by D. M. Almond
CHAPTER 8
Dull drums were beating in the distance, while the dancing laughter of worms wriggling through a torso played in Corbin’s mind. He could sense himself slowly unwinding from the taut cord of death that wrapped around his neck. Choking on the clean air, desperately gasping to fill lungs too bruised to hold it in, he tried to shout his denial.
The smoke flitted by Corbin’s eyes as shadows danced past his vision. Through the thick fog in the distance, an emerald gleamed brilliantly, cutting into the pain like a knife of clarity. The Great Crystal’s singing played in the back of his mind, clearing away the fog and instead filling the world with brilliant, blinding light quickly followed by nothing.
He jerked his head up from the wet stone path, and the dream slowly faded into the recesses of his mind.
Where am I? Panic opened his eyes wider, thinking perhaps that would dispel the sheer nothingness that surrounded him. He tried to focus his vision in vain, futilely hoping to perceive something, anything at all in the pitch-black night. How long was I unconscious?
Twitching fingers groped along the floor beneath him, making their way up from his waist. Something must have hit him from behind, knocking him face down to the ground. With his breath no longer coming in such awful ragged gasps, he pushed himself up to his knees. A flash of blinding light cut across his vision, the pain in his side ripping the air back out of his throat and dropping his body to the ground. The crunching of his teeth gritting together resounded like shards of broken ceramic being ground under heavy boots.
Great Crystal, what has happened to me? Corbin’s mind raced to remember how he had gotten here.
Flashes of insects battling the Falians raced across his mind’s eye, but they were only momentary glimpses, disappearing into the shadows as quickly as they formed. Shaking his head in frustration, he grunted with the effort of moving, deciding that it was more important to get to safety.
Steadying his breath he braced himself for the pain that was sure to come and tried to rise a second time. Much slower now, he pulled himself up to his knees, taking deep, even breaths. Pain radiated upward like crawling snakes from the ribs on his left side, but he braced himself against it.
Where did my weapon go? He tried to peer into the murky shadows around his knees, hoping for some miracle to light up his spear. To the right of his body, the shadows seemed more of a gray than pitch black. His eyes must be slowly adjusting to the lighting or lack thereof. Corbin leaned toward the grayness, rubbing his aching palm against the cool, damp rock wall that he found there.
At that moment, it was more inviting than a campfire. His probing fingers explored the marble wall until they fit snugly into a secure hold. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and then pulled himself slowly to his feet. The snakes started cruelly biting into his side again, with waves of nausea wracking his body and painful sparks dancing across his vision. Corbin damned the pain in his side, fighting on until he was leaning heavily against the wall.
There was no sense trying to figure out which way to go since leaning on his left side was not an option, and he had no intention of walking backward. Corbin figured his ribs must be broken. In this darkness, he would be completely defenseless with a such an injury if one of the skex came upon him.
What was that? He had not realized he was already shuffling along, his whole body leaning into the wall, until his foot was stopped short by something on the ground. Not wanting to risk bending over, with the potential of never getting back up again, Corbin prodded the object with the toe of his boot. A dead man’s arm slapped wetly, sliding freely across the ground. The whole thing had been severed.
Distant shrieks rose into the night air as another monster filled its abdomen with human meat. Corbin embraced the anger that wracked him, spurring his legs faster toward the path ahead.
Soon he came upon an area of the wall that glowed faintly luminescent in the shadows, casting a glow of green haze from a moss the city had planted as emergency lighting. All around the floor, Corbin spotted dead bodies, torn and mauled by the flesh-eating insects.
He also eyed a sword one of the men had strapped to his waist. This would be worth the risk of bending over, so he carefully made his way down to a crouch, racking his body with waves of pain. The weapon was much lighter than it appeared, its metal reflecting the pale green glow. Corbin balanced it in his hand, moving it left to right, getting a feel for the weight of the new weapon.
With a little effort he set forth again, back into the engulfing shadows, his index finger nervously tracing circles over the blade’s hilt. Sounds of battle echoed off the smooth marble walls. It was coming from ahead, but still he could see nothing.
