Mary practically throttled the little guy. “Stop it!” she demanded. “Don't say that! Take it back!”
Simon's eyes bulged and the pack's eyes widened collectively at the sight. Mary was acting entirely out of character, a development that was fast becoming a disturbing trend. Then she relented, bursting back as if she'd been burned and landing in a huddled heap on the floor. Jas snatched Mary up in his arms and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. He wiped a stream of tears running down her face and wiped a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. Mary burrowed her face into the crook of his shoulder while the rest of us tried to give them as much privacy as was possible in such a confined space. That was enough to make me seriously begin to consider this the end of days.
I let everything cool down before continuing. We had all the time in the world, after all. “I didn't say this was over. Far from it. Unfortunately, I've a feeling it’s just begun.”
“What makes you think that?” Kathryne reached for the reassuring touch of her weapons but still found nothing. They were such an integral part of her that missing them was equivalent to amputating a limb.
I shrugged. “A hunch.”
“Another hunch?” she asked, an incredulous frown on her face.
“They haven't been wrong so far.” Simon shrugged.
We all wanted a silver lining to latch onto, but they needed the truth. “It'd be easier to hand out a load of lies that would make us all feel better, I know. But that's all I've got. I've just got a sense that it doesn't end here. I'm not willing to lie down and die for these bastards. No way am I going to live out the rest of my existence powering the furnaces of this dark place. No, if I'm to die, I'll be bringing down this whole place with me.” A grin stretched the folds of my face into a dark parody of a smile.
— Chapter 22 —
The heady promise of revenge eventually dulled with the passing of incalculable hours, bringing us back to the monotonous exercise of survival. Until the status quo changed and inaction was replaced with action.
“Don't make a sound,” a hard voice commanded as the lock was lifted and removed.
I expected my body to be tired, or at least strained and in some pain from sitting on the cold stone for hours on end. Surprisingly, it wasn't. Apparently, being a ghost had advantages. I just couldn't shake the feeling that just standing still caused harm. It was this place, I knew, the workings of the Leviathan's body that drained life until only a dry husk was left. Shaking these thoughts from my head, I crouched as a hooded form ghosted into our midst, closing the door behind it.
“Have you been sent to finish the job?” Kathryne said with venom in her voice as she rose.
A pile of tattered black cloaks were thrown onto the ground, the thump startling all of us into activity. Slowly, to keep us from his throat, the intruder pulled back on his hood and revealed himself. My spirits rose at the sight of Gallick's friendly visage. His luminous armor had been discarded and he now possessed a black sword in place of the shining one.
“Gallick. What exactly are you doing here?” I asked him. “Must not you honor your master? That is why you left us to rot, isn't it?”
He ground his feet into the uncompromising stone. “There be no honor in serving a master who has none of his own. There'd be dreams for this place, once. Auckland was a bright star, and many be inclined to follow that kind of man. Things be changed from what they were. I no longer be one to follow the biddings of his tainted soul.”
Jas picked up one of the cloaks and wrapped it around himself. “Good enough.”
Finally, I understood what he'd been trying to communicate before. “So if you've been planning a jailbreak, what took you so long?”
“I was waiting,” he grunted.
“For what?” I asked.
“The opportune moment.”
“And this is it?” Zack looked around, as if expecting some sort of clarion call.
“This be it. We'd best be going before the moment passes.” He pointed at the cloaks. “These will do much to hide you from the hordes for as long as their power holds out. You'd better be sure that secret weapon of yours is up to it.” He eyed me.
“Where will we go?” Mary sniffled and rubbed at her bloodshot eyes before enfolding herself in a cloak.
Gallick twiddled with his thumbs nervously, anxious to be off. “Cusion has a beating heart that drives him, like any other beast. If you be set in your course to destroy him, you must leave all doubts behind. No other has survived the maze.”
“What's the maze?” Simon asked.
