Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “Did you hear that?” whispered Abigail; her voice just audible over the clamor.

  But Drish hadn’t heard a thing beyond the pirates’ racket, and he shook his head.

  From there they continued into a labyrinthine underworld of moldering brick, at times parting through curtains of hanging slime, or drudging across layers of mold and fungus, and Drish soured at the sight of his ruined clothing. Though already soiled from his ordeal in Port Armageddon and the skiff, his expensive velvet jacket, and suede boots might have been salvageable, if not for the putrescent scum that had soaked them through and through. Things would prove only to get worse from there. Not until they’d reached the main line did Drish experience what true revulsion was. Walking along the fetid shores of a burbling river of sewage, the once pampered noble didn’t think he had the fortitude to physically make himself go on any further. The crushing reek of excrement was beyond anything he could tolerate, and he readily vomited into the muck coursing beside him.

  Drish had hardly wiped the drool off his chin before Mace Portman was hollering orders to move faster, when Abigail suddenly grabbed Drish by the arm and stopped them both in place entirely. “You had to have heard that,” she whispered, while in the twilight her glistening eyes sought confirmation from his.

  Drish wanted to say she was right; out of some sense of propriety; but when he stopped and strained his ears all he could hear was the ringing in his eardrums from being in the middle of too many gunfights.

  “Come one,” she urged, “you must…I can’t be crazy.”

  Then he caught it, something faint and distant…like the pattering of metal boots marching across stone, and he turned back to Abby and nodded in excited confirmation. “I do hear it.”

  “You two, stop dallying and keep up,” barked Bar.

  It was hardly more than a quarter-hour later that the noble thought he heard something which caused the blood in his veins to freeze. “Drish…” it seemed to come echoing out from the gloom behind him. “Drish…” He had to stop again; to perk his ears and find out.

  “Drish, I know you don’t want this!” It sounded like Graye, as impossible as that seemed. Last time he’d seen the imperial officer was back on Port Armageddon. He couldn’t be in the sewers of Junction now…could he? Would Graye have chased him this far? “The life of a fugitive isn’t for you.”

  “Do you hear that?”

  Abigail rested a hand on his forearm and pulled him along. “Just some propaganda nonsense that I can’t make out. Ignore it and come on,” she urged. “The sewers of King’s Isle are said to be ancient and expansive. We can probably lose them, but only if we can get far enough ahead. If what the tales say about Portman is true, then he will get us out of here. He’s something of a legend, you know…They call him the Vapor Wraith… he’s said to have a secret base that’s filled with warriors and is nearly impossible to find.”

  “Drish!” The voice sounded closer still, and even Abigail couldn’t deny she understood what it was saying now. She even looked at the fugitive aristocrat in confusion. “Why is it calling out to you?”

  Somewhere in the tunnels, not that far back, came a clattering, but it didn’t sound like anything Drish had ever heard. He dropped back to search the darkness, but only the darkness stared back.

  “Drish!”

  “What do you want from me!” The noble fired his challenge into the darkness, and suddenly the noble found himself being flung about and slammed against the sewer’s curved wall.

  “Bar, easy,” protested Abby.

  When Drish regained his wits, he found the pirate captain clutching his jacket lapels and breathing angrily in his face. “What are you doing…? Now’s not the time to be keying the Empire in on our location…not if we want to escape. Just stay quiet and keep moving!”

  “I still have your note, Drish!”

  Bar let the noble go with a look of confusion. Abigail appeared immensely puzzled as well by the broadcasted statement, but the sudden and approaching clatter of moving machinery, sent everyone into a panic. The whole tunnel seemed to tremble under some titanic cacophony, and even the muddy sewer-water rippled with seismic waves.

  “My offer still stands, if only you’ll surrender yourself now.” The voice blasted down the tunnel, shaking the foundations, and setting Drish’s eardrums to quivering. A loud speaker, he reasoned, just as Mace’s powerful voice rose almost to the same decibels.

  “Combat crawler!”

