by Nazri Noor
“Trust me on this,” I shouted back, though I had no reason to trust even myself. The blistering light of the portal cast such intense brilliance across everything that all that stood before it was shadow, the entire square shrouded in a writhing, undulating mass of limbs and tentacles.
I focused on that darkness, homing in on the sensation of peeling back the veil between Here and the Dark Room, only this time, I had no intention of stepping through. Whatever dwelled in that nether place – it was time to let them out.
“Dustin, we need to get out of here,” Prudence shouted, so close to my ear that it nearly broke my concentration. I shook my head. “You idiot, we need to go before – ”
A black mist rose from the shadows cast against the street, climbing, at first, in thin wisps, delicate tendrils that seemed to be made of smoke, or darkness. That smoke began to stir, and to churn. Still the horrors stampeded for the living, howling, frothing. All at once the mists and shadows hardened, coalescing into a baleful, bladed solidity that glimmered like crushed velvet and gleamed with the unmistakeable sharpness of steel. Something in my chest burned, low and slow, but it built into an agony so intense, like an ember forcing its way out of my body. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth to fight the pain, but to no avail. My heart was on fire. I threw my head back and screamed.
The shadows rose as one.
Whips and lashes burst from the ground, the insides of the Dark Room hardened in this reality into something thorny, vicious, and sharp. The Hands shouted at each other to retreat as the square transformed into a nightmare pit of writhing black appendages, all hungering to slash, flay, and shred. The shadows tore into the abominations, ripping them into rubbery strips and chunks of foul meat. Every last thing that poured out of the gateway fell in the field of black grass I had conjured from the Dark.
I was doing this. I felt every blow that struck out, every knife cut inflicted within this meadow of ebony blades. I was controlling it somehow, and the fire in my chest, the sensation of my heart being thrust into boiling oil was almost worth the grand swell of power. Something like laughter threatened to burble out of me, tearing its way out of my throat. It was just another scream.
And Thea met it with her own, her face contorted in rage. “No,” she shouted. The gateway was closing. My assault had finally depleted its never-ending supply of fodder. “No.”
She spread her arms to her sides, fingers splayed, the very picture of fury. The air around her shimmered as she used her gift, manipulating light to use as a weapon. Reality itself wavered as she summoned an array of massive lances around her body. There were six at first, hovering near her, like guided missiles waiting on her command. The light about her flickered, and then there were a dozen spears, then twenty, then too many too count. She pointed at me, shouting wordlessly. As one, the spears flew for my throat.
The pain in my chest was too intense, searing at my insides, rooting me to the spot. More and more spears appeared around Thea, an unending hail of javelins, like a salvo of comets waiting to annihilate me. Yet I couldn’t move. If I had to die, then at least I knew I died saving the city.
Hey dad, I thought. Look. I’m a hero.
But the spears never hit home, colliding and bursting in the air just inches from my face in scintillant flashes of light. Two bodies stepped into my peripheral vision, and I knew how I had survived. To my left, Odessa had her hand out, one of her shields erected invisibly. To my right, with sweat dripping down his neck, Bastion exacted the last of his power to keep me protected.
Which left me free to focus on the only enemy we had left.
With the final dregs of my strength I forced the pulsing mass of shadow to rise from the ground, black ropes of solid darkness twisting into a singular, massive tentacle. It crashed upward, roaring like a tidal wave, reaching easily to Thea’s height and driving forward with enough force to halve her at the torso in one horrible slice, or to pulverize her in a single blow. My first friend in the underground, my mentor, my murderer. Straining against the pain, I bid her a silent, remorseless goodbye.
But the blow never hit home. Thea cursed me, her teeth sharp and white, and before the surge of shadow collided with her body a blinding flash of light scorched the night. When I looked again, she was gone. With nothing left to destroy, the shadows dissipated into motes, little droplets of night returned to the blackness of the Dark Room.
“Fuck,” Bastion shouted. Good old Bastion, never at a loss for words. “Fuuuck,” he yelled again. “She got away.” He raked at his hair in frustration, then looked left and right, at the sticky mass of severed tentacles and oozing rubbery blackness, the only signs that the children of the Eldest were ever here. “Fuck,” he shouted. “Who’s going to clean this up?”
It was almost funny to me, how Bastion could hardly decide whether sanitation or Thea’s escape was more important, and I might have laughed if I didn’t feel like my entire ribcage had been torched right out of my body. Nothing had ever been that painful to me, and I didn’t understand how I had survived. The agony was subsiding, but it was dreadfully clear that calling on the Dark Room had taken something out of me.
I patted at my torso, my chest, just to be sure that I hadn’t actually been burned alive. Everything was still there. My hand came away wet, though. Sopping wet, and I wondered how I could have possibly sweated so much.
“Dustin,” Prudence said, running up to me. “That was incredible! How did you – Dustin, you’re bleeding.”
I looked at my hand. It was covered in red. I laughed.
“Oh,” I said, chuckling. “Oh, good. At least I wasn’t burned.”
“Dustin, we need to get you out of here.” Prudence’s eyes were wide with terror, and I knew that I was in trouble. “We need a cleric,” she shouted. “Here. Now.”