“It be the core of Cusion, a labyrinth o' sorts. If the tales be true, Cusion's greatest weakness will be there.”
I wasn't going anywhere until I'd filled in all the cracks. “And what else?” There had to be more than that.
“Also, his greatest strength. There'd be good reasons why no one tells tales of it in anything but whispers.”
“Great.” Simon bit off the sarcastic remark before grabbing his own cloak.
“Why are you really trying to help us? You have more than misplaced honor weighing on you,” Zack asked.
“I'm tired. This blighted place be wearing on the soul. Eventually, I'll be drained, a directionless being of the horde. Struggling to hold to a semblance of life is not living. My humanity be slipping away. It must end.” With the last bit, he raised his voice in challenge, shaking his fist at the walls around him before realizing his error and glancing at the door.
I sensed that this was the crucial moment. Funny how when it came down to it, there wasn't really a choice at all. Bending down, I clutched the dark fabric in my hands, feeling the life squirming around in there. A mental nudge at my foot and a brief impression of images lent the idea that Shadow was on board.
I narrowed my eyes and allowed myself a small smile. “All right then. Let's go find the black heart of this place and make it bleed.”
Jas grinned, his thumb trailing along his fangs. “Let's.”
“Someone has to keep you from running in the wrong direction.” Kathryne sighed maternally.
“All this light was playing hell with my night vision, anyways.” Simon puffed himself up.
I was extraordinarily lucky to have friends like these. Others might have thought twice about risking their skin for others, setting themselves against the odds. Clenching my fists, I hoped I'd be able to figure out how to get my powers back before it was too late.
Getting out of the hold had been a frighteningly easy task. Then again, one wouldn't think to find resistance when no one expected an escape attempt. Plus, there hadn't been that many people about in the first place. It wasn't like there was a crowd of citizens to notice our departure. Instead of leading us back the way we had entered, Gallick had other ideas. We'd traveled down a set of seemingly infinite stairs set in an alcove behind the whirling ball of power and had been relentlessly pounding down them ever since.
“Where are we going? I think up would be a better idea,” Simon said.
“There be many things you must learn if you want to survive. This be a foreign world, with foreign rules.” Gallick grinned.
I conserved my energy, not trying to bend my mind into accepting some undisclosed truth in a twisted reality. The unnatural illumination of the hold was slowly fading and had become an uncertain twilight. We ran, cloaks billowing out behind us, our progress marked by the echoing corridor. I was almost surprised that everyone in the entire dimension couldn't hear our raucous descent.
Finally, we came to a rasping halt and Gallick bent down, obscuring himself in shadow. We were on a platform of sorts, a small thing. The problem was that the endless staircase we had been sprinting down for the past twenty minutes was a fallacy. It had led to nothing but blank darkness and black rock. Someone had gone to the trouble of carving out all this stone for nothing.
“Aha! Gotcha, ya damn bugger. Always playing hard to get.” I sensed more than felt a slab of stone moving beneath our feet.
I braced myself for some
catastrophic upheaval of earth, but none came. Opening my eyes, I focused on the sickly yellow light filtering into my eyes. Cocking my head curiously, I got down on hands and knees next to Gallick. When I thrust my head forward into the light, I was presented with a disconcerting paradox.
“What twisted mind...” Jas began.
Before us lay a mirrored landscape of dark plains, similar to those we had originally traversed in our quest for safety. The only thing was, we'd left those thousands of feet above us under a blood moon, its red radiance shining down. Here, there was still the scraggly rock, the enveloping darkness. My world shifted queasily as I maneuvered myself through the opening on hands and knees, uncertain if I'd fall forever into the twinkling red stars above. Instead, I just looked like an idiot, made all the more comedic by the pallid yellow light of an entirely different moon.
“Not possible,” Simon said. He screwed up his eyes and held his head, as if the paradox threatened to blow his head off his shoulders.
