by E. M. Hardy
And so Martin shared his life’s story with the Empress. A mother who kept trying to go vegetarian but always ended up going back to pork chops and grilled burgers. A father who worked long weekdays but then came home and swept his wife in his arms like a sappy romantic every single weekend. A younger sister who thought her older brother was a weirdo for obsessing about Egyptian pyramids. Football jocks who bumped into him and messed his stuff up when the coaches were watching but would discreetly apologize later while thanking him for speaking out to protect their cheerleaders. A childhood friend who constantly obsessed about her nails but would absolutely wreck him in first-person shooter games. A stern professor who had a stick up his ass but would stand up for what was right and true in the world. He even told her about his anonymous tips to the police, after hearing the spirits of the deceased rage about their murders.
Through it all, the Empress would nod and giggle at the right time, letting him talk. He suspected that she had other motives and that she was hamming up her role as the innocent maiden, but he didn’t care. It had been much too long since someone actually sat down and asked him to talk about his family. He was never good at deception anyway. If this was some sort of test, then he laid all his cards out on the table for her to better evaluate him.
The Empress seemed satisfied with their discussion. She turned to her guard, the big guy who spoke for her, and nodded. The guard froze for a second, his expression flat while his eyes met with the Empress.’ She nodded once more, slightly more firmly this time. To the guy’s credit, he didn’t hesitate. He took out a small knife and cleanly cut off the bindings restricting Martin, who thought he was about to get his head cut off or his clay gut sliced clean open for displeasing the Empress somehow.
The Empress beckoned Martin and General Shen Feng’s party toward one of the structures beside the main throne area. She walked at a leisurely pace, which Martin matched. She continued asking Martin all sorts of questions about his home as she had lunch, her attendants fanning out and bringing out plates and bowls.
Steamed rice, some vegetables with a dark sauce poured on top, and roasted goose. Martin was surprised at the simplicity of the food; he had always imagined emperors would hold lavish feasts during the different meals of the day. Still though, there were things about the meal that reminded him of her status. Empress Xi Li sat behind a screen so that only her outline showed while an attendant sampled the food from every single plate served to the Empress. Only when the attendant nodded did the Empress—and everyone else—began to eat. General Shen Feng sat stiffly on his seat, doing his best but failing miserably to hide his discomfort. Martin knew he expected this ceremony to have concluded hours ago with a few quick words from the Empress. A show of power, of dominance, right before going through the terms and contracts of Martin’s vassalage. Both he and Martin did not expect for whatever this was to last so long.
“The goose is exceptionally juicy this time, and it goes really well with the bok choi. My compliments to Mistress Wen Jing and her ladies.” She nodded her thanks to one of the attendants, who bowed low and left the room—probably to pass the Empress’ thanks to the cook. “Are you sure you could not join us in this meal?”
“As much as I want to, your highness, I am physically unable to eat. One of the perks of being made this way is that I really don’t need to eat. Though I am burning with envy with the way you describe your meal. I could kill for—” Martin was wondering what the Empress looked like behind that screen when he froze mid-sentence, unable to contain himself as a separate part of his consciousness processed the horror of what he had just done.
***
A few minutes earlier, in the Bashri Desert…
Two-hundred meters.
Martin knew at the back of his mind that he would be safe. The darkness all around him was nothing, the absence of open air was nothing, the fear of death was nothing. He could still see through his eyeballs, which tracked the raiders as keenly as a hawk tracks its prey. His walkers did not need oxygen, only the power radiated by the obelisks. Even if every single one of his walkers was broken down, his consciousness would still exist within the confines of the pyramids.
That didn’t stop him from being afraid.
One hundred meters.
He couldn’t help it as he tightened his grip on his spear. He could feel the pressure on the hands of his walkers. He could feel the grains of sand scrape the clay bodies whenever he moved them. The sand smelled overwhelmingly dry and dusty, and he was thankful that his walkers had no real nostrils; it would be hell having sand up his nose every time he moved. He could even feel the coolness of the sand upon his clay skins, which surprised him with how soothing it was when compared to the blistering heat of the sun.
He wondered what it would feel like when his walkers broke apart—when they died. Would he feel the pain of each strike, or would he just feel nothing, like when he watched his dolls get torn apart by jungle creatures?
Fifty meters.
What terrified him the most, though, was the knowledge that he would have to end a life. Movies, books, games—they have a way of sanitizing the violence. You always know that at the back of your mind, the violence was fake and simulated. Watching documentaries on the horrors of war was a different matter. His body seized up, his breath quickened, and a cold sweat broke out when he watched deaths recorded on video. Didn’t matter whether it was a propaganda piece showcasing an execution, war footage showing people getting gunned down, or vehicles suddenly blowing up from a missile strike or roadside bomb.
What would it feel like actually killing a person? Not just watching someone else do the deed, but to do it yourself? And then repeating it over and over and over during the course of a war? He remembered Suhaib’s words though: “If you can’t manage to deal with mere bandits, ones that don’t even have their own jinn, then how do you plan to repel these all-powerful invaders when they arrive?”