How was I still alive? I held out my palm for Prudence to see, proud as I had been in first grade when I was finger-painting, when Mrs. Moyer said I showed an aptitude for art, when I knew even then that I would always like everything and never be good at anything.
But it wasn’t fair. I finally found something I could be good at. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to go. Not yet.
I touched my chest again. Under my shirt, something felt ragged, and torn, and it stung insanely. Ah. My scar, from the ritual dagger. It had reopened. I held my hand out again, up against the light blazing from the moon. The stars were singing to me. But it was too loud, and too bright.
Too bright. I needed the darkness.
“Hey dad,” I said, laughing. “Look. I’m a hero.”
The world went black.
Chapter 21
Everything was blinding white when I opened my eyes again. My mouth was cotton-dry, my head felt like it had been kicked in repeatedly, and my chest – the best I could say was that it felt like a small, burning coal had been shoved in there, like someone was driving a cigarette into me, right through my scar.
And somehow, in these cases, my mind had been conditioned to expect one and only one person at my bedside: Thea. I guess it was only natural for me to start scrambling against the headboard the first time I opened my eyes since the battle outside HQ. Later on I was told that I was screaming. They had to sedate me.
It turned out that it was always someone different keeping watch over me. Prudence, a few times, and Herald. Even Bastion, bless him and his douchebaggery.
Clerics took turns fixing me up, or so I was told. It wasn’t a one-doctor job, and several clerics had to go through cycles of healing and expending energy, but I liked to think that I wasn’t the only case they were working on. There were a lot of injuries in the aftermath of the battle at the square, after all.
Bastion tried to convince me that I was an especially tough patient to handle, though. All the screaming, he said. I scoffed at first, but Prudence later told me that I took a lot out of the clerics because my wounds weren’t only physical. I didn’t ask what she meant by that. All I knew was that the burning in my heart eventually
subsided.
At some point, in between the marathon sleeping sessions, I noticed that a television had found its way into a corner of my room. I knew that no one had installed it, that this was HQ’s way of reacting to my presence, because some part of me wanted to know what was going on. And that was how I caught up on things, in small, blurry periods of wakefulness.
Between news reports and snatches of conversation with Prudence and, once, with Odessa, I put things together in my drug and magic-addled state. Odessa’s shield had done its work of locking the abominations in and keeping the normals safe.
Shrikes, the Scions had come to call them, the creatures with tentacles and dozens of mouths, the things that bayed like demons, the children of the Eldest. Then the Lorica had sent out teams of Mouths to wipe all traces of the battle from the minds of the normals and emergency responders who were within the vicinity.
It would have been too much work, no, near impossible to rectify things for the entire city, though, so those furthest from HQ, and the public, in general, were appeased with some cockamamie story about a PR stunt for an upcoming blockbuster. That was what the pillars of light and explosive battle were for, all just a roadshow for some big-ass movie with a promotional budget to match its production.
The Lorica had more than enough funds lining its coffers to get multiple PR firms and news outlets cracking on the story, enough to drum up buzz and create a cover for a film that was never going to happen. I joined the Lorica in fervently hoping that people would eventually forget about Hypergalactic Facepuncher: Armageddon in Lunar City.
They never found Thea. She probably blinked off somewhere to lick her wounds. I tried to take some comfort in knowing that she couldn’t possibly do anything more destructive than calling that massive circle, but knowing what little I did of magic and the underground, I was sure that Valero hadn’t seen the last of her.
Her shrieking portal, Prudence explained, was an actual rupture into our dimension. Not just a regular gateway, but a proper tear, the summoning circle being massive enough to have possibly caused permanent damage to our reality. The exact point of the rift became an object of curiosity for the Lorica, something that HQ’s biggest brains had explained was now the brittlest part of our world.
Kind of like how scientists noticed that there was a thinning in the ozone layer before a permanent hole was punched in it. Great. Super awesome. Prudence said HQ was working on a way to reinforce the barrier, to make sure we never got another screaming tide of hell beasts ever again. The last thing we needed was another shrike invasion. I didn’t like the way her eyes kept glancing away from mine when she told me about it.
Days passed – it felt like weeks, really – and my aches subsided enough that I could get around on my own again. Color me boring, but I felt that I’d had enough action for what was technically only my first month on the job. One day Odessa was visiting, and I more or less tendered my resignation by telling her I didn’t think I had what it took to be a Hound anymore.
Odessa sighed. “I don’t blame you. Things are never quite this dangerous at the Lorica. Haven’t been for a long time, but it looks like Thea Morgana was in it for the long haul.”
Morgana? That was Thea’s last name? God. I really didn’t know her at all.
“She really took her time to study what she needed,” Odessa continued. “Fifteen years at the Lorica. Can you imagine? Waiting that long, biding her time until the right victim came along – sorry.”
I gave a weak smile and tried to shrug it off. Fifteen years? That would put Odessa at ten years old when she joined the Lorica, which made no damn sense. The only thing old about the Scion was something in her eyes, a kind of depth and knowing that only came with experience and age. Maybe I’d never find out her secrets, but I still had a couple of questions that needed answering.
