Blood Skies (blood skies)

by Steven Montano

  A sound like thunder approaches. It is the unicorns, whose hooves splash in the water and whose whinnies echo through the mists in an inhuman dirge.

  The women run. Their thick wool dresses have been made heavy with moisture, and the marshy forest conspires against them with sodden earth and thick tendrils of silver smoke.

  He tries to help them, but he can only watch. He isn’t really there.

  The unicorns emerge from the silver fog like a chain of nightmares. Their skin is black and coarse, and thick dark blood oozes from their nostrils and hooves. Their eyes are white and their horns are jagged and covered in scratches. Their teeth are fanged.

  They descend on the girls and kill one of them in an instant. Her terrified face is reflected back in the unicorns’ eyes as their horns rend her fragile body apart. Her mangled remains fall up into the sky, where she is swallowed by rain that falls like inverted tears.

  The other girls run through the marsh, slowed every step of the way by thick vines and walls of foliage. Fog cages them.

  Again, he sees their memories of the place they once called home. Black rain falls onto steep stone steps that ascend to a grim palace, the heart of the black city. Silhouettes of soldiers surround them, men and women determined to keep their realm safe from the faceless advance of a distant enemy. White fires burn in great pits at the outskirts of the city, dank beacons to light the soldiers’ return. Armor grinds against stone as they march out of the city and onto fields wet with blood and rain.

  The soldiers die in battle and fall in waves, face down in the mud where they swallow earth and grime before their lives are crushed from their bodies.

  The unicorns are persistent hunters, and they show no mercy. The women are exhausted, and their bodies are covered in silver ice. Their hair and dresses have been soaked through with water, and they huddle together in the shadow of tall rocks shaped like broken fingers.

  The unicorns smell of brimstone and blood. Their horns are bloody and their manes have gone white. They feed on these women, these souls without mates.

  She is alone now, and she is no longer needed. He reaches for her, and for a moment see sees him, and she wants to reach back.

  Her mind returns to the creeping shadows over the fields of war. Her memories bleed to recollections of the glade, her small paradise filled with silver haze and the girls with white skin.

  She falls up. Even as the unicorns come for her, all that she can think of is how the worst days are behind her. She falls into air filled with tears and leaves.

  The sky freezes as she ascends into its embrace, and she remains there, held in gray stasis, forever frozen at the edge of death.

  SIX

  DESCENT

  The black walls rumbled. Cross tried not to think about the fact that there was 1,000 feet of open air past the wood beneath his feet. At the nadir of that drop was the Wormwood, likely the last place he’d ever wanted to go in his entire life, or the first place he’d always planned to avoid.

  Either way, I don't really want to go there. Too late.

  “ Two minutes!”

  They were perched on benches than ran parallel to each other on opposite sides of the airship, a tight space barely eight feet across and twice that long. A tiny ladder at one end of what was basically a large closet led up to the command deck, while the descending ladder at the other end dropped to the landing platform.

  “ For as big as these ships are, you think they’d have more elbow room,” Graves shouted. They had to shout to be heard over the turbines and the rattling walls.

  “ They’re over sixty percent armor,” Stone said. “I think they figured you’d rather be safe than comfortable.”

  Graves just laughed. None of them were safe, and they all knew it.

  They were packed six deep: Morgan, Stone, Kray, Graves, Winter, and Cross, all strapped tightly to their bench seats. Each of them wore black combat fatigues and a heavy armored coat. Bandoliers and thick belts packed with equipment that ranged from scopes and knives to grenades and canteens weighed them down. The armored coats went just past the waist, and they were cut tight so as not to snag on their surroundings and impede movement; each coat was set with flexible Kevlar strips that helped minimize injury from glancing blows, though there was little it would do against a direct bullet wound or a blade. The regular soldiers wore additional armor beneath the coats, sections of steel and tightened Kevlar that protected their vital areas. It was all designed to allow mobility and speed. The best soldier, they taught, was the one fast enough to avoid getting shot or stabbed in the first place.

