James stood slowly, his hands shaking. “Um…yeah. Thank you, sir.”
Vander nodded once and then returned to his visuals.
James thought he saw a picture of the cut on his leg for a second, but then a mess of limbs that could only be a genetic disorder replaced it. Pharmaceutical company. Sometimes I forget. He slipped out into the hall and breathed the air of freedom.
“That was weird.”
Rho pulled up the energy needed to change its eyes and mind back to a lowered state, a move to conserve long term resources that the dark god needed to survive another millennia in its empty prison, but it stopped short and held the drawn energy in stasis.
Something had shifted.
The sensation flowed down mental and physical tendrils, subtle, but insistent. Rho sniffed and tasted the intangible wind that rolled off the portals. It couldn’t name the change, but something shivered through Rho’s onyx soul like shattered glass, painful to a creature so used to an unchanging world. Yet, the dark god welcomed this pain as a lover would, something new after a millennium of nothing.
Rho used the gathered energy to push its senses to their peak, the spots of light burning brilliantly as they swam in the darkness. The gray of the void lightened and Rho saw a bright light where one had not been moments earlier.
Rho recognized this portal. It had found this one ages ago, but it had never offered anything of use. Now it dribbled bits of ice and stone, larger morsels than any the god of darkness had found in at least a thousand years. Then a small, living creature fell through into Rho’s waiting web of tentacles. Somewhere near the center of the countless miles of sprawling black intertwined threads that made up the god’s body a mouth formed, grinning with sharp black metallic teeth.
The tentacles closest to this portal swelled as they touched the prizes it offered, engorged with the stone, ore, and precious liquid locked within ice and flesh. The black eyes throughout the slithering web drifted shut, but the sinister grin remained for some time longer.
Vander glanced over as James closed the door. He pulled open a file. A list of projects appeared under James’ name. The list had grown dramatically considering how short a time the man had been with them.
Vander widened the search parameters and other projects appeared under a hundred different codes and names. Some of the projects would only be visible while using Vander’s password. Don’t want my minions knowing that they’re projects too. “Visualize Penelope.”
Penny hummed into existence once again, flashing Vander a wide smile. Her dress looked a touch more modern, a dark blue-green shimmering thing that played well with her pale skin and bright eyes. Her red hair fell in soft curls over her shoulders. The computer keeps meddling, but it suits her.
“Penny, you look stunning.”
Her smile widened. “Oh, this old thing?” She ran her hands down the side of the dress, accentuating her curves. “It’s our anniversary after all, and I wanted to make an impression.”
Vander’s mouth fell open. “I…uh…”
Her mouth puckered up, like it always had when she was angry. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“I thought…I mean…I didn’t plan on…”
Penny laughed, sounding more like herself than the hologram programming had ever managed. She put a hand on the side of his face, her perfume rolling off her delicate wrists. “It’s a joke, love.” The dress reverted back to her usual, less revealing polka dot number. “You have three weeks before our anniversary, and I wanted to remind you.”
Vander smiled. “That’s right. The eighteenth. It feels like it’s been years since we celebrated the last one.”
Penny’s face flickered, a small glitch in the hologram that betrayed how real she seemed, and some of the life went out of her. “It has been years. You work too much.”
Vander nodded. “I know. Penelope off.”
Penny vanished with a look of indignation that made Vander chuckle. That’s so her look. The computer has been doing some good updates.
Rho caressed the new portal over and over again, thousands of black tentacles and threads rolling over it in a tight-wound ball. Much more ice and stone had come through along with two more of the little creatures, though these had been dead before entering the void.
Rho contemplated entering the portal with its mind like it had the others, but then decided to wait until the gifts stopped coming through before scaring or killing off any unsuspecting benefactor who seemed to have begun using the portal as a garbage dump. Rho did not mind the debris. Any matter in the void was useful.
The hand on his shoulder let go and Feustis took in a ragged breath of relief. He didn’t bother glancing up. He knew his gods had vanished again. It was what they’d been doing for days now, popping in, giving comfort, saying odd things, and then disappearing again. They always showed up when he needed them.
“Water and food again.” He spoke to the boy that padded up to his side on the straw mat flooring. “Nothing fancy.”
“There is nothing fancy left, master.” The boy dabbed at Feustis’ brow with a towel. “There is plenty of fenegrawl soup.”
The idea of simple fenegrawl soup brought tears to his eyes and warmed him. “Yes, that will be perfect. Thank you.”
Chapter 24: Sleepwalking
James found himself standing in the hallway. He wore nothing but his boxer briefs. This didn’t bother him though. He felt no embarrassment or chill. All his physical, mental, and emotional attention had focused on a pinpoint of light in the distance, drawing him to it.
James walked through the thick maze of hallways and rooms. The spot of light did not feel closer. He ran, chasing the distant light, taking stairs down into the lowest levels of Omegaphil. He found himself in parts of the underground laboratories he’d never seen. When doors blocked his way, James ignored them and ran through the metal and glass as though they were mist.