It was causing me a similar discomfort. My brain was painfully trying to process the separation from reality I was confronted with. One doesn't have their world turned upside down that often. “This is something. Although I'd half hoped to see daisies and sunshine.”
Gallick grinned. “Feast yer eyes. Ye be on the other side of the world. This world shifts, though the red moon always brings new blood, new souls into the fold. Lucky for us, that means the hordes like to migrate. Bad news be that the most powerful and hungry remain.”
“Lovely,” Kathryne said, her vibrant eyes peeled for enemies. She had adjusted to the paradoxical shift with ease.
“At least the larger ones will be easy to see,” Zack said.
“I don't think that's a good thing.” Mary glared.
For a moment, we hesitated on the periphery of the staircase as Gallick strained to close the bulky hatch. The hardest thing to get used to was the lack of life, the absence of sound. The little certainties that allayed fears and cemented your place in reality. Here, there was nothing but a draining darkness, a potent concoction of concentrated nothing. Yeah, adjusting was difficult.
“So there's a reason these holds of yours are burrowed into the earth, besides the obvious,” I said.
“That'd be as good a guess as any. We ain't the ones who dug up this blasted rock in the first place. I doubt any still remember that feat, except Midreal. They be a long-standing hold.” He glanced nonchalantly into the slight shadow cast by the moon's filthy light.
“I assume you know the way?” Jas ran a hand through his sweaty hair. “I'm not sure if I want to wait around until your friends figure out we didn't invite them on our little field trip.”
“Right good idea, that. And where we be going, they won’t follow.” Gallick slapped Jas on the shoulder with a meaty arm, peering uncertainly into the dark.
“I thought you knew where this maze was,” Simon asked, shifting his weight nervously.
“I do at that, but—” Gallick looked in my direction. “There is one that knows better.”
“Caleb? How is he supposed to know anything? We just got here,” Mary complained.
“Not him.” He shook his head. “The hound.”
“Shadow?” Jas spoke up first. “We haven't seen him since we got dragged into this hellhole.”
“And yet here he be.” Gallick reached down into my shadow and pulled the hound from it, grabbing it by the scruff like a disobedient pup.
The hound let out a scratchy bark, yelping its displeasure. Carefully, Gallick placed Shadow onto the ground, where he flowed between my legs like a cat, rubbing up against them playfully. Smiling, I bent down to pet him, thinking I'd already become attached.
“Hiding like that in plain sight. Who would've thought?” Zack tilted his head and frowned.
Everyone looked to me for an explanation. “I found out he stowed away after they asked about him. Figured I'd keep it a secret since they'd been looking to drain him like they were going to do to us. Didn't seem right to hand Shadow over like some bartering chip, after all he's done for us.”
“I'm not sure I like things being kept secret,” Jas told me. “But that was the right move.”
My eyes tracked Gallick's; it was his move.
Powerful muscles bulged as Gallick clenched the hilt of his sword. “Well, can't say as I blame ya, lad. But ye got a powerfully ally in that mutt, there. That beast be both Midreal and Cusion, a blend of sorts, even if it has taken to ya. I don't believe he be meaning you harm, since he had a right good chance before. That there dog's gonna sniff out the maze for us. It ain't easy to find on the best of days, let alone enter.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That right, boy?”
I impressed a set of images into the hound’s mind, trying to convey the conversation to him. It was probably redundant and quite likely insulting, but I didn't want to chance it. Shadow leaped into the air and loosed a confident woof, certain he had his bearings. To prove he wasn't kidding, he struck a pose, freezing and extending his nose in the apparent direction. There wasn't much to validate the hound's assertion, but I didn't doubt he had the wherewithal to lead us to the maze. There were only minute differences in the landscape, just repeating rises of black stone, harsh and cruel, dead.
“I sure hope that dog knows what he's doing,” Mary muttered.
“Shadow knows,” I reassured her. “He led us to the Leviathan before. This isn't much different, I guess, just on a different playing field.”
