by Heath Pfaff
Instinct took over and I dove to the side, not sure why exactly, but suddenly certain I needed to move. I managed to get clear as it threw its head forward and spewed a jet of nasty, green fluid that sprayed across the roof and hit the jabbering male from the room below. The liquid splashed across his legs and hips and he began to scream immediately. I didn’t waste time looking, not then. I hit the creature again, hard, as the screams of the woman joined the man. Zark and I didn’t stop attacking until the monster fell back down through the hatch into a pile of thrashing metallic limbs. The hatch slammed closed.
I turned to see what damage had been done to our company, and then immediately wished I hadn’t. The male was dissolving. His clothes had burned away and his flesh was sliding off of his bones as the green liquid just ate through him. He was reaching for the female for help, but she’d retreated to a corner and was just screaming and screaming to herself. The man’s bowels had started to fall out through the hole opened in his abdomen and they were dissolving too as they hit the the acid. The woman threw up.
I heard Zark swallow hard, and I knew what had to be done. I moved forward and leveled one powerful blow at the man’s head. The weighted end of the staff tore through his skull and ended him almost immediately. He went quiet, but the woman was still shrieking.
“It’s better this way.” I said, feeling sick, terrible. I knew he wasn’t really alive anymore. This scene wasn't actually happening at this moment, but that didn’t change the horror of it all, and the feeling of guilt that crept through me. I’d just killed a person, and he hadn’t done anything to deserve it, but he wasn’t going to survive anyway, and this way his pain was gone. I’d helped him. I had to believe that or fall apart.
Zarkov put a hand on my shoulder. “I wish I’d thought to do that.” He said, his voice sounding weak and shaky. “It was the right thing to do.”
I turned and looked out over the city, trying to clear my head and get a handle on what we needed to do next. The view from the tower top was clear. I could see over the wall into the grounds of the spire in front of us, and out into the city in the other direction. I wasn’t entirely certain how to get over the wall just yet. The gap between the building we were in and the defensive wall around the tower was large enough that the jump would be difficult, if it was possible at all.
The woman had stopped screaming finally and was rocking back and forth where she sat, talking to herself, and occasionally to us. Her language was confusing though, the words a mess of syllables that were clearly a language, but might as well have been only sound.
“We can try and jump it.” Zark said, looking at the gap between us and the wall. The wall was lower than us. There was a walkway along it for guards, but clearly there were none there now. It would be a hard hit even if we could land it. I wasn’t positive we wouldn’t break anything, and if we missed the jump we’d die. Of course the alternative was going back down the tower or staying up here for the rest of our lives, which wouldn’t be long. I had no doubt another of those creatures would be along soon enough.
“I think we’re going to have to.” I answered, looking at the gap again.
“I can make it.” He said confidently, taking in the distance with a critical eye.
I looked at him, trying to gauge his confidence level, and he seemed certain. He knew his capabilities better than I did. He was stronger than me. He could probably jump further, though I was faster. I didn’t think my legs could push off as hard as his though.
“It’s a long way down. We could break a leg if we land wrong.” I pointed out.
He nodded. “I thought of that, and the wall is relatively narrow. There is a chance I may have too much momentum and stumble off the other side. It’s either that, though, or we go back down and look for another route. I’m not confident that’s a good option, not with those thing out there.”
I sighed. “Yeah, that was what I was thinking as well. If you’re confident you can make it, then you should jump first. I might need your help. I’m not as certain about the jump myself. It’s at the edge of my range.”
Zark looked over my shoulder at the woman who was now crying softly and watching us with a kind of horrified, wide-eyed gaze that told me she wasn’t entirely certain what to make of us. “What about her?” He asked, seeming uncertain.
“She won’t be able to make the jump. We can’t take her with us, and we both know she’s not really alive anymore. This whole moment has already played out. Nothing we do here changes anything except for the time that we’re here.” I told him, though I could feel the surge of guilt at the thought of leaving someone behind. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Even knowing what I did about the doors and how they worked in these situations, she seemed very real, and very afraid. It was impossible not to feel any sympathy for the woman.
Zark nodded, and I could see him actively fighting his own doubt.
“We do this or we die.” I spoke slowly and clearly so he’d understand just how serious I was about this. We didn't have a choice. I put my doubts away and cleared my mind for what needed to be done.
I could see Zark getting himself together as well. His shoulders stiffened and solidified, his posture straightening. I could see him pushing the pain down inside of himself, the uncertainty. He nodded.
He took four or five steps back from the edge then. The woman came forward a little, looking at both of us with a tear streaked, desperate face. She began to speak, her words coming out in a shuddering incomplete strands. I turned my back to her and put myself between her and Zark. He met my eyes for a second, and then his focus was on the jump. He exploded forward towards the edge, and the woman behind me screamed and lunged for him as though she thought she might save him from killing himself, but I grabbed her and tossed her to the ground hard, pinning her face down on the ground as she thrashed beneath me.
