by Tyler Vance
“Hundreds of thousands of years wandering through the eternal white of the Transcendental Plane have made it apparent that I deserve the title coward,” Khryzt’s echoing double-voice admitted to Sheikoh. “Through all of the countless ages, I searched for purpose in the endlessness. I dreamt that I might find some means of rejoining my brethren Sycrarian.”
“Each century I was forced to endure chipped away at my hope. Every moment, I lived the agony of complete loneliness. I bitterly regretted my cowardice. If I had had the choice again, I would have stayed; regardless that it meant a death at the hands of Zynia Faet. I would have welcomed Zynia’s blade in my chest to breathe the gentle darkness of my people one last time. To hear the call of the Celestial Crescent,” Khryzt murmured in two echoing voices of deep thought.
Sheikoh watched the Sycrarian, not sure where the creature was going with its monologue. His eyes kept drifting over the skin of Emili’s elbow, or the tiny, red mole on the bottom her jaw. Before he invariably shook himself and reminded himself firmly that this was a demon and not Emili. As if to remind him of the fact, a drizzle of sparks flickered out of Khryzt’s eyes.
“You were supposed to be my salvation,” the Sycrarian cried, startling Sheikoh. “You were everything I had been searching for all of those the untold centuries. When you promised to release me from the agony of my exile, I was beside myself with hope. I hadn’t felt hope for millennia.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how you do it on your little Black Moon, but over here in the real world, when someone does you a favor you say ‘thank you,’” Sheikoh responded sharply. “You demon’s must show gratitude by blowing a grandma up or something, huh?”
Khryzt fixed him with a cold glance.
“Your favor consisted of a few short words after everything I’d done to aide you.” Khryzt retorted, before continuing. ”When an Outworlder such as you offered to forgive my transgression of the Celestial Crescent’s will, I felt an exhilaration that no mortal could ever hope to understand. Upon extending my consciousness, however, I realized that something was horribly wrong. The Celestial Crescent wasn’t singing its song through the Transcendent Plane. It was gone.”
“Then I felt it, the moment that you opened a portal to this place. The crescent pulled me here. I followed you through the portal in the body of your Emili. The call of the Celestial Crescent led me to him,” Khryzt spat in his twin alien voices, flinging a disgusted finger at the unconscious Centaurai.
“This monster has stolen the Celestial Crescent. As a result, the Black Moon, has been eradicated. Without the Celestial Crescent at its core, the Black Moon can’t form from the chaos drawn around it. It’s is bound to this contemptible human, and I know of no way to disentangle its sacred silver from his life-force.
“The Celestial Crescent belongs in the Transcendent Plane. Without it, everything that I have longed for all of these centuries has proven to be nothing more than ashes and half-forgotten dreams,” Khryzt finished in double-tones of bitter despair.
So Khryzt was trying to retrieve the Celestial Crescent. And it was somehow bound to Cylium Vest.
Sheikoh bit his lip and thought things through. Ghost was after the Arch Centaurai position, Camillio Tyche wanted the codex (hopefully he didn’t want the Sycrarian overly), and all Sheikoh wanted was for the demon to vacate Emili’s body. Khryzt would probably go back to the Transcendent Plane with his magical crescent thing… If Tyche figured out some way to rip the crescent out of Cylium Vest…
Sheikoh opened his mouth to suggest a compromise.
Ghost and Indigo burst into the cavern. Sheikoh cursed and dodged behind a boulder. They couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to pummel the distracted Khryzt with a barrage of red and green plasmafire. And it wasn’t doing much to the demon. From the slams and sizzling of his cover, Sheikoh could tell Khryzt’s shield hadn’t faltered.
It looked like negotiation was off of the table. There was nothing else to do but proceed with their original plan.
The plasmafire cut off suddenly. They had apparently discovered the invisible barrier around the Sycrarian. Sheikoh flipped over the eight-foot boulder in a single, bounding leap. He landed in a roll, morphing it into a charge for Khryzt. Air howled in his ears and the ground heaved. Around him, rebounding plasmafire pelted smoking craters into its rock walls. The cave shook.
Through the tumult, Sheikoh furiously raced for the two white flames.
