by Mike Wild
“Cut the crap, Garrison,” Trix said. “I know what you are. You, Sheila Uong, Scarret Star. All of you.”
Garrison smiled. “Ms Uong, yes. Star, simply a fool. But you’re correct in that there are others—many others.”
“And all of you are going to inherit the Earth. Or what’s left of it after your mate down there gets his way.”
“Such is the plan.”
“Yeah? DragonCorp and its magical technologies being the police force, I suppose? Tell me something, Garrison—why would a god of destruction need any policing?”
“All will be revealed.”
“Don’t you mean, ‘That would be telling’? You don’t fucking know, do you? Have you got any idea what’s going to happen when two dimensions merge?”
“Have you?”
“Yes! Which is what makes me a damn sight smarter and saner than you are!”
“Tell me something—in the end, is it sanity or strategy that matters?”
Garrison raised a hand and pointed out a few things. The few things being master team members poised on other ledges, looking down on and surrounding the camp. All bore rocket launchers like his own.
“Fire,” he said.
They were such little things. Tiny plumes of illumination in the dark. But enough to make Trix’s heart thud. Almost as if in slow motion, she watched the subsequent trails of smoke from the missiles mark out paths all over the camp and directly towards where she and the others stood. She could not see the missiles themselves, but they were coming. Oh, they were coming.
Trix spun, enveloping Jentiss and Ralph in her arms, forcing them down. Yuri leapt with them, covering all three with his own form. So many around them, who could have no conception of what was about to hit, did not take cover. The missile struck and detonated, leaving a pit the size of a mass grave. Bodies which might later be buried in it were flung into the air, coming apart as they went, as did the neighbouring yurts and their contents. A heavy rain of dirt and debris hammered down on Yuri’s back, and when he looked up, a second later, the first thing he saw was the smoke trail of another missile coming in. His first instinct was to tighten his protective grip on those below him, but the sound of the missile’s approach was wrong—all wrong. Instead, he grabbed the prone forms beneath him, scooping all three into his arms and, with a roar, ran. The missile struck just where they had been lying, and the shock wave from its impact blew all four of them into the air. They crashed down in a tangle of flesh and armour, not all of it their own, and people who’d been helping each other only moments before now stared in their direction with sightless eyes.
Jentiss coughed, picked herself up. Though still staggering, she managed to pluck a spear from the ground and hurl it with unerring accuracy at one of the master teamers. His finger about to tighten on his rocket launcher’s trigger, to launch a killing blow, he instead doubled over as the spear rammed into his stomach and out through his spine with such force that the vertebrae dangled. He fell slowly, head over heels, and thudded into the ground. Jentiss snatched up his rocket launcher and drew a bead on Garrison, but he was already turning away with a smile, disappearing into the darkness above. Enraged, Jentiss rammed her sword into stone to create a foothold and began to climb towards the ledge, but Trix had seen the slyness of that smile.
“Jentiss, no!”
The warrior turned, her look questioning.
“It’s a distraction. All of it.”
Realisation was instantaneous. “The ring.”
They ran to the temple area and found what they’d feared. The six sorcerers had been cut down in their blindness of concentration, throats slashed from ear to ear, none too neatly, from behind. The assassins could not have been long gone as the sorcerers’ lifeblood was still spreading in puddles about their dead forms, a thick mingle of red and yellow and green.
“It is gone,” Jentiss said unnecessarily.
“Of course they had no time to—?”
“Render the ring useless? No.”
Trix swallowed. “This happened only minutes ago. There’s a chance we could still catch them.”
Jentiss shook her head. “Which way did they go? Which way would you follow? How much fortune would have to shine upon you in order for you to choose the right path?”
“Point taken. It’s a jungle out there. So the question is, how long before Garrison reaches the rift?”
“Who can know? Perhaps a week. Perhaps a day.”
Trix’s heart thudded. She was all too aware of the implications of what she was about to say but said it anyway.
