by Joe Ducie
I dispensed with the shotgun and fired a blast of pure, raw Will at the pack, blasting half a dozen of them into the air. Destroy the heart or the brain, sure, but both at once was better. From over the small rise to the east, about sixty feet away, poured another pack of the bastards. A rough count of fifty, and more behind them.
Without it needing to be said, we broke into a sprint. The mission was the shield. Lord Winter’s attack force, or the other contingent of jeeps in our assault, would hopefully deal with the packs from the front while we swept around their back. If not, we’d be in all sorts of trouble if the shield proved impassable.
The stink of the dead filled the air, as did the not unpleasant smell of burning stone, ignited wood, and the spent shells—a coppery, primal tang. I felt a rush, eager to be alive and on the ground in a fight. Bracing the shotgun against my shoulder, I spun and dropped to one knee, firing once—twice—thrice—into the pack of deadlings behind us. The shotgun bucked in my hands, slammed into my shoulder painfully, but the curtain of enchanted pellets cutting through the rank and file deadlings was immensely satisfying.
“Ha!” I cried, and found myself laughing as the barrel of my shotgun blazed hot.
Annie’s revolver pounded in my ear, smoke curling from the barrel, felling deadlings one after the other. She couldn’t miss. Her grin matched my own.
We ran some more, the shield within a few hundred feet now.
Great beasts, massive goliaths, shaped like bears but nastier, hairless, pale-skinned, bruised purple flesh, red glowing eyes—you know, the usual monster fare—sprung in on us from the east. Two more of our soldiers went down under the assault before we could tear the bear-beasts apart. That left a final two soldiers plus Arlon.
“Come on!” he growled.
Nothing for it but a final sprint.
We moved against the breeze at speed, Annie’s revolver roaring, picking off deadlings in the air as they leapt toward us. A rain of white-flame ash and bone fell around us, sparks caught by the wind. We were death and firepower at the heart of a tornado of fire. Only minutes, perhaps two, perhaps nearly three, had ticked by since our assault began.
As we drew within sixty feet of the shield we were bathed in rotten purple light—my headache intensified, a sharp stab of pain behind my useless eye, and Annie went pale. She snarled and reloaded, picking off more of the fell creatures.
At last we reached the shield—within half a dozen feet. The cold coming off the monstrosity, which arced into the sky a mile above our heads, was like midnight in the heart of winter. Arlon and the two remaining soldiers moved from our front to our back, providing a guard between us and the approaching armies of deadlings and monsters.
“Do what you have to do, Hale!” he roared.
I shook my head and looked at the shield, to Annie. She spared me a quick glance and continued to fire at the enemies. If this didn’t work, if we couldn’t get through, then we’d die here, our backs literally against a wall of dark magic.
“Thirty seconds!” I shouted. “Buy me thirty seconds!”
I cast a web of Will at the shield, felt sick to my stomach when my power touched the seething mess of energy, and burned through all the diagnostic enchantments I knew, one after the other, as fast as thought. The thing about using Will like this, was that I got the readings and measurements back just as quickly. The shield was pure power, touched by the Void but not of the Void. It’s source, the on/off switch, was within the city. It stood point-nine of a mile high at its crest and was about ten feet thick in front of me. I saw no way through, no unlatched back door. It was impenetrable… for most.
“Declan!” Annie screamed.
I spun, shotgun swinging up. Another of those hideous tentacle monsters spilled into our little glade before the shield, throwing aside debris, slithering over rocks and screeching to high hell. It picked up one of the two remaining soldiers—a woman who laughed as it grabbed her and began unloading her assault rifle into his face. The monster sprung back and threw the soldier through the air—over our heads—and into the shield.
I watched her fly, watched her hit, and watched her burst into flame as she struck the shield. Her entire body flared green, I saw her skeleton beneath her flesh, before she fell as less than ash.
“Oh fuck,” Arlon spat.
Two, three, a fourth tentacle monster, leaders of the deadling packs, it seemed, emerged over the rise on our backs. The last soldier and Arlon fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded, trying to stem the flood.