He had to start somewhere, no matter how unsavory the thought was to him.
Ten meters. Eight. Five. Three. Two. One.
Zero.
Twenty walkers burst from the ground at the same time, jutting their spears into the sides of the lead elements. He wasn’t so naïve as to go for the riders; that would require an accurate jab, and they were on top of their mounts. No, Martin aimed for the horses. Suhaib’s party was mounted and steadily pushing on with their camels. Killing or even injuring the horses of the raiders would be as good as putting them out of action. That, and they were a lot easier to hit.
One walker, one horse—that was what Martin intended to achieve. However, he missed more than half of his targets. Of the twenty walkers that burst from the sand, only nine managed to stick their spears into the charging horses. Down they went in a tangle of shouting men and neighing horses. Many of the walkers who stuck a horse lost their spears, which snapped as the charging horses barreled on due to momentum. The walkers who missed adjusted their aim, going for and successfully injuring other horses instead.
Martin took advantage of the sudden chaos, trying to injure as many horses as he could. Soon though, the mounted riders had put enough space between them and the walkers. Realizing that they had ridden into an ambush, the akinji following from behind reared up and spread out to encircle the walkers. Very quickly, Martin’s walkers were left brawling with the dismounted akinji, who fought back with disciplined viciousness. The few walkers who had kept hold of their spears began jabbing out, sticking them into wherever they could even as the akinji recovered and began fighting back. The rest bent down, picked up their javelins, and threw them.
Flubbed miserably, was more like it.
In Martin’s mind, he envisioned his walkers sleekly throwing javelins that would catch men and horse. In reality, the javelins were simply too top-heavy and ended up going down head-first. Some of the still-mounted akinji barked out in laughter and charged the encircled walkers. The armor of the akinji prevented the spears and daggers from doing m
uch damage, and their martial training coupled with their superior numbers allowed them to quickly overpower the remaining walkers.
Through his walkers, Martin felt every bone-jarring impact of a saber slash that skidded across his clay body, each arrow shaft bouncing on the tough material instead of piercing through. When the akinji found that piercing and slashing didn’t work, they resorted to bludgeoning and brute force.
Martin numbly watched as a mounted akinji reared his horse, which pummeled him with its powerful front legs before rearing up once more to finish him off with a heavy stomp. A group of akinji circled around him, before someone behind him lunged in and bashed his head in with a saber. One of himself held down an akinji raider so that another of himself could stab the raider with a dagger, but an akinji rider had appeared out of nowhere and knocked the would-be stabber away with a well-aimed lance. The raider he had been holding then squirmed free before holding him in a grapple while another of his friends systematically disassembled him with saber bashes. He found himself blasted by sand, which seemed to swirl all around him. Before blackness overtook him, he saw the translucent body of a jinn gesturing at him as large rocks shook themselves out of the sandy ground and flew straight at his head.
The scene of carnage repeated itself over and over again, with Martin fighting desperate but losing battles. He had wondered earlier what death would feel like in the body of a walker. He found out that it was jarring, disconcerting, traumatizing, but ultimately painless. He was thankful for that minor convenience, as all he could feel from his ‘deaths’ were pressure and a distinct sense that someone was ripping you apart without the need to scream your head off.
Twenty-two horses killed or maimed, and all but one of his walkers downed without managing to kill a single akinji. Martin had hoped to do more damage, but this alone was enough. The raiders were regrouping, tending to the wounded, and shouting out orders instead of riding full-speed toward Suhaib’s party. He had not committed to this one ambush, though, as he didn’t need to ‘win’ a decisive battle here. He had planned to spread out his walkers into groups of twenty at random intervals. Each group’s purpose was to slow down the raiders, make them travel cautiously or risk losing men and women should they ride heedless of the threat. Each engagement meant tying up the raiders in short battles, each forcing them to reorganize and tend to the wounded.
Inflicting casualties was not his priority; he only needed to slow them down.
It was then that Martin noticed something very strange as the rush of battle ended. One of his walkers was thrown quite a ways from the ambush site, having held on too tightly to its spear. One of its arms was broken, and a leg was cracked. It wouldn’t be getting anywhere fast, especially since the other raiders had already caught sight of the damaged walker and were stomping toward it. Through its non-existent eyes, Martin looked down at the corpse of an akinji raider. This one had been thrown violently from his horse, and ended up snapping his neck as he landed head-first into the sand. It was then that he noticed something floating out of the man’s corpse—something gaseous and indistinct. Martin’s consciousness condensed into that one walker, even as the akinji were systematically tearing the others apart.
It reminded him of something he had seen before… a memory from somewhere. And then it hit him: he was staring at the raider’s soul. It was the same as in the vision, where the winged woman had coaxed out the soul of Mut after killing her.
Lost in his memories, he did not notice himself as he emulated the winged woman of his dreams—opening the palm of his one remaining hand before closing it into a fist and pulling with all his might. The man’s soul flew toward him, sinking into the featureless face of the walker.
