by C Bilici
He simply nodded, making no show of what he might be thinking.
“Everyone’s interpretation is different. It’s a personal thing. I once met an Italian Ward who used to be a Catholic priest, and his life tokens were sacramental wine with a drop of his own blood, and communion wafer. Another who simply used blood and dirt. As long as we use something of own body as a binding agent, it could be ground up potato chips if you believed in it enough.”
“I thought your lot called them crisps.”
She glanced up from the notebook when he didn’t answer, saw him inspecting the pestle in his hand before screwing his face in disapproval and taking to the bowl with it again.
“The same goes for avatars,” he intoned, voice and the rhythmic sound of his work hypnotic. “I’ve seen all manner of weird and wonderful in my years, and others far short of fantastical. Not everyone is creative.”
He checked the liquid again and nodded before charged his tattoo gun with a large dropper. He picked up a sheet of transfer paper with symbols that Stacey had drawn on earlier, the sheet crinkling loudly in the silence. How many times had she sat or lain in a parlour waiting for this process? None of them had ever been both this mundane and extraordinary at the same time.
She would only have the few sigils to begin with, so it hadn’t been difficult to pick the ones she wanted. The wait was the worst. He had talked up just how bad it would be, and she had thought of the stakes to get over it. But time had dragged on.
“Are you ready?” Fenton held up the gun.
“No. But let’s get this party started anyway.”
He gave a single nod. “First we need to apply your warding sigil.” She nodded as if she knew what that meant. “Make sure you have your avatars image ingrained in your mind the whole time. You will need it for when we move to the Nexus.”
She tore out the page and waggled it before folding it up and sliding it into the back pocket of the denim shorts she’d picked to wear. “Portable.”
He nodded. “Let’s get to it then.”
She gave a snort of a laugh. “I swore I would never do two things in my life. Let someone piss on me, and ever get a face tatt.” She smiled, eyes unfocused. She blinked as her eyes shifted to him with a sardonic smile. “I guess I’ll have to make a new fuckit-list now.”
She stood to sit again on a stool so Fenton could transfer the markings to her forehead.
She’d drawn the three symbols, markings that looked a mixture of runes and Asian characters, within a circle. Luckily, Jasper had written translations for her one languid afternoon in bed. She’d picked out the symbols for mind, power and protection. She remembered calling Jasper a hippie at the time and felt a lump grow in her throat.
Fenton stood aside so Stacey could inspect the placing in the long mirror. She turned her head about to make sure it was right. “Yep,” was all she said.
Fenton nodded and started the gun buzzing and looked at her for confirmation again. She nodded and he started.
She screwed her eyes tight at the pain. It was more intense than the many tattoos she’d had done on her shoulders and arms, though she knew from previous research and discussion it would. The forehead was definitely not a fleshy part of the body. Though she thought Fenton’s descriptions of excruciating pain had been overkill.
Thankfully, it didn’t need to be a masterpiece and was soon over and he was wiping off the excess. She panted from the pain and looked in the mirror again. It wasn’t half bad for an amateur, and he obviously had a steady hand.
“Happy?”
She nodded. “Stings like a mother bitch, though.”
“Not yet it doesn’t. Are you ready?”
She nodded her head over and over. “No, so stop asking me that and just fucking do it before I chicken out.”
“You should know,” he said, licking his thumb, where a sigil began to glow, “when I said it would be excruciating earlier, I was referring to this part.”
“Wait, wha—”
His skin pressed to hers and set off an explosion in her skull. Bone shrapnel blew through her mind for what felt like eons and ricocheted around, not stopping until her whole brain had been turned to jelly. Her vision was transformed into blinding pain, every single photon becoming a piercing needle in her eyeballs. It was a slow motion agony that she didn’t think could get worse but did. Just when she thought she’d reached a new threshold of pain, it increased.
