by Aaron French
The monks seemed to float over the surface of the ground. They often had to wait for us, it seemed, but they did so patiently, not talking amongst themselves, but watching us with curious expressions on their faces.
As we approached the castle-like structure standing out of the snow, I felt my chest clench. The massive walls looked exactly as I remembered from my dream. I didn’t understand how they could be there at all, but I didn’t say anything to the others, even after Tak asked me repeatedly what was wrong. He’d insisted on wrapping my arm, had worried that I’d injured my head, but I seemed fine.
My hair only stuck out about an inch from my head. I rubbed my fingers over the top of my skull, and sighed in some regret.
This time, unlike my dream, I entered the castle through the main gate.
The monks called up to someone inside to open the gates, and the massive doors made of blackened wood and metal swung outward. I stood there, astonished as people poured out, dressed in far more variety of clothing than the monks themselves.
We entered the great hall, and the giant stone man sat there still, his lap covered with flower petals and paper birds... only now people crowded the hall, too, rows of kiosks lining the walls and the center aisle. Sitting by the steps near the stone man, a real man with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen smiled at me.
The monks led us back into the same inner chamber.
There, my captain spoke to their leader with the scarred face, while the rest of us huddled against the wall, handed hot drinks by the ever-silent monks.
Captain explained to them how we’d come looking for a possible home for some of our people, how we were ancestors of theirs, and meant them no harm. He further explained that an accident of his ship had stranded us there, and that another ship would come to pick us up. But he wanted to leave at least one of us behind... as a token of our good faith and renewed relations.
The monks listened to all of this very somberly.
When he finished speaking, the leader smiled. Glancing around at the other monks, he smiled again, knowingly this time.
The rest of the monks smiled with him.
Then he pointed directly at me.
Tak stared from the man’s finger to my face, his eyes disbelieving.
“What’s that about?” he muttered.
“Her,” I heard the monks’ leader say clearly through the tinny voice of my universal translator. “She can stay with us. Only her.”
The Captain looked surprised, too.
He glanced at me, then at Tak, and seemed to be trying to decide if he should argue. When more seconds passed, I saw the resistance in his eyes start to fade, until finally, he shrugged.
“Sure. As long as she agrees.”
“I agree,” I said, too quickly.
Again, Tak stared at me, his eyes openly suspicious now.
When I glanced at the monk with the scarred face, he winked at me, crinkling the lines of his face.
Unable to help myself, I laughed.
About the author: J.C. Andrijeski has published novels, short stories, essays and articles. Her short fiction has appeared in webzines and anthologies, in genres from science fiction to horror and monk punk to contemporary and urban fantasy, as well as humor and literary. A children’s story of hers, Mumbletoes, was published in a collection by Wonderella called Ogner Stump’s 1,000 Sorrows. She has also published a graphic novel set in the world created in her Bridge series, and penned the occasional screenplay. Her nonfiction articles have covered subjects from graffiti art, meditation, psychology, journalism and history. For more information on her and her writing, visit: jcandrijeski.com.
Xenocyte: A Kiomarra Story
Caleb Heath
“There’s always a storm coming.”
Barale embraced him from behind. Her chin rested on his head, her calloused hands covering his heart. “Don’t do it, Luny.”
The sky above and the sea below the bluff were gray, pregnant with menace.
“I’ve gone as far as a first initiate can,” said Lunakis. His mind filtered through the wind, fingers of consciousness dipped into the water.
He sighed and mist swirled up around them. His will held the cloud in place. When he let it go, the wind blew it away.
“I’m completing my second initiation.”
Barale’s arms tightened. “You could lose your mind for good,” she growled.
“I found it once, I can find it again.” Lunakis broke away and looked up at Barale’s frost-worn brown face, so unlike his pale one. She was barbaric in her furs. Her glacier-blue eyes met his gray ones.
“You want to protect people,” said Barale, “but you can do that with the powers you have now. You’re Xenocyte enough. Remember that we’re Autarchs too. Fighters, leaders, sailors!”
“Were Autarchs. We’re not in the navy anymore,” said Lunakis. “We joined–and left–for our own reasons.”
“Did Jan put you up to this?”