Is this how the roc-bats live in the valley? he wondered, thinking of the blind flying creatures who let out shrill screams, like banshees, to guide their flight.
Leaning against the wall and taking the pressure off his ribs again, he cocked an ear to listen ahead. It sounds like some drunkard’s laughing just around the bend, he thought. With renewed vigor Corbin continued, still guided by the wall, an image of men celebrating their victory playing in his mind. More of the luminescent green light oozed into the shadows, where a laughing man sat propped against the wall ahead.
“Sir, where are the others?” Corbin tentatively asked, speaking low in case there were skex in the area, and looking around in the dark for the man’s companions.
Still laughing, the man dreamily looked up, his unkempt brown beard dripping foamy spittle. The clouds parted in his eyes as he focused on Corbin’s face, and his laughter cut short.
“I killed three of them, lad,” he somberly explained.
“Three of who? Do mean the skex? I don’t understand…are you alone? Where are the other soldiers I heard a moment ago?” Corbin fired the questions out in rapid succession, never giving the man time to answer as he slowly crouched beside him.
“Others? I got three. Killed the bastards before they got me.” He directed Corbin’s gaze to his hands, which clutched his large belly.
For the first time since he had woken, Corbin truly came out of his stupor and became fully aware of the world around him. The man was dripping blood from a deep gash that ran across his entire midsection. So much blood covered the ground that Corbin’s boots were sticking in it where it pooled around his feet.
The world lurched as his body rejected the contents of his stomach onto the man’s legs. He quickly tried to wipe the vomit from his face and instead smeared some of the dying man’s blood across his chin.
They stared at each other in shocked silence. Then the man’s eyes glazed over again and bubbling laughter gurgled out of his throat. His hysteria began building in crescendo, to the point where Corbin was not certain whether it was laughter or screaming. Knuckles white, Corbin shoved his blade with a crunching sound up through the poor man’s jaw and into his skull. He watched in sick horror as the old soldier was released from his agonizing, drawn-out death, until the madness faded from his eyes and he drifted into peace, and then slowly pulled the blade out.
He had never killed another man before. Even though he knew this was the right thing to do for the tortured soul, every nerve in his body grew cold and rigid at once. For the second time, his stomach lurched forward, this time with nothing to give to the aching world.
Careful not to disturb the soldier’s dead body, Corbin lifted the goggles from around his neck. It made him sick to know he needed to remain pragmatic. Despair aside, these would help him see in the pitch-black. The miners of Parian wore them when going into the deeper caves.
With the goggles tightened around his head, he twisted a small dial on the strap, adjusting the emerald quartz lens and lighting up everything before him. At first the area was framed in a grainy green glow, much like the moss, but then everything sprang into life as all the other natural colors began seeping through the shadows. It felt like looking through a shaded screen at the world, nothing quite as brilliant or focused as normal light from th
e Crystal would provide. It wasn’t the best, but Corbin would take this diluted view over what he had just stumbled through any day.
He wondered if the soldier had anything else useful and rummaged through the man’s utility pouches until he found a small animal skin tube. Corbin sniffed the opening.
Medi-gel! He flipped the wax seal off with his thumb as he hiked up the side of his torn shirt, revealing the long gash across his ribs that was caked with dried blood and dirt. He gingerly squeezed the tube, spreading the healing gel over his wound. A hiss escaped through his gritted teeth as the gash sizzled close, leaving a long, white, hard nub across his skin. Finally, he began to feel some semblance of being balanced again. Looking around him and the dead soldier, he found nothing else along the wall. All about the city, however, he could hear the battle still raging.
On his feet again, Corbin started out at a steady pace, still leaning on the wall for support. It was not long before he realized the air fully filled his lungs once more, giving him renewed strength and clarity. The mining goggles functioned properly, bending the light with their special lenses, revealing a good yard ahead of filtered view.