  Drish turned towards the warning just as a heavy clunk hammered the air, and suddenly the whole tunnel flooded with an intense light, leaving him blind and groping dumbly for safety.

  “Eye shades on! And bring out…” But the resistance leader’s voice was drowned beneath the roar of an engine, the squealing of ball bearings, and the hiss of hydraulics.

  “Drish,” Abigail screamed, but her voice lost out to the thunderous report of heavy machinegun fire. Brick shattered and crumbled to sand and gravel, and while pelted by this debris, the noble tried to seek out his companion, but his loafer slipped in the unseen muck on the floor, and he went crashing down on his side instead. Around him, he sensed feet scuffling, seeking escape.

  Another round of machinegun fire burst out, thundering in Drish’s chest, leaving his ears buzzing with a maddening tone, and yet through it all, those terrible ball bearings squawked in riotous movement. For a brief moment the light fell away, and when Drish looked up, he saw a cylindrical nightmare of iron snaking through the tunnel; a nightmare filled with moving parts, and swiveling guns, looking almost centipede-like in its terrible form. This mechanized monster hissed and roared, and when its spotlight came swinging back around, Drish braced his head before another barrage of machinegun fire tore up the walls around him. But then a thud, a whoosh, and finally a deafening explosion sent a percussive shockwave of heat, flattening all, and silencing the assault. The mechanized centipede rose again, but with a torturous groan, before it started to screech and rattle towards a deathly sigh; slow at first, then slower and slower, until all revolutions ceased and the menace went still and quiet.

  The light faded soon after, and in the setting twilight a heavy door came falling down from the crawler’s side, striking the ground with a bong. The patter of boots followed, and when Drish raised his head he spied imperial soldiers spilling out the side of the machine, like carnivorous insects, firing their guns, or drawing swords in preparation for close-quarters combat. From the nooks and crannies of the tunnel, pirates and insurgents rushed in challenge, dashing madly until both side came crashing together like a tide on the shores of the sewer’s mainline. In the ensuing clash, the centipede could be heard issue one final crackle before a loud pop put its lights out entirely and plunged them all into darkness.

  Steel rang. Sparking flashed. Intermittent bursts of gunfire lit up the tight confines of the arched tunnel, revealing snarling figures locked in battle, exposed into existence as white ghosts one second, and then fading to shadows in the next. Drish couldn’t keep track of the movement. In the primal darkness, grunts, cries of shock and pain, and moans of despair was all that there was.

  “Flare,” someone’s voice echoed out, and instantly the darkness vanished in a flash of red. Squinting, eyes throbbing under the intense light, Drish saw a soldier standing nearby, and it looked like his hand was on fire, until Fen shot him in the gut. The trooper doubled over and crumbled to the ground, dropping the flare in the process. It went rolling across the grated stonework past Drish and into the river of human waste, and whatever mysterious reaction caused the flare to burn was not extinguished. Instead, it continued to glow an unearthly brackish green—horrible to behold beneath the surface. The whole chamber took on a strange underwater quality after that, and everyone came to look like desperate corpses locked in an immortal struggle.

  Drish tried to slink away from the fray, but found himself tackled to the ground. Someone was on his back, pinning him helplessly. He tried to fight back, to wiggle free, but the assail
ant pressed his face into the muddy stone, just centimeters from the river of sludge.

  “You can forget this note,” growled Graye, his hot breath in Drish’s ear. A fist came slamming down in front of his nose in an instant, and clenched between the fingers was his confession letter. “After this, it doesn’t matter! Nothing can save you.”

  Graye put all his weight down on the helpless aristocrat’s skull, and the earlier pain Drish felt in his jaw intensified, and then his neck popped. Starbursts of light danced in his vision, as tingling seized his extremities.

  Does he mean to smash my head open, Drish screamed with terror. He cried out, flailed his arms and legs uselessly, but the Hierarch had him, and there was nothing the helpless noble could do to save himself.

