Soul Stealers

by Andy Remic

  Now, she was dead. And Walgrishnacht could not quite believe the turn of events. General Graal was, and had been, a servant of the vachine religious culture for nearly three centuries. With Kradek-ka, he had helped usher in a new age of advanced clockwork technology, which elevated their race from savagery to high art. Graal was a founding member of Engineer Council Lore, and a harsh advocate and defender of the Oak Testament. Graal had been instrumental in the taming of pale-skinned creatures, the alshina, from beneath the Black Pike Mountains, and of training these soldiers in warfare and tactics; thus, he was the strategy behind many successful invasions and harvesting north past the Heart of the Mountains in Untamed Lands. After the recent breakdown of several Blood Refineries, it had been Graal who spearheaded Council and carried the vote to invade south. In High Engineer Philosophy, Politics, Ethics, History and Honour, Graal was unquestionable, and untouchable. He was Core to the Vachine Society. Integral. Like a Heart Cog.

  Walgrishnacht chewed his lip, and wiped tears from his face with a long, brass talon.

  "What shall we do?" said Beja, voice soft. He fidgeted. His body echoed uncertainty.

  Walgrishnacht stood and stretched with a tiny tick tick echoing from his clockwork internals. He stared off across distant snow-fields, to the camped army of albino warriors; and he knew, in his heart, in his soul, that in an unprecedented move they were betrayed. But what was Graal's plan? What were his goals? Whatever they were, they did not involve saving the vachine race from blood-oil extinction…

  Walgrishnacht shook his head. Confusion spun like a snowstorm. The whole situation was… inconceivable! Impossible! Unwarranted! And yet there had been murder, and worse, betrayal.

  Walgrishnacht turned on Beja. "We must take the platoon back to Silva Valley. We must explain that General Graal has betrayed the vachine, and everything our world stands for."

  "We may not survive the mountains," warned Beja, not through fear but tactical understanding. He was aware they may never deliver the message, and thus warning, to the Engineer Council.

  Walgrishnacht nodded. "We will give our lives to cross," he said. "The High Engineers must reconvene the War Council and assemble the Ferals – for if Graal plans an invasion after the snows have passed, and Silva Valley is unprepared…" He left the sentence unfinished. They both understood; without warning, Graal with his highly trained, disciplined, and experienced Army of Iron would roll through Silva Valley like a tidal wave. In an ironic twist, it was the General who commanded the army, not the Council. But then – the General was incorruptible, was he not? Walgrishnacht's face fell into a maelstrom of hatred. "Instruct the men. We move in ten minutes."

  "As you wish, Cardinal."

  The Warrior Engineers readied their packs and weapons, a sombre mood descending on the platoon. Then, as they headed back north through deep snow, away from Old Skulkra and the sour betrayal that had occurred, so in the distance a howl rent the air, a long, high-pitched note that seemed to linger in the deep forests and dark places of the night.

  Beja looked to Walgrishnacht. "Wolves?" he said.

  The Cardinal showed no emotion. "Maybe," he said. "Move out."

  Anukis, of Silva Valley, had been born to Kradek-ka, one of the founding fathers of modern vachine society. Kradek-ka, like his father before him, had risen through Engineer ranks until he attained the exalted position of Watchmaker. He had achieved this level by ingenuity, cunning, and a technical skill which far outweighed most who lived in Silva Valley. Kradek-ka's skill had been with clockwork; not just the machining of parts, or the intricate assembly of clockwork components, but with the design of new clockwork machines – machines which, more importantly, could integrate with the vampire society, keeping the dying race alive. This engineering also formed the basis of their religion, accelerating them in an evolutionary arc which left them… superior.

  However. With his daughter, Anukis, Kradek-ka made changes. For a start, unlike normal vachine, Anukis could not drink the refined narcotic blood-oil, which every vachine relied on to sustain their clockwork mechanisms and, it was said, lubricate their clockwork souls. No. Anukis was different. Anukis was special. Anukis could not take the blood-oil like normal vachine. She could not mate with the magick. She could not feed as a normal vachine would feed… and, technically, this made her unholy, her very existence sacrilege to the High Engineer Episcopate.

