by Tyler Vance
“Ghost, you are absolutely right! There must be some way that we can use that to track the Centaurai and the Sycrarian! Is there anything you can do?” Tyche exclaimed, intentionally misunderstanding Ghost.
The leader of Legacy held the Celestial’s eyes unrelentingly, nodding only when Tyche finally added;
“Please? We just need to know whether they’re heading for Intrasentient City or not.”
Ghost’s two index fingers simultaneously clicked buttons on his silversteel wrist cuffs, and the air between them shimmered with a projected keyboard. He keyed something in as fast as lightning. The screen of Ghost’s monocle was flooded by pictures of Emili wearing a pair of flaming eyes along with lines of backwards letters. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel.
“She jumped the southern section of the wall, carrying an unconscious Vest,” Ghost told them, reading.
“Well, that changes things and not necessarily for the worse. Our prime objective is now acquiring the codex. As soon as the three of you help me achieve that end, I’ll make you each immeasurably wealthy. As well as taking care of Vest,” Dream resonated through the dancing, blue-lit room with a smile.
“Easier said than done, Dreamer. I notice that you didn’t mention demons anywhere in that tidy little plan of yours,” Sheikoh retorted.
He was surprised when Tyche flashed him a smile.
“While researching that amulet that you’re wearing, I found a story of a Celestial that used it to incapacitate Golems, that is demons possessing anything to confirm their animation and anchor them in the real world. As soon as he got the amulet over their heads, the entity immediately lost consciousness,” the Celestial told him confidently.
Sheikoh nodded uncertainly, unable to find it in himself to voice the real objection that tortured him. Something had to be done about the demon, but he wasn’t sure that he had it in him to do it himself. Sheikoh couldn’t bring himself to face the girl that he loved. He couldn’t aim a pistol Emili’s freckles any more than he could bring himself to shoot Dorothi.
But he couldn’t just stand by and let Khryzt tarnish Emili’s memory. Under the mask of Emili’s face, the demon would inevitably wreak untold destruction. Sheikoh knew that he might be the only one who could stop it.
As much as his gut twisted at the thought of assaulting Emili, he couldn’t allow the creature to invade Emili’s body without reprisal. The demon had invaded Emili’s body and raped her soul. Could Sheikoh really stand by and let it happen? He clenched his teeth in frustration. It boiled down into an impossible choice. He could either kill Emili’s body, or let the demon go free to do what he wanted with the girl that he loved.
His chest swelled, conflicted at the enormity. Indigo’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“I killed the Coascendant. Pay me now, Celestial, I’m done. This thing is more than I’m willing to fight,” Indigo muttered.
It was the wrong thing to say.
The whites of the Celestial’s eyes flooded blue. Everything, from his irises to the whites of his eyes glowed brilliant blue. The show of power was puny compared with the leaping flames of Sycrarian-Emili’s eyes, though still mesmerizing. Tyche leveled an outstretched clutch at the ganglord.
Indigo let out half a cry that cut off with a gasp. Sheikoh watched as Indigo’s enormous body was lifted twitching into the air and then pressed against the sharp chandelier. The ganglord wore an expression of agony, like Dream or Camillio or whatever was lifting him up by his very blood. The Celestial’s voice took on the menacing twin-timbre he shared with the demon.
Sheikoh shivered, suddenly cold.
“You were hired to take care of the Coascendant and the Centaurai. Failure isn’t due any reward; you would do well to remember that,” he spat menacingly.
Tyche’s clutch held the quivering giant, suspended in the air above the table for a moment. Then suddenly the blue lights in the Celestial’s eyes sparked out and he let his hand fall to his side. Indigo’s body fell heavily onto the runed table with a dull thump. Sheikoh was a little surprised that the table held under the weight of the massive man’s fall. Ghost leaned down and whispered something into Indigo’s ear, before turning to address the group.
“A strong light is showing up on the Celestial Imaging scope. The demon seems to be somewhere inside of the Schizn Canopy,” Ghost told them tersely.
Camillio Tyche’s face lit up with its earlier excitement.
“The time is at hand. Follow the Sycrarian through the Schizn Canopy and get the amulet around its neck. Then all you have to do is kill the Centaurai and bring me back the codex as well as the Sycrarian. You will each be 400 million dots richer at the completion of the task,” Tyche told them all with excitement. Sheikoh looked at the Celestial with disbelief.