To the right he found a steep stairwell cut into the wall, leading up to the next level. Corbin fell into his hunter’s crouch, sensing the need for caution as he climbed the steps. At the top of the stairwell, sounds of clashing steel and shouting came closer.
A large skex, its back to him, stalked from left to right and then back again, staying just out of reach of its quarry. Three more of the monstrous insects surrounded a group of people who fought back, including his brother Logan, who was smack dab in the middle of it all.
Corbin quickly scanned the battle. Between himself and the nearest winged monster lay the carcass of another skex, its head littered with arrows.
Logan must have dealt that one its deathblow, he thought. Torn pieces of several people littered the ground all around the grisly scene.
His brother must have lost his bow, as he was now holding a metal staff that he used to parry, first the large insect in front of him and then the one to his back, barely keeping the beasts at bay. There were two people next to him, one on either side. The woman at Logan’s right was a soldier by the looks of her. She was firing her pistol in between dodging the skex’s attacks. On his left was a citizen who must have been caught on the walls when the attack began. He was bleeding from a bad wound on the side of his head and holding a long spear, which he frantically waved about in the dark to keep the insects at bay. By Logan’s feet lay Elder Morgana’s laser rifle, but none of the trio could possibly see it in this pitch-blackness.
Crouching low to the ground, Corbin made a dash to the fallen insect, hiding behind the armored plates of its thorax. Peering around the side of the dead monster, he could make out his brother better. Logan took three steps forward, bringing the largest insect’s snapping pincer in, then with a backward dash with his staff, he slammed down on the claw, slapping it to the stone floor. The skex was enraged and brought its tail in hard, the stinger dripping with sticky poison. Though he was clearly exhausted, Logan was somehow ready for this, dodging quickly to the left and opening the way for the insect behind him to take its sister’s barbed stinger squarely in one of its eyes. A high-pitched screech erupted from the thing’s quivering maw and the two struggled to separate, flipping over on their sides beside the edge of the wall.
Just behind the newly blinded insect was one of the city’s defense turrets. It was an enormous weapon, made to shoot down any monstrous insects, sauria-lizards, or even roc-bats that came too close to the city’s borders. It resembled one of Logan’s crossbows, but was as large as two riding elks side by side. The defensive unit had a giant stone seat that would house one city guard while another worked a hand crank, which they used to pivot left or right. Corbin felt an idea forming, noting there was still a handful of massive spears loaded into the side of the mechanism.
How many of these unfortunate souls would still be alive if they had only been able to see the turret in this darkness? he wondered.
Logan jabbed his staff hard into the side of another skex as it batted the wounded man beside him to the ground. The soldier joined in, firing her gun and flinching as the bullets ricocheted off its armored skin.
“We need to get out of here while the other two are distracted!” Logan yelled to his companions as they scrambled to help the man rise.
Corbin seized his opportunity while the skex were all fully distracted. Flinging himself over the dead monster he had been using as cover, he made a beeline for the turret.
Logan had just fallen onto his back, barely rolling away from one of the insects’ tail as it whipped through the air. As he hopped to his feet, Corbin ran across his limited view, like a ghost emerging from the shadows.
“To the left, by your feet!” Corbin yelled.
One second he was there, the next he was slipping back into the shadows, leaving Logan to ponder whether he had just seen a phantom or perhaps even a flickering piece of his imagination playing tricks on him. He judged the truth of it when, stooping down to blindly grope around his feet, his fingers found the cold metal of the laser rifle he had dropped.
Jumping into the seat of the turret, Corbin leaned far to the side and furiously worked the crank, spinning it hard with both hands. He moved the weapon in the wrong direction at first, then realizing his error, reversed to aim at the two skex struggling to break free of one another. Once they were in his line of sight, it almost seemed as if the larger skex sensed the danger.