  Snow was upstairs with the flight crew, in part to help the pilots navigate with the aid of her spirit, but also, Cross knew, because she wasn’t comfortable being pent up in tight quarters with a bunch of soldiers. She’d have to get used to that pretty quick.

  We all did, Cross thought.

  The rickety airship descended through a pocket of turbulence that rattled the walls. Cross was convinced that he heard the wooden planks pull apart behind him, which was all but impossible since they were held in place by an inch of magnetically reinforced steel plate. The craft shook violently, and then fell ten feet in two seconds before it leveled out again. The contents of Cross’ stomach clawed at the bottom of his throat.

  “ This is awesome,” he muttered.

  “ This is the life!” Kray was normally a quiet man, but he acted like a jubilant kid whenever they got to fly to missions. Cross wasn’t sure how anyone could get used to being on airship at all, let alone enjoy it. He had been on plenty of missions, but he wasn’t sure if there was some magical number of aerial drops he’d have to take part in before all of the sickness and strained nerves became easier to cope with. He hoped he’d live long enough to find out.

  “ Hang in there,” Graves laughed. “The real fun starts when we touch down.”

  “ You have a twisted idea of fun, my friend,” Cross smiled.

  “ Come on, Cross,” Kray bellowed. “Stop being such a woman.” Kray was strangely quiet whenever they were on the ground — it was only in the air that he turned obnoxious.

  “ What would you know about women, Kray?” Winter smiled. The mage was calm and self assured, just like always. Winter, the “old man”, was a foot shorter than Kray and twice his age. He was also the senior mage on the team and an experienced warlock, so they all knew better than to mess with him. Winter actually deferred most of the team’s arcane matters to the much younger Cross, but Cross was always sure Winter knew how comfortable he was having the older mage in the group.

  There are two other mages again, he corrected himself. Snow isn’t your sister today. She’s your tracker. As if his nerves weren’t already shot because of how important the mission was, Cross also had to worry about keeping his only living family member alive, as well. Damn it, Snow. Why did you have to go and be a hero?

  “ I know plenty about women,” Kray smiled.

  “ Really?” Stone said with a grin. “What women do you know, Kray? Beside your Mom?”

  “ I know your Mom,” Kray said with as straight of a face as he could muster.

  They all laughed, save Morgan. “Morg” had on his game face. He stared straight ahead, smiled politely to encourage his troops, but it was clear that his mind was already on what lay ahead.

  The Wormwood. Perhaps the worst place to go on a world that had redefined the notion of bad places. It was over a hundred square miles of twisted trees and dank marsh occupied by Chul, Gorgoloth, Maloj, and other things Cross didn’t know about and didn’t want to know about. And in that mire of witched wood and poison swamp they had to find a woman. A traitor.

  And we have to find her before the vampires do, Cross thought. Wonderful.

  Cross knew that he just needed to stop worrying. He had skills and talents to contribute to the Alliance, and that was just what he’d do. This was what he was meant to do…or so he’d been told. Some days, he wasn’t so sure.

  I’m drifting, he realized. Gro
wing numb, complacent, and unhappy. And if I slow down to think about what’s going on, I freak out. So just get on with it.

  “ Gear up!” Morg called. “Check your equipment! One minute!”

  God, Cross thought. I will never get used to this.

  “ Let’s try to make a respectable exit this time,” Morg said as he walked towards the back of the airship. He used an iron pole that ran the length of the ceiling as a handhold. “Our deployments have looked like a comedy routine lately. Let’s clean that up before you make me unhappy.”

  Morg was a big man, tall and lean but well muscled, and he had a deep and resonant voice that was loud even when he whispered. He wasn’t as big as Kray, but if Cross had to pick which of the two men got to beat the hell out of him, he’d pick Kray in a heartbeat. He felt at least then he’d have a chance of surviving.

  Cross’ HK45 automatic was at his side, and he made sure both the pyrojack gauntlet he’d purchased from Warfield and his spare pair of standard gauntlets were in his pack, which he then cinched up tight. The pack itself was laced with armor and clamped to his heavy armored coat. Emergency release triggers set under his armpits allowed for a quick getaway from his pack in case he had to ditch his gear for speed, or if any of his equipment was compromised and turned unstable. The small battery pack for his arcane gauntlets was located on his belt. The thin wiring that reached between the pack and his wrists tensed as he checked the connection. Copper wiring hummed with potential.