“Then we don’t stop Garrison. We stop Kh’Borian. Ralph, Yuri, and I get past the soulstripper, reactivate the teleportal, bring your forces over. We don’t secure him, we don’t reinforce his bonds, we reach him, and, one way or another, we kill him. Demigod or not, we kill the bastard stone dead.”
“Aren’t you forgetting? You have no chance without the—”
“Crystal,” Trix finished. “But I’m not forgetting, I’m remembering. Jentiss, I wore the ring—I know where the crystal is.”
XVI
Bridge
The only way over the bridge was under it. Trix had spent an hour scanning the ancient structure with binoculars, mapping a viable route to move undetected beneath the clashing forces. Traversing its five arches was the path to take but would pose a precarious challenge; the bridge was under constant pounding not only from the meleeing warriors but from the concussive shock waves of the detonating magics in the air either side. Mortar showered down from the span’s blackened stone, and occasionally chunks of stone fell, too, weakening the bridge further as, in slow-motion bounces, they shattered against buttresses and beyond. All in all, it was surprising the bridge was still standing.
The getting across was only part of the problem. Another was what lay on the other side. Luckily, it seemed the enemy camp could be avoided. Shen, back online once more, had pinpointed an opening beneath the lip of the chasm wall. Too small for him to extrapolate, especially with the background ‘noise’, it was a kind of inlet which hopefully led beyond the camp. Hardly inviting, though—the roughly ten-foot-diameter tunnel was pitch-black and oozed a bright green sludge that stained the wall in a vomitous ‘v’ for hundreds of feet below. As Trix had first trained her binoculars on it, a flurry of small black shapes had flown screeching from its interior, as if fleeing something within.
“It could be a dead end, Trix,” Shen said.
“That shit has to come from somewhere.”
“You have a magic mirror,” Jentiss said. Trix looked up to see the warrior woman staring at Shen. She had been briefing her commanders on Trix’s plan. “You did not tell me you had a magic mirror.”
“My friend prefers the term ‘wormglass’.”
“Nonsense. Anyone can see it is a magic mirror.”
“Wait … what? Trix, who are you talking to?”
Trix brought Jentiss into frame. “Shen-Li, Jentiss Firemane.”
“Whoooaaahhh … She-Ra.”
Jentiss sighed. “Yes, She-Ra—and the rest of her is up here, little man.”
Shen reddened and coughed. “Actually, it’s a form of singularity that allows communication between here and—”
“Narnia,” Jentiss nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“Urm …”
Trix smiled, despite being preoccupied with the third part of their problem—reaching the arches. No small task. The bridge’s underhang was only accessible via a series of dodgy-looking ledges on the near chasm wall. Of varying height, the only one they could reach from the lip was some two hundred yards away. The ledges would be hazardous taken slowly, more so at speed, and they’d have to move like the clappers if they weren’t to be picked off like ducks at a fairground shooting range.
“Covering fire has been arranged,” Jentiss said. “Staggered launches from the trebuchets at few-minute intervals. They’ll create blind spots for the enemy ranks, but your movements will need to be precise, timed.”
>
Trix nodded appreciatively. Tactically, she and Jentiss thought alike. She slid dagger in sheath, secured staff and crossbow, tightened backpack straps. Yuri and Ralph, already prepped, yomped to the drop-off point and eased themselves over the chasm’s edge. Trix was about to follow when Jentiss took her arm.
“You are certain about this? The location of the crystal and where you need to go?”
“Enough to get me to it.”
“Then tread warily. What you have seen so far is nothing to what may await in Kh’Borian’s domain. This may help.” From her back Jentiss unslung the rocket launcher she’d recovered earlier, and Trix embraced its strange, green glow.
Trix smiled, handed Jentiss her binoculars. “Watch for my signal when we’re ready to go. See you on the other side.”
Jentiss moved to stand with the trebuchet crews, while Yuri helped Trix onto the limited space of the ledge. She felt a vertiginous wave of panic as he momentarily swung her out over thin air. Bollocks, it was a long way down—black as pitch despite the pyrotechnics. A dizzying black that seemed undulant and alive. But no time to dwell. She checked Ralph and Yuri were ready, scanned for the distant glint of binoculars, and gave Jentiss a thumbs-up.