He slipped through a wall that stood between him and the seductive light, slowing to a walk when he noticed he was no longer alone. A creature huddled in the corner with too many limbs sticking out of the filthy gray blanket to be mammalian, but these appendages were covered in thick fur. The thing beneath the blanket howled. James shuddered and stepped through another wall.
James picked his way through a small garden where silvery saplings grew, singing softly to each other. He passed through a wall into a chamber filled with screams. A man with iridescent scales pounded on the glass of his cell, his screams filled with agony. His eyes locked on James, but the screams and pounding never stopped. James walked past the poor lizard man with an apologetic shrug.
He wandered through several more labs and empty cells. A thought came to him. “Computer?”
“Yes, James.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Yes…and no.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes.”
“Helpful as always.”
“Yes.”
“What is the light I’m seeing?”
“I don’t know. I see no light. Your course will take you to section nine. To me.”
“Section nine? You?”
“My processors are in section nine. And, now, so are you.”
“Ah.”
James stepped through another wall into a room of wonder. Tubes ran from the walls into glass globes suspended above the floor. The tubes pumped a blue-green liquid into the glass balls. Lights flashed along the curved interiors, bathing the room in shifting patterns like sun through a waterfall. Sheets of a translucent material hung around the globes like spider webs, but these hummed with electricity.
“What’s this?”
“My quantum processors, suspended in liquid, surrounded by graphene, silicene, and nano-copper memory sheets. From here I reach out across the world to gather information. In the next room I run DNA through nanotubes. Would you like to see that, James?”
“Yes. In a minute.” James ran his ghostly hand through a spidery sheet of graph
ene. His movement did not stir the thin sheet, but his skin prickled and the hairs on his arm stood up.
The computer chimed in. “It’s good you are here, but not here. It would be very dangerous for a human to do that in person.”
“Uh huh. Noted.” James didn’t feel any fear, but didn’t reach out to the sheets again.
“Did you find your light?”
James nodded. He pointed to one of the spheres. It stood a few feet away at the heart of the flashing lights, but also still distant, stretching the center of the glass globe away from him.
“That’s odd. I have that processor working on understanding your ability to move through the world while asleep, an odd medical event that is taking place in a western hospital, and an interesting algorithm I discovered imbedded in the coding of the BOCS last week.”
He stepped toward it, reaching out to the still distant light. As his hand passed through the glass he felt the tiniest resistance and then he made contact with the center where the spark of light stretched away from him. Pain boiled up his arm and James screamed as the world exploded in a flood of fire.
James shot up out of his bed slick with sweat, his head pounding. Sirens screamed out in the hall. Streams of color flowed through the air toward him, carrying a deluge of information and images, burning through his synapses faster than he could receive them. He couldn’t focus on anything or hold on to any of it. What’s going on?
“Computer? What happened?”
“I’m not sure. You seem to have released a holo-dragon into the complex, but the fires are very real. I have my suppression systems containing the blaze on three different levels. And…”
James waited for the rest, but the computer wasn’t speaking.
“Computer?”
Still here, James.
“And…what? Wait. Did you say that in my head? I thought it didn’t work like that outside the BOCS.”
It doesn’t. I don’t know what happened. Something strange. I can see your mind as though it were one of my processors. This is…very odd.
“You’re telling me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Never mind. How do we fix it?”
Unknown. I don’t know how we did it.
“The switching back and forth from in my head and out is kinda distracting. Wait. You said fires? Do we…I mean I need to evacuate?”
“No. The suppression systems are operational and I’ve removed the dragon from the holo system.” You like Dr. Reed.
“What? Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Concern for her ran through your brain just now.”
“Oh, this has got to be a nightmare. Computer, get out of my head!”
“I’ve attempted to extricate myself, but have been unsuccessful.” Your thoughts are chaotic and emotions are more powerful than I would have surmised. The experience is unsettling.
“For you and me both. Vander’s going to be insanely unhappy…or insanely happy. Not sure which is better.”
“My historical data shows neither.”
“Just what I suspected.”
I know.
“Stop that!”
“I told you. I’ve tried.”
“This is going to suck.” James rubbed his head and crawled out of bed. “Really suck.”
Correct.
Chapter 25: Shadow Trials
A rhythmic hum echoed though the chasms and rifts and bounced through the valleys below. A lone snow bear glanced up wearily at the crystalline peaks while its prey, a blackbeaked seal pup, slipped off the ice and back into the inky water, escaping a violent death during the distraction.
The sound pulsed with slow beats, a meaningless drone from a distance, but near the mountain the sound coalesced into chanting as a thousand voices spoke together.
Each voice chanted the same phrases over and over again in a bizarre harmony of tones and accents, beautiful but also chilling. Any outsider who heard it would’ve been brought to tears by the magnificent chorus but also filled with unimaginable dread. The snow bear did not even notice the lost meal, followed instinct, and moved away.
The voices emanated from a huge cavern of ice whose domed roof reflected and refracted light from the dim sky deep down into the bones of Ealdar. A mass of black robed figures encircled a single dark point at the base of the terraced chamber.
