Awakenings

by Timothy Manley

  They could hear a series of locks and latch-works moving behind the door. Then, slowly, the doors pulled open. There were a dozen men, in various ages, all bald, all Asian, and all wearing orange robes. The oldest man was standing in front, grinning at them.

  “Welcome,” he said. “Come, welcome to the Mountain Retreat.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I think my favorite breakfast is one with crispy hash browns, four eggs with the whites cooked and the yolks runny, placed in a line on top of the hash browns. Then about eight slices of thick cut bacon, and half as many breakfast sausage links. Two English muffins laden with butter to help sop everything up. Ice cold water to drink, fresh orange juice and black coffee.

  Alfred floated above his black disc standing there patiently while I ate. After I got out of the pod last night I was out of sorts. I keep getting my ass kicked. I was winning, but I was also getting hurt pretty much every time.

  “And it doesn’t matter how they kill me?” I asked Alfred again. “Even if they hit me with a rock in the head?”

  “It depends,” Alfred patiently explained again. “The lesser creatures of the taint must infect you. They have to have bitten you and then you die. Greater creatures, intelligent ones like you’ve been fighting, all they must do is kill you and you will turn, owned by them.”

  “Their slave?”

  “Yes.”

  “As far as anyone knows this place doesn’t exist anymore?”

  “According to the documents I have access to in the scholar’s tower, no. The legend is a very old one and Five Rivers is something placed away in history.”

  “But all the folks aren’t even awake yet?”

  “No,” he said flatly. He was finally giving me better answers but some he still didn’t know. “Only about twenty percent of the earthborn have been awoken.”

  “And the world, who else is here?”

  “Besides the earthborn that have been woken, there are people from this world, that were born here, and there are people that were created by the shrines.”

  “Fake people?”

  “Constructs,” Alfred interrupted me. “They’re not fake. They are real people created by the shrines.”

  “And there are people from this world? Natives?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re all genetically just like me, like us earthborn?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have children the same way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Earthborn and the Natives and the Constructs can interbreed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens to their offspring?”

  “I don’t have that knowledge yet. The more buildings you free the greater level of access to hidden knowledge the scholar’s tower has. That is, until an actual scholar comes to inhabit it and increases its research capabilities.”

  “And to do that-,” I said pointing my fork at him.

  “The port must be freed of the taint,” he said interrupting.

  “Free it, and they will come,” I said taking another bite.

  Once I had finished eating I took my coffee to the family dining room, where I left the giant book. In that book was a map of Five Rivers the land, and the port. I had it open to the city, showing the businesses that needed to be cleared. There were fifteen left, with City Hall being the last one.

  “I think I want to do this one next,” I pointed at a shop in the town circle, skipping quite a few. It had the note ‘weapons & armor’ in the book. “But I need some armor and better weapons than what I’ve been using.”

  After breakfast we went to the workshop. The manor had access to anything I wanted. I had it give me better armor, cloth hauberk, with leather and mail, steel shoulders, bracers and greaves; a padded helm with the old Viking style eye pieces. A round shield and a bigger axe. I was doing better with the axes than the sword; apparently I was an axeman, not a swordsman. Boots, gauntlets, weapons, I was ready.

  Or so I thought.

  ————

  I wasn’t used to moving in the armor. I wasn’t used to using a shield or an axe that size. I was actually nervous. I thought and planned for when I took the guants. But that changed rapidly. I didn’t think or plan for the others, not to that level. I just did it. Like I always used to. My mind was getting in my way and it was making me nervous and scared. I had too much riding on this. If I was ever to free the kids I had to do this. If I failed I’d probably be lost, and Rae would have no idea where I was. I had no doubts that she’d be able to free the kids once she found out what she had to do. But we wouldn’t be a family and I’d be a missing dad.

  I wasn’t actually afraid of dying. I’m sure it would hurt less than the injuries I’ve already suffered. In fact, I was never afraid of dying. I just never expected to. The only thing I did not want to do was leave my family before they were ready. That was it.

  And that’s when brilliance hit me; a goddamn time bomb. I know, odd time, but my brain works that way. And there wasn’t time, I was standing right in front of the door. A collar or bomb or something timed to blow up and kill me if I turned. That way, I’d be sent to the shrine, freed.

  “By Uncle Sven’s nipple rings that’s a wonderfully messed up idea,” I said out loud.

  I worked the latch and pushed the door open with my axe. I looked up to the ceiling, didn’t see anything, checked inside. I saw armor on stands, weapons on the walls and in racks. I entered slowly, cautiously. The door slammed behind me the world expanded. The walls rushed out, so fast they induced motion sickness. The floor expanded, the ceiling increased in height. All too fast to make sense of it, and then it was done. The small shop had become huge, with an incredibly tall ceiling. Torches were lit across all the walls. Chanting could be heard coming from the walls, the sound pressing in on me.

  From the hallway opposite me a giant mountain of a man emerged. He was massive and dressed like a sumo wrestler. He looked at me, his eyes beady and glowing red. His mouth was a gaping maw of rotted flesh and it smiled at me.