Recognizing its vulnerability, the massive beast sheered the smaller one’s head off, sacrificing its sister to save itself. The monster rumbled and chittered in defiance just as Corbin brought the weapon’s sight downward, pointing it directly at its head. With a tight squeeze of the trigger, a spear shot out of the machine with a large snapping sound, shaking the floor and shoving him back hard against the seat. The barbed steel bored straight through the beast’s compound eye and deep into its body. Its insides sprayed out in a steady stream where the spear had pierced. Screeching, the dying skex took two staggering steps forward before its face came down with a crunch into the ground.
At the same time, Logan aimed the laser rifle he had retrieved, his blood pumping hard with the elation of finally regaining some sort of advantage in this fight.
“Time to say bye bye,” he snarled.
The remaining skex came on with a ferocity he could not have predicted, spurred by the death of its kin. Logan was forced to the ground as it rammed right into him. Far too fast for him to react, the skex smashed one of its crab-like pincers down on his wounded hand, pinning him to the ground. The pain of shattered bones coursed through his body like an electric current.
The only thing stopping the monster from goring him on the spot was the swift reaction of the soldier, who was back on her feet and running the civilian’s spear in at the skex. Catching it right between its rows of armored plates, she bought them just enough of a distraction. Logan squirmed, frantically trying to break loose from the hulking monster’s grip.
His brother’s blood-curdling scream made Corbin jump and his blood freeze, just as he was watching his own prey fall from the edge of the parapet. Corbin had to shield his eyes from a succession of bright flashes, followed by a series of loud screeching noises as the laser rifle blasted through the skex’s armored hide.
The beast fell dead on its side, freeing Logan from its grip. He dropped the rifle, numbly staring at what was left of his hand, and roared in agony. Every finger was shorn down to the knuckle, leaving only a thumb, brokenly jutting at a weird angle from the crushed area of pulpy flesh where his hand used to be. Fountains of blood squirted from the wound.
Corbin screamed for his brother, jumping down from the turret. Before he even made it to Logan’s side, the soldier was there, tying off his wrist with a makeshift tourniquet of cloth that she had quickly torn from her pant leg.
“Do you have an
y medi-gel?” Corbin asked, wishing he had not used the tube he found on his own wound. Thankfully, the woman was already squeezing some of the stuff onto the nubs of his brother’s hand. Desperately grasping Logan’s tunic, Corbin pulled him up to a sitting position. “Logan talk to me. Stay with me!”
Logan looked at him with glassy eyes and smirked. “Those glasses look ridiculous, little bro.”
The soldier began to chuckle. “Man, this guy is something else! If he hadn’t shown up when he did, we would all be dead, for sure.” She shook her head at the insanity of it all.
“We need to get him inside the city, to a healer!” Corbin said.
He lifted Logan by the armpits while the soldier grabbed his ankles, and together they carried him just behind the defense spear, where she said there should be a doorway. The irony that they had been that close to salvation was not lost on Corbin, as they skirted the dead littering the area. The wounded civilian pushed open the door for them, and once inside the corridor, a soldier quickly brought them to the healers’ barracks.
“You’re damn lucky, son,” a soldier said, chewing on the butt of a cigar while a long gash on his arm was stitched up. “Not only to survive a fall like that, but then to find your brother on top of it all. Must have the gods looking after you to have that kind of fortune. You Walker boys are heroes, no doubt about that.”
Corbin only dimly heard the man, sickly watching as the healers tried to save what was left of his brother’s shattered hand. Without looking over at the soldier, he mumbled under his breath, “Right…real lucky.”
At the apex of Fal, on the highest wall of the city, a metal door banged opened. Out of the twelve levels of the capitol, only the top two had yet to be breached by the invading horde. The battle below was at somewhat of a standstill, as the swarm of carnivorous insects was distracted by feasting on their already captured prey. It was a short reprieve that the soldiers meant to take full advantage of, retreating into the city walls to regroup and carrying whatever wounded they could to safety.
Some of the people out on the walls were still alive as the skex ripped them apart with hungry tentacles. Elder Alain looked down at the grisly scene of carnage from the top level, despair filling his heart to see the great massacre that had befallen his beloved homeland.
