by Casey Herzog
“Save ye breath; ole Albridge ain’t listening to ye,” Keith mocked.
Dante’s feeling of dread was growing with each passing moment. He hadn’t felt this way since being attacked on the platform, but it was certainly the same despair of being in the middle of a life-threatening environment.
The uneven, muddy ground thickened, and so did the wooden prison that surrounded them. Rain began to fall through the leaves of the forest roof, a cold shower that only served to make them more miserable. Their anger was rising, and they were no longer able to keep a formation in the disastrous conditions of the land around them. Furthermore, light was no longer penetrating the canopy, and in some parts there was simply pitch-black darkness. The only light came from Observer’s eyes, lighting the way like a beacon. Dante suddenly realized: Webster’s exam has only just begun.
Their exhaustion and frustrations were palpable, but they had to continue somehow.
As they reached a small, muddy clearing, one of them tripped and fell, cursing. Dante moved quickly to pick him up, giving him a few words of encouragement, but the boy wouldn’t rise. His eyes were glued to the ground where he’d tripped, and there was horror in his expression.
“What’s wrong?” the Healer asked, tensing.
The boy didn’t answer, instead crouched onto hands and knees, sticking his hands in the mud and frantically shifting it aside like a madman.
“What’s ‘e doin’?
Oh shit, Dante thought as he watched the boy cry out and scramble back on his hands. Where he’d removed the mud, there laid an arm.
“The dead lay here,” Servant breathed, saying whispered prayers and stepping carefully away. “Fresh dead. Students…”
The rain continued to pour, but the group stood there nervously, looking around them at the wall of trees as leaves rustled with the breeze.
“Are you still blind to the threats within the forest?” Dante asked Observer, and the boy tried uselessly to locate whatever was hunting them. He nodded and edged further away from the surrounding trees.
“We don’t need our gifts; they’re right there,” Animal hissed.
Something released a soft breath nearby, and a ragged figure stepped out from beyond the trees, slipping down the slope of the clearing and landing in the mud with an awkward crouch. Dante and the rest fanned out, keeping their eyes on whatever it was. It looked human, but they’d learned not to underestimate Webster’s traps.
“I am guessing,” the woman with the dirty hair and ripped rags began, “that you came this way to evade the beasts beyond.” She lifted her head and they saw her monstrous face, a deformed and heavily-scarred mask with two eerie blue pits as eyes. “Big mistake.”
“Who are you?” Dante asked as they formed around her, half distracting her, half curious as to who and what she was. “Why did you hurt these people?”
“I was once a student, but he left me here as punishment,” she said bitterly, before adding, “And I hurt them because they intruded upon my territory…”
A pair of curved blades slipped out from behind her wrists, “…And so have you.”
She burst forward with a piercing scream, charging straight at Observer. Dante cried out and threw himself at her, but she deflected him into the mud beyond, slashing at the boy with the glowing eyes and causing him to yelp in pain. The lights immediately went out, and they were plunged into darkness once more.
“Dante!” the Healer heard Observer cry, but he saw the nightmarish shadow powering forward through the mud toward him next.
“Fuck,” he grunted, rolling into a kick and connecting with the spectre-like killer before rolling away. “She’s here!” he cried.
“Get away from him!” Animal roared, launching himself onto the creature and fiercely grappling her to the ground. Dante squinted his eyes in time to watch her spin and stab a blade into the boy’s ribs before slipping out of his grasp. Keith arrived late, his punch missing her completely, his effort ending in futility as the woman knocked him out of the way.
Dante reached Animal and placed a hand on his chest, removing the dagger slowly to avoid tearing further at the wound.
What is she doing? Dante wondered, but a moment later he realized. Observer was getting groggily to his feet and starting to charge his energy once more. She’s going to get rid of him for good.
The killer leaped at the unsuspecting Observer with her remaining dagger pulled back behind her, ready to stab him in the heart, but a figure moved between them before she could reach him.
“In the name of our Lord and creator,” Servant uttered with a small book in his hand, his words echoing powerfully across the clearing as the woman fell flat on her face into the mud, her limbs locking into awkward angles and her throat emitting a high-pitched whine, “I cast the burning light of justice upon you, impure creature of the dark! Begone from this world and suffer the pain of a thousand deaths!” A blazing white flame formed in front of him, descending onto the killer creature and enveloping her. She struggled against whatever bindings were holding her and spat curses at her attacker. Suddenly, it was clear she was about to about to break free. “I cannot…keep my hold…”
“Curse you!” the woman screamed, free again and staring with a look of hatred at the young Preacher. She pounced on him, her dagger punching down into his gut before Keith wrenched her off and threw her into the mud again. This time he was relentless. Dante hurried over to heal the fallen youth as he gasped and prayed, but managed to see the small brawler’s true skills.