  And then the weight vanished all together. Slowly, painfully Drish rolled away, onto his back, and there was Bar next to him, wrestling with the colonel. They were locked in a brutal contest of strength, with Drish just trying his best to drag himself away, but when his neck popped all the strength vanished from his arms, and he collapsed. The stricken noble moaned in despair; the left-side of his body numb; while the savage melee raged on around him. In the tussle between the pirate captain and the imperial officer, the glint of a knife flashed out. The two growled and gasped; hands locked around hands, locked around knife, while beside them, the feeling started to pour back into Drish’s limbs. He rolled over, and spied the blade slowly sliding down into the captain’s taunt stomach.

  Bar roared with pain.

  In a panic, the near-helpless aristocrat sought out help for his would-be rescuer, but everyone was occupied, fighting for their own lives, and that’s when Drish spied it… an imperial pistol lying on the sullied floor only a meter away. It begged to be used.

  Instinct seemed to take hold of the noble’s hand as it slide across the moist stone, to cup the pistol’s grip, and haul it up into the air. Drish took aim, and at that moment Graye raised his Hierarch-white eyes to find the barrel pointed at his head.

  The soldier’s ferocious grimace melted to sympathy. “Don’t. I can guarantee your—”

  Drish pulled the trigger.

  There was a flash. A hole opened up instantly in the center of Graye’s forehead, and behind him, the wall on the opposite side of the tunnel was painted in gore…and all of it seeming to happen in a vacuum of absolute silence. Graye gaped in astonishment as the moment lingered, suspended perfectly in time…enough time for Drish to contemplate the invasion, the Oath, and ultimately his father’s murder. And then the officer tumbled backwards and slipped into the waters of the sewer with a muted splash, and that was that. Drish had killed a man, and an imperial officer no less. His mind reeled under the implications…under the horror of taking another man’s life. He’d never even so much as struck a man in anger up until that point, and now—just like that—he was a murderer.

  Drish tossed the gun away.

  “Fall back! Regroup” screeched a Hierarch soldier, his voice piercing. “Graye’s down, Graye’s down, fall back!” The fighting continued only a few seconds more before the remaining Iron troopers scattered in abandonment of the crawler and their dead commander, towards the tunnels behind them. Portman took the opportunity to rally his own troops in retreat, but none of that mattered, not to Drish anyway.

  I am a murderer now. He lamented, and there he probably would have sat for an eternity had someone not grabbed hold of his jacket and shook him back to awareness.

  Chapter 11

  “Hey, you all right, Drish? Come on, snap out of it. We got to get out of here before those troops get reinforcements. Get a hold of yourself!”

  A face took shape inches away, and Drish realized it was Bar. “You’re not dead,” he stammered in disbelief.

  “And neither are you,” replied the pirate, before a spasm of pain made him flinch. He reached down and pulled the knife from his own stomach, issuing a sharp inhale through his clenched teeth in the process. The tip stood stained red with blood, but fortunately for the captain no more than that.

  “Where’s…” Drish was almost afraid to ask as he scanned the dead and wounded lining the sewer.

  “Abigail,” Bar finished for him with a gravity to his dark expression that made Drish feel suddenly sick.

  “Right here,” the woman’s melodic voice pierced the gloom like a ray of light, and Drish heaved himself up to find her limping his way through the pirates and insurgents who’d made it back on their feet.

  The overjoyed noble couldn’t contain the upwelling of love in his heart. He had to talk to her; to be near her, and he even shoved the young Fen roughly out of his way to do so.

  “Watch it, you jerk,” protested the boy pirate.

  But Drish ignored him. “Abigail,” he said in a breathy exhale, as he rushed up to her. He stopped, however, just short of actually grabbing hold and embracing the beautiful woman; his noble sensibilities too refined for such a bold act. He checked to see if she was alright instead, noticing her pants streaked in rivulets of blood. “Are you… are you unharmed?”

  Abigail did what Drish could not bring himself to do; she threw herself into his arms, and even as he winced with the pain in his neck, he caught her anyway. It didn’t matter, his pain melted in the light of their singular embrace, and as her lips locked against his everything else vanished as well. Drish’s head swam in dizzying circles, and even after she pulled her self away, he was lost in the moment.

