by Heath Pfaff
“They’re making more of them.” Zarkov said, voice a bit shaky. “By the Blackened, this is a nightmare.” He certainly wasn’t wrong. We ducked back around the corner. We still had easily another hour of travel to get to the tower, and I suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that the tower was the source for all of this mess. It looked like the kind of place that would create monsters.
“We need to start being more careful.” My voice was calmer than I’d expected it to be. I drew half of my staff weapon so that I would have a hand free. I could always draw the other half and connect them quickly if I needed it. Zark retrieved his haladie from his back and gave me a nod.
“We’ll move carefully.” He said. “If anything gets in our way, we’ll attack quickly and violently than get moving again. I don’t think staying in place is a good idea. I don’t want to end up added to the collection of parts.”
I nodded my agreement. “Alright, then let’s get going.”
We started forward again, moving street by street, alley by alley, checking each before we started down the next. The strange creatures were everywhere, crawling across buildings, ducking into houses, and peering down narrow side streets. It looked like this part of the city was mostly empty, though occasionally we heard screams and once we came across a man being dragged out of the window of his house. I saw Zark tense like he intended to go after the man but I grabbed his arm.
“There is nothing that can be done. This is just a fraction of time in a place that we’re only visiting. It is only real as long as we’re here. Once we’re gone, nothing we do here will have mattered.” I warned him. We didn't want to fight unless we absolutely had to. Trying to save someone who would just fade away when we passed back through the doorway was foolish.
Zark looked deeply upset. “Are you sure about that?”
I nodded. “Yes. I tried to bring something back once and it just vanished at the door.” I didn’t want to explain how I knew that my theory was more than just a theory, that Ghoul had told me about the nature of the areas used in these training missions. “While we’re here it’s real enough, but even if we save someone it won’t make a difference. We can’t take them from here, and once we’re gone, they could reopen the door and it would all just start again. It’s a bubble that is constantly reliving these moments.”
It wasn’t easy for me to see or hear the things around us either, but keeping this truth in mind allowed me to stay sane. It was the only thing I could do to keep level headed in the chaos. We just had to survive and then we could go back to our world and this place, this terrible nightmare, would be over.
Zarkov sighed deeply. “I hate it . . . just letting them die.”
“If you go after them, we’ll die, and we’re the only things here that are real, that will persist if we go back to our world. I know it’s bad, but we just have to make it through.” I told him, reaching out and squeezing his arm. He gave me a nod, jaw firming up. I could see the resolve in him. He would do what was necessary.
More of the creatures began to appear as we traveled further inward and it got increasingly difficult to avoid them all together. Luckily they seemed unorganized and confused, and they weren’t particularly well assembled either. We saw one split apart in the middle of the road only to be dragged off by others of its kind. It was like the person, or people, building them were still perfecting the process. We even saw a person fight off one of the creatures with a sword and make a run for it with little difficulty. It was their swelling numbers that caused the biggest issue.
We ducked into a small abandoned house as one of the larger mechanical monsters skittered out from a alleyway. It was top heavy and having trouble controlling itself. It looked like someone had strapped half of a horse to it. The creature was skeletal in places with metal pieces and gears worked into the flesh. It’s head lolled from side to side as though the spine was broken. Its eyes were glass now, orange, glowing windows that burned with some inner fire.
We stood inside the house and watched it fumble through the streets for a bit before we were sure it was away, and then we slipped out of the building and started down the road again.
“They’re getting more and more horrifying.” Zark said with a dark, dry chuckle “I didn’t think that was possible.”
Someone stepped out in front of us. At least I thought it was someone. They were dressed in a long tattered cloak, caked in blood. I froze in place, and Zark did as well.
“Don’t go down this road.” Zark warned the man. “There is some kind of horse creature down there.”
The man raised his head and green glass glowed beneath its hood. It came forward suddenly and I barely managed to dodge aside as a blade swept just inches past me and clattered against the stone of the ground. I rounded on this new thing and got a better look at it. It was humanoid in shape, though as the hood fell back I could see that its face was full of metal pieces, bottom jaw entirely gone. It didn't seem to have full arms either. Instead there were metallic limbs that ended in swords grafted to its torso. This one was fast, too, and far more mobile than the spider-looking ones.
Zarkov spun to the attack immediately. He was incredibly fast and one of the blades of his weapon slammed into the back of the creature’s neck, a blow that should have severed its head, but instead it clinked like one blade hitting another. There was metal wound into its spine. It rounded on him in an instant, blades slashing out. Zark dodged backwards with precision, and then I came forward, drawing the second half of my staff weapon. I wielded them like swords. The first blow I leveled at this new threat’s skull, a blow that would have easily killed a man. It’s skull cracked, apparently not entirely metal up there. Brain matter splashed through the air to land on the ground a bit away with some pieces of skull, and the damn thing spun on me, lashing out with both of its arm blades.