“Hale!” Arlon cried. “You have to go!”
No, I thought.
I’d lost men and women who had served with me before. I’d lost entire battallions, I’d killed whole legions, and seen interdimensional ships with crews in the tens of thousands plummet into stars or—worse—fall into the Void. A fate worse than death. War was war, fights were fights, but I hated winning at a cost so high it may as well be defeat.
I tossed the shotgun to Annie and summoned my Will, brought my force to bear against the nightmare hordes—monsters and worse I had spent my whole life fighting against, and never seemed to get any closer to defeating. I stepped forward, placing myself ahead of Arlon and the last soldier.
“What are you doing?” the grizzled old man yelled. “Get thee the fuck out of the way—”
I slammed my glowing fist into the ground with a tremendous shout. My Will, my power, I directed outwards in a half-circle of raw strength. The ground shook, split, and a concussive wave of shock-force tore into the lines of monsters and deadlings.
Several dozen tonnes of earth, steel, and stone tore up from the ground. I hurled the chaos into the packs of enemies. A hundred deadlings disappeared in the maelstrom, the sound was deafening, the end of the world.
I fell back, utterly spent, a wave of nausea sweeping over me, maximising my headache from the shield. I leaned over and threw up a good deal of my dinner.
All fell silent as the dust settled.
Annie offered me a hand but I made it to my feet by myself.
“You look like you’re about to pass out,” she whispered.
“I never believed the stories about you,” Arlon said, eyeing me. He shook his head. He looked afraid, even… disgusted. “They don’t do you justice by half.”
A great crescent had been ripped into the earth for about seventy feet, dotted with white fire and twitching tentacles. Howls, screams, rose on the air to fill the awful silence. At the edge of my damage, the deadlings—more deadlings, fresh deadlings, and other evils—began to regroup. They screeched in rage, pure anger, and spilled into the crescent.
“Time to go,” I said grimly. “Arlon, you won’t get out of here alive. You’re coming through the shield with me and Annie. You too,” I said to the last soldier standing.
“Fuck,” she whispered. Blood trickled into her eye from a cut on her forehead, the gash stuck and sticky with her frizzy blonde hair.
I grinned and tasted blood of my own. “Quickly now. Cancel your energy swords, Arlon. We’ve got half a minute at best. To the edge of the shield and all of you line up alongside me, with Annie at the far end.”
I turned back to the shield and stepped right up to its edge until all I could see was oily purple-red light. I snapped my hand out and gripped Arlon’s right hand. The last soldier took his other hand, and she took Annie’s with her left.
“Take a deep breath,” I said. Please let me be right about this… “On three.”
At our backs, the deadlings and monsters roared, as if sensing we were about to escape.
“One!”
Arlon squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
“Two!”
This had worked once before, on a shield far more malignant—the Degradation surrounding Atlantis, put in place by Lord Oblivion, my greatest enemy. I hadn’t planned on another degradation for this fight, but then not everything could be accounted for, especially when dealing with the Everlasting.
“Three! Run!”
; I yanked Arlon forward, and he the last soldier. We braced ourselves for fire and death, no doubt deserved for being so foolish, but instead got cold and pain.
My head nearly exploded with the pain, but a soothing light emanated from my chest, from my heart, and the shield couldn’t touch me. We moved through the sickly purple light, like trying to run through syrup, but we moved. I couldn’t see anything save the dark shield, but I felt Arlon’s hand in mine—which was good, as I wasn’t sure the protection that allowed me through the shield, and Annie, would pass to him. He’d have been certainly dead, had I left him behind.
What felt like an hour later, but was less than ten seconds, we emerged through the other side of the shield as one group of four. Alive—harmed, pale, shaking—but alive. We collapsed to the ground under a sky blood red and purple before the massive silver towers of the Atlas Lexicon.
I fell utterly spent.
It was Annie that got me back on my feet this time. “Come on,” she said. “We need to get away from this thing.” She threw a thumb over her shoulder at the shield.