I was in the middle of packing my things then. Truth be told, I guess I didn’t really need to tell Odessa anything about leaving the Lorica. The sight of me sorting out my belongings must have been resignation enough.
“About that. Me being the victim and everything. Is there any reason she might have picked me?”
Odessa shook her head. “I can’t think of anything specific. I’m inclined to believe what Thea said, that you just happened to be there. Still, the question remains: what exactly did she do to you?”
It was my turn to shake my head. “My guess is as good as yours. Like that whole thing with the shadows just – spilling out of me. Ripping things apart.”
“Yes. That. Those things on the field that night, the mists and the tentacles. Is that what you see inside your head?”
“Not in my head, but in the Dark Room, when I walk through it to step somewhere else.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you need me to tell you that there were stark similarities between your shadows and the shrikes that poured out of that rift. The tentacles, I mean, the blackness. At best I can tell you that the source of Thea’s battalion is the same source that feeds your very specific brand of magic.”
“The Eldest.” The word made me shiver. Just a word, but loaded with too much meaning I couldn’t decipher or comprehend.
“Whatever it was that she embedded inside you seems to anchor your power to the Eldest and their reality. It must be why your magic is so – unusual. We’ve seen Wings with abilities similar to yours, but considering what you did the night of the attack – no, you aren’t strictly a Hand either, are you?”
I set down a shirt, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at my palms. “I’m not sure what I am, if I’m honest.” Or what Thea had turned me into. I clenched my fists. “But whatever that is. Do you – am I going to turn into one of those things, you think? Am I one of them, whatever they are?”
Odessa pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “Unlikely. The shrikes were grunts, just minions. Your abilities are different. Stranger. More connected, I think, to the Eldest themselves.”
“You’re a Scion. You know more than the rest of us. What are the Eldest?” Maybe Odessa could tell me something the others hadn’t.
“Well,” Odessa said, folding her hands together. “You know about the entities. What Thea said was not untrue. The Eldest are the first among all. Ravenous, mindless beings that are not of this earth or this reality. And we’re only better off for it.”
“So where are they?”
“I can’t say. A different dimension, somewhere beyond the stars. These things are so ancient that they predate mankind entirely. But their power reaches so far that even with Thea’s rift closed, we have no guarantee of safety. The Eldest are primal, terrible, immense. They existed before us, and so will they remain when we’re dead and gone.”
We, Odessa said, which at least clued me in to how she was, in fact, human. That made one of us. It still offered no answer to what I was, or what I had become. I scratched at my chest absently and went back to packing.
“But yes. That’s something to worry about another day. Whatever it is, Mr. Graves, I have every confidence that you know what you’re doing now that you intend to leave the Lorica.”
What a strange thing to say, I thought. I turned to her, unsure of how to respond. Odessa’s eyes gleamed with dark understanding. We were alone in that room, yet it still felt as though she wanted to keep things subtle – in case someone was watching, or listening.
“I have every confidence that you’ll find the right answers,” she said.
It was as if she knew exactly what I had planned, somehow, which was odd, because even I wasn’t sure what I was going to do myself. I only nodded, and when she extended a hand to shake goodbye, I accepted. Her hand was warm – human – and she didn’t recoil when her fingers met my palm. At least I knew I was still human, too.
Odessa left me to finish packing, but a rapping at the doorway just seconds after she departed tugged at my attention. It was Herald.
“So,” he said. “You’re really going.”
“I really am.” I shrug
ged. “Guess I’m not really cut out to be a Hound after all.”
Herald scoffed and folded his arms. “You know that isn’t true. You’re going to keep in touch, right? We still get to hang out and stuff.”
I frowned. “Don’t be stupid. Of course we can. I’ve got your number and everything.”
Herald nodded. He watched me for a bit in silence, then cleared his throat, nodding at my things. “You sure you’ve got everything?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Um, yes. I think so.”
“Good thing I had a spare backpack to lend you from the archives, then.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at him with a puzzled expression. “Good thing.”
I was grateful for the loaner, sure. Probably one of the most practical magical objects I’d ever seen at the Gallery, this backpack that could carry far more than its size should realistically allow. I kept dumping stuff in and it just kept taking it all, never bulging or growing in size. Herald told me that the bag was actually an opening to a pocket dimension. It really saved me the hassle of packing all of my stuff into boxes.
“Just be sure to return it once you’ve moved in and settled. I’ll get flayed if we don’t get it back.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. “Checked it out especially for you.”
I chuckled. “Appreciate it. And yeah, I’ll be sure to bring it back.”
“Empty,” he said. “Totally empty. Be sure you don’t leave anything in there.”
My forehead creased again. Herald was being weird about this, but he was doing me such a solid with this whole magical bag thing that I didn’t want to be an ass about it. I said nothing and slung the backpack’s straps over my shoulders. Oh, and that was the best part, too. The bag never got heavy. For all anyone knew, all I had in it were some clothes and some books. Someone could look at me and think I was just a college kid going to his next class, and not some dude hauling around an entire apartment’s worth of crap. Man, I love magic.