That was it? Everything that Emili was to him had been packaged into the order ‘bring me back that codex and the Sycrarian’? Sheikoh wasn’t going to give the arrogant Celestial Emili to bind and experiment on. He could easily imagine the Celestial locking her into a cage and hiring scientists to fill her up with tubes and needles. He felt sick.
Sheikoh glared at the smiling Tyche. Upon looking at the monster, an intense hatred flowed through his muscles. He suddenly stood up and turned, kicking his armchair onto its back.
“Silence! Wait!” the Celestial ordered him. When Sheikoh didn’t stop, he turned to Ghost.
“I notice you shoved the fate of the world on the three of us, while you cool your heels back here. No thank you, Cel-ass-tial,” Sheikoh parted harshly, sharply twisting the doorknob.
Sheikoh furiously strode out of the flickering, blue-lit room. When he’d first entered, the magical flames had seemed mystical, but he’d suddenly realized how pretentious they were. They grated on his nerves along with everything else about Camillio Tyche. It was pathetic to see how far the Celestial went to impress them. Then treat them with contempt.
“SILENCE, I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU! YOU HAVE TO EARN YOUR PAYMENT!” Tyche shouted after him.
Sheikoh didn’t even look back. He wasn’t about to sell Emili for any payoff in the world. He raised his hand and aimed an obscene gesture behind him.
“Bring Silence back here!” The Celestial ordered sharply.
Sheikoh heard Indigo’s heavy, booted footfalls behind him. The ganglord must’ve been itching for a good fight if he was running to obey the Celestial. Sheikoh kept walking until he heard Indigo’s heavy breath. Mess with me now, you’re gonna die, Sheikoh vowed coldly.
He didn’t even turn to face the ganglord though. He just let Indigo charge him, focusing everything on his sense of hearing. At the last possible second, Sheikoh twisted and flipped the bigger man over his shoulder. Indigo retaliated midair, flinging a lightning kick at Sheikoh’s face. Sheikoh dodged, but only just; he felt Indigo’s boot graze his forehead. The surprise attack had cost Indigo though; Sheikoh watched the six and a half feet of muscled man fall hard.
Keeping his eyes on Indigo had been a mistake though. Sheikoh realized as Ghost’s quicksilver fist slammed into his cheek. The blow jarred through his skull. Sheikoh stumbled back a few more steps and then arranged himself into a defensive stance. Ghost must’ve slipped to Sheikoh’s side like a wraith while he was distracted. He wasn’t sure how the wiry Ghost could have possibly hit him like that.
The two appraised one another with their guard’s up. Sheikoh leveled a glare at Ghost. He was the master of sneaking around, not some Century washout. From the corner of his eye, Sheikoh saw Indigo recover, rolling up into a battle stance. The two members of Legacy advanced on Sheikoh, slowly circling around his sides. Ghost tossed his monocle into a nearby patch of grass. Sheikoh backed up with a hard gleam in his eyes. Behind the gangsters was the Celestial.
“Sheikoh, listen to me,” Dream’s whisper echoed in the silence of the night.
“I’m not going to run around and risk my life for you anymore! This job is officially over! Done!” Sheikoh spat, furiously
His fury
suddenly exploded, drenching the night with a haze of blood red. Sheikoh forced his cyborg limbs into overdrive and bounded over to, then through the Indigo’s guard. The motion was so fast that the ganglord barely had the time to even arrange his face into an expression of shock before Sheikoh’s kick blasted into his solo plexus. The force rocketed Indigo backwards, and knocked the air from the man’s lungs.
Then Sheikoh twisted his death glare to aim at Ghost. He crouched, pulling out his electroblade out of a boot and sprung high into the air in a single fluid movement. Sheikoh flew high up, over the roof tops, staring at Ghost with wild eyes. He hung for a moment, looking at the man. Ghost’s expression was unconcerned; the leader of Legacy stepped out of his battle stance.
“You claim that Legacy is some kind of protection? You were the bastards that sold Emili Four,” Sheikoh whispered, cold as ice. His words were stolen by the wind.
Ghost was going to pay. He deserved to die more than Sanatous, however annoying the dude was.