- Emili’s -
- Khyrzt’s -
Its eyes
Just below them, all the power of a hurricane swirled itself into a dense, white ball. It floated outside of Emili’s mouth, which was arranged in silent roar. By the vortex’s whistling light, Sheikoh could see Emili’s face. Her neck stretched out, taunt and strained. Her white teeth sparked with the ball’s blinding light. Even blanketed in thick clouds of dust and wearing a demon’s expression, she was unbelievably beautiful.
Sheikoh shook himself. He guessed that the blast was more than enough to kill Ghost and Indigo. As well as about half of the mountain above. Sheikoh desperately hurled his body the last ten feet. He rocketed towards the Sycrarian, faster than blinking. His arms instinctively covered his face. A cloud of surprised sparks flared over his forearms.
Sheikoh slammed into the Sycrarian, and knocked it off of Emili’s feet. The inferno of force exploded outwards. Sheikoh’s vision was swallowed in blinding waves of untamed chaos. It was surreal to see reality warp and stones fly under pressure he was immune to. Sheikoh ran straight through the storm of power, untouched, while the cavern quaked beneath him. He thanked the amulet bouncing against his chest. The destruction should have charred him black in an instant.
Sheikoh burst out of the misfire. Dodged a stalactite threatening to spear him. Charged the nearby Sycrarian. He slashed with his hissing electroblade. The stroke threatened to cripple an arm.
Emili’s arm.
Sheikoh’s strike stuttered for the merest instant. He didn’t have time to follow through. Khryzt dodged.
And he was suddenly wide open.
Shit!
A leg whipped across Sheikoh’s chest. The air was smashed from his lungs. He was flung backwards like a crumpled, paper ball.
Midair, he wrested his ML5 out of its holster and covered the demon in instinctive plasmafire. It looked like it surprised Khryzt. All three of his shots went wide.
The next instant, he smashed into hard rock. A breath gasped out of his chest and the pistol was knocked out of his hand. He bounced off the rock and collapsed into a heap of numb surprise. A haze slowed his thoughts and froze his battered body. He lay there dazed. Consciousness flickered in and out. Ghost and Indigo saved him. They quadrupled Sheikoh’s desperate plasmafire with their own.
Khryzt didn’t deflect their shots with its invisible wall though. Emili’s arms bent into a circle and, in the air between them, a swirling vortex opened up. It plucked Indigo’s and Ghost’s plasmafire out of thin air, focusing them into a ball of tornado-fast wind. The power spun with the light of their shots.
This didn’t look good. Sheikoh pushed himself up, climbing to his feet heavily.
Khryzt twisted the energy into a rough harpoon and held it above Emili’s head like a conqueror. Sheikoh didn’t like where this was going. He stepped towards Khryzt as the demon threw the cackling energy at Indigo and Ghost like it was a spear made of lightning. The lethal bolt zigzagged towards Indigo and Ghost, faster than the eye could follow.
Ghost flung himself at Indigo and tackled him out of the path of the bolt. The snarling energy ripped a new tunnel through the wall behind where they’d been moments before. The members of Legacy slammed into a wall. The cave floor heaved violently, moaning a deep, ominous rumble. Sheikoh struggled to regain balance as the chamber shook. Cracks climbed up the walls.
Something shattered by Sheikoh’s foot. He looked over and then up at the ceiling. Stalactites were raining down, there tips sharp as daggers. He dodged left and right, avoiding the falling blade
s, and slowly moving towards Khryzt in a desperate frenzy of blurred movement. One lanced straight towards his chest. His balance was off. He couldn’t dodge it. It was going to stab him in the heart.
At the very last instant, Sheikoh desperately swung his right arm at the stalactite. It shattered it like glass.
Khryzt had forsaken him for two easier targets. The Sycrarian pointed two flickering, purple fingers at Ghost, who kept Indigo safe beneath him. The android had covered Indigo from the hail of falling stalactites with his own body. Sheikoh could just make out the needles of rocks impaled in Ghost’s back.
The stalactites finally stopped raining. Sheikoh bunched up his metal legs and charged the Sycrarian. But it made no difference. It was too little, too late. He was too far away.
Khryzt smashed Ghost’s shoulder with a purple beam. It blasted him into the air, spinning like a gear. Ghost came down rolling and didn’t stop until he lay against the far side of the cave.
The android only lived because the demon hadn’t noticed the dull gleam of blacksteel peeking out of his Synthskin. But there was no way Khryzt didn’t see it now.
Blacksteel limbs jutted out of Ghost’s tattered skin. The android’s clothes were ragged and torn all over his frame.