She turned her head and was trying to look at me, eyes streaming tears. She was confused and horrified, but I didn’t want to see her. I wanted to see Zark, and pinning her had put me too low to see if he’d made it.
“Zark?!” I yelled, my heart hammering away in my chest.
“I’m here!” He called back. “I made it.” He sounded just a bit shaky. I had to guess it had been close.
The woman was babbling again, words pouring out of her in a nonsensical stream that I couldn’t decipher. I took a breath and then slammed a fist into the back of her head, hard. The blow knocked her unconscious. I was a bit worried I’d caused her some lasting damage, though I quickly realized that was a foolish thing to be concerned about given the situation. She was already dead. I just needed her quiet, and not doing anything that might kill me while I was trying to make this jump. Guilt gnawed at my gut.
I unlocked my staff and tucked it away on my back as I stood up. I looked across the gap I had to jump. It seemed impossibly wide. Zark was standing there, near the edge, waiting to catch me if I missed, but even he could only reach so far.
I looked down over the edge. It was a long way down. I’d die quickly if I didn’t make the gap. At least I wouldn’t be torn apart by the monsters. I rolled my shoulders and stepped back, giving myself some room to run up. I could do this. I had to do this. It was that simple. I couldn’t falter. There was no room for failure, and there was no room for doubts. I might not be able to control external influences, but this was me against the gap. All I had to do was jump far enough to make it. I could do that. The only limits I had were those I placed on myself.
I took another deep breath to steady myself. I could do this. With a yell like a battle cry I burst forward, pushing everything I had into my legs. The edge of the tower came up fast and then I was pushing off with everything inside of me to spring forward. The ground vanished beneath me and the void opened up. The world seemed to slow down and it felt as though I could feel the very wind itself resisting my forward momentum as I clawed my way forward through its suddenly very tangible grip.
My eyes locked on where I wanted to lan
d and it seemed, in that moment, that I was pushing myself there by force of will alone. Zark was in the peripheral or my vision. The landing area was everything. It was the focus. I was getting closer and closer, and then suddenly I hit it. I landed and folded down into a roll as I did, dissipating the momentum as I’d been taught. Zark grabbed me as I skidded across the wall, slowing the momentum that threatened to carry me off the other side. I still came to a stop rather close to the opposite edge. I hit the far wall, which was low enough that I could have easily toppled right over it, with quite a bit of force. All that mattered, though, was that I came to a complete stop. It took me a moment to get my breath back after the impact.
Zark was laughing. “At first I didn’t think you were going to make it, but you had far more speed on that then I thought. It looked like you almost shot straight across the gap. That’s impressive.”
I looked up at him and grinned. “Well, I couldn’t let you show me up.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t, trust me. I barely caught the edge. You didn’t see?”
“No, I had to . . . “ I looked back up the way we’d come. I couldn't see the woman from here. “She thought you were trying to kill yourself or something. She tried to catch you when you jumped and I had to restrain her, knock her out.” It was likely that the monsters would come back and find her like that. She’d be dead. They were going to rip her apart.
“She’s already lost.” Zark said, clearly able to see where my mind was going. “This whole place is. We just need to finish what we’re here for and get out.” It was his turn to remind me of the situation.
“Yeah, I know.” I answered, and it was true. I knew that. Why, then, was it so hard to deal with? The Wardens lacked compassion. This whole situation was designed to burn out our compassion, and it wasn’t the first such position we’d been placed in. This was why I was going on. I was going to change things, and if I failed here, nothing would be changed. “Yeah, I know.” I repeated, and this time with more conviction. I stood up and dusted myself off.
I walked to the edge of the wall overlooking the courtyard next to the tower. “They said there would be signs to where we needed to go. I haven’t seen one in a while, but now that we’re at the tower, we should be on the watch.”
Zark walked up next to me. Below us the courtyard was eerily quiet, though somewhere distantly I could hear screaming, the kind that only came with a painful, terrible death.
“There are stairs leading down over there. I thought there would be more of those creatures in here. They said this place would be heavily guarded.” His voice was a bit quiet, as though he was afraid of being overheard. It was probably a good idea not to attract notice if possible.
“They said the watcher’s stone would be heavily guarded. I don’t doubt that it is. That means this is simple. We just need to head in the direction that those creatures are going. We need to find a place with a lot of them.” I chuckled a bit darkly. “Simple” was perhaps not the best word to use.
“That seems like a bad idea.” Zark noted with a shared bit of dark laughter. “You’re probably right, though.”