I nodded agreement and we managed to stumble down the road, the four of us supporting one another, and came to a park of green grass full of picnic tables and little huts. We saw no one, nothing. If there were thousands of people here in the city, they were either dead or hidden well. Our footsteps echoed far too loudly.
We made it to one of the three-sided huts in the park, near a statue of bright marble that looked like a war memorial to me, and slumped into the benches around the table. We’d held onto most of our weapons. Annie passed me the shotgun and I began to slowly, painfully, reload the weapon from the shell cache in one of my pockets.
“How did we get through the shield?” the lady soldier asked.
I cleared my throat and nodded. Fair question. “I cast a net of protection,” I lied. Well, half-truth. I was certain—certain now it had worked—that the petal of the Infernal Clock in my heart had granted us passage. The petal was pure anti-Everlasting. It could resist their Will.
“Well, OK, so that got you in,” Annie said. She was staring at me, and I suspected that she didn’t believe me.
Damn. Well, my dear, I am lying, but not for much longer. The petal in your heart helped, too. “Staying close to me got you all through. Few other options that could have helped, perhaps to do with you not being Willful, but I’d wager it was being swept up in my awesomeness.”
Annie gave me a wry smile. “Oh yeah, I’m sure that was it.”
Arlon grunted. “Now we’re here, what do we do?”
“I’m low on ammunition. We need to hit an armoury sooner rather than later.” The lady soldier gave us all a look and then half a smile. “I’m Caitlin, by the way. Caitlin Collins. Or C.C.”
“Nice to meet you,” Annie whispered. “Sorry it’s not under better circumstances.”
“How well do you know the city?” I asked Arlon and Caitlin.
From one of the pouches on his utility vest, Arlon produced a bandage and pressed it against the ugly cut on Caitlin’s forehead. “Fairly well,” he said. “If our people are anywhere, I’d say they’re in the Vale Crystalis—the big tower in the centre of town—or the accommodation towers on the east side of the city. We should make our way there, try and contact the leadership.”
I nodded. “That’s one plan.” I’ve a few others. “How long to reach the Vale Crystalis?”
“The shuttle craft don’t seem to be operating,” Caitlin said, scowling out at the city from our hut. “Everything is far too dark, dead. There’s no electricity.”
“And we don’t know what’s between us and there,” Arlon added.
“If it were a straight shot on a sunny day, we could walk from here to the square outside the Vale Crystalis in about forty minutes. We’ll probably have to move a lot slower if we’re going to make it, though.”
“We don’t know what’s out there,” I mused. “Could be nothing this side of the shield.”
Arlon gave me a look only the old seem capable of giving the young and naïve. I was young, but I didn’t think I was naïve. “You think there’s nothing out there?”
I shook my head. “No, I expect more if not worse than what we fought through to get here.”
Annie sighed. “When should we move?”
I gazed out at the city, up at the sick shield over our heads, the blood-red and burnt-purple sky. There would be no night, no day, just the awful light until the shield came down. Again, I thought I saw a monumental face in the barrier, something ancient and old and cruel watching me from above. The Everlasting.
“Ten minutes to rest, recover, reload,” I said. “Then we head out.”
CHAPTER SIX
DREAD ASH ON THE WIND
(Gotta give up the booze and the one night stands)
“Are we trapped in here with one of the Everlasting?” Caitlin asked. “That was the rumour circling the command centre back in Spire-Brunnen. The real reason you, of all people, Arbiter Hale, were brought in.”
I eyed the woman while I considered just what to say, how much of my dark and terrible knowledge to impart. She was tall, and I liked that, blonde frizzy hair and light blue eyes. She wore the standard battle garb of a soldier, military fatigues under an armour plate vest. More than all that, Caitlin had proven her worth on the battlefield. Here was another one I could use, another one I’d most likely get killed.
“I’m curious to know more about this as well, Hale,” Arlon said.
I caught half a grin from Annie. She liked to see me bombarded with questions.
