggers?”
Damien saw Squalt’s glance flicker to his sword, and he stepped firmly on the headmaster’s wrist, pinning both hands and the weapon to the floor. “Nice try,” he said.
Squalt smiled with the part of his mouth that would move and continued his explanation. “We don't know enough, Damien. Like you said, I'm one of the…new guys. Especially compared to you. Do you honestly think I know how the Blood Rites are done? I barely…made it through mine.”
Damien looked at the Flameblade under his foot. Its orange-brown aura was dull, hardly visible. Squalt wasn’t lying. He had very little aptitude for Conjuring. “And this Untouchable,” he spat the name out with contempt, “thought that my book would have the process in it?”
Squalt nodded. “Guess so. Did it?”
Damien shifted and his nanites rushed into the foot holding down Squalt’s sword arm. His foot tingled as the small machines packed themselves densely inside his foot, making it heavier and heavier. Eventually, Damien heard the wet crunch that came from Squalt’s bones being crushed from the weight. The headmaster whimpered, but shut up when Damien backhanded him.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said the headmaster.
“Where can I find him?”
“No idea,” Squalt said. “He's not exactly a public figure.”
Damien reached out, and Squalt flinched. Damien didn’t let the pain come immediately. He rested his hand on Squalt’s shoulder, so the headmaster did not relax.
Tendrils of nanites moved from Damien's fingers, up Squalt's neck, and surrounded his eyes. Squalt gasped as Damien took his vision, and he screamed when the nanites contracted.
After crushing the headmaster’s eyeballs, the nanites returned to Damien. Jelly-like ichor oozed down the side of Gilbert Squalt’s maimed face.
“Where can I find him?”
Squalt whimpered. His voice was barely a whisper. “Was that necessary?”
“I think so,” Damien said. “Where can I find this new Untouchable?”
Squalt turned his head toward Damien. His face conveyed no emotion. His empty eye sockets oozed. “I really wish I could tell you that. I’ve met representatives here and there across Erlon and…in some Instances.”
“Where?”
“Three times in Ferran. At a small café run by a man named Derin Sarnt. Once in Yagh, north of the city wall. I have the Instance locations in a…a file on my tablet.”
“Where is it?” Damien asked.
Squalt was silent.
“Do you really want to play this game, Gilbert?”
The headmaster thought for a moment and shook his head. “On the bookshelf behind my desk. It's hidden inside a book called Before Our Eyes.”
“You’re a bastion of wit, aren’t you, Gilbert? Are there any encryptions?”
“None you won’t be able to break,” he said. His voice was breathy now. He was having a harder time speaking. “I promise.”
“What else can you tell me about this situation?”
“There's nothing else. The Untouchable…is a special kind of bastard, Damien. But you know all about that, don’t you?” Squalt spit black blood.
“He invaded my home. Made me break my vow. That's enough for me to want him dead,” Damien said. “But he’s taken my name. Using what I did—and I did good, Gilbert, whether you want to admit it or not—to undo everything we’ve worked for. And you’re helping him? You agree with him? Not to mention that you have Ceril. I told you years ago to act like he didn’t exist, but you couldn’t. You wouldn’t. Now I know why.”
“Get out…of my office.”
“I intend to,” Damien said. “I need one more thing first, Gilbert.”
“Which is?”
Damien reached down and took the sword from the headmaster’s hand. The dull orange-brown aura was immediately replaced with a bright purple-green fire. It illuminated the room even through the sunlight, and even though it put off no heat, the change in hue and radiance made the headmaster cower.
“How?” Squalt said. “How did you—”
Damien gripped the sword in both hands and plunged the sword into Squalt's neck. Black blood sprayed, and Damien pulled down as hard as he could, splitting the man in half. Organs rushed out of the dead headmaster, finally able to decompress from their positions in his body. Damien pulled the sword away and looked at it. There was no residue on the blade.
Damien held his arms wide and opened his hands. The Flameblade disappeared from one and appeared instantly in the other. Good, Damien thought. It’s mine now.
He walked to the wall and found the book containing the headmaster’s hidden tablet. He took a moment to look out the window, where the golden afternoon light still beamed in. Vivid greens, blues, and yellows were everywhere. He understood why the headmaster would have chosen this Instance for his office. It was a good place to spend a lot of time.
He checked the tablet, and Squalt was right. The encoding was simple, nothing his nanites couldn't bypass. Within a few minutes, Damien had access to the locations where Squalt had met with this new Untouchable's representatives. He read through the list and determined the best place to begin his search. He had a few contacts near some of these places. At least, he once had. If they were still around, he hoped to be able to call in a few favors, or barring that, make a few demands.
Still, though, there had to be something else around here. He went to Squalt’s desk, sat in the chair, and placed both his hands on the surface. Information flooded his mind—he had forgotten how much he loved that sensation—and he began to filter through the images and clips that were rushing behind his eyes. He focused on this impostor, and told the computer to project any videos pertaining to this new Untouchable. Damien wanted to see what had been done in his name.