  The behemoth charged. I was a big man, but even at my largest weight I was never that obese, and this monstrosity was a good foot taller than me. I did what I could and just dove to the side, trying to roll out of the way. I had intended to hit him with my axe as I came up, but the armor floored me and kept me from rolling. I had to climb up, and he was charging me again. I moved again, swinging with my axe and digging it deeply into his upper arm. He pushed me with his other hand and I flew across the expansive space. The motion pulled my hand off my axe, the blade still sunk deep into his upper arm. I landed hard on my ass and then skidded across the solid dirt floor.

  He pulled my axe out and laughed at me. He held the blade and then shoved the haft between his bulbous rotted thighs, rubbing it against his genitals. Then he moaned. He was scratching his rancid balls with the haft of my axe.

  I pulled a throwing axe and feigned like I was making an aimed throw at his head. He fell for my feint and lifted his hand to catch the axe. But I moved it at the last minute and threw from the side, digging the spinning axe blade into in his kneecap.

  He screamed in pain and pulled my axe off his balls. He tossed it to me, to the ground before me, daring me to grab it. The haft was covered in this bubbling pus ridden slime that I could swear was eating away the wood.

  “Eat shit,” I said to him. I dropped my shield and pulled my seax and another throwing axe. He screamed and started wobbling to me in another charge.

  “I am Urto!” I screamed and charged him. But, instead of meeting him head on, I did a tackle breaking move, by shoving my arm under his and rolling away from his grab. This move rolled me behind him where I buried my axe into the small of his back, into his spine. Then I shoved my seax in the hole next to the axe and pushed both in, pulling them apart, separating his spine from itself.

  The giant beast fell to the ground, its legs no longer working. It tried to reach around and grab me but with its massively obese state once down it wa
s trapped. I shoved my seax into the base of its skull. I had intended to dig for the crystal, but the body vanished. The card that replaced it had only one thing on it, ‘rancid and infected mawashi’.

  I left the card where it was. I went back to my large axe but it was still fairly gross and I feared what infection touching it would give me. I picked up my shield as another figure entered.

  This one was different than any other I had run across. It was a man, not as tall as me, but still standing about six foot two. He wore a helm that kept his face black, but his eyes glowed brilliantly red. The helm had curved horns, rolling down from either side. He wore a metal breastplate with metal pauldrons over a mail shirt. The belt he wore was thick with large rings of metal, especially in the front. The skirt was of light leather but ended in greaves that had a fairly nautical flaring to them.

  He wore a slightly curved sword hanging from a chain hooked to his cuirass. In his hands he carried a large axe. The blade was a sharply curved bearded axe with a heavy blade and the tip of the axe beard elongated to a wickedly sharp tip. The haft was blackened wood, still brown in parts, and extremely well worn. A good eighteen inches on the opposite side of the axe blade was a heavy spike with a slight curve to it. The bottom of the wooden haft was flared in a curve to facilitate holding and it appeared extremely hard and broad, as if it had been well used in dealing strikes.

  The figure went to a weapon rack, pulled an axe just like the one the sumo demon had defiled, and tossed it to me. I shoved my throwing axe in my belt, sheathed my seax. I picked up the axe and my shield and stood there, waiting.

  He seemed to nod in agreement and then casually stepped to me, he lifted his axe effortlessly even though it was huge and swung it in a twisting arc. I figured he was going to feint so just stepped into his attack and attacked his axe blade with my shield. He did try to spin his blade, but my shield caught it.

  The blade of that axe went through my shield, cutting the bottom part of the round shield off, then through my chainmail, through the metal, through the hauberk and into my lower abdomen. It didn’t go deeply, but it went enough to draw blood and elicit a shocked cry from my belly. The pain hadn’t registered, but the feeling of having your gut cut open was a new sensation. He had hurt me and it enraged me. I hit him in the face with my axe while his blade was still at my belly. The left horn of his helm deflected my blow.

  He lifted the haft of his axe and popped me in the head with it. I staggered back, and he poked me in the chest again, using the bottom of his axe haft, hitting hard enough for me to feel the force, and then his blade was coming down to my head.

  I could see it in the short arc of his swing. He was really good with that axe and moved it faster than I could follow. I dropped the remnants of my shield and basically body slammed him into a bear hug. His swing was thwarted, but he held his ground, and I got my swing in.

  I did an under-swing, to bring my axe blade up his skirt right to his balls. As my blade neared its mark half a dozen black tentacles reached out, grabbed my axe and ripped it from my grip. I let go of my axe and pushed him away from me, backing up myself.

  “No way!” I screamed. “Tentacle penises are not allowed!” I pointed at him as I yelled.

  Though he made no sound I got the sense he was laughing.

  I pulled two of my throwing axes and held them in each hand. To hell with this guy. He moved towards me swinging that massive axe in a figure eight like it was nothing. I figured he was going to trick me, that no matter where I thought he was going, he wasn’t going to be there, so I just slammed into it.

  He hit me in the face with the haft and tried to swing the blade up from my side, catching me in the back with his spike, but my axe caught him in the soft crook of his arm, the other one I shoved into the damned darkness of his helm, right at his glowing red eyes.