She was going to die, if she wasn’t already dead, and this was her personal hell. She had failed Paul and Jasper. They would die. Eaten up by Umbra. Torn apart by the hands of that shadow of a man. They would—
Stacey blinked and the light subsided.
A warm afterglow remained in the core of her mind.
“Whoa!” she said in awe of the feeling, the pain already a faded memory.
In the mirror, the glowing sigils cooled and dimmed to nothing, then were gone from view. The only trace they’d been there was faint pink line on her skin that was already mostly healed.
Fenton smiled. “Whoa indeed.”
“Is that it?”
He nodded. “Now the Ward and avatar binding. Do you remember what I told you?”
“Keep my eyes closed. Concentrate on the image of my avatar. Don’t open my eyes until I hear it call me. And don’t think about anything else.” She counted the list off on her fingers. “And, if somebody asks you if you are a god, you say yes.”
“Precisely. Apart from that last.”
Nerves and anxiety gnawed at her diaphragm, threatened to burst into her chest. It was definitely not going to be an easy job, being a Ward, especially with the uncertainty of her loved ones’ lives on the line. She had no idea what she was getting herself into. She just knew it had to be done.
“Up on the desk and take your top off.”
“At least buy me dinner and a drink.”
She did as he said, and he laid the symbols out on her chest as she’d asked. She’d chosen the runes for heart, life, sex, love and death. That’s what being a Ward meant to her, from what she’d seen so far. He hadn’t asked her about those choices. She approved the placing and he started inking in. In the centre of those five symbols, he had added his own.
“This sigil is the only one that all Wards use universally,” he said, telling her to close her eyes now as he worked on it, taking his time and talking her through it. “The Eye of the Ward.”
Stacey pictured the symbol on his amulet as he described it to her. A warmth filled her chest that she wasn’t sure was imagined, a result of the tattooing, or some magic seeping into her. She thought it was probably all three. Whatever it was, as the needle dragged through her flesh, embedding more of the ink in her, she felt a pull, and screwed her eyes to further darken her vision. In that darkness, the symbol formed as he drew it, hovering before her.
The needle ran over her skin, drawing in curved acs to the top and bottom and sides of the eye, looking like four strange eyelids. She could no longer hear the buzz of the needle, only his voice and the image of the symbol being birthed.
“These represent four other planes. Four other worlds.”
A dot appeared at the apex of each curve, growing into spheres as her mind rushed through the voids of space and time to see them. Four planets of varying size and colour. Two Earth-like blue orbs, one coloured strangely green, and the fourth a deep blood-red. Before she could inspect them in wonder, she was brought rushing back home, to Earth. A mad spider’s web of glowing lines covered it. The Ward shield.
But she didn’t stop.
She flew over that familiar blue, brown and white marble before she could take in all its glory. She raced faster until the stars were a blur.
“And this—” An enclosing oval opened to surround the eye, burning into the darkness. “This is the Void. The birthplace and home of the Umbra.”
She stopped dead in complete darkness — one moment hurtling headlong, and the next, unmoving. The Void was the Nexus in reverse. There was no g
round or discernible direction. A shudder ran the length of her body. The place was so alien, even after the Nexus and Enclave. It held an unnaturalness that seeped into her flesh.
The line of the oval neared completion.
Stacey looked about in confusion. This no longer felt like a vision or scene in her mind. It was as if she had presence, that she was actually there.
Then, she was surprised that it was not utter darkness as she’d first thought. It was more like watching static on an old television, but with the brightness all the way down, and the station was being tuned. Flashes of things came and went. The more she looked the more she sae, like one’s eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness after light. Her eyes were acclimating to the Void, but it was not a matter of light. The further the Wards eye neared completion, the more she could see.
The whole place roiled and teemed with dark colour, just as the creature in her flat had. Horror massaged her skin. Those things weren’t just from here, they were made from this place. The whole Void was Umbra. Like an ocean. And she was in its depths.
The line inched to completion.