Martin mentally gasped as he felt a rush of power course through his entire being. His consciousness shook with the infusion that seemed to blossom from that one walker to every corner of his influence, from the half-constructed obelisks that he had left on the end of the lonely Bashri Desert road to the core of the great factory-pyramid in the Leizhu Swamp. He could not describe what, exactly, had changed or how he changed, but he knew that something within him seemed to grow from absorbing the raider’s soul.
Martin was so wrapped up in the sensations flooding him that he almost didn’t notice the familiar whispers start bubbling up again. Almost.
These were the whispers that had haunted Martin’s past life. They were everywhere and nowhere. They sobbed, they raged, they whimpered, they cried. He did his best to ignore most of them, though some did pass on information that he could act on. Some were victims of violence in the past, and bemoaned their unjust passing. When he encountered voices like those, he listened in for clues that he could use. He then passed on that information, which led to the resolution of cases that were left unsolved for decades. This was how the police had managed to get on his trail after the latest incident, the one where he had left an anonymous tip about the Look-Ma-No-Hands killer.
He thought he had left the voices back on Earth, back in his old life. And now, after absorbing the dead man’s soul, they had come back to haunt him. Except this time, they could do far more than give Martin nightmares.
The voices coalesced around the walker that had absorbed the soul, orbiting it and bombarding it with pleas and questions. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, though, as they all spoke at the same time. For the first time in his life, Martin could see the voices that he only heard during his mortal life. They were gaseous and ethereal, just like the soul of the man. But where the man’s soul glowed with light, these souls seemed to be drab and gray. Everything around them seemed muted, indistinct. The voices stopped, and Martin noticed that they then turned their attention to the corpse of the dead man in front of the walker.
And they plunged right into the dead mass of flesh that used to house a soul. Without any competition, the voices were able to impress themselves upon the body and claim it as their own
Martin felt a chill run up his non-existent spine as the dead man jerked once, twice, before pushing himself up. He also felt his body lurch forward as a rider knocked him down with his horse, cracking the surface of the walker but not completely breaking it apart.
The rider slowed down his horse and turned it around, asking her comrade if he was okay. Instead of responding though, the dead man howled and made a beeline for her. He jumped up the horse with unnatural fervor, then pulled the rider down to the ground, clawing at the woman’s armor before finding the exposed neck. He moved swiftly, rending her skin with savage strength and sinking his teeth deep into the flesh. All the raider could do was scream in horror, trying to punch her way free.
One brutal snap of the jaws later, and the woman’s body went limp. Martin thought the undead man would start eating the woman’s flesh, like what he believed zombies would do, but it didn’t do such a thing. It stopped the moment the woman died, stood up once more, and eyed the other living bodies before running full-speed toward them.
“Shayateen! Shayateen!” screamed the raiders, their warning echoed by others as Martin’s walker witnessed the second man’s soul float out of his body. He could not help but remember the rush of power, of strength, that came with absorbing the first man’s soul. Every fiber of his being wanted to experience that power again, to bring it into him and call it his own. That power would be immensely useful when the invaders arrived, especially if he could learn to tap into it.
That was when he remembered: these were the exact same thoughts that the young knight bore, the one that the Builders had managed to kill. Martin recoiled in horror as he realized he was becoming the exact thing that he was going to fight against—a parasite that fed on human souls.
No, he was not becoming one; he was already one.
He turned his damaged walker around, saw the raiders close ranks and huddle together. The presence of this undead, this thing they called shayateen, had unnerved them, but they were disciplined and ready to deal with the new threat. They levelled thei
r lances at the undead man and rode toward him, but he didn’t care at all. He jumped into their charge, taking a lance into his stomach and another in his shoulder. He managed to pull one man down, though that man righted himself and could push himself back up. The other riders began to hack and slash at the undead man, who continued screaming with impotent rage as the raiders systematically cut him down.
When the man finally went still for the last time, the screaming mass of voices flew violently out of a body that was ravaged into unrecognizable chunks of meat. They seemed to dissipate into the air, going silent as they did so.
Martin knew that the riders would be back on the hunt if he didn’t slow them down. If Suhaib fell to them, Martin would lose the very first ally he had made in this new world.
He didn’t have much time to bemoan the irony of what had happened to him, of the discovery that he was just like the invaders he was preparing to fight against. He had to make a choice, here and now. Would he abandon this new power, take a risk relying solely on his walkers to slow down the raiders? Or would he use it now to further delay them and buy even more time for Suhaib to make his escape?
Martin chose the latter.
He reached out with the broken hand of his walker, bringing the dead woman’s soul into his own. His consciousness shivered as more strength flowed into his being. The voices began stirring again, whispering louder and louder, before they raged and drew themselves into the dead woman’s body. She pulled herself up, seemingly ignoring her spilled entrails and flopping neck.
One broken walker and one shayateen, against hundreds of shaken but determined akinji. They would at best delay the akinji for only a few more minutes, but it was better than nothing.
***
At the Red Court…
“—the ability to taste things again.”
Martin’s walker at the Red Court did not miss a beat, continuing his pleasant conversation with the Empress even as he absorbed the soul of a dead man through a walker a few thousand miles away.