Lunakis’s patience vanished. “In three months we’re supposed to meet in Torialis. Until then I’m staying. Ohbrill trained me, so I’ll help him train his cloister’s prospectives. And I owe it to you, to Jan, and to myself, to go in that pit and not come out until I’m stronger. And if you can’t accept that, leave, and I’ll see you in three months!”
Thunder sounded. Barale was yelling at him, but the wind snatched her words.
Lunakis’s thoughts played in the wind and waves, his mind suddenly peaceful.
Barale’s mind was a blizzard of fear and desperation.
He caught words from the future and reeled them in, resuming mindfulness of his body as he did so.
Barale’s hands clenched. Her eyes teared. Lunakis put his hands on her shoulders.
“I feared you’d die if you went back to Irae,” he whispered, “that in trying to finish your Flow Breaker training you’d kill yourself. You’d do fighting drills in roaring snowstorms; punch ice blocks until your knuckles broke. Finally, you’d fight your master. If you won, you’d learn the final techniques. If you lost, he’d kill you.”
“He didn’t,” said Barale. “You’d have known that if you’d looked at the future.”
“It’s not that precise, Barale!” yelled Lunakis. “Even if it was, I wouldn’t have looked at your future.”
“Why?”
“I’d be pained, not knowing whether you’d live or die. But what if I looked and saw only a frozen corpse?”
She raised her hand, brushed her thumb over his forehead. “You didn’t lose me,” she said.
“And you won’t lose me either,” said Lunakis. “I’ll go in the pit, expand my mind as far as I can, and then go a bit further.”
“And try not to become a vegetable,” smirked Barale.
“Easier than dodging avalanches,” he retorted.
“How would you know?”
Lunakis kissed her. They held their bodies together, casting away the coastal chill. He lost himself in the kiss. He tried to think of nothing else, but his attention wandered into the air.
Something cut the wind, and he instantly raised it into a shield behind Barale. The twisting micro-whirlwind caught something and shot it upward.
They whirled around. Barale drew her hammer and took a fighting stance. From the bluff top they could see white-gray figures leaping from the cover of rocks and scraggly trees, rushing up the hill.
They were loathsome. Bent-backwards legs propelled scaly shark-like bodies. Their spike-ringed, vertically-split mouths quivered; a single, articulated spike arm hung from each of their bellies.
One of them was ahead of the rest. Lunakis had enough time to notice that one of the spikes rimming its mouth was missing before it launched another salvo.
A spike missed impaling his neck. Another tore through his robes and scratched his left bicep. One spike missed Barale’s head. Another stuck in her heavy furs.
Lunakis took the small whirlwind he’d caught the first spike with and stretched it out. It covered more area now, but w
ouldn’t provide as strong a defense. They had a moment to plan.
“All right?” he asked.
“Spike in my shoulder,” said Barale through gritted teeth. “Not too deep. Fine for now.”
“We’ll be overrun. Ideas?”
“Call some lightning?”
“Could only hit a few of them.” A salvo of spikes shot from the advancing things and scattered on the wind shield. “And we don’t have time.”
“Can you keep this thing in front of me if I’m moving?” she asked.
“It’ll take focus.”
Barale nodded and bent down. “Alright, get on.”
Lunakis put his arms around her neck and wrapped his legs around her waist. He yoked the wind shield and held it in front of her.
Barale switched to a two-handed grip and held her hammer high. She took a stance, chanted a fragment of her true name, and then slammed the hammer into the ground. The earth rumbled and tiny cracks radiated out in a cone.
The creatures staggered in the magic quake. Some fell over, but even those recovered quickly.
Barale took a different stance and chanted another word. She began to run, slowly but picking up speed, her footfalls avalanche loud.
Spikes showered them. Lunakis’s shield deflected most, but a handful struck Barale. She didn’t flinch.
The creatures were funneled by the narrow path to the cliff face. Barale barreled down it. The leading thing had fallen over when she’d struck the ground. It hadn’t gotten up yet. Her foot came down, and its armored skin crunched like snow. Its shriek echoed in Lunakis’s ears as Barale kept going, swinging her hammer in sweeping arcs, spilling monsters left and right.
They cleared the gauntlet and Barale slowed as the ground leveled. Lunakis glanced back. The few things left weren’t pursuing.
“What were those?” asked Barale.
“More damn dimensionals.” Lunakis slipped off her back and looked west, the direction of the cloister. