Arcana Universalis: Danse Macabre
Page 8
Caleb almost pressed the advance, but thought better of it and left.
The answer didn’t take long.
Rows of wooden crates stretched out across the cargo hold, but stopped short of the small plot where Caleb practiced alone. He stepped and punched, turned and kicked, his movements fluid and ever changing, adapting themselves to the shortage of space and his ever changing whims.
He’d grown fond of these sessions, and the fact that this would be his last weighed heavily on him. His time was henceforth to be split between advanced combat training under Sabian and assisting Aldebaran in the laboratory, leaving no opportunity for the cargo details or these exercises that occupied the spaces in between.
He wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed since that fateful day on the surface of Zayin… a month, maybe three? And in just that small span, his lot in life had changed completely, from the dim promise of a life toiling away in some mouldy library, to his new roles as apprentice and soldier.
Pivot. Kick.
Driscoll was absolutely right: being dead wasn’t all sunshine and daisies, but it truly didn’t have to be all bad either. Caleb had purpose, pride, and perhaps a chance (however slight) of something better on the horizon. If he were to be completely honest with himself, he hadn’t felt this satisfied—deep down, thoroughly satisfied—since he was a child. Since before the incident.
Roll. Sweep kick. Jump-flip, stomp.
No, for once in Caleb’s dismal life, he’d taken a bad situation and turned it into an opportunity. He’d set a goal, accomplished it, and become what he wanted to be instead of what the situation seemingly required. He finally felt like he was taking the reins instead of being led around by the nose…
…and yet, he was a slave, with a choke collar permanently lashed around his soul. The severe cognitive dissonance of that thought stopped him dead in his tracks.
Then he saw a familiar flash out the corner of his eye. The mysterious light was back, but this time, he went on as if nothing happened. Maybe he could lure it out with his feigned inattention. He melted back into his exercise and affected an expression of utmost focus, but kept his eyes pinned open.
Thrusting elbow. Rising knee.
Another flash.
Upper block. Punch, punch.
An eery streak of light.
He could feel the thing there behind him, lurking, waiting. There came a lull. The time felt right, so he prepared himself and spun.
The light was so bright it blinded him. Something struck his face and the taste of electricity filled his mouth, his throat, his being.
Darkness came.
Second Interlude
Here it’s Winter without end. Snow races across the surface, buffeted and thrust along by gusts of wind that howl and cry. The sky above is lifeless grey, barely lit by two dim and distant suns which prevent late evening from ever fully turning to night.
The landscape is ever changing, rarely one thing for long before becoming something else entirely. Riven and treacherous, torn apart by earthquakes that come and come again, the whole world is cracked and jagged ice hidden beneath a blanket of fresh white powder.
The boy and his friend are nowhere near the surface. Deep beneath the flesh of that world, far from the dim light, the winds, and the sounds of disembodied sorrow, they rest now in a cavern little larger than their quarters aboard the ship.
It’s ironic, the boy thinks to himself, that after all the worlds they’ve set foot on, after all the strange creatures they’ve faced down, a literal misstep has done them in. Just one foot on an uneven surface. One slip. One grab. One fall.
Then they tumbled together, down, down, down into the belly of this silly, stupid planet. Down into this chamber where the ever falling snow has sealed them away for good.
His friend sits opposite him with a hand engulfed in animate flame. It’s been faltering for hours now as the young interfector weakens, his grip slipping and sliding off the slight flows of energy that hardly seep into this place.
Neither wants to admit it, but they both know that when the flame is gone, they’ll freeze and die. No one will ever find them, and their stiff corpses will sit here like an unseen monument to stupidity until the end of time itself.
The boy sits with his arms wrapped around his legs, the awkward bulk of his vapour-helmet resting atop his knees. He’s rocking back and forth to keep warm, and perhaps in some futile effort to stave off the terror of his impending doom.
His friend meanwhile looks relaxed. Maybe even relieved. He’s staring at that hand held out in front of him, marveling as he always does at this simple skill he’s mastered and the living fire that does his bidding.
“How can you look so pleased?” the boy asks.
“What?” is the muffled reply.
Stupid helmets.
“I said,” he shouts, “how can you look so pleased?”
His friend shrugs. “Would it make a difference?”
He hates that his friend has a point.
So he rocks, and he shivers, and he whimpers too quietly for the noise to escape his helmet. After untold minutes, he starts to mumble through numb lips, and at least that gives him something to concentrate on for a little while.
“…stuck here in this stupid hell, and I just want to go home. Is that so much to ask? Just home, where snow is a funny word in a textbook, and the worst thing in the world is my Lisbeth being too busy for a picnic. And I just don’t get the universe at all… I mean, why am I being punished? Why not that Rainer jackass? Never done a bad thing in my whole Grim-damned life, but here I am stuck in this…”
“What’s that?” his friend asks.
The boy’s teeth chatter as he replies, “What?”
“Did you say you’ve never done a bad thing?”
“Never have.”
“Is that so?”
“Pretty much,” the boy says. “I mean, I’ve snatched an extra sweet roll from the kitchen, or thrown a mudball at a jerk’s back when he wasn’t looking, but I’ve never done anything really bad. I’ve never violated Doctrine.”
His friend snorts.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’ve violated Doctrine.” His friend’s words are so simple there isn’t any space for deception to squeeze in.
Silence spreads quickly then freezes in place, only to be broken by the groan of another distant earthquake a moment later. Somewhere far away, a glacier is crumbling and crashing to the ground. More caves are being rent open or else sealed shut.