  The air stiffened around him as his spirit tensed, sharing his anxiety. He felt her cool touch against his skin, a reassuring pressure that reminded him of her presence.

  Snow came down as Viper Squad prepared to disembark. Her hair was pulled back from her face, and Cross heard the whispers of her spirit as she prepped for the descent. Her spirit would soon extend its form into a wide perimeter pattern, so as to better detect distant anomalies and arcane patterns that would help them track their quarry. Cross’ and Winter’s spirits, on the other hand, would be held in tighter rein, allowed to roam only short distances for close proximity readings.

  Weapons were checked and rechecked. Blades slid into sheaths. Straps of leather and plates of steel armor were cinched tight. Cross checked his pistol again, even though he’d done so already. There was nothing left to do but worry. Those last sixty seconds seemed to stretch on for an hour.

  Finally, the chemical lamps in the cramped cabin turned red, signaling their descent, and moments later they turned green. The bay door fell open, and crashed onto the dirt.

  Black trees loomed before them like a grim wall. Cross smelled moss, brine, mold and sap. The Wormwood lay directly ahead. Blood fell from dead tree branches. Shadows bent and twisted unnaturally, lending the darkness a dizzying depth.

  The airship — a bare sailing vessel as big as five wagons — hovered in the air behind them for a moment. Its muted turbine engines blew air and dust away in an expanding cloud and created a swirling funnel of dead leaves. Cross felt the ship's exhausts push against them, and the entire Squad remained crouched until the airship lifted up and turned away. It would circle the area until they returned. Morg signaled, and they silently entered the haunted forest.

  SEVEN

  WORMWOOD

  There was something in the trees.

  Cross stepped back. His handheld telescope was banded with bone, and it was freezing to the touch. A few years of experience had done little to get him used to the feel of some of his arcane implements, most of which were all as cold as death.

  “ Well?” Graves asked. They stood at the edge of the Wormwood, a grim forest of grotesquely misshapen trees and ravenous bogs. The Wormwood was populated with refugee warlocks, soul miners, clouds of black poison and lost relics of the world before The Black. The unexplained energies from The Black had twisted everything with the taint of madness and magic, and it had killed millions of people in the process. The Wormwood was just one of many mutations left behind in the wake of that apocalypse. Its thick branches and dark roots blocked out the sky, and a horde of psychotically carnivorous animals roamed its depths. Arteries of black blood ran through the roots of the trees and into the dark soil of the immense forest, and necrotic fluids lent the air the stench of rot and organic matter.

  “ There’s something there, but I can’t quite make it out. Not clearly, anyways.” Cross handed Graves the telescope. Up close, Cross could clearly see the scars on Graves’ cheek and neck. He’d acquired them after the campaign in Blackmarsh, when he’d been held prisoner in the Ebon City of Krul, a place where the vampires tortured prisoners and took their time turning them to undead. It was a technique that normally assured total obedience while still retaining a converted human’s original skill set, which otherwise wasn’t possible — most vampires held no trace of their former selves.

  Cross was no beauty, either: he bore a scar from a vampire attack that ran down his left cheek and onto the lower left side of his mouth and jaw, but nothing as grievous as Graves’ wounds. If not for quite a bit of luck and some inside help, Graves never would have made it out of Krul at all.

  Cross’ spirit brushed against him, and he quietly breathed her cold vapors in to let her ethereal form swim into his lungs.

  “ Are you okay?” Winter asked him. The older mage was a few yards behind him, where he was busy adjusting a much more elaborate thaumaturgy harness than what Cross wore. Winter’s heavy implement was strapped to his torso like a parachute. It weighed a good twenty pounds and was as bulky as a tombstone. Cross didn’t need such an excessive pack, at least not yet — his was just a battery, four inches across and weighing barely a pound, strapped to his belt and hooked to his gauntlets with nearly invisible copper wires. Unlike Winter, he also only needed his implement when he manifested magic. Winter had to wear his just to stay alive.