  I was taller and bigger than him, and I was on him, I had him, and I controlled him. I dropped both my hand axes and grabbed his axe. My large hand clasped his axe handle just before his, and I moved it, intending to crack him in the nuts with hardened wooden haft of his own axe. His tentacle penis grabbed it and pulled, and the motion helped me rip the axe from his hands. I stepped on his knee and shoulder slammed him, knocking him back across the room and to the floor.

  He was laying there on his back, and I had his goddamn axe. It was a hell of a lot lighter than it looked. And it hummed in my hands, eager for movement. It felt good to me, like it was made for me. I smiled at him as he got up.

  “This is mine now,” I announced, grinning at him.

  He stood and drew that sword he wore. He positioned himself in a fighting stance, the sword before him. This was the first time he didn’t stand relaxed like he was in control in the entire fight. I smiled because I had him on the ropes and he knew it.

  I spun the axe and moved, my left hand was near the blade, my right held it lower down on the haft. I intended to feint and then hit him with the bottom of the wooden haft to use the spike and take that sword away. He moved fast and swung that blade faster than the light could catch and sliced right through my left wrist.

  My left hand was still gripping the haft of the axe, right near the blade. But it was no longer attached to my forearm. He spun that blade to stab me in the face with it and I wrapped my left arm around his sword arm and head butted him.

  I’m pretty sure I was screaming with wild maniacal berserk rage. I don’t really recall what I was saying, probably something wildly inappropriate. But I was screaming. And he head-butted me back, stabbing me with those horns in his helm.

  My left hand was falling, my fingers slipping from the haft of the axe, rotating through the air, by my right hand still held it tight. I had locked his sword arm with my left arm and the horns of his helm were shoved into my collar bone. Without thinking, as if on instinct, guided by the feel of the axe clasped in my grip, I spun it, and shoved the spike through his head. The move stunned him and she staggered. I pulled the axe and spun it again, spinning my wrist as I did, and it swiftly cleaved his head from his skull. I then quickly moved and hit again, cutting it open. There, was the glowing crystal, exposed to the dancing torchlight. I slammed the butt of the axe handle on it, crushing it, and received the rush of light for my efforts, letting me know I had freed that building from its taint.

  The body of my adversary had been replaced by a stack of cards. I didn’t think about that, I had blood gushing from my stump. I grabbed a torch and shoved my stump in it. I screamed as the fire cooked my flesh closed and stopped all bleeding.

  I fell to my knees as the pain across all my body began to speak to me. I grabbed the stack of cards, my dismembered hand, the huge axe, my new axe, and I left. I went to the ferry and worked it to return to the wagon. I pulled out Alfred and sat him here. He watched me in silence as Marble took me home. My hand was sitting on the bench right beside him and he kept trying not to look at it.

  Marble knew the drill, and he knew to hurry. I didn’t have to do anything but climb in and sit down.

  I looked through the cards. The deck was huge, this one dropped a lot, all of his armor, the sword, and a lot more. There were coins and jewels, gemstones, magical items I had have to look over. And a hand-written card.

  ‘My Lord Urto, I thought you and I would meet later as I expected you to move through each building in order. I can see that was foolish, a man of your merit would pick the strongest challenge and take that first. I am proud to have met you in battle, and proud to have been bested by you. I give you honor, for you fought well. I give you thanks, for you freed me. Though you ended me here, I am not gone. I will return to my city and perhaps, we can meet again. And perhaps, then, I may best you.’

  “Is this normal, Alfred?” I showed him the card once I read it.

  “I… I… I… don’t know.”

  “Where is he talking about?”

  “The City of the Dead. It’s deep in the southern Wastelands.”

  “It’s in the book?”

  �
�The one you have, yes. It’s there.”

  “Can I be honest with you?” I asked.

  “Of course, Master Urto,” he said. “You always can. And everything is in confidence.”

  “I’m surprised I won.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He was far better than I was.”

  “Urto,” Alfred’s voice dropped. “You won.”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring at the road. “But I’m not exactly sure how.”

  “You’re Urto,” he said.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “My Lord,” Alfred said, getting official. “He may have been an expert swordsman. He may have been an expert axeman. But Urto is the better fighter.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I smiled at him. “But I can’t think that way or I’ll get cocky.”

  Alfred sniffed and said, “I think you started off that way.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Meal time at the Mountain Retreat was a communal affair. Everyone sat in a huge room with long tables while volunteers pushed carts with huge buckets down the aisles and one by one ladled heaping servings of stew into each person’s bowl.

  Wendell, Brandon, Martin and Erin were sitting at the edge of one of the tables. Their bowls were filled with stew. They took tepid tastes and then began to eat.

  “Where is Rae?” Erin asked.

  “She said she had something she wanted to do,” Wendell said. “This isn’t bad.”

  “There’s no meat,” Brandon said.

  “Meat doesn’t make it good,” Martin said. “I’ve had plenty of vegetarian dishes that are really good.”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “They’re vegetarian here.”

  “That’s what I don’t get,” Martin said.

  “Should I go look for her?” Erin asked.

  “No,” Wendell said. “She’s fine. I think she’s talking to the headmaster.”