  Still. Here, and now, Anukis had other problems to worry about.

  She was tall, and beautiful, and in possession of long, flowing, golden curls which shone and sparkled in the sunlight. Her fangs were brass, and as she had recently found, her clockwork was built to a more advanced design than any in the vachine society had before witnessed. Kradek-ka had made her a Goddess – and in making her a Goddess, had at the same time cursed her, and condemned her under Vachine Law.

  On a mission to find her father, Kradek-ka, whom the Silva Valley needed to repair their malfunctioning Blood Refineries, Anukis had soon found herself in position of victim, of slave, at the hands of Vashell, one of the youngest ever Engineer Priests to achieve such a rank; and a vachine who had sworn to love her until the end of time, marry her, and sire a hierarchy of proud and vicious vachine warriors. That was, until the day he discovered her impurity, her living sacrilege. After vicious humiliation, they thus set upon a mission to discover her father's whereabouts within the dangerous and daunting Black Pike Mountain range. After a series of violent events which saw Anukis discover her true nature – that she was no longer vachine, but something more pure, something infinitely more primal… a word which taunted her with its haunting echo of millennia – vampire, she was vampire – Anukis had been separated from Vashell, and the kidnapped Falanor Queen, Alloria, and found herself on an Engineer's Barge deep within hidden tunnels under the Black Pike Mountains, drawn inexorably towards the fabled Vrekken in the hope it was an esoteric pathway which led to her missing father, whom she believed trapped in the near-mythical world of Nonterrazake.

  The Vrekken.

  The Vrekken roared. It surged. And it pulled… nearly half a league across, and filling a cavern of such incredible scale it veered off around Anukis to impossible heights, distant sheer walls glinting with dark rock and lit by wrist–thick skeins of mineral deposits.

  The Vrekken howled, like a primal giant in pain. It was a huge circular portal, a juggernaut of churning spirals leading down in massive, sweeping circles towards a savage cone depth… a whirlpool, thought Anukis, eyes taking in the scene in an instant, head tossing back golden curls as her lips came back, brass vampire fangs snarling in horror, her clockwork ticking inside with increased rhythm as gears stepped and cogs spun, twisted, clicked, and Anukis grasped the edges of the Engineer's Barge. There was nothing she could do. The powerful current had her, pulled the boat towards the Vrekken, towards its vast circular sweep and tears ran down Anukis's face for here, here she had discovered her true identity and suddenly realised what her father wanted of her – to help revert the vachine to the pure, to the vampires of old, and away from the twisted merging with deviant clockwork technology, away from a reliance on the machine.

  Anukis breathed out in a hiss.

  And sped towards the huge underwater whirlpool…

  The Engineer's Barge was tugged, then flung into the Vrekken and caught like a toy. It powered in circles, nose in the air leaving a wide wake through churning waters and Anu spun down, and down, and round and down and she realised the mighty whirlpool consisted of layers and she passed down, through layer after layer of this oceanic macrocosm, of whirling dark energy, of raw power and violent fusion and screaming howling thrashing detonation and mighty primordial compression, and she thought…

  There is no fabled Nonterrazake. It does not exist.

  Just death. Death in this place…

  Anukis screamed… and waited to be crushed, eyes closed, hunched down on the brass barge with its thumping clockwork engine, her heart thundering in her ears like the ticking of the strangest, devia
nt clock. Spray burst over the barge, drenching her, and she could taste salt and bitterness and the whole world was a confusion. Round and round she spun. Down down through dark layers. She felt the pressure, and heard squeals as the Engineer's Barge started to buckle, to compress and crunch and fold in upon itself and Anukis hunkered down further, a ball of foetal fear, and then there came a crash and wrenching of iron and something slammed her face and darkness rushed in like a surge of sea water into a drowning ship – and Anukis remembered no more.