Immediately, a gigantic representation of Cernt Academy floated in front of him. He hadn’t been the one to build Cernt, that had been all Roman’s doing, but he had always had a soft spot for it and Yagh in general. Something about the terseness of the people and the cold of their desert appealed to him. He hated to see the school on fire. He increased the speed of the video, and he watched as groups of impostors murdered innocents with Flameblades and nanotechnology.
Damien was a killer, but he was not without a conscience. He killed when he had to, not haphazardly, and this pretender was making a mockery of everything he had built and done. Damien would have never killed so indiscriminately. If there was a pattern to the mayhem he was viewing, it was lost on him. He was going to have to find this Untouchable and have a discussion with him about his methods. Damien would have to teach him a thing or two.
A whuff-pop sounded from beyond the projection, so Damien Vennar closed the holovid. The heavy, wooden door to the office creaked open, and a group of three people rushed through—a man and two women. Who the hell are they? Damien wondered. They hadn’t seen him yet, which was good. He would hate to have to kill them, too, so he Conjured himself invisible once more. The nanites surged from his veins and
through his pores, coating his body and initiating the veil instantaneously.
One of the newcomers looked directly at him, but Damien knew that he was hidden already because of the telltale tingle of the Conjuring. Lucky for whomever that was. Damien sat stock-still as he watched the trio come further into the room, and he noticed that the man was carrying someone covered in blood, who was either unconscious or dead. Damien couldn’t tell which, but from the amount of damage to the body, he guessed it was a corpse being returned for burial.
They searched around the room for a bit, and then the man noticed Nary Thralls’s body. He inspected it, and was about to alert his comrades when one of the women screamed: she had found Nary’s head. The screamer was a small, blonde woman, and she stood directly in front of Damien. She did not see him; however, she did see Nary Thralls’s skinless skull grinning at her.
It did not take her long to find Squalt’s body, either, and when she alerted the other two, the second woman vomited. A chain reaction was started, and after much dry heaving, the three of them finally began to speak.
The blonde woman asked, “What is this? Where are we?”
“Dunno,” answered the man. “But I'm not real excited to stick around.”
“I don't see why you would be,” the blonde woman said. “Who could or would do this to someone?”
“What about that?” he said and pointed at the headless body.
The blonde woman almost threw up again, but stopped. The other woman was not quite so lucky. She dry heaved as her companion walked past Thralls’s body to stand in front of the giant wooden door.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“What?” the second woman asked.
Instead of answering, the tiny, blonde woman ran across the room, back to the halved man in front of the desk. Damien watched in fascination as she leaned down and took hold of his head.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man asked.
“Checking something,” she said. Her eyes scanned the office and then dropped to the dead man in her hands. She flipped the half she was holding over, and examined him in profile. “It's Headmaster Squalt,” she confirmed. “This must be his office.”
“What?” the other woman asked.
“It's him. It's Squalt. When the Gatekeeper sent us somewhere adjacent to Ennd's, the closest Instance must have been the headmaster's office.”
Damien blinked at what he was hearing. The Gatekeeper? No, it couldn’t be. He looked at each of the people in front of him, focused on the dead body in the man’s arms, but couldn’t identify any of them.
“There’s always been a rumor that Academy headmasters were given private Instances,” the woman continued, “and now I guess we've confirmed that.”
“Who's the woman?” the man asked.
“No idea,” the blonde said. “You know, doc?”
“No way to tell.” So the second woman was a doctor. Interesting. “We’d have to run tests, and umm…”
“Yeah,” the blonde said. “Yeah.”
“So what do we do now?” asked the man.
“Get back to Ennd's. If their bodies are still here in this condition, that means no one else knows about this.”
So they aren’t a cleanup crew from Ennd’s. No one was alerted when the headmaster died? Damien thought of the implications of that.
“Can you get us out of here?”
“Yes,” said the blonde woman. “It’s just the matter of putting in Ennd's code in the panel by the door.”
“And you have the code?” asked the doctor.
“Yeah, unless they’ve changed the code.” She let go of the dead headmaster, wiped her hands on her pants, and walked determinedly to the door.
She keyed the code and waited. She heard a slight buzzing, and when she pulled on the door, it opened with a whuff-pop. She peered through the opening, then threw the door open as far as she could. “It's Ennd's,” she confirmed. “Let's go.”
Damien Vennar watched them leave the office. If the Gatekeeper was involved…
He got up from Squalt’s desk and looked at the two corpses he had made. He wanted to feel regret, but he couldn't.
With a sigh, he Conjured his Flameblade. Its green-purple aura was brilliant. He concentrated on this new Untouchable and what he had done to Damien’s name. Anger flowed through him, and his knuckles whitened as he gripped the hilt of the sword. He raised the Flameblade above his head and slashed downward as hard as he could. He heard a whuff-pop as his weapon sliced through the membrane that separated this Instance from the others.
He stared at the portal in front of him, released his Flameblade, and stepped through.