Keith is unstoppable, he realized.
The small boy waited for her to turn around shrieking before throwing a savage punch in her face. He knocked her to the ground before standing over the strange woman and slamming her head back into the mud. She screamed and clawed at his face, but the boy was unstoppable, his cheeks red with fury. He wrapped her hands around her throat and pushed his knees down into her forearms, effectively overpowering her as he screamed into her suddenly fearful eyes and pushed his fingers into her throat and — crack.
The demonette, or whatever she had been, exhaled softly as her life escaped her, and Keith leaned back with a content sigh.
“Fuck off,” he breathed, standing slowly and inspecting the area. “Fuck off, you hear me!”
Dante smiled, and slowly they all began to laugh. Even Servant found the situation humorous and began to chuckle, finally howling the loudest of them all. They had faced one of the terrible threats Webster had thrown at them, and they had pretty much destroyed it to emerge unscathed.
The Healer knew there was plenty of forest between them and Webster, but he was sure that they would be able to make it through and keep their lives.
In fact, I’m going to try my hardest to ensure everyone makes it out alive. When we do, I’m going to give Webster a big ‘fuck off’ of my own.
Silas’ fingers tingled as he sat sharpening his blade. To anyone else, he was simply sitting idly by, waiting for his students, but the man was actually controlling the flow of a section of land several hectares large, its entirety consisting of a tree-riddled hell that spawned all sorts of life-threatening dangers for his students to deal with.
The rough, merciless professor grinned as he felt two of his most dangerous threats — Tyran the Demon and Lulissa the Tormented Soul — tearing through entire groups of students, although the latter had killed one too many of them. Yikes, he thought, Albridge encourages challenges, but this might have been too much.
He allowed himself to shift his attention for a moment as one of his fingers tingled stronger than the rest. A particularly strong group was cutting their way through the forest without pause, their numbers and strength too much for his traps and threats. The Lucid Dreamers, he thought, what a deadly bunch. Webster knew King had never left first gear when he’d set him and Beth to fight against Dante and Keith. The bastard was hiding something, his true powers most like—
Webster’s hand shot back, and he cried out as the painful tremors shot through
one of his fingers into his palm, burning him like a blue-hot flame igniting his very flesh.
Lulissa’s death echoed through him, the disgraced student’s demise an event nobody had managed to pull off since he’d placed her there years ago — before the University itself existed. She’d been his most useful — if unwilling — servant, and his favorite for sure. Silas sensed the killers’ fury and their simultaneous joy as they stood over her corpse and celebrated, pushing further forward into the forest with purpose, screaming hateful words at him and feeling overconfident. Anger rose within the professor, and he clenched his teeth. He was slipping again. A part of him knew he needed to concede the fact they were just too good, but another screamed at him to teach them a lesson.
The latter voice won.
“So you think you can defeat me like this because you have the Healer and the Observer with you, you little shits? Let’s see about that…”
With a strong thought and a flick of a finger, Silas Webster sent a horror after the group. One he had never used before, but one he had been waiting a long time to unleash.
“This is about to get interesting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Collapse, Part I
Callum didn’t need to listen to what the guards were saying to know there was fear in their words. Their looks and their actions were enough. He knew a lot about the Coalition, having served with them so long, so he was fully aware of what it looked like when there was an emergency and their back-up plans went sideways.
It looks exactly like this.
There were prisoners rattling their cages and yelling taunts down, but the custodians were no longer shocking or beating their captives for it. They had lost their typical brutality and replaced it with an uncharacteristic desperation. Callum wished he could smile and celebrate what was happening, but he knew why it was all taking place. Russell had taken the mines. It had taken him less than three days to enter the mines — unwillingly, even — form an army and finally, topple the guard structure in place and kill the Coalition officer stationed there. Callum was in awe, to say the least. The enhanced monster was a natural-born leader. In another world, another time perhaps, Russell may have made a legendary historical figure. A conqueror akin to Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Instead, he’s just going to become another number in my great, long list of kills, Callum thought confidently. Russell may be charismatic and the type of man that changed the world, for good or for bad, but he’s also a rabid dog that needs to be put down.
And not just anyone could do it, only Callum himself, he knew. Me or the Whisperer, but he’s been missing for a few days now. Russell had only ever had trouble fighting them, nobody else.
The enhanced maniac’s cell sat empty, the man’s absence weighing heavily on the block across from Callum’s. There were many who had allied him within this section of the prison, and they yearned for his return. They had been the first to hear of what happened in the mines, the words of traitorous or cowardly guards reaching their ears through secret means.