The first of the great wooden arms swung upwards with a thwoom, loosing its fiery payload. It took some six seconds for the roiling mass to reach the far side of the chasm, which Trix, Yuri, and Ralph used to begin negotiating a series of hand- and footholds from the first to second ledge. As the fireball hit, they were starkly illuminated against the rock, but enemy eyes saw nothing. They were halfway over when the fires died, and at risk of being targeted, but the second trebuchet had already launched. Its fireball arced and impacted as they reached the ledge and loped in a half crouch along it, jumping, this time, to the next, slightly below. The third trebuchet fired as they moved again, though by necessity more slowly as the ledge narrowed along its length, forcing them to shuffle with their backs to the chasm wall. Facing the blast, they looked down as the fireball exploded, only to see the ledge cracking beneath their feet. They couldn’t slow their pace, or they would miss the cover of the next launch, but the endless stream of scree breaking and falling meant by the time they made the slight climb to the next ledge, the one they had been on was almost gone. They were heaving themselves up as the fourth fireball thwoomed overhead, but while Trix and Ralph reached safety, Yuri was not so lucky. The ledge gave just as he got a hold, and he fell, grabbing and kicking at air and dangling by the fingertips of one hand. Ralph backtracked to help the Russian, but at a cost of vital seconds, the conflagration opposite already fading. Spotted from across the chasm, they had to pick up an already dangerous pace, scrambling across the next three ledges as sizzling, burning, and crackling bolts of energy blew lumps of rock out of chasm wall passed only moments before. Their lengthy, flailing leap off the last ledge to the underside of the bridge was facilitated more by shock wave than their own momentum.
The three of them collapsed against the base of the first arch, gasping. They were out of immediate danger, but here their problems really began. Trix’s plan was for them to follow the ringstones that made up the arches’ curves, moving in a series of inverted u’s, using the shadows of the gothic carving that decorated them as cover. But first they had to reach the carvings. Though the bridge was crumbling in places, for the most part its stone was blocked so tightly there was barely a handhold to be found. Thankfully, the quartermaster at the camp had provided them with gear. That the backpack from which Trix pulled the first piton was stamped ‘PLAGF’ in Hanzi betrayed its provenance, and she wondered, hammering it in, what fate its first owner had met. Whatever it had been, Ralph’s face looked as if he were facing one worse. He, like all DOME employees, had received training in ropework for the various pitfalls that might be encountered in the levels, but that didn’t necessarily make him any good at it. Thus it was that he shuffled uncomfortably as Trix heaved herself up, hammering in a second piton, then a third, while below Yuri began to coil and knot the rope she trailed from her waist into lengths, one of which he passed to Ralph. The Russian tied himself off and began to climb, and Ralph had no option but to follow, feeling a little like one of those toy ducks a child dragged behind itself on a string.
The going was slow, which made it easier, and he had not one but two sets of foot- and handholds to guide him. So by the time they were four-fifths of the way across, he was fine, just so long as he didn’t look down. As it turned out, it wasn’t down that caused disaster to strike; it was what was right in front of his face.
It wasn’t Ralph’s fault—not really—just a knee-jerk reaction. The decoration over which they were clambering was so thick with soot and carbonised gore as to be unrecognisable in original form, but a misplaced hand broke away a clump and he found himself being stared at by a great black eye. That the eye was carved, part of some long-forgotten statuary of gargoyle design, was irrelevant—Ralph cried out and let go his grip. His cry was lost in the hubbub of battle, and the first Trix and Yuri knew of him falling was when his line snapped taut. They looked to see the old man dangling some ten feet below them, flustering, kicking, and twisting, and then the piton around which his rope was wrapped snapped from the stone under his weight, and, eyes widening, he plummeted away. The old man was secure, still attached to his rope, but when he jerked to a halt, swinging and spinning, he was well below the curve of the arch, in full view of the enemy.
From the other side of the chasm, a skeletal jaw opened in a roar, boney fingers of hands draped in putrid flesh pointed, and a thrumming fireball some six feet wide headed directly for the old man.