“Little Cusion here be our best chance.” Gallick shrugged. “I've walked these plains more than most, and it'd be a gamble for even me.”
Shadow growled, a clear note that clearly projected challenge accepted. He circled around the group a few times, a rumble resonating through his throat. As he did, his body brushed up against the back of our legs, effectively herding us. A burst of laughter congealed, sounding foreign in this depressing world. After Shadow had our attention, he burst off in the chosen direction, chortling all the way. Many times the hound doubled back, making sure his charges were maintaining the correct course.
“Are you sure this will hide us from the things skulking about?” Zack tapped his cloak dubiously as we walked, as if trying to unearth the answer from its folds.
“Can't be so sure with all the noise we be making, but they should mask the energies we be broadcasting. We need not worry too much about the hordes marching, but there are others lurking that might become curious.”
“That's just great,” I huffed, though I'd yet to begin really fretting the possibility.
“So keep silent,” Kathryne said and I shut up, teeth clacking together audibly.
“Wise woman, there,” Gallick managed to get out before her glare silenced him as well.
We walked into the endless night, the red constellations above predicting that blood would still be shed, no matter what advantages we had gained in Shadow. Trekking over rises and down again, the predictable pattern returned some of the comfort of predictable certainties that had been absent up to this point. We didn't come across anything trying to tear us limb from limb and consume our essence, thankfully. Hours passed and the dull monotony of restless inactivity settled in. I never became overly tired. That would probably be due to the nature of our existence, considering we didn't actually have tangible muscles to tire out anymore. We were pure spirit, and I figured each cautious step we took forward drained energy from the core of our being.
I shook myself at that realization, and brought it together with the speculation that if we waited long enough, we would eventually be destroyed and engulfed by this world, though the hordes would probably find us first. My mind struggled with this line of thinking, figuring I was on the verge of some discovery. However, try as I might, I couldn't force the secrets of this place to reveal themselves.
— Chapter 23 —
Shadow woofed loudly, breaking me from my reverie. A rumble went through the earth below us, morphing into a violent shaking that tore my feet out from unde
r me. My hands reached for weapons that weren't there as the first strike landed in our midst. A giant hand slammed into the ground beside my head, spewing rock fragments in an expanding arc, drawing blood as some of the sharper pieces found unprotected skin. I hadn't even gotten to my feet before that same hand snatched Simon up and broke him in two. A bright light escaped his broken form, seeping into the body of our attacker. It illuminated the immense form, approximately man-shaped but four times the size and fashioned from pure darkness. Without that spot of light, it blended almost perfectly into the scenery. Then the Simon we knew disappeared, a dark shade taking its place. All this occurred in a short span of seconds, before anyone had a chance to react.
“Simon!” Mary cried and a collective groan went through the pack.
“Dammit, dammit!” I hollered, rushing the beast with nothing but my bare hands for weapons.
I flailed at the giant, but it was no use and only served to make me lightheaded. The behemoth chuckled darkly, some sentience allowing it to seemingly grasp and feed off pain. Then Gallick charged the massive thing in a display of fearless action, slicing deep into the shadowy limbs. Shadow growled and attached himself to a leg, clenching powerful jaws down on dark flesh and refusing to let go.
“What do we do?” Zack cried in anguish.
“There is nothing you can do.” Gallick grimaced as he swerved between the thing's legs and struck again.
“Kathryne, you can help!” I latched onto her arm, feeling powerless. It did not sit well with me.
Jas spun around, spotting a black-armored horde approaching. Their numbers were few, but that hardly seemed to matter. Simon was gone and we had no weapons to fight with. We couldn't beat these things as we were, without power. I tried stoking the fires of my rage, but it only served to make me more enraged at my impotence, the inability be any help to my friends. I tried drawing power from the nexus, but not even a drop trickled from the locus of my being.
Leviathan (Fist of Light Series) Page 23