She could make out shapes, both simple and complex. Clouds. Nebulae of living mass. Parts of creatures she knew, others she would nightmare about
Then she saw him.
Paul.
She tried to call his name, but was mute. Neither could she make him aware of her presence by waving her arms. She was nothing in this place, wasn’t even there. The man-thing formed out of the darkness, melting into view. It now looked more man, no longer black and malformed, but whole, with defined features.
It spoke to Paul. Leaned in, smiled and gestured just as she could make no sound, she couldn’t hear. That thing — that shadow man — pointed at Paul. Its finger elongated and split into a mess of worms. The writhing tips inched toward Paul, who struggled agains his binds.
It was like an insect pinned to the fabric of the universe and trying to move it.
The finger tendrils slithered over his left eyeball. Paul shut it as tightly as he could, pulled his head away, but the cord-like things propagated and slung additional tethers about his head, twining into his long hair to hold him still before pushing between the lids and under. Digging deeper.
Paul screamed in silence but the look on his face said it all.
In her mind, Stacey could hear his cries intensifying as the Shadow Man slowly pulled back its nightmare hand.
Paul’s face contorted, the muscles in his neck cording, his arms and legs stiff.
The Ward sigil completed.
Paul’s eye popped free.
Stacey screamed, and underneath it, she heard Paul. She stooped and could still hear.
The Shadow Man turned to look at her, and smiled. “Well, hello there, Stacey.”
“Paul!”
Without warning, she was whisked back to the study where she found herself panting and sobbing.
“Stacey!”
Fenton held her shoulders and tried to catch her gaze, but she was shaking badly. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for Paul. She half fell to the floor and her stomach heaved and she coughed.
“I saw him. I saw Paul. That thing!” Her whole body shook and she was in a near blubber.
“What did you see?”
She stared at him in silence, jaw shuddering, unable to speak.
“A vision of some sort is normal, practically customary.”
She looked up at him through bleared eyes. “That man Umbra— That Shadow Man. He has Paul in that place. The Void. He took out his eye. His fucking eye, Fenton! He just pulled it out! I saw it.”
Fenton looked concerned, more than a little shocked. “That can’t be. You couldn’t have been in the void.” He stood and looked about confused. “You must be mistaken.”
“Yeah? Well it fucking happened.” She sniffled and snorted, fought the urge to vomit again. “Whatever the fuck it was, it happened. Motherfucker saw me too.”
He rounded on her. “What?”
“The cocksucker looked at me and said hello and smiled with Paul’s eye on his finger… Thing.”
The urge to empty her stomach again built.
Fenton’s hands hooked under her arms and hauled her up roughly and pulled her to the doorway. “We have to go, now.” His voice sounded panicked.
She shrugged his hand off angrily. “Wait, I just—”
A loud crack rang out behind them. Fenton released her and they turned to look at a spot above the desk where she had been sitting.
A black sphere the size of a golf ball appeared and resolved into an eye.
“Holy fuck,” Stacey muttered.
A river of black poured around the eye. Fenton pulled her through the door and house and outside.
As they ran onto the grass, there was the sound of building metal. Stacey turned and fell. The rusted roof bent upward, creaking as dark sludge squeezed through nail holes and cracks. Several sheets of corrugated iron popped and peeled back. Lashing, featureless tentacles sprang skyward. A resounding wooden crack shook the entire roof.
The windows filled with writhing darkness that bowed the glass before they gave way with sharp crashes. The front door slammed shut as a wave of black filth washed against it, pushing it in its wake and squeezing through its gaps. The door groaned and split, more black slime oozing from the cracks before it gave way completely, spewing the stuff that rolled out like the tongue of some demon beast. As it uncoiled, the Shadow Man formed at its crest smiling wide and speeding at them like a nightmare surfer.
He now had a third eye embedded in his forehead.