Sheikoh tipped towards Ghost, aiming his hissing, blacksteel electroblade straight for the man’s unconcerned face. He fell through a rush of wind that screamed for him to stop, but Sheikoh didn’t intend to. Hatred pulsed through his blood, clawing for the life of the man that was everything wrong with the world. Ghost, the Century, the gang leader and the Four dealer who had all but stolen Emili from him and Dorothi. As soon as Ghost came into range of his electroblade, Sheikoh pounded the weapon into his face with all of the hatred and desperation that he’d ever felt in his life.
The knife vibrated Sheikoh’s arms as he raked it down the man’s face with a metallic screech. He instantly knew that something was off. His electroblade wasn’t slicing through skin; rather, it felt like he was trying to slash through a hunk of metal. Sheikoh’s fifteen foot drop smashed him against Ghost. The leader of Legacy didn’t even budge, so Sheikoh painfully bounced back. He slid through the dirt, looking up at Ghost’s face with disbelief.
Torn skin hung from the cut that Sheikoh had raked across Ghost’s face. The slash scored all the way from the middle of the man’s forehead down to his jaw. That wasn’t what had caused Sheikoh’s shock, however.
Underneath the ripped wound hid a line of blacksteel. The tattered skin drifted in the night’s breeze. Sheikoh could make out a blacksteel skull hidden beneath what must have been Synthskin. It was designed on the same alien frequency as Sheikoh’s own cyborg arm and legs. For a minute, the sectioned blacksteel skull grinned at Sheikoh.
“Surprising, isn’t it?” Ghost asked sardonically. “Century can choose to go through a conversion. That’s why their robes cover the whole body; nobody knows which of them are human and which aren’t.”
Sheikoh glared up at Ghost, his furious eyes demanding ‘Why won’t you just let me be?’ Camillio Tyche walked up to stand beside Ghost. The Celestial wore an almost credible look of sincerity. Sheikoh glared at him as well.
“Silence, you don’t understand. I can’t face the Sycrarian. An unbound Sycrarian is untouchable to the Celestial. Upon drawing the slightest bit of magic in, the Sycrarian could drain my life-force in an instant. Without magic, I’m nothing more than an old man,” Tyche confessed quietly.
“Yeah, is that right? Well you aren’t the only one who knows what the demon can do, mate. I’ve seen what it’s capable of! Even wearing the amulet, it easily overpowered me. There’s nothing we can do!” Sheikoh spat vehemently back at Tyche.
He lifted himself to his feet, brushing dust off of his worn, black clothes. Out of the corner of his eye, Sheikoh saw Ghost take a step towards him. Sheikoh clenched a hand around his electroblade. Just try it, he dared the android.
“Ghost, stop,” Tyche commanded sharply. “If you get too close to the Transcendent Amulet it’ll nullify your blood rune.”
Ghost shot a glare at the Celestial and took a grudging step back. Camillio Tyche turned back to Sheikoh.
“We need you, Silence. Without the amulet or the codex, there’s no way to stop the demon. If we stand by and let it, it could destroy the entire world,” Tyche urged Sheikoh.
“If it’s for the fate of the world, I’ll give you your precious amulet back, but that’s all I can do. The thing is faster than us, stronger than us, and it can use magic. We need to call it a day and run like you were planning before the bad guy became a freaking demon, Celestial,” Sheikoh spat scathingly.
Camillio’s blue eyes probed Sheikoh’s expression intently.
“I don’t think that that isn’t the reason that you refuse to fight… her…” Tyche murmured, staring into Sheikoh’s dark eyes.
Sheikoh’s expression flickered. He regained control of it after a second, but the damage was already done. Camillio Tyche had caught the momentary glimpse of pain in his eyes. The Celestial’s lips formed a half smiled of pity. He leaned over Sheikoh’s shoulder and modulated his volume so that no one else could hear.
“Sheikoh,” Tyche whispered into the teenager’s ear. A chill shivered down Sheikoh’s spine at the mention of his real name. “The reason that I wanted the codex was because the book was rumored to hide the lost secret of binding Sycrarian. If you bring the codex and the demon to me, I will extract it from Emili. You get her back, and I get my own Sycrarian. Then we can leave this city behind us.”
Sheikoh’s eyes widened when he heard Emili’s name. How had the Celestial found out about her? He searched the man’s face intently before deciding that it didn’t matter. Then his eyes dropped out of focus and he thought hard for a few minutes.