From the doorway, Lady Cassandra emerged, just catching up to her husband. She was breathing heavily from running, her white hair and ivory robes whipping around in the wind as she made her way over to him.
“Alain, stop this madness at once!” she weakly demanded between gasps. The look he shot her said volumes, and Cassandra felt as panicked as a trapped bee, shaking her head violently to deny what she knew he was about to do.
He regarded her for a moment and gripped his chest, the idea of losing her almost was too much for him to bear. Her heart surged with a fleeting hope that he had changed his mind.
“There is nothing else to it, my dear Cassandra. The day has come, and it must be done.” Somberly he stroked his massive braided beard as he spoke. Before she could deny him again, he gently took her by the shoulders and pushed her back into the stairwell. “Now get yourself back inside where it is safe, star of my stars.”
Lady Cassandra lost herself in his eyes, unable to speak, silently imploring him not to leave her. Alain nodded sadly, hearing her voice in his mind, and pulled her trembling body close to his, smelling her hair for the last time.
Without warning, Alain abruptly spun around and slammed the metal door shut, locking her inside the stairwell. He turned his back on the woman he had loved for almost two centuries. Through his hard life, she had meant everything to him.
All the happiness in the world could be found in that woman’s smile, he thought, fighting back the sorrow enveloping him, but this must be done.
The finality of it hit him as he made his way to the large dais set in the middle of the parapet. An enormous obsidian egg twice his height was cradled in its center.
Cassandra could hardly find the air to breathe. Tears seemed to be flowing from every pore of her body as she choked down the aching in her chest. Alain had put in the code to seal the gate, leaving her trapped inside, helpless in the face of his imminent sacrifice. He gave one last look at his wife through the window of the stairwell door before flipping the switch to activate the powerful weapon.
The egg opened with a mechanical whir, revealing small steps leading inside the chamber. Once inside, he stretched his arms above his head, locking them into the harness, which automatically began the process. The whirring continued to build in its crescendo as hot metal coils sealed around his forearms and clamps clasped his legs firmly in place. His robes were tossed about as the air began to crackle with the building energy inside the egg. On the smooth outer surface, colors ran in waves, flowing brown to green then back to black again.
Alain’s command had to be shouted to be heard over the ancient machine’s deafening roar, the whirring so loud it shattered his eardrums. Blood ran from his nose and ears. The air crackled as whips of energy began lashing anything not bolted down off the platform.
Pieces of stone showered over the wall, raining down on the swarm below. Some of the skex stopped gorging on their meals, their frenzy interrupted by this new commotion.
“Farewell, my dear,” Alain whispered, his words swallowed under the deafening roar of the machine. The countdown ended inside the weapon.
Behind the sealed metal door, Lady Cassandra’s screams were lost under the cacophonous waves of energy, and she pounded hysterically on the window for her husband. In her mind, she could hear his screams as the obsidian egg tore his life essence apart, converting it into raw energy.
Lost in the deepest anguish a human can experience, Cassandra slammed her forehead repeatedly against the door, as if that could silence his screams wracking her mind. She felt him erased from existence, and her legs wobbled like jelly, spilling her to the floor in sobs.
The obsidian egg flared in a brilliant blue glow, all of Alain’s essence melted into raw energy. A massive concussive force wracked the walls as the egg fired long waves of blinding green plasma off its surface in all directions. The plasma was hotter than lava, yet moved down the city walls like a tidal wave. Not an inch of the surface was left uncovered. Everything organic it touched melted under the sheer heat of the otherworldly ooze, absorbing into it and making the plasma stronger as it washed further down.
It was only an instant, a blinding hot moment, and the skex were burned away, along with all their victims’ mutilated bodies. One blinding flash, and the only thing left was a half circle at the city’s base level, where the plasma had flowed into the grated moat built for just this contingency plan. A handful of the insects in the air were all that remained, and they fled from the site of their near genocide.
The battle was over, the city of Fal saved, and Lady Cassandra’s husband was gone forever.