Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  “W-what?” I repeated, feeling my concentration wane and cool sweat prick up on my brow. “I, uh, I just...” I said, trying not to pant too hard, “I wanted to know if … nng…” I leaned over and panted, and the librarian, who had been coolly eyeing my bizarre display, looked behind me and blinked twice.

  “Sorry. I had a burglary very recently,” he said, after giving Moro a thorough once-over. The spectre backed away and peered at him through the gaps in the shelf she stood behind. “I’m rather on edge. What is it you’d like?”

  I turned back to him and gave my best smile, but he looked away; clearly it wasn’t quite working on him for whatever reason. “I, uh, I want to see—”

  “The prophecy,” he interrupted me without making eye contact, clapping his ledger shut and sliding it under his counter. “You’re late.”

  “Sorry, what?” I asked, but I followed him anyway as he began to make his way to the back of the enormous circular room. I hoped that he would hurry and find whatever it was that I needed, because the dust was really threatening to make me sneeze.

  “I said you’re late. You’ve been here for almost a week.” He paused and checked a timepiece in his pocket, almost causing me to collide fully with his slender back. “Yes. Almost a week exactly.”

  Had it really been that much time?

  If my body wasn’t dead, I’d be able to log out and go home at any point in the next day. I would have roughly twenty-four hours or so to cut my losses here, say goodbye, and leave the chosen one-ing to somebody else. Like Ryken. Or maybe even Samson. I wasn’t looking forward to finding out what I was supposed to get done while I was here.

  “Here, come through here. Quickly, now.”

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked, getting ready to inspect him anyway. It just seemed nicer — more reminiscent of home, I guess — to get people’s names from their own mouths from time to time. “And how is it you know how much time I had here?”

  “Let’s just say that I’m the only one around here who seems to be doing my research,” he said with a wink. “Call me Leonidus, or Leo.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Research?”

  “On you,” he replied simply, and then turned a couple of corners so that I had to jog a couple of steps to keep up. “And … on your kind. There are more, I take it?”

  I didn’t know what to say, and saw no need to disagree with him. “There are more,” I confirmed.

  He nodded. “As I thought.”

  We came to an alcove with a couple of pedestals, each with their own open tome or proudly presented scroll. He gestured to one of them. “I imagine this is what you’re looking for.”

  I stepped forward and peered. It wasn’t one of the scrolls, as I had kind of expected, but one of the long books. The prophecy took up the entirety of a thick book, hundreds of pages long and twice the normal page size. It was written in chicken scratch and most, but not all, of the lines seemed to have some kind of rhyming couplet, which was cute. I ran my finger down the centre of the page it was open on.

  “So … this is about me?” I asked with a cocky half-grin.

  Leo looked at me sideways. “You could say that. I might prefer to think of it the opposite way.”

  “Oh?”

  “You are about this.” He tapped the papers. “It will take you a day or two to read it all. I will provide you with water and bread, but outside of that you must go to the market stalls nearby. There is no seat, and it’s bound to the pedestal by the Father’s magic. Alright. Enjoy!” Leo bowed and turned to sweep away.

  “Hey, wait!”

  He turned back.

  “I have to read the whole thing? It’ll take me two days?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “If you’re a fast reader. Did you bring a notebook to write down pertinent lines onto? I’m sure you did.”

  “Uhh…”

  “Come to me if you need anything,” he said, looking incredibly disappointed before walking away and leaving me there. I wasn’t entirely sure that I would even be able to find him if I did want his help.

  Well, I sure as hell couldn’t spend two or three days here. I just wanted to glance at the thing — I had been hoping it was one of those, you know, snappy prophecies. Succinct.

  I flipped to the beginning. It started with a mention of the gods, I figured, since I recognised some of the terms from my time in the Collective. Some of the words were unknown to me, and some of the sentences were slightly scrambled and confusing. It was a little like trying to read a flowery translation of an Old English poem, but I muddled through all the way to page two and just about figured I knew what was being said.