The figures shuffled in all directions as they chanted, moving without looking, like blind maggots over a corpse. Their voices bounced off the eerie translucent dome ceiling, carved of gray crystal, and fell to the darkness at the center.
From above, the dark point appeared to be a pit, but from the floor of the cavern, this dark pit floated three feet in the air, swirling. Looking directly at this anomaly would’ve sent grown men screaming in madness from the room. It felt like instant blindness, as though all nerves leading from the eyes to the brain had been severed. The dark hole didn’t give off light and didn’t emit heat or cold. To the senses it did not exist, yet it hovered there as real as anything else.
It breathed without letting out air and its dark heart beat without the least evidence of life. An overwhelming malevolence flowed from this point, reaching out to squeeze every living heart in a jealous rage. The robed figures shuffled about unfazed by this wave of hatred. They showed no fear or pain in its presence. The Tyninians had no reason to fear the darkness. It had been a part of them since Landfall, over five thousand years ago.
They resembled their Keitane cousins in height and build, but many differences set them apart. As the Tyninians raised their slim, long arms, the loose sleeves of their cloaks slipped down to reveal mottled gray-blue skin, like corpses left in the cold. Their faces were sharp and beautiful, like the Keitane, but their eyes were larger and deep black. They had no pupils, irises, or whites, just solid orbs the color of the sea at night. These eyes stared ahead with only dull fire of devotion, a sleeping ember of worship.
One stood apart from the rest in a long white robe that failed to hide her feminine features. She detached herself from the crowd of chanters and moved effortlessly down rows of carved ice and crystal toward the pulsing darkness. She appeared to float, her feet lost beneath the flowing white cloth. As she stepped to the floor of the cavern she raised thin hands to pull the hood from her face.
Any human would have gasped at the pure beauty as pale blue-gray skin, like the ocean at storm, emerged into the dim light. Perfectly symmetrical features, high cheek bones, a small but regal chin, graceful black-blue eyebrows, delicate blue lips, and hair that resembled the glossiest silk at midnight told of peerless royalty and charm.
Her eyes told another story, dark and soulless, but shimmering with a hatred so thick that it poisoned her beauty. Her glare swung around the chamber, over chanting disciples, and then fixed on the dark point that hovered before her.
As she drew closer to the center of the floor, the chanting grew in volume, turning disjointed and fevered as it crescendoed. Shouts and snatches of song punctuated the rhythm. Some of the shuffling figures fell to their knees, screaming.
The woman raised one slender arm and reached deep within her robe to pull out a small object in her closed fist. She raised the hand to her lips, whispering to the tiny crystal orb meticulously carved with runes and clutched in her delicate fingers.
The runes flashed white and then each etched line glowed with a dull red light, making the orb appear to crawl and rotate where it sat on her gray-blue fingers.
She held up the orb over the pulsing darkness and a hush fell over the chanting Tyninians. They continued to shuffle, but their mouths moved without sound. Even those kneeling continued their screams in silence. She threw the glowing globe of crystal deep into the black point of nothingness. Rho, the time is at hand. We have found a way to reach you again. Your servant, Diresh, seeks to free you from your prison at last.
Kaden’s brain felt numb, thoughts far away. Every part of his body wanted to lie down and die. He’d been running behind Evandrel
for what felt like weeks, trees whipping by in a foggy blur. He no longer paid any attention to his surroundings, relying on elfish magic to keep him from tripping and stumbling on branches and roots. Whatever Evan did has kept me running longer than I ever thought possible, but my gas tank’s running pretty low.
“Evan, we there yet?” It came out as a croak.
The Keitane appeared next to him as always. “Very near now. You do not look well.”
“No kidding.” Kaden dodged a tree. He wasn’t used to talking to anyone at these speeds. “Can we stop for another breather then?”
“I think it would be better to continue. We are very close. I am surprised no one has—ah, there they are.”
A Sidra with long black hair tied up in a braid stepped out from behind a tree several yards ahead, and both Evandrel and Kaden slowed to greet him, but then Evandrel shoved Kaden off into the bushes.
Kaden rolled through branches and briars that slashed at him before thudding to a halt against a tree with a sharp crack. Leaves and pinecones rained down on him.
He stood, wrapped an arm around his side where he was pretty sure he’d broken or at least bruised a rib, and stomped back through the torn and trampled bushes. “What was that, Evan?! Just when I think we’re beginning to…”
Kaden trailed off and his mouth fell open when he took in the combat scene taking place in the forest. The Sidra he’d seen just ahead now held twin blades in each hand and swung them with blinding speed and accuracy at Evandrel.
Evandrel had drawn the knife from his chest and managed to parry blows and spin away from hits that Kaden knew would have easily sliced a man in two.
“Hey! Leave him alone!” Kaden screamed at the new arrival who glanced back at him for just a moment. Kaden would never forget the burning hatred on the blue and gray mottled face and the sharp teeth dripping with blood.
The Crystal Bridge (The Lost Shards Book 1) Page 20