I blocked one and gained a shallow cut across my arm from the other. I used the momentum of my dodge to round on it quickly and level another staggering blow to the front of its face. The glass lenses of its eyes cracked, the light going out as a thick, colored liquid poured from the damaged lenses. It fell to the ground and began to whirl around violently, blades thrashing around in blind throes of death. Zark and I both retreated away from the creature, moving further down the path the way we needed to go.
“That was close.” Zark said, not sounding happy. “That one was fast.”
I nodded. “We can’t underestimate them. It went down, but even fatally wounded it was dangerous. Come on, we’ve got to be quicker.” I said, and Zark just nodded his answer. We started moving with a little less caution for stealth, but a lot more urgency. Suddenly we just wanted out of this city. We encountered another creature we couldn’t avoid, though this one had the spider-legs and wasn’t quick or well put together. We dispatched it easily enough, though we discovered how powerful it was when it shoved one of its bladed legs through the wall of a building during the fight. With a little more time and design improvement, these creatures would be devastatingly powerful and agile. I was glad we’d been sent when we had. Given a few more weeks, this place would no doubt be far more dangerous.
We were getting closer to the spire in the center of the city all the time, but finally we reached a point where we had to stop. There was a large wall around the outskirts of the tower. It rose some twenty feet into the sky above us and looked to circle the entire perimeter of the spire The front gate was open, but there were metal monstrosities filtering in and out of it at a steady pace.
“We can’t go through there. We’ll have to go over.” Zark noted, not sounding impressed with the idea. I looked up at the wall and had to agree with his current state of mind on the subject. It was smooth like a mirror’s surface, though black. At the top was a barbed, rusted stretch of curved spikes designed to be very difficult to climb over without suffering some nasty wounds.
“There is probably an easier way into this place, but I doubt it’s anywhere that the general public knows about. The city might h
ave a sewage system that runs under it, but I’m not sure how we’d even go about finding our way in, and then you can get lost in those things easily.” I sighed, and looked around the wall as far as I could see. There was a tower a few blocks away. It wasn’t next to the wall exactly, but it was high enough that it would give us a vantage over the wall.
I pointed. “We should go down there and check it out. We might be able to see something better from the top of that. At the very least we’ll be high enough that we can see what is happening ahead of us.”
Zark nodded and we turned together and started walking in that direction. Around the base of the spire the creatures were thicker than thieves on market day. They shambled up and down the roads, smashing into building and ripping through the insides searching for survivors. It was a terrible sight to see. They weren’t particularly systematic about things, but at the same time it felt like they were becoming more and more organized. It was strange. This felt like the very early steps of some type of invasion. I was happy this wasn’t my world. Something told me these monsters wouldn’t stop at this city.
When we reached the tower we found the door had already been broken in. I gave Zark a worried look and we nodded to each other silently. There might well be something inside waiting for us. We pressed in quietly, weapons ready as we made it through the first floor to a flight of stairs that led up. There was a streak of blood leading back down the wooden steps, still wet, which meant that it was relatively fresh. I stepped onto the first stair and it creaked beneath my foot sending a rush of panic through me. The building was old, the stairs worn from years of use. There would be no way to get up them without making noise.
I clamped my jaw shut and began a slow, careful ascent. Zarkov followed me, and between the two of us it felt like we might as well have been singing at the top of our lungs as we climbed the steps. From somewhere above was a loud crash.
“That has to be one of those things.” Zarkov hissed, looking anxious. “If it’s just one we can take it. They don’t move well. We could lure it into a doorway and we’d have the mobility advantage.”
I nodded. It was a sound tactic assuming we snuck up on it, and not the other way around. So far they hadn’t seemed particularly stealthy, but if it just held still and waited for us to come we might still be surprised, and I didn’t think that would end well. For a while the sounds upstairs continued, but by the time we’d gone up our fifth flight of stairs it was frighteningly quiet above us. On the sixth floor we found a pile of bodies in various states of disrepair. It looked like something had been collecting the people it found here and making a pile of them. The streaks of blood ran from the pile back down the stairs. Some of the bodies were fresher than others.
“This is a nightmare.” Zark said quietly. “They’re just killing everyone.”
I nodded. “They’re using them for parts. The dead become more of them. Somewhere they have to have a forge to produce more of the metal bits. I’d imagine that’s where they’re taking the corpses. Or they’re taking them someplace cool to store them so they don’t entirely rot. I mean, this many dead aren’t going to stay usable for long.” I shrugged. “At least I wouldn’t think.” Things were already getting putrid. There were flies and maggots everywhere. It was horrifying and disgusting.