  Already fifteen minutes had passed and I felt intellectually drained. This was why I had disliked English class back in school. It made me feel dumb sometimes, when I didn’t feel like I was getting the right meaning from the texts. And, in this case, there was a right or wrong answer. No matter what Miss Harrison might say.

  I needed to figure out just exactly what destiny I had cheated my way into.

  And what destiny I had cheated Ryken out of.

  “Gods gods gods,” I muttered, trailing my finger down the second page. There had been a few gods, if I had this right. Not just Titania and No One. There were more, and they had found Pax instead of created it — which made them sound like aliens to me. Moro was nudging at a stack of papers on the bottom of a nearby shelf, but her snout was passing straight through them. The sight made me smirk, and I read the next short passage aloud to her.

  “The god creators rested from afar

  And let the world spring forth at hands of titans.

  Time passes, worlds crumble,

  The Exodus surge has immortals born anew.

  The god creators enter and the end begins.

  In ending there is beginning.

  In ending there is beginning.”

  I looked at Moro, who snuffed and licked her nose, and looked back at me. “It’s kinda … nonsensical, right?” I asked her. “I think the god creators are us. And the immortals are us, too. So the Exodus is when we arrived here.” I licked my lips. “And that ending beginning thing is what the Brothers say sometimes, so I guess it’s something to do with Titania’s return. Fuck, I don’t know.”

  I bit my lip and then skipped forward a couple of pages, skimming it for buzzwords like ‘immortal’ and ‘creators’ … and ‘apocalypse’, though I never saw that last one, thankfully. I saw scary-sounding names mentioned as the guardians of Titania’s ancient secrets, and thought to the map. Azhul Na’kur, Roisha Rowain, Bekku Krazhik. Rewarded for their loyalty by being locked away to protect her trinkets from her enemies. Sounded more like a punishment.

  “Look, there’s a whole section on the blood of the Father bringing about the World Eroder when the path is clear. No one is gone.” I chewed my lower lip. “No One is gone, or no one is gone? If the path is clear, the World Eroder comes to Pax and everyone dies. In ending there is beginning. Yeah, yeah.” I flipped through the next few pages. “Where am I?”

  My eye landed on the word ‘wolf’, so I paused. “Hey, Moro, this is about you:

  “Wolf on man. Spectre on skin.

  Flesh rended, soul corroded.”

  I sighed. “This doesn’t look great for us.”

  I’d been there for just under half an hour when Leo strolled in and nodded at me, presenting a mug of water. “Be sure to rest your eyes and protect your notes.”

  Yeah. My notes. I smiled and nodded and accepted the drink. “So, uh, what’s … the tl;dr of this stuff, Leo? I have somewhere to be pretty soon.”

  His eyes clouded over. “You want me to give you…”

  “The gist, yeah. The summary.”

  “The book is incredibly layered,” he said, sounding a little upset. “The prophecy has a hundred areas that are hotly disputed; you could perhaps glean some meaning from the words that nobody else could. It’s very important that you take the studying of it seriously … or you could doom us all!”

/>   I pointed at him. “Aha, how, though? I see that the Collective are going to summon their scary goddess if the ‘path is cleared’ — and I see that Moro is going to do some fighting, but what actually matters to me, personally?”

  He tutted and flipped to a page as if he knew the tome off by heart, then jammed his forefinger at the section right at the end. Right. It would have taken me forever to get there, wading through all this boring wankery.

  “It’d be really helpful if you could talk me through some of this,” I told him. “I, uh, saw earlier in the prophecy that I was supposed to have a guide, to walk me through the dull parts.” He stared at me. I grinned.

  “It doesn’t say that,” he said. But he stayed anyway. “Here. This whole section is about your appearance proving the return of Titania. The chosen. This analogy of the predator and the moon? That’s almost certainly a reference to the wolf. The warrior mentioned here — that’s Votorius-Khan, the Titan whose constellation you were born under. With me so far?”