“Shit,” Trix said.
Far below, Ralph began to flail. Or at least Trix thought he began to flail. It was only after she had looked on helplessly for a couple of seconds that she realised he wasn’t flailing but gesticulating, albeit somewhat frantically, in a repetitive, ordered pattern. Spell-weaving, in fact. Sure enough, as the fireball drew close enough to paint him a glowing orange, another colour appeared—a scintillating green in the form of a shield of energy Ralph spun like candy floss between himself and it. The shield disintegrated as the fireball struck, but it did what Ralph intended, deflected plumes of fire safely around himself and the fireball itself into the darkness of the chasm.
“Shit,” Trix said again, though this time with an impressed tone. The old man was getting bloody good at this stuff. She only hoped he could keep it up while Yuri or herself got him out of there. One or the other of them would have to rappel down and—
There was a bright flare in the depths. The deflected fireball, impacting. To Trix’s eyes, it lit an area the size of a coin, but that was only a sign of how far down it was. It was what it lit that caused her to gasp. She hadn’t been wrong when Yuri had swung her out from that first ledge: the blackness was undulant and alive. In the aftermath of the fireball, it seemed also to be very pissed off.
She strained to see what the shapes were that broke away from the blackness, rising towards them. They came so rapidly she was soon able to pick out detail. Flapping things of sinew, muscle, and leathery flesh, their piercing screeches—audible even over the battle—identified them beyond doubt. Harpies. At least a couple dozen of them, with more following.
“Shit,” Yuri said.
“Thanks for saving me the need to repeat myself.”
“Filthy fucking things,” he snarled. “Likely roosting down there feeding on the fallout from the battle.”
Sure enough, now they were closer, Trix could see razor teeth and claws from which dangled shreds of flesh and fabric, all that remained of those felled from the bridge. Like Yuri, she hated these fuckers, but here she welcomed the arrival of one—the one in the path of the next fireball thrumming at Ralph. Its screech became a shriek as the fireball engulfed it from behind, causing it to spiral away in flames. But Ralph’s lucky escape wouldn’t last long—the air was becoming thick with harpies, with him slap-bang in their midst, and if a fireball didn’t
get him, he’d be torn apart in seconds. Trix bit her lip. What to do? She looked desperately at Yuri, decided, pointed at the rope.
“Give me some slack!”
“How much?”
“All of it! Now!”
Yuri didn’t question, quickly trailed out their reserve. Trix was moving as he did, leaping from what they now knew to be gargoyle to gargoyle, uncaring as the coatings these had accumulated cracked, crumbled, and fell away beneath her tread. “Give me ten seconds and cut Ralph loose,” she shouted back.
Yuri looked into the dizzying chasm below. “Are you insane, English?”
“I’ll let you know in ten sec—”
Her shout became fading cry as she kicked off into the air, legs bicycling for momentum, rope snaking behind her before cutting into her gut as it reached the end of its slack. As it did, she gripped it hard, twisting herself a hundred and eighty degrees, and for a second was frozen in space, like a clock hand at twenty past three. Then she began to drop. The air whipped at her, the bridge by her side was a blur, and about halfway down there was a jarring thud to her shoulder as she collided with one of the gathering harpies, spinning it away in a confused flurry of wings. Throughout this she managed to keep the old man in her sights, aiming directly for him, shouting his name to get his attention. But Ralph was too taken with the sight of the harpies which had started to flap hungrily about him to notice. Thus it was when she slammed into him, bundling him in her arms, that he let out a surprised and particularly choice invective together with a rip-roaring if entirely involuntary fart.
“Patricia, Jesus Chr—”
“Sorry, old man.”
It had been precisely eleven seconds since Trix had left Yuri, and she looked up to see Ralph’s rope falling towards them, having been cut by Yuri one second earlier. Good lad. With Ralph in freefall, as it were, she was able to carry him on her own momentum, then drop him onto a ledge some halfway down the barrel of the arch. It wasn’t an ideal spot for the old man to be, but a damn sight better than where he’d been a moment before.