“Call me Declan,” I told my new allies. “Anyone who fights like we just fought gets to call me Declan.”
We’d left the hut in the park behind us about five minutes ago, moving from the outer city and into the wide avenues, the grid-like streets, of the Atlas Lexicon. Large buildings and mighty towers, connected far above by crystal skybridges, rose all around us. No corpses—of students or deadlings—littered the streets, but carts were overturned, small vehicles crashed, a general feeling of menace clung to the air. And it was silent. Deathly silent. The heels of my shoes clicked against the sidewalk and echoed down the deserted city blocks.
“Fine, Declan,” Caitlin said, hefting her assault rifle from one shoulder to the other. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“No, you didn’t,” Annie agreed.
“If it’s one of the Everlasting, then we’re fucked,” Arlon said simply, scratching at his rough stubble. “Pardon my French.”
“Oh, it’s definitely one of the Everlasting,” I said, glancing up at the ugly shield overhead, to all sides. “But she’s trapped in here with us—not the other way around.”
“She?” Annie asked. “How do you know that?”
I shook my head and didn’t elaborate. “We have to be mindful of… people… listening in to our conversations. I’m playing things close to my chest for now. You’ll see why soon, I’m sure.”
“And the Everlasting created the shield around the Lexicon?” Caitlin asked. “Mercy.”
“Actually, I think the shield is part of the Everlasting,” I said and stopped them all in their tracks. “A part of her power, her soul, her essence—whatever you want to call it. I’ve been seeing faces in the muck.”
“How can that be?” Arlon asked. He swallowed hard. A cool breeze swept down the street, trailing dust and stale air. “How can we fight it?”
“I’ve hurt the Everlasting before,” I said. “Even watched one of them die.”
Arlon and Caitlin exchanged a worried glance. They didn’t quite believe me. Well, proof will out, should they survive the night. And it was night now, the sun—although we couldn’t see it—would have descended well beyond the mountains to the west. The valley would be dark. I wondered, in a detached sort of way, whether Lord Winter and his Dawn Mercenaries had survived their assault. Certainly they had not breached the shield, nor could they, if my hunch was correct.
“Three blocks up, about a ten
minute walk, and the grid pattern of these streets gives way to a few blocks laid out in concentric circles,” Arlon said. He was on point, a few feet ahead of me and Annie. He had renewed one of his energy blades, coating his right arm and three feet beyond his wrist in hot yellow light. “From there, fifteen minutes or so—if we’re quick—to reach the piazzas and square out front of the Vale Crystalis.”
I could see the tip of that impressive spire, a good mile and a half away, peeking above the buildings and towers directly ahead. Something didn’t feel right. Well, none of this felt right, and my head still throbbed dully from the influence of the shield, but something else was nagging at me.
“This feels like a trap,” Annie said, voicing the concerns of all in our party.
“It’s definitely a trap,” I said. “But we’re not snared so easily, are we?” I tried for a grin, failed, and clenched my fists to keep them from shaking. I was still a little low on juice after dispelling the army of deadlings before the shield. I needed rest and a good meal. I’d find neither tonight, of that I was sure.
Unseen eyes watched us from the windows on either side of the street, hundreds of pairs of eyes it felt like, glaring down at us. Perhaps it was just the malice from the ugly shield, but I thought not.
“You all feel that, right?” I whispered.
My band of merry warriors exchanged uneasy glances and nodded.
“The city is infested. Whatever madness was set loose outside the shield… it’s inside, too.” Arlon spat on the ground. “Why don’t they attack?”
“We’re being led to slaughter,” I said. “Which is a nice way of saying the Everlasting needs us.” Needs me.
Annie caught my eye again and raised a single eyebrow. What aren’t you telling us, telling me, Declan, that eyebrow almost shouted. I gave her a reassuring wink, a reassurance I didn’t feel, and we crossed from one block to the next at a set of dead traffic lights. Somewhere in the distance a crow squawked against the silence, shattered the stillness, and a shiver ran down my spine. The shotgun barrel felt heavy, frozen, numbing my fingers.