  “Probably.” I wanted to go get some sleep.

  He let out a hefty sigh, then flipped a page. “So then this passage: ‘A light behind the eyes that never dies,’ referring to you. Tenacity. I can see that.”

  I looked down at my feet, for some reason, and then back up at him. “OK.” I figured that was definitely something that was supposed to be referring to Ryken. Not me. I didn’t feel particularly tenacious.

  “Here is what I think you’re looking for,” he said, and I stepped forward. “The fight between the champions of the gods. Either the chosen of Titania will die,” he said, and then gently cleared his throat, “or he will leave, and return, and the weight of the world will be on his shoulders.”

  “So, like, basically Jesus,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Someone from my … hometown,” I said vaguely. “Just a dude.”

  “Right.”

  “He went away and then he came back. Is that what I am supposed to do?”

  Leo’s finger travelled downward. “Yes. If you return, you are our Champion.”

  “Shit, so I have to die or I have to save the world? Really? Can’t…” I trailed off.

  “What?”

  I thought about Ryken. I thought about Nickel. Dareth. Caspian. Hell, I even thought about Samson, and Atraea. Xanthe.

  “Can’t … someone else just do it?”

  His lids suddenly seemed to become very heavy and he pressed his fingertips to them and paused as if in some pain. “No,” he said. “The text is vague about other things, but it is clear about that. The world is in your hands.”

  "But ... I don't want to save the world. I just want to..."

  "What?"

  "You know ... regular stuff. Explore the world. Meet some girls. I just want to hang out."

  “You just want to … hang out?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” I said. My voice suddenly sounded pretty small. “I…” I went silent, and he made no move to break the awkward pause with his own words.

  “I will leave you to ponder your future,” he said, and turned away. I could feel the disappointment hanging in the air even after he left. It clung to my skin, and made me heavier.

  Ugh.

  I trudged out of the library, taking a couple of wrong turns first, and then made a move to wave at him but he was nowhere to be seen. I stepped back out onto the street and pulled in a deep breath of clean air. Then I let it out again in the form of one soft word.

  “Fuuuck.”

  I had armour. I had a cowl. I could hide my wolf for a little while, and I could hide my face.

  If the Falchion felt like offing the chosen one, they were going to have a butt of a time trying to figure out who that was!

  I walked with a spring in my step, which was weird, because I was around fifty percent sure I was going to die in a couple of hours.

  Roark met me at the base of the spire and nodded. I nodded back. “Ryken?” I asked. He shook his head.

  “Not here yet. I got some news from Artur, that greasy weasel.”

  “What?” I paused my strides toward him.

  “The Falchion has decided we will meet them at the dungeon the map leads to. They are not going to hand over the girl until they receive whatever treasure is in its depths.” He blew out a breath. “I’m normally rather fast on my feet, but I have to admit that I can’t see a way out of this one, unless you sacrifice the girl. But something tells me you aren’t going to do that.”

  “No, I can’t do that,” I said. There were only a few people in the world of Ilyria that I would have gone to so much trouble for, but she was one of them.

  He looked as though he understood, which was a relief. “I had a woman too, once,” he said. I didn’t want to pry, so I said nothing. “I would have given up a treasure trove of gold for her, too.”

  “She’s not my … anything,” I said. I wasn’t even totally sure I liked her as a person. But there was something really hideous about the thought of letting someone I’d shared a moment with get tortured to within an inch of her life for a damn map inside a VR game. It was especially awful when I remembered that she had been snatched up right next to me, while I slept. I fucking hated that.

  “Still,” he said. “Can you find a way out of this, then? It looks like we might just have to accept that the Falchion gains something that could seriously aid them in their fight to take Dawnspire.”

  I didn’t like that. Since this seemed to be my home now, I didn’t want the streets running red with blood, or whatever had been threatened.

  “We’ll see,” I said simply. “We could still get there first. Meet them there. Take the girl by force.”