Sheikoh gritted his teeth. Blacksteel was much tougher than normal bones, but even it had a limit. As Sheikoh well knew. Whatever his problems with the dude, he wasn’t going to let Ghost go out like this. He had to distract Khryzt. Before the demon killed someone.
He leapt at Khryzt and slashed at Emili’s freckled face. Khryzt twisted out of harm’s way. A wave of Emili’s blonde hair glanced over Sheikoh’s arm, leaving behind a thin film of longing.
Khryzt leapt backwards, and Sheikoh followed.
He came down on Khryzt. Flung a blindingly fast back-kick at the demon’s face. There was a satisfying crunch. Emili’s neck bent backwards. Blonde hair and droplets of blood trailed behind the demon as it staggered a few steps backwards. Sheikoh landed where it had been. In the same movement, he hurled a right uppercut at Emili’s chin.
Khryzt dodged the blow.
The demon’s fiery eyes sparked red, and it tried to slam a fist into Sheikoh’s midriff. He dodged and immediately retaliated. They traded whistling blows, dodging one another’s staggering assaults. Khryzt managed to smash Sheikoh’s shoulder, knocking him reeling back. Luckily, it had been his right shoulder. His left would have shattered under the force.
They circled each other warily. Khryzt twitched Emili’s hands into sharp claws and charged Sheikoh at the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. Sheikoh dodged the creature’s raw kick, then the whip-like forearm slash, screaming with speed. He landed a quick jab on the Emili’s knee and the demon responded with a wild flurry of lightning punches. The blows flickered around him and ended with a clumsy back kick that he caught and jabbed with a knee.
The Sycrarian was stronger, but Sheikoh was more skilled.
They disengaged, panting. Khryzt’s eyes flared with a burst of red and orange sparks. The Sycrarian rushed Sheikoh, attacking furiously. Sheikoh barely managed to dodge the fists that flooded all sides, disappearing into their own realm of speed. Sheikoh retreated, dodging desperately. Khryzt’s blows easily had the force to power straight through his guard, so he didn’t even pretend to have it up. His face was tight with concentration as he fought for his life. Sheikoh had never fought this desperately. The relentless attack was quickly wearing him down. Sheikoh knew that his only chance was to buy enough time for Ghost or Indigo to figure out a way to give him an opening. Then Sheikoh could snap into overdrive and force the amulet over Emili’s head.
Sheikoh was able to land a glancing blow on Emili’s elbow and another slightly telling one on her knee, but only because the demon was fighting like a berserker, clawing and swinging Emili’s arms at the dancing teenager in a relentless pure offense. The furious strikes didn’t let up for an instant. Sheikoh retreated ever backwards, forcing his eyes unblinking, so he wouldn’t miss any of Khryzt’s hissing strikes.
Then Khryzt managed to wrest the upper hand.
The demon whipped a right hook his way. Sheikoh managed to dodge just out of its range. Until the demon opened Emili’s fingers into a claw. Sharp fingernails slashed straight through Sheikoh’s eyebrow. A splash of ruby blood blinded him for a moment.
Khryzt took advantage of it, slamming a knee into Sheikoh’s stomach, hard. Sheikoh was knocked backwards, gasping for breath. Khryzt rushed the stumbling teenager with Emili’s sharp nails thrust forward like a spear. Behind Khryzt, Sheikoh noticed a shadowy figure with an assault rifle trained on the Sycrarian. His eyes widened. He hoped he understood.
Sheikoh threw himself forwards, just managing to evade Emili’s outstretched nails. His side slammed into Khryzt though, and the demon wrapped Emili’s unnaturally strong arms around him. He had sacrificed balance for a final, desperate dodge. He was trapped in the demon’s iron grip. He could only hope that his ribs held out beneath the demon’s massive strength.
If this didn’t work, he was dead.
The keening hiss of plasma sounded in the cavern. Khryzt’s grip around him suddenly loosened. Sheikoh expertly flipped Emili’s body over his shoulder with all his strength and twisted his knee onto her chest. Khryzt’s burning eyes glared sparks at Sheikoh, who suddenly noticed a burned bone stuck out of the smoldering plasma wound on Emili’s shoulder. He forced pity from his chest angrily; now was not the time for a soft heart.
“Looks like you forgot something. You lose your little shield when you get too close to this,” Sheikoh murmured over Khryzt, tapping the amulet with a thumb.