I must kill him as soon as he comes smashing back into the prison, Callum knew, even if it means losing my life. I can’t let him reunite with his army. The soldier suddenly felt older and wearier than his years, and an additional thought reached his mind. I’ve lived long enough anyway, fought hard and seen plenty. If I were to lose my life, I’ll have lived it to the fullest… There are certainly worse ways to go.
He had managed to communicate with Fillmore through covert means: slips of paper, complicit guard messengers and hand signals. The patrol captain had been transferred to a cell in Callum’s immediate view, and the two were using their familiar military sign language to its fullest extent to say what they needed to. Right now, however, the captain was communicating with somebody else in a different cell. Callum was left alone with his heavy thoughts and the ghost feeling of a weapon in his hands as he moved around slowly in his mind, imagining scenarios in which he would end up finishing what he’d started at Ayia and killing Russell once and for all.
Boom.
The echo of a very distant explosion reached the prison from the east, and Callum knew it was Russell’s doing. There was a loud cheer from many of the captives, and the restlessness within the guards’ numbers grew. The Coalition custodians began to slip out of the block, and prisoners celebrated when only a ghost force was left behind. Callum swallowed nervously, not feeling as confident as the rest. He knew if the guards were discussing something and the explosion had just pushed them to run towards the armory…
They’re not fleeing, you fools, he told his fellow prisoners in his mind. They’re getting guns to kill us all if the approaching numbers are too much for them. Callum didn’t mind losing his life in the coming battle if it meant stopping the Lord of Lawlessness for good, but he didn’t he plan on being shot dead inside his cell by a guard any time soon.
He signaled at Fillmore an instant later, communicating his theory on what the guards’ next action was. The patrol officer agreed fully, pointing quickly at one of the guards who had been left behind and making a friend signal.
They had to do something fast. If the guards saw it fit to kill everyone in the prison, it was going to happen without a second thought. No prisoner was worth the life of a guard, or at least that’s how the Coalition saw it.
Callum made a decision right then. He needed to talk with the guards. He needed to be freed from his cell if there was a way to turn this around without committing a mass extermination of the prisoners.
“Hey! Hey! In the name of the Coalition and the blood I spilled for it, I demand to be heard!”
Fillmore’s eyes were suddenly as wide as saucers, and he was trying to silence Callum from where he stood at the bars of his gate. There were angry reactions to Callum’s words: many prisoners crying insults and threats at him, others warning the guards if they released him, they were dead men.
“The alien sympathizer, is it?” the highest ranking member of the guards who had been left behind said. “Why would we bother listening to the words of a race traitor?”
“Because I know what your men want to do to us and I’m not afraid of letting it be known. I’ll burn this place down before that murderer even arrives.”
There was a silence that followed, only low whispers coming from the mouths of several prisoners. Dots were starting to be connected, and the guards knew it was bad.
“Bring him down,” the sergeant spat, making hurried signals to two guards closest to the elevators. His mouth twisted in an ugly scowl as he glared at Callum. “However, if you waste my time, I’ll execute you.”
There was newfound respect among the prisoners for Callum as he was escorted out of his coop and pushed into an elevator. The prisoners at least knew now he wasn’t allied with the guards even though he was a fellow Coalition soldier.
“Get out us out of here,” a prisoner pleaded to him through the bars of his cell.
“I’m not going to join that bastard Russell,” another said softly, “Get me out and we can make sure he doesn’t have a chance to win.”
A third prisoner stretched his arm out through his cell and caught Callum as he walked past.
“I see potential in you, young man. Lead us. The killer with the shining arm has corrupted many minds. Lead u—” the old man winced as a baton descended rapidly onto his wrist, but when he opened his eyes once more the weapon had stopped just a few inches away. Callum was gripping the baton and glaring into the eyes of the guard who had used it to attack the aged prisoner.
“Leave him be,” he growled before letting go of the weapon and continuing his walk forward. “Thank you, old man, I’ll consider it,” he said without turning back. He caught sight of Fillmore’s horrified, but interested, look and chuckled. Let me handle this, he signaled. It did nothing to calm the captain down.
The angry Coalition officer shot a hate-filled look at Callum, but the soldier knew any threats towards him were useless right now. If they e
xecute me, they better hope they can kill the prisoners before Russell arrives and frees them all. There are going to be a great many furious captives unleashed on them now that I’ve gained their respect.
“Let’s talk over there,” the man managed to say, pointing at the entrance to a different area of the prison, but Callum shook his head.
“I’ll take my luck in the yard, thanks. The exercise yard, if you wish, for some privacy.” Before the sergeant could indicate which guard he wanted to escort them, Callum pointed at the one Fillmore had identified as an ally. “He can join us for your protection.”
There was a long, annoyed look from the sergeant, but finally the officer nodded.