Rune Warrior

by Frank Morin

  “I’m the one who’s sent to put out the fires.” Gregorios pointed down the mountain toward a small group of people fleeing along a distant ridge, tiny in the distance. “The heka who triggered this eruption died in the process.”

  Sarah didn’t bother to ask if the mountain killed them or if he had. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly initiate such a catastrophe.

  “Took eleven souls and some very sophisticated runes,” Gregorios said. “Always wished I could have gotten my hands on those.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “So I’d recognize them if anyone tried again.”

  Before Sarah could reply, the mountain around them simply dissolved.

  She screamed as they fell into shadow and fire. She felt more than saw the walls of earth and exploding lava. Heavy winds blasted blistering debris against her skin and she tumbled in the air.

  Then blackness and silence descended over everything.

  She could not decide if she was dead or if Bastien had just ripped out her soul.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Do not speak of your happiness or of your enhancements to one less fortunate than yourself.

  ~Plutarch

  Alter lay back on the chair near Harriett, trying not to betray how nervous he felt. He was a hunter, sworn to remove the demons from the earth, and yet somehow he had instead joined their company. He was about to entrust the purity of his soul to the hands of a facetaker he didn’t know. Again. In other circumstances, they would have been mortal enemies, and yet only moments ago, he had accepted from her what might have been the most delicious cookie he had ever tasted.

  He wondered if Harriett would hold a grudge the day he pulled the trigger.

  Of all of the facetakers, Alter trusted only Eirene. Harriett, whose mind he would be walking through, looked like a pretty young woman. He didn’t want to explore her memories. Surely they were full of a lot more than just pie recipes.

  Part of him longed to return to Jerusalem and the simpler life at the clan compound. Part of him longed to set Sarah free and help her see the truth. For her he would risk much.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Francesca said as she came to help him with the helmet. “We’ll take good care of you, I promise.” She winked.

  That didn’t help at all.

  “Aie, we have a problem!” Bastien sounded scared. He was powering the machine linked to Sarah’s soul.

  Francesca rushed over. Alter tossed aside his helmet and jumped out of the seat to follow.

  Bastien had fallen to his knees, his face twisted with pain. The purple fire of his nevron was flickering to orange and burning up his arms.

  Francesca grabbed his shoulder, her eyes already glowing with her activated nevra core, and for a second he relaxed.

  Then she screamed and began convulsing.

  Sarah and Gregorios started shaking in their chairs. Alter couldn’t imagine what tortures they were suffering. Harriett grabbed Francesca’s shoulder and added her strength to steady the machine.

  Bastien drew a shuddering breath. “Something is very wrong. We have to get them out.”

  “Do it!” Alter shouted.

  The moment of clarity passed and Bastien again groaned and bowed over the machine, his limbs shaking so hard it was amazing he didn’t collapse.

  Alter drew his knife. He alone remained free to act. For most of his life, he would have considered a situation like this a gift from god. Four facetakers were helpless before him. He could dispatch them all, bring his family great honor.

  All he had to do was sacrifice Sarah in the process.

  Hating himself for what he had to do, Alter placed his hand on Harriett’s quivering shoulder and marked a rune of binding across his hand and onto her neck. Instantly he felt the drain as his life force was sucked into a maelstrom of terrible proportions. All three facetakers were completely committed, but they had lost control of their nevron.

  Alter had helped Eirene hold the memory in place while Gregorios and Sarah battled Mai Luan. That experience had taxed his strength, but it was a simple process, like trying to lift a heavy load.

  This was like trying to look straight ahead while riding in an airplane that was doing barrel rolls in a hurricane. His stomach rolled with the twisting sensation and he felt on the verge of losing his lunch.

  Everything about the chaotic, churning nevron rippling between the four of them felt wrong on a fundamental level. He had never felt the nevron of the facetakers so clearly, but something had broken. He couldn’t explain it, but it tugged at his attention like a splinter in his mind. He focused his will and reached with mental fingers through the maelstrom of facetaker powers and plucked that splinter out.

  The facetakers gasped as one and sagged together, their strength spent. Alter could feel their nevron settling back into the centers of their beings. Facetaker nevra core were foreign to hunter rounon sensibilities. The time he had helped Eirene power the machine, he felt her nevron pulsing against him as a distant tide, a vague undercurrent. Now the nevron of the facetakers burned in his soul with vibrant clarity. He feared that if his control slipped, the devilish power would invade his soul and corrupt him.

  For several seconds, their nevron pulsed with the rhythm of his own heartbeat. He felt like he could seize the combined strength of their nevra cores and command it to do his bidding, and he nearly snatched his hand away. Such an act would defile him to the roots. The moment passed and the facetaker powers seeped away, distant, but no longer foreign.

  He couldn’t explain what had happened. It was as if they had tried to power a rune that was far too strong to bond to their souls. They were completely spent. His strength alone fueled the machines as their nevra cores flickered and faded. The load was heavy, but he could manage for another minute.

  None of the runes on the machines would do this to them. It had to be something in the memory.

  Alter hunched his shoulders against the strain. “Bastien, call them out.”