We moved on past the sixth floor with our trepidation building. It was eerily silent above us now. The seventh floor was empty as well, and that left only one more floor above us. It was where we were headed. There was a roof with a parapet just above that. It would provide an excellent view out onto the spire and its courtyard.
The eighth floor stairs opened onto a narrow hall. We moved cautiously out into it and came to our first door. We didn't know where anything was located here, so we pushed the door open and looked inside. The room was clearly an office. There was a desk, and rows of book shelves. Everything looked strangely serene here, as though the chaos from below hadn’t yet reached this place. We made a quick round of the room, and then went to the next. It was another office, this one still intact as well. There was a partially written letter on a desk next to a spilled well of ink. I glanced at it, but the language was indecipherable to me. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen writing through one of the doors and not been able to read it. Apparently the common tongue wasn't all that common.
We slipped out of that office and moved on to the next, and when we tried the door it refused to open. It was the center area, the door that generally had the room that would open onto the next stairs, and the one that probably had our roof access. I frowned and growled quietly in agitation.
“It’s jammed.” I told Zark. He took the handle and gave it a turn and a push. Someone behind the door screamed, a female voice.
She yelled something in that same unfamiliar tongue.
“Open the door. We need to get to the roof.” I called through quietly, though I knew that probably wouldn’t accomplish much. So it hadn’t been one of the monsters making noise up here. A person had been barricading this door.
The woman’s voice sounded again from the other side, a long barrage of nonsense words, and then a male’s followed. I couldn't tell what they were saying, but they sounded frantic. They were no doubt asking us questions about what was happening beyond their room, if it was safe to open the door, or maybe if we were actually people or more monsters.
I ran my hand across the door. It was a thin wooden portal, clearly not designed to stand up to an assault. If the creatures came up they would rip it apart quickly. Blackened, they could probably go through the wall if they wanted to. It was strange the amount of faith that people put into the walls they’d built.
“Open the door or I’m breaking it down.” I called out, drawing the second half of my weapon and putting them together. The weighted ends would give me plenty of swinging leverage. I guessed that they’d be terrified on the other side of the door, but we needed to get up on the roof, and we couldn’t just sit in this hallway talking to people who didn’t understand us. That was getting us nowhere.
The voices came from the other side again, though this time the male was louder, yelling. He sounded angry. Something moved below us, the metal clinking echoing up the stairs from several floors below.
“Damn it.” I growled, and then I took my staff and swung it with everything I had at the door. The sound of the impact was loud, but it splintered the wood as it hit. The people in the room screamed, and something down below us bellowed as well, a terrible, inhuman sound that gurgled and rattled.
“Work faster.” Zark said, looking back down at the stairs.
I didn't take time to acknowledge that as I began to hammer on the door repeatedly as hard as I could. The metal clinking was coming up faster now. The door fell open, splitting and splintering as Zark slammed into the damaged wood, exploding into the room beyond through a relatively small hole that I’d broken in the door. I followed quickly after him, stumbling over a desk and a fallen bookshelf that had been pushed to form a barricade. There was a man and a woman in the room who both went from terrified to relieved as we entered, though when the metallic clinking of our pursuer echoed through the hole we’d made they looked less relieved.
They both started chittering in their odd language at the same time, talking quickly and loudly over each other.
“Shut up!” I snapped at them, and though they didn’t understand the words, they seemed to have gotten the tone. More quietly the woman started talking again. She was a thin, blond haired woman with light blue eyes. She looked young, and her eyes were red from crying. She was talking and pointing at the door.
The moment of calm faded when the monster following us came grinding down the hallway and slammed into the recently broken entryway behind us. Metal claws raked at the opening that was too small for it to come through.
“Roof!” I yelled to Zark, though it wasn’t necessary. We charged for what turned out to be a ladder in the back of the room that led to a hatch up onto the roof. The creature at the doo
r was slamming into it, splintering the wood further, and I knew that soon it would either knock the door in or break it open enough to come through. The man and woman clambered to get up the ladder with us, and soon enough we were all on the roof. I closed the hatch but there was nothing up there to put on it.
In the room below us I heard the sound of the door caving in, and then the creature roared again as its metal limbs clanked across the floor to the ladder. Zark took up a position on the opposite side of the hatch and we both readied our weapons. The two people were as far from the hatch as possible, screaming and crying. I hoped the monster couldn’t climb the ladder, but that hope fled as the hatch surged upward and a terrifying head popped up through the opening. It looked like it might have been a horse at one point, though it was skinned and the eyes replaced by red glass. It screamed as though in terrible agony, though that might have just been the only sound it could make now. I leveled a powerful blow at it, and it’s skull caved in as Zark did the same from behind, the blade of his weapon cutting deep. The creature ducked its head and I heard the sound of some mechanism clicking and engaging inside of it.