  A dark lake lapped a dark shore. It was raining, fat droplets pattering across the lake. Anukis fluttered open butterfly eyelids that felt stretched to the point of breaking, and wondered if she were dead. But then pain slammed her like an iron oar, and she realised she couldn't be dead; the world hurt too much, and in her experience, this sort of pain only came from being alive. With a tiny hiss, her vachine fangs ejected, and then retracted. This, too, told her the world was real. Only Man could have invented the vachine.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows, and listened. Nothing, but the lapping of water and the fall of rain. She frowned. Wasn't she inside the mountain? Then, slowly, as if dissolving from a dream, a gentle rhythmical hush hush hush came to her ears, and she looked up, and her mouth dropped open. Above her, the Vrekken spun, massive and violent and dark, a whirlpool in the sky, black and blue and gold and laced with traces of occasional purple. Rain fell from the mighty whirlpool, and Anukis climbed to her knees, and then to her feet, her body aching, every joint complaining, her eyes still fixed – locked – to the truly stunning and magnificent sight above. For long minutes everything was forgotten, but slowly Anukis came round, her clouded mind clearing, and she was brought back to the present. She glanced right, to where something lay crumpled by the dark lake's shore. She began to walk, soft boots silent on slippery wet rock, and with a start she recognised the crumpled thing; it was the Engineer's Barge, crushed into a loose tangle of metal as if folded and squeezed in a giant's mighty fist. With a quick movement, Anukis looked down at herself, as if fearing, for a few seconds at least, that she had been crushed also. But she hadn't; and except for a dull throbbing in her bones, as if her internal frame had somehow taken a battering but left her flesh intact, she felt fine. More than fine. She felt… invigorated!

  Glad to be alive.

  She stopped and gazed around, and wondered if this was Nonterrazake, the fabled mythical underworld and, more importantly, the secret home of the Harvesters. She moved to the wall, which followed in parallel with the lake's shore, and began to walk, footsteps quick, urgent now, for she was certainly trapped down here, in this underground place, and of one thing Anukis was certain beyond all doubt: there was no way she could head back up through the Vrekken. It was a one-way journey.

  She stopped, by a small tunnel. She would have to crawl. She got down on hands and knees and peered in. She could see light, a distant eerie glow, and began to crawl through the rock. Gradually, the mountain beneath her hands, and indeed above and around her, began to fade, a graduated change from black through grey, and finally to the colour of ivory. Of bone, bleached and old. Beneath her hands the rock was no longer black, but a rough-textured white. Her nostrils twitched, for she could smell fresh, cool air. She emerged into a larger tunnel, and saw immediately she was in a mass of inter-connected tunnels which led off, seemingly randomly. Anukis swallowed. She imagined wandering down here in a labyrinth, forever, or at least until she starved and died.

  She picked a tunnel at random, and walked across rough bone floor, hand trailing against bone-smooth walls, her mind working. She looked up; the ceiling was high, vast, and it was from above cool air flowed. It caressed her skin, soothing, like a sigh from a lover.

  Anukis quelled a savage laugh. That sort of life was over for her. It had been since Vashell's… abuse.

  Vashell. She remembered his love. His words of kindness. Then his hatred, and actions of violence. Beating her. Making love to her. Fucking her. She smiled. There was a difference; a big difference. And then their quest, their journey, their fight. Right up to the point where she ripped off his face, and left him scarred and bleeding beyond all recognition because of her powers of newly awakened vachine dominance.

  Where are you now, lover? she thought. And she could not keep the bitterness from her mind.

  She walked. It could have been hours, or even days, for down in this bone-white place, this place of caverns and caves and tunnels, time seemed to have no meaning. And although this strange underground labyrinth of Nonterrazake was empty, and silent, Anukis could not help but feel she was being watched.

  Several times she would turn, fast, a superspeed vachine flick of body and head dropping to attack crouch, fangs out and claws extended for battle. But every time she was met with a vision of simple, gleaming bone.