Paul’s eye rocked about madly before focusing on Stacey, locking on her just as Fenton led their escape.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“WE HAVE TO go to the Enclave, get the other Wards, and wage war on this fucker!” Stacey walked briskly back and forth in the blank space of the Nexus, the lack of sound from her boots making her angrier. “We have to get Paul out of there somehow!”
“Stacey!”
“No! I don’t want to hear it. He’s still alive but for how long. I—”
Godfrey groaned and shifted his weight behind her.
Stacey turned to yell at the creature and froze.
Black tendrils worked their way up its legs, leaking up from the white floor, staining the pristine landscape.
Fenton watched in shock, slowly shaking his head. “This isn’t possible. How can they breach the Nexus?”
An eyeball floated to the tarry surface, rolling about before latching onto Stacey. The Shadow Man’s head formed around it. He was pushing himself into the Nexus. He must have followed them somehow.
Fenton looked up at Godfrey and the knight parted its massive jaw, eyes flaring. Fenton nodded at him. “Hold on.”
Stacey looked at him in confusion, wondering if Fenton was speaking to her or his avatar. Chains flew from Godfrey’s throat to surrounded her. A howling wind rushed around her. She leant on the cocoon of chain and heard the wind again, like some hurricane. Heat radiated through the metal and she understood. It wasn’t wind but fire.
A shrieking, animal wail took the place of the flames.
The chains about her rattled and shifted. The ground below was scooped up, Stacey with it. She fell to her rear, bracing her arms against the rough, still warm metal as. With a jolt, she knew they were on the move.
The pit of her stomach lurched as if she were falling, and the chains opened and retracted. She looked around in confusion. A puddle of burning, bubbling blackness a short distance away that was attempting to escape before laying quiescent.
Was it over, she wondered?
The black pool spiked up in a desperate last attempt, prompting the knight to approach it, fire jetting from its mouth to consume the puddle.
“You didn’t tell me he breathes fire.” Stacey watched the flames where she sat, mesmerised.
“It took me a while to realise,” Fenton added, monotone. “I may have inadvertently thought of St George and dra
gon fire at the time of his birth.”
The fire reflected in his shock stricken eyes.
“So it’s dragon fire?”
Fenton shook his head, still staring. “That would be something, wouldn’t it? But no, I think it’s just regular fire. Fire kills them.”
“Yeah, I figured. Like with the wasps.” And Justin, she thought. The pang of his loss burned like the fire. She tried not to picture his demise, but in trying failed.
“With practice, some Wards can access their avatars from outside of the Nexus. As you’ve seen.”
“Right. Those burning darts you used. I guess I need me an avatar.”
The burning ground flexed and bowed, swallowing the flaming darkness, leaving no trace asa white enveloped and filled the spot.
“What the…”
“The Nexus cleans up after itself. If you leave something laying around, it eats it up. Where it goes is anybody’s guess. Maybe it absorbs it.” He shrugged and turned to look at her. “You don’t have to do the avatar binding now. In fact, I would advise against it with everything on your mind.”
“If you’re worried I’ll end up with some kind of one-eyed, flaming Umbra monster, don’t be. I’m more focused now than I will ever be. And we’re here. No time like the present.” She waved her arm around her indicating the whiteness of the Nexus.
“You’re positive? Because, as much as I love this cantankerous old bastard, there’s no going back.” Godfrey looked down at Fenton and flared his eyes. “No offence, my friend, but you’re not easy on the eyes.” The avatar grunted and looked at the last of his handiwork as the Nexus healed. “No. We should do this later.”
Stacey shook her head, looked back at him with determination in her eyes. “I’m doing this now, even if it means I end up with a walking pile of shit.”
He nodded. “Fine. Close your eyes and—”
“Wait.” She pulled the folded paper from her pocket to stare at it. With a sigh, she folded it and clutched it in her hand. She shook out her arms and took a deep gulp of air, exhaled slowly from her mouth as if she would be running a marathon. “Ready.” She closed her eyes.