Tyche’s deal made sense, but Sheikoh wasn’t sure. Desperation beat one’s morals into submission. Even though the Celestial’s eyes seemed sincere, the bags underneath them hinted at desperation. Tyche’s face was lined with stress, his mouth molded into a serious half-frown. Tyche’s greying brown hair was pulled back into an unkempt ponytail. The man just had a strained demeanor.
Of course he was strained. There was a freaking demon on the loose. His obvious desperation didn’t necessarily mean the Celestial was lying though. Sheikoh didn’t make out any glint of falsehood in Tyche’s eyes, and even if he had, Sheikoh didn’t think that he’d be able to resist the slight possibility that he could bring Emili back. Finally, he nodded his head reluctantly. Tyche smiled in satisfaction.
Sheikoh didn’t smile back though; he didn’t see that he had much choice in the matter. If he let this opportunity pass, he didn’t think he could ever face Dorothi again. He was probably going to die. Even with the amulet, victory was a long way from a sure thing. The Sycrarian’s punches were lethal.
“Fine, it’s a deal. Double cross me and you’re dead, though,” Sheikoh warned Camillio Tyche.
“That sounds fair,” Tyche responded quickly with a sparkle of exhilaration in his eyes.
Sheikoh gazed at Tyche searchingly with a question perched at the edge of his lips. The Celestial looked back, his face arranged in amusement.
“Go on,” the Celestial motioned Sheikoh.
“Why do you want me to go so bad?” Sheikoh asked the Celestial with distrust.
“Honestly, the quick answer is that neither Ghost nor I can wear the Transcendent Amulet without repercussions. I’d lose my magic, and Ghost would fall over dead the second that the blood rune tying him to his android body failed. Indigo could wear it for us, but you’re unique situation proves much more useful,” Tyche explained, lowering his voice emphatically. “You are better suited for this than anyone in the entire world. If anyone can do this it’s you Sheikoh.”
Then the Celestial raised his voice so that Indigo and Ghost could hear him as well.
“Take three Swifthooves and track the Sycrarian through the Schizn Canopy,” Camillio Tyche told the three of them, Ghost nodded quietly. “Deal with the Centaurai and then bring back the codex and the girl, Alive.”
They turned, Sheikoh following somewhat numbly, and traipsed through the dark, dingy streets. Behind them, Camillio called out.
“Good luck.”
Chapter 16
Sycrarian Silence
Sheikoh rode the smooth springsaddle of his mottled orange Swifthooves without effort. Alongside him were the black helmeted profiles of Indigo riding a huge grey beast of a Swifthooves, and Ghost, in the lead, riding a blue Swifthooves. It was an infinitely more bearable experience than Sheikoh’s ride with Emili had been.
Regardless, his face was a tense mask. His anxiety wasn’t for what lay before them, but for a worry left behind. He’d quickly searched his two houses for Dorothi, but she was nowhere to be found. Then Sheikoh’d called her, but she hadn’t answered. It was too similar to the time that Emili had disappeared. Sheikoh shivered, remembering it and wished that he’d checked in on Dorothi during the recess between meeting with Tyche and heading to Randel Sanatous’s place.
Right now he needed to focus. He could worry about Dorothi later. That’s what Sheikoh told himself at least. But the more he tried to deny the nagging worry, the more it bothered him. A vision of Dorothi lying unconscious in that alley pounded at the back of his head.
Sheikoh almost shook his hair in an effort to dispel the image, before he remembered that he was wearing a Swifthooves helmet. Shaking his head wouldn’t move any of the raven bangs away from his eyes; his hair was all but strapped where it was. He needed to live in the moment right now. As he rode the Swifthooves down the dirt road that sliced through the Schizn Canopy, he called on the cold part of himself to push the screaming, protesting emotions deep into his chest.
They were following Khryzt using Celestial vision monocles. Ghost had given him and Indigo each a brand new one before they left, but Sheikoh couldn’t get his to work. He tried to do the double wink that activated the monocle’s Celestial energy tracking vision that Ghost had showed them, without success. He repeated the movement, exaggerated, but the energy screen wouldn’t pull up. Frustrated, Sheikoh twisted his face and blinked his eyes, trying to get the thing to work.
Most didn’t know it, but the Celestial vision Ghost used to track down the Sycrarian was actually the reason that monocles had been developed in the first place. For centuries the Intrasentient Emperors had directed all of the empire’s research funds towards figuring out how the Celestial were able to manipulate energy. The consecutive emperors each nurtured a hope that science would one day acquire the secrets of magic.