  “I am trying,” Bastien said in a quavering voice, his face dripping with sweat. “They do not respond. The failsafe, she does not work.”

  “It has to.”

  “Something’s shaken the mold,” Harriett groaned. “We need to stabilize it.”

  Through the linked connection, Alter felt her take over the primary link to the machine. It was far too intimate a feeling and he shuddered at the close interaction he was forced to endure with these demons.

  The worst part was that they didn’t feel evil at all, just extensions of himself.

  “What happened?” Francesca asked between gasping breaths.

  “I have no idea,” Alter said. “Let’s hope Gregorios can trigger the escape on his end soon.”

  “If he can’t?” Bastien asked.

  Fear made it difficult to speak. “Their minds could be lost forever.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The first of these was Spartacus, a Thracian of nomadic stock, possessed not only of great courage and strength, but also in sagacity, mighty enhancements, and culture superior to his fortune, and more Hellenic than Thracian.

  ~Plutarch

  Sarah awoke to soft twilight filtering between tall, brick buildings built close to the cobbled street where she stood. The ground no longer shook, and the air smelled of horse manure and rotting food. A welcome change from the stench they had just escaped.

  “This is better,” Gregorios said, “but still not what I was looking for.”

  “Did you do that back there?” Sarah demanded.

  “I’m not even sure what happened.” For the first time his calm composure cracked.

  She decided she preferred it when he looked like he was in control.

  “Well, where are we?” Sarah looked around. They stood at the end of the street, where it emptied into a plaza facing a huge amphitheater. For a moment she wondered if it might be the Colosseum, but it looked smaller than the ruined one she had visited in modern day.

  “Capua,” Gr
egorios said with a frown. “Who would want to visit Capua?”

  “Is this your memory or not?”

  “I’ve been here,” Gregorios said. “So it probably is. I’m just trying to remember this moment. It’s not as easy as it looks sometimes.”

  “But if you didn’t bring us here, do you think it was the man in the wide-brimmed hat?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a frown. “But it feels familiar. I’m thinking it’s my memory, but I don’t know why we ended up here. Something’s definitely not right.”

  “Should we leave?” Sarah fingered her escape rune.

  “In a minute. Keep a sharp lookout. If he’s here, I plan to have a chat with that hat man of yours.”

  “Where are all the people?” Sarah asked.

  The streets were mostly deserted with but a few people moving around in the distance. They all hurried, as if afraid of being out.

  “I wonder if we landed here just before Capua was taken by Rome,” Gregorios said. “It has the feel of a siege.”

  Sarah decided she didn’t like that feeling. She turned, looking back up the long street she had faced when they first appeared. A powerfully-built man was charging in her direction. He was dressed like a gladiator, carried a thick, oaken spear, and looked really mad.

  “Ah, Gregorios.”

  He turned and grimaced. “By the forgotten gods, why him?”

  The charging gladiator raised his spear and shouted, “Gregorios!”

  “Who is it?”

  “Spartacus,” Gregorios said with abundant disgust.

  “The Spartacus?”

  “I hate it when people talk about him like that,” Gregorios muttered. “You’d better back up.”

  Sarah scrambled away as a heavy, round shield appeared in Gregorios’ left hand and a weighted net in his right. She watched with growing nervousness as the raging gladiator closed, amazed to think he might really be the famous Thracian who led a slave revolt that turned into a full-fledged war.

  She loved the television series.

  Spartacus lunged, driving the spear with enough force to have splintered Gregorios’ shield.

  Gregorios didn’t wait for it. He slipped to the side, deflecting the spear off his angled shield with a metallic clang. At the same time he whipped out the net in a move that was so graceful and efficient, it was more like watching a ballet step. The net flared and enveloped Spartacus like floodwaters over a housetop.

  He tried to lunge at Gregorios, but tangled in the net and tripped.

  Gregorios kicked him in the head. “I don’t make the same mistakes twice.”

  Sarah was glad Gregorios was all right, but she felt a little disappointed that Spartacus hadn’t put up more of a fight.

  “I will rip off your head,” Spartacus bellowed as he struggled against the sturdy coils of the net.

  “Come on,” Gregorios said to Sarah. “The net should hold him long enough to finish our work. I want to find your mysterious hat man.”

  Sarah followed Gregorios up the street at a run. Together they leaped three stories to the rooftops of the long apartment buildings lining the road.

  Spartacus roared with fury and ripped the net to pieces in a convulsive heave.

  Sarah noticed the runes on his back and legs.

  “Hey, he’s enhanced.”

  “Tell me about it,” Gregorios said, not bothering to look back. “He was one of the most powerful heka ever.”

  They vaulted over the next street and ran along the rooftops, leaving the raging gladiator behind. Sarah just barely caught Gregorios’ next muttered statement.

  “Should have killed him when I had the chance.”

  She didn’t like the idea of Spartacus chasing them, but she was glad Gregorios hadn’t killed him while he lay helpless in the net. Spartacus was sort of a hero, or at least the television version of Spartacus was. She caught herself feeling betrayed to think he’d been so successful because of his heka enhancements.

  Sometimes the truth was really disappointing.