The Sycrarian’s eyes flared, spitting up a cloud of bright sparks. They surrounded Sheikoh’s face painlessly. Emili’s expression twisted with white-hot fury. A drop of blood dripped from Sheikoh’s forehead and landed on her cheek. Indigo jogged over, wearing a cocky grin. His rifle was slung over his giant shoulder.
“That amulet will not save any of you from a slow, painful death,” Khryzt hissed in double-tone.
“Shut up, freak,” Indigo responded.
Behind Indigo, Sheikoh watched Ghost lift himself to his feet. The android’s clothes and Synthskin were burned and tattered. They hung open around the now clearly visible blacksteel. His metal body was part insectoid and part skeletal. Foreboding green wires wound around the exposed bits of metal and machinery, like a perverse imitation of veins. As the leader of Legacy limped over, Sheikoh found that he couldn’t tear his eyes from Ghost’s horrifying face.
About half of Ghost’s face looked passably normal, even with the bits of blacksteel that gleamed dully like blackened blood through the torn holes across one side of his face. The Synthskin stretched almost all the way across the man’s brow before giving way to a line of what looked like burned and shredded flesh. The wound split through Ghost’s face, exposing the android’s true self. Everything from Ghost’s blacksteel snout to the silver-toothed grimace was visible through the curtain of burned skin. Ghost’s black skull resembled the grinning face of death. His eyes glowed toxic-green in the dark.
Sheikoh was suddenly ripped forward in a haze of motion. The world blurred with streaks of speed as the cave around him echoed with cries and thumps. Khryzt had taken advantage of Sheikoh’s momentary lapse in attention, twisting Emili’s body out of Sheikoh’s hold like a snake. The next thing that Sheikoh knew, his and Khryzt’s positions had been reversed. The demon grinned down at him evilly.
The Sycrarian suddenly bounded into the air. Khryzt hung above them, floating, with Emili’s arms outstretched as though the demon expected an embrace from them. A battered Sheikoh rolled backwards onto his feet, his wary crouch mirroring Indigo’s and Ghost’s. Indigo fired an experimental bolt at the demon. It glanced off of the Sycrarian’s invisible shield and blasted a black stain into the ground. Khryzt’s white fires illuminated the cave with cold, blue light.
The demon held out its arms, and two shadow-drenched objects hurtled into Emili�
��s hands. By the flickering light of the Sycrarian’s flaming eyes, Sheikoh could see that they were the Transcendent Codex and the unconscious Centaurai. The Sycrarian cradled the codex in the crook of Emili’s arm, and held the limp body of Cylium Vest by his hair.
He noticed that the Centaurai’s crimson, coat-tailed jacket had been ripped and stained a murky brown. Stubble shadowed the man’s jaw, and his gelled hair hung greasily around his haggard face. The arrogant socialite that had threatened him so long ago had been transformed into the ragged, unkempt man, slowly revolving beneath the flying demon. Sheikoh almost felt sorry for the guy.
“Let’s see whether the Transcendent Amulet can protect you from this,” Khryzt’s demonic double-voice echoed menacing throughout the cave.
Khryzt closed Emili’s eyes and the cavern was suddenly plunged into darkness, tempered only by the two tendrils of white flame that escaped under Emili’s lids. Sheikoh glanced at Indigo, wearing a hard expression. He knew what Khryzt was about to do. The cave shook, slowly at first and then violently. The roof cracked, pouring gravel onto the cave floor. A glinting backdrop of sunrise streamed through the ceiling.
They didn’t have time!
“GHOST! OVERDRIVE!” Sheikoh screamed.
Chapter 17
Stone Rain
Sheikoh forced his cyborg parts into overdrive, flung Indigo over his shoulder and bounded into the still air, streaking along the rock wall as the ceiling crumbled. Adrenaline kicked in. His heartbeat pounded against his eardrums. Sheikoh bounded along falling boulders like they were stepping stones. His blacksteel legs blasted off of the rocks, shattering them into sand. Sheikoh lolled to the left under Indigo’s weight. He tried planning his path through the avalanche, but he had to take what came his way.
For the merest instant, the rocks flickered to the wood and rubble of Randel Sanatous’s collapsing roof. He wrenched his eyes back to the moment. Leaping from boulder to falling boulder. Forever upwards. He was like a cricket on speed. Every inch was a miracle. It was like he was trying to run up a down escalator. Only infinitely harder.