  “A couple cuts and bruises is all…” she spoke softly into his ear as she wrapped an arm around his head and teased at the hairs on the back of his neck.

  “And that,” he nodded down to her leg, feeling a twang in his spine, like someone had wrapped iron around his neck and shoulders.

  “A little graze across my leg is all.” She smiled warmly, her saffron eyes aglitter. Believe me, I’ve had far worse than this.” And again she locked her lips on his, and this time he savored the experience; the taste of mint; the feel of her soft tongue.

  That’s when Bar cleared his throat. “If you two are finished…”

  Abigail pulled herself away, blushing brightly, before disentangling herself from Drish. The absence of her weight and heat was instantly missed, and the noble stood dumbfounded and unsure what to do with himself, when Abigail abruptly knelt down and swiped a rucksack up off the ground. Drish recognized it as the same one from the skiff.

  “Listen,” said the young woman in animated excitement, “I brought this for you.” She looked girlishly beautiful, filled with a bashful hesitance as she held out the ruck for him to take.

  Drish raise an eyebrow. “For me?” he took possession of the sack with slow, skeptical deliberateness, finding the bag unexpectedly light. “What is this?

  “Just look inside…” she urged with a wide grin, her saffron eyes all alight. “I was going to wait…until we reached Bar’s ship, but…well, this is all so damned haphazard I might as well do it now—before anything else goes wrong—right?”

  Drish hesitated with the cord, instead locking his eyes on the young woman; lingering on her hopeful expression; her soft lips parting in anticipation. He was in love, he knew that now. Just like his father, who’d given into the enticements of Allura when he fell for a commoner named Emilie Silverstein, Drish had followed suit, falling for one named Abigail Fellkirk. How his grandmother would roll over in her grave if she knew he was following in Arvis’s footsteps, but then maybe joining the Resistance and falling in love with a common-born was his destiny as well.

  Finally he did as instructed, knowing Abigail couldn’t take a moment more, and his heart beat faster with the thrill of discovering what she’d given him. He folded back the canvas flap, and peered inside. He paused in the light of his discovery…a flood of conflicting emotions washing over him as he reached inside and pulled out his father’s bottle of Coronation Wine.

  “I know he’d want you to have it, Drish.”

  The orphaned son was speechless, and on the verge of tears, closer than eve
r before. It was like having a piece of his father back, though it wasn’t without its bitterness. It helped reminded him of just how far the two of them had grown apart; how different they were right up to the end. Floating within that murky red liquid he discovered a profound emptiness. His father was the last tie that linked Drish to anything of the Unified Kingdoms, and now he was gone…and only this bottle remained.

  It proved too much to look upon a moment longer, and Drish tucked it back away. “Thank you,” he said stiffly, sliding the pack up over his arm. Beyond that, Drish had little else to say. All the events of the past couple days had shaken him to the core. Everything felt topsy-turvy inside, like he were a freshman once more attending the Royal University, and trying to find his place in it all.

  The survivors walked for some time through the dark, winding passages of the sewer, leaving behind the main line, where the fallen bodies of Candarans and Hierarchs alike lay in the filth of King’s Isle. Each twist and turn of their journey seemed to take them deeper into this underground world, where the structures became progressively older. Soon, the smell of sewage was replaced by a far-older musk of clay and dirt, and the walls changed to cut stone; gray, and with some of it so old it had crumbled to pebbles, exposing the raw earth beneath.

  “Listen, I wanted to thank you for coming back to rescue me,” said Drish, breaking the silence that overcome them all for the past hour.

  “It was—” Abigail started to say, but Bar Bazzon quickly interrupted.

  “A wasted effort,” he said. His voice strained. He appeared barely able to contain some strong emotion buried beneath the surface.

  “What’s your meaning, Bar,” snapped Abigail, herself bordering on anger, and up ahead, Portman and the remaining men stopped.