  Just like I’ll have to, eventually.

  “ I’m fine,” he said. “Jitters, is all. I’m worried about Snow.”

  “ She’ll be fine,” Winter said after a moment.

  “ Damn,” Graves breathed. “I see them.”

  Cross and Winter both knelt down behind Graves. They looked deep into the dank innards of the forest. The bone-pale tree they hid behind was ancient and gnarled and as hard as concrete. Long dried fruit dangled from the withered branches, solid white and covered in gooey webs.

  Cross took the scope back from Graves, but Winter put a hand on it.

  “ No,” he said. “Save your strength for what matters. I’ll do this.”

  Cross’ fingers ached as they peeled away from the icy steel. They’d grown so cold they felt scalded from the touch of the metal. Winter took what was seen in the scope and projected it into the minds of all three men. The image was not physical, not real, but light that was bent and twisted into a paradox of ethereal intellect, shifted and sent to their corneas so they could all see the same image when any one of them looked through the scope. Winter aimed the scope into the heart of the trees.

  Past the twisted trees and black marsh, through green air and methane gas and slithering red snakes that clung to the trees like leeches, beyond a stump covered with shredded bones and dark red oil, there stood a trio of men. They were dark silhouettes shrouded in cloaks. Al three had weapons strapped across their backs. A cloud of dark air clung to them like a swarm of icy bees. They were small even in the scope, which meant they were a considerable distance away.

  “ Sentries?” Cross asked.

  “ A Creed. Shadowclaws,” Graves said with a shake of his head. “The vampire version of us. They’re looking for Red, too. And they’re ahead of us.” He spat a dark wad of corrosive chewing tobacco onto the ground. “Again, I say ‘Damn’.”

  “ How do you know they’re Shadowclaws?” Cross asked.

  “ Well, for starters, there are three of them,” Graves said matter-of-factly. He may have come across as a backwater hick most of the time, but Graves was an expert Hunter. “They wouldn’t send a regular unit out this far from Rath. Shadowcl
aw Creeds move faster, and they’re elite.”

  “ But there can be more than one Creed out there, right? Working together?” Cross had expected the nod Graves gave him. “Damn it. Have you faced them before?”

  “ It’s been a while.”

  “ Have I?” he asked.

  “ Not with Viper Squad. We fought at least one Creed in Blackmarsh.”

  Cross suppressed a shudder. He never wanted to even think about Blackmarsh ever again. Sometimes, he had still had nightmares about that campaign, his baptism of fire.

  “ We’d better get the others,” Winter said, and without a word he started back towards their base camp, located just outside the boundaries of the woods. Viper Squad couldn’t actually camp inside the forest. People had died from prolonged exposure to the fumes that the black blood arteries pushed up from the ground and into the Wormwood. Winter told Cross they’d be fine so long as they kept moving and didn’t stay in any one spot for too long. For some reason, that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “ Where are Morg and Stone?” Cross asked. Graves held up his hand for silence. He gripped a black chunk of rune carved stone; Stone, somewhere out there in the forest, had another just like it. The piece of meteoric rock churned with arcane energy. Cross watched as shadow leaked from it, and he saw ethereal black liquid ooze out between Graves’ fingers, and ebon steam squeezed out of his closed palm. With two of the stones, anyone could send simple messages across impossible distances without actually having to utter a single word.

  “ They’re on their way,” Graves said.

  “ Where are they?”

  “ They’re dug into a rock bed two klicks east of here, watching the paths by the river.” Graves stood up. He was only about five-and-a-half-feet tall, but it was all muscle and grit. He was a short blonde-haired man with a scraggly beard, unkempt hair and black and red fatigues laced with stakes, knives, pistols, a pair of carpenter bombs and a wide-bladed machete strapped across his back. Cross was a good six inches taller than Graves, but Graves was easily the more intimidating figure, especially since Cross was excessively thin and pale. Cross’ fatigues were light and loose — a warlock had to be able to move and to allow his skin to breathe, lest their arcane spirits would boil or freeze their flesh. Most days, Cross would have preferred being able to wear the armor.