  I am not alone, she told herself, feeling paranoid.

  I am not alone…

  They watched her. Hundreds of them. They glided silently through the labyrinth, but here, in this place, they were partly invisible; for these were the Halls of Bone, the place which had spawned them, the place from which they had been granted life.

  They were the Harvesters. And this was their World.

  The Harvesters watched Anukis, curious, for a very select few made it through the Vrekken alive and they wondered what elements of blood-oil magick she carried in her soul to make it so. But then, she was a daughter of Kradek-ka, and this answered much; and made the drifting Harvesters smile beneath their ornate robes of white and gold thread.

  Shall we kill her? came the pulse through bone. It was communal, hive-mind, shared by all. It was a question asked not to other Harvesters, but to the sentient world of bone around them. They thought the same question at the same time, as if they were clones, and the answer which whispered back came from the very bone-roots of the mountain under which they ruled: Skaringa Dak. The Great Mountain.

  No. Let her find her father. Let them speak.

  She has much to learn.

  Much to understand.

  The Harvesters allowed her to drift by. There were thousands now, drawn from their blending with the bone walls and columns by curiosity, and the sweet smell of her blood… and the sweeter smell of her soul. They drifted like ghosts, long tapered fingers extended as if tantalised by her organic fluid presence. But she never saw them. For in this place, they were genetic chameleons.

  Unwittingly, Anukis was guided like a pig into a trap. And eventually she found herself at a small cave, a circular opening, a wide pale interior decorated with rugs and a desk. Shelves lined the bone walls, and every single one held a tiny clock, all ticking, all transparent, so that a million cogs thrashed as one, and a million gears made tiny stepping, clicking motions. Anukis blinked, for this sight was unreal; as unreal as anything she had expected.

  "Anu?"

  "Daddy!"

  Kradek-ka rose from the padded chair of white leather and Anukis leapt, tumbled into his arms, and his face was in her golden curls and she fell into his scent, of tobacco and clockwork oil and hot metal. He still smelled the same. His arms were tight about her, soothing away her troubles. She cried, a little girl again, her tears flowing to his leather apron, and the old Watchmaker finally moved her gently backwards and smiled, a kindly smile on the face of a wrinkled, ancient vachine.

  "What are you doing here? This is a dangerous place!"

  "I have come for you. To rescue you!"

  "Rescue? No, no, no. Did you not read my letter?"

  "What letter?" Anukis's brow furrowed, and Kradek-ka made a tutting, annoyed sound. "I left a letter for you. With Vashell. When I realised I had to come away."

  "Vashell has been… evil, to me."

  Kradek-ka frowned, then, and his face was no longer the face of a kindly old vachine; now, he appeared menacing, and suddenly, an infinitely dangerous foe.

  "That explains much," he said, softly, and moved to a nearby bench. Idly, he lifted a tiny clockwork device and began to fiddle
with the delicate mechanism. As his hands moved, so the clockwork machine began to alter and change, sections flipping out and then over themselves, rearranging like an intricate puzzle, over and over and over again in an apparently infinite cycle. Eventually, Kradek-ka placed the item down.

  "What is happening, Daddy? I am confused. Why are you here? What are you doing here? The Blood Refineries are breaking, the vachine of Silva Valley – your people – are beginning to starve!"

  "You must brace yourself for what I am about to tell you," said Kradek-ka, and his eyes now looked old, older than worlds, and Anukis felt a shudder run through her body. In a strange way, Kradek-ka no longer resembled her father, even though his features had not changed; suddenly, he seemed alien, an altogether different creature.

  "This does not sound good," said Anukis quietly, allowing herself to be led to a low couch. She sat, and Kradek-ka sat in his chair, and their hands remained together.

  "The Blood Refineries are failing because…" he looked away for a moment, eyes seemingly filled with tears; tears of blood-oil, at least. "They are failing because I engineered it so."

  "What? You seek to kill the vachine?"