  Together she and Gregorios crossed several more streets. Capua was a fairly large town, more like a city. If they had to hunt for the man in the wide-brimmed hat, it was going to take all night. Gregorios finally paused on the roof of a large building, probably some kind of government palace. They stood four stories above a paved piazza with a large fountain and several statues.

  “Any idea where this guy might be hiding?” Gregorios asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “First time visiting Capua. If he takes off his hat, I doubt I’d notice him.”

  That wasn’t true. She’d recognize the feeling of dread that clung to him like bad breath.

  Gregorios turned a slow circle until he faced back the way they’d come. His eyes widened and he muttered, “Oh, Zeus.”

  Sarah spun just as Spartacus crash-tackled Gregorios into a chimney. As he passed, he brushed her with his broad shoulders and the impact knocked her sideways.

  She fell onto the roof’s ceramic tiles and they broke away under her weight, sending her sliding toward the edge. She scrambled for purchase, but couldn’t stop. Sarah plunged off the edge and fell to the manicured gardens below.

  She wasn’t too worried. She could handle a four-story drop in the memory world.

  The shrubbery was unexpected.

  Sarah landed hard on a hedgerow shaped like a woman with upraised arms. She shattered the shrubbery and tumbled across a lawn. With a groan, she stood, brushing leaves and branches from her arms, and spitting out pieces of twigs.

  On the roof, Gregorios and Spartacus fought with wild abandon. She needed to help him.

  “Well, what an unexpected surprise.”

  The cultured voice with a hint of accent sent a cold shiver down her spine. Sarah turned and saw a figure standing close behind her.

  The man in the wide-brimmed hat.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

  ~Marcus Aurelius, fourth life of Emperor Nerva

  The man in the wide-brimmed hat crossed the space between them in a rush, but still somehow managed to look unhurried. He grabbed for Sarah’s collar, but she slapped his hand away and leaped back over a nearby fountain.

  She imagined in that high-flying leap that she looked like Trinity from The Matrix.

  He launched after her. Even while soaring over the fountain, he managed to keep the brim of his hat tilted so that she couldn’t get a clear look at his face. She caught a glimpse of smooth-shaved cheeks but that was it. As he flew down toward her, she felt again the sense of dread he triggered.

  Enough with that reaction.

  Sarah summoned a baseball bat.

  The tilt of his concealing brim took on a surprised angle just before she caught him in the ribs with a swing that would have made Babe Ruth proud. Driven by her enhanced strength, the blow shattered ribs and sent him crashing back into the fountain. The statue splintered under the impact, and he fell into the water with a cascade of broken stone. A red stain spread from him.

  So much for scaring her with his hat.

  A little beast that looked like an over-sized bullfrog with saber-tooth fangs hopped out of the pool right in front of her. It opened its mouth and a long tongue lashed out at her left thigh.

  “Eww!”

  Sarah squashed it flat with her bat.

  Then she leaned over the unmoving form of the man and reached for his ever-present hat.

  He snatched her wrist.

  Sarah instinctively yanked back and retreated. That only helped him leap out of the fountain and land beside her. He had already shaken off the effects of her brutal strike. Either he wore several healing enhancements or he had extra souls fueling his powers in the real world like Mai Luan had done in Berlin.

  Sarah tried to punch him in the throat, but he caught her other hand. She struggled against him, but even with her enhanced strength, she couldn’t break free.

  He held her close, although she still could
n’t see his face. It was as if he had summoned shadows to crawl up under the brim and keep it concealed.

  “How do you fuel the facetaker memory?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about, freak?”

  His grip tightened painfully on her wrists. He spoke again, his voice formal, with a slight accent she couldn’t place. “Do not trifle with me. I will know your strengths. Speak before I decide I have no use for you.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure how to respond to the weird demand. It was like he thought she was the facetaker. She wrenched her arms against his grip and tried to knee him in the groin.

  He twisted her wrists, and pain flared up her arms. The pressure drove her to her knees. “I applaud your tenacity,” he said. “But I am your master now.”

  That was creepy on all kinds of levels. As Sarah tugged against his grip, her recently bonded rune began to burn against her skin. She felt that strange light feeling she had when facing Mai Luan in Berlin. Her wrists faded in color and she became insubstantial.

  His hands passed right through her arms. She could feel them, like chilly shadows. Then she was free.

  He stumbled back half a step at the sudden release of tension. Sarah leaped up and kicked him between the legs with every ounce of her strength. Her foot was not insubstantial.

  As tough as he might be in the memory world, no man could ignore a kick like that. He collapsed, clutching himself and hissing a horrible moan.

  “Master that, weirdo.” Sarah reached for his hat again.

  “Look out!”

  At Gregorios’ shout, Sarah dove to the side. They had practiced together enough that she knew not to hesitate when he used that tone.

  A large statue crashed down right on top of the man with the wide-brimmed hat. Spartacus was impaled on the twin, upraised swords at the top of the statue. He was covered in blood and badly battered, but still struggled to free himself.

  That was exactly the kind of determination he showed in the movies.

  Gregorios dropped to the ground beside Sarah.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.