“I…” the boy stammers. “Do I even want to know?”
“Would it make a difference?” his friend asks again, and again, he has a point.
But the boy realizes he really does want to know. He likes this guy more than he’d ever dare admit, and after just a few months cooped up in a room together, they’ve somehow become family. The boy has never excelled at making friends, but this strange, courageous, jovial, irrepressibly self-confident bastard is his brother now. The boy’s need to know boils over.
“Well? Spill it already.”
There’s a long pause while his friend reconsiders. Admitting to a violation of Doctrine calls for a pause, even with death quickly on its way.
“Promise me you’ll never tell.”
The boy almost laughs. “Who would I tell exactly? The ice? Come on.”
“I need you to promise.”
“Fine, I promise.”
“On your life, Cabe.”
“I, Caleb Gedley, son of a lowly bookbinder, swear under penalty of death and dismemberment that I will never, ever tell anyone whatever bloody damned thing you’re about to tell me. Satisfied, Bibbs?”
“Yeah…”
Silence comes again, followed by the crackling of settling glaciers.
“My sister, Serafina,” his friend says, then pauses again. “She never went through benefaction.”
The words arrive with a thud as if dropped from a towering height. For the first time the boy can remember, the
light of joy is gone from his friend’s face. There is no confidence here, no courage. There’s only this confession soaked in regret at its utterance.
“She’s a witch?” the boy asks incredulously.
His friend nods.
“But… how?”
“My parents thought the practice barbaric, so they paid to have her documents forged. They faked the scar themselves.”
The boy’s head swims. The Imperium comprises a hundred-thousand inhabited worlds, each with its own history, culture, language, but the thread binding them together is the Emperor’s Doctrine. One of the few things Doctrine demands is that all female infants be given benefaction before their first birthday. It’s for their own protection.
The boy has seen it done, and though he was terrified at the time, it amounted to hardly anything at all. The girl-child was lain on a ceremonial platform, a zoëtrist affixed a spoon-shaped instrument to her forehead, and he was done a moment later. The panoptic gland was gone just like that. No discomfort. No pain. Just a happy, chubby little girl saved from misery, madness, and ultimately self-destruction. How could that possibly be barbaric?
The boy shakes his head as if trying to jumble its contents, maybe rearrange them into some shape that makes a bit of sense. The pieces refuse to fit.
“Does she have the second sight?” He feels idiotic for asking. Of course she hasn’t awakened it.
“She does.” The light comes back to his friend’s eyes. “And that’s the most amazing part, Cabe. The miracle. She’s fine. As sane as you or I, and damn talented too. I used to teach her technique whenever I visited home, but she’s outpacing me now.”
The boy wants to spit an oath but there isn’t one potent enough. No matter how he tries, he just can’t make the pieces fit, and every word his friend speaks throws them further into disarray.
“I don’t get it,” the boy finally says. “It’s an idiot risk, and for what? A few parlour tricks and a lifetime of hiding.”
“Sorry. I thought you might understand.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve had everything taken away from you… and you know what it’s like to receive an amazing gift no one else wants you to have.”
The boy is quiet then. His pride is stung, and he knows it’s time to shut his damn fool mouth.
And so they sit there in sullen silence waiting to die while the groaning, and quaking, and crackling grows closer, until finally the ceiling of their cavern parts and rescue arrives.
Caleb’s eyes opened and the dream vanished. His brain was a damned mess. It took him long seconds to recognize the cargo hold’s ceiling, and longer still to realize he was lying flat on his back.
When he levered his head up, he saw the one thing he could never have expected: a tiny blue woman was sitting on his chest, her multifaceted eyes reflecting sadness, worry, and dozens of shimmering colours. She looked at him and said, “Oh Caleb-Human, what have they done to you?”
He hoped that this too was a dream, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t wake up.
A Letter From the Author
And thus concludes the second episode of our strange experiment. As you might have guessed, this entry took much, much longer than I anticipated, and I can’t adequately describe how terrible I feel about it. Switching over to this method was supposed to result in faster, more regular releases, and instead it’s been eight months since the last episode came out.
As so often happens, life got in the way… or more appropriately, death. My father passed away suddenly in November, and the truth of the matter is that I just couldn’t stand to look at this story. He was a constant source of humor and love in my life, and a quiet but confident supporter of everything I’ve been doing. Having him simply vanish from my life one morning knocked the wind out of my lungs, and it made writing about death and dying unendurable.
I needed to escape, and I’m so very sorry that this meant leaving a cliffhanger hanging for so long.
Take this story as a good omen, though. I’m back to work on Arcana Universalis, and things are rolling along quickly. I have momentum again. The plan is always evolving, but with a little luck, the complete novel should see daylight this Summer.
In the meantime, all I can do is ask for your patience, and quietly hope you stick with me long enough for this crazy thing to come together. It’s going somewhere fantastic; that much I promise.
And as long as I have you, now would be a great time to email a copy to a friend. This novella is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which means you’re allowed to share it with friends, and so much more. For more information about the license and the abilities it grants you, please visit the Creative Commons website.
I’m so glad you came back for more!
Chris J. Randolph
Oktopod Digital Press
Table of Contents
Book II:First Fragment
Book II:Second Fragment
Book II:Third Fragment
Book II:Fourth Fragment
Book II:Fifth Fragment
Book II:Sixth Fragment
Book II:Seventh Fragment
Book II:Eighth Fragment
Second Interlude
A Letter From the Author