  “I thought about that, but there is no way they won’t have thought of it too.”

  I couldn’t disagree.

  “I’ll go find Ryken if you want to leave right now,” I said helplessly. This whole thing was a shitshow. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “He lives in the crowded southwest part of the town, with the other kids like him,” Roark said. “The old Rookery. He’ll be there, I’d guess. Just ask some dirty-looking kids for him.” He smirked, and I wondered if he was kidding.

  “All kids know each other in Dawnspire, then?”

  He laughed. “All the orphans, yeah. They take care of each other. No one else to do it for them, is there?” I wouldn’t know. “Just grab him and come back here. We need to leave if we stand any chance of beating them to the punch. It’s possible that they could set up traps if we take too long.”

  Traps would be a serious bummer. I thanked him and gestured for Moro to follow me, and then I wandered in the direction I eventually figured was southwest.

  It didn’t take me long to find the Rookery, or the poor area. Suddenly the houses were broken and ugly, and the people were dirty and wide-eyed. There was a very different smell emanating from every sidestreet and alleyway, and unpleasant stains on the ground and walls here and there.

  Two children were screaming and running in the opposite direction, and when I waved them over they didn’t even hesitate for a moment. Which was weird.

  “Ryken?” I asked them. They couldn’t have been older than eight, but their faces were streaked with grime and their clothes torn. They grinned gappily up at me, and I found it hard not to smile back.

  “What’s it to ya?” one of them asked.

  “I’m his friend.”

  “For his frien’ … just two pieces.”

  Cheeky little… I shook my head and brought out my coinpurse and pulled out two gold pieces that I pressed into their little hands. Their eyes went wide as plates and the other one nudged his friend, who pulled in a breath.

  “Actually … it’s four.” He held up four fingers and smiled again. I sighed.

  “I’ll give you two more when you bring me to him, how’s that?”

  They looked at each other, elated, and then ran off. I swore under my breath and shoved my coins back in my pack and took off after them,
weaving around a couple of women and apologising. The kids took off up a nearby stone wall like rockets, and I grunted and heaved myself up to grab at the windowsill, pulled myself up, and then leapt to a nearby balcony. Two painful failed attempts later, I was on the roof and panting, my stamina creeping downwards towards 90% already.

  They were about fifty feet away already, leaping from roof to roof. “Ugh.” I took off into a run as well, feeling my muscles already begin to protest. That would be the relative lack of Fortitude, and of stamina. Running full pelt, it turned out, steadily drained my green bar until I finally leapt to the final roof, and fell to my knees, panting. The kids had jumped through a hole in the roof and I just was not about that.

  “Down here!”

  My stamina crept back up to 70% and I pulled in a deep breath and looked over the lip of the roof. The two boys smiled up from a dirty alley and waved me down.

  “He’s down there?”

  They looked at each other and then craned their necks, their smiles never faltering. “Come down,” one yelled up at me.

  “He’s here, come down here.”

  Stamina hit 75% by the time I awkwardly hung my legs over the side and gracefully flopped onto a stranger’s balcony, and then repeated the process, landing on my feet — luckily — on the weirdly wet ground.

  I looked around. “Ryken, buddy, let’s go,” I called. “Stop hiding, it’s Matt. It’s time to leave.” The teenager was probably being cautious with pretty good reason, but I knew that when he heard my name he’d appear from the shadows, or wherever he was hanging out. I turned to the kids when no one appeared. “Look, you’re not gonna get your other coins if you’re wasting my—”

  “You saying this guy is really rich, yeah?”

  Well, that was a voice I didn’t recognise. I turned to my right just in time to see a rapier thrust forward with the expert stance of someone who had had format fencing training. Which really surprised me, considering the wielder was not a day older than twelve.

  I flinched backwards in surprise, and the rapier’s dull point pierced through the first few millimetres of my leather jerkin. Right between my ribs. The kid had expert aim.