“When we get there, and we find the stone, we’ll just grab it and fight off the creatures as long as we can while we wait for the door to open. I imagine there won’t be a way to sneak in and sneak out. I mean, we can try, but if things go wrong, we’ll just hold onto that stone and fight until we can’t anymore.” I said, making sure we both understood what our goal was. Once we had the stone they’d open the door, then we just had to get through it safely. That might be incredibly difficult, but we were skilled. We knew how to fight. We might only need a minute at most to get to safety. We could fight for that long I hoped.
“You make it sound simple.” Zark noted with a shrug.
“We both know it won’t be easy, but we just have to get a hold of that stone. After that it’s a matter of staying alive, and I don’t intend to die here. This place is terrible.” I shuddered a bit as I went back over everything that had happened since we’d stepped through the door to get there.
“Let’s find this thing, then.” Zark said, and he turned and started for the stairs.
I fell in with him, keeping pace easily enough. We crossed down into the courtyard and started making our way around the tower. We both started heading for the main door. It wasn’t a matter of having discussed a route, but there was just this impression that if this item was in here, it was going to be in the tower proper. Probably at the top of the damned tower. I looked up at the spire above us and felt a sense of dread. It was so tall, and it looked like it might have a labyrinth of passages inside. It was the sort of building that would be cursed in any old children’s tail. It looked evil, if a building could be said to be so.
The closer we drew to the front gate, the slower and more cautious we became. Strangely we hadn’t encountered any of the metal and flesh things yet, but we both could feel the tension of impending doom hanging above us. We reached the front door of the spire and both of us stopped in our tracks. It hung open, torn part of the way from its hinges. It was a massive door, so whatever had caused so much damage must have been very impressive. Above the door was an arrow painted in what looked like dried blood, and above that was a single word.
“Right.” It said.
“That’s our language.” Zark pointed out.
I nodded. “I’d say that’s one of the signs leading us where we need to go.” I answered. “I didn’t think they would be quite that obvious.”
“Well, it can’t be anything else. No one here speaks our language, and I haven’t been able to make out any of the writing I’ve seen so far. This was clearly left for us.” He reasoned, and he was right. I felt almost a sense of relief. We were on the right track. The question was did it mean to go into the tower and then go right, or to go “right” now?
“Do you think we go in?” I asked Zark and he nodded quickly. “Of course. I mean, why would they bring us here and not make us go in?”
“Wait a moment.” I told him and then I began to circle around the tower in the other direction, watching the walls as I went. At first I thought my intuition was wrong, but then I found another red arrow painted onto the wall. It pointed further along the side of the wall. I made my way quickly back to Zark. “I found another arrow. We don't have to go in.”
“Oh.” Zark seemed surprised, then just a bit disappointed. He looked back up at the tower.
“You wanted to go in there?” I asked, surprised myself, though mostly at his strange apparent desire to go into that place.
He gave a small shrug. “Aren't you curious at all? I feel like the answer to the mystery of what’s going on must be in there somewhere. Don’t you want to know what happened here?” He looked at me, something like childish curiosity on his face. It was so strange to see that there. This was a bit of the Zark that had first come to this place before it had beaten the wonder out of both of us. It was cute really.
“I suppose some small part of me is curious, but a much larger part of me doesn’t want to die.” I said, shooting him a grin. “So let’s just get what we need and get out of here.”
Zark nodded. “You’re right. I don’t really want to have to fight anymore of those damn things. I think the mystery will stick with me for a long time though.”
“Good. If we have a long time after this then this went well.” I told him, trying to get us focused on our task again. “Come on.” I led him back around the side of the tower and showed him the next arrow. It pointed further in the direction we were going so we kept on walking, though it wasn’t long before we began to hear the disconcerting metal clinking and rattling of the creatures again. We were going the right way.
We reached a wall that stretched from the side of the tower across to the main wall. It was about twelve feet high and there was a gate in it near the far side. We huddled into the corner, there was shadow covering it and concealing our position, but from where we were we could see the horrible metal creatu
res going in and out of the gate. There were a lot of them. We counted eight or nine different ones, though it was difficult to tell for sure. Though they differed, some of them had a similar look about them.
“Something is happening in there.” Zarkov noted.
I nodded my agreement, looking up at the wall we were against. It was a stone wall. We could climb it easily enough, but what would be on the other side, and what might see us when we were on top of it? We’d be out in the open. The only other alternative, though, was the gate. There was just far too much traffic there. That left only the option to go over, though it wasn’t a great choice either.
“We’ll have to climb.” Zark said, clearly reaching the same realization that I had.
“I’ll go up first. You stay down here and I’ll let you know if it’s safe to join me.” I told him, reaching for the wall.
He grabbed my arm. “I should go up first.” He said, his eyes finding mine. “This is dangerous and we both know I’m ahead of you in the class. I’m stronger. If things come to a fight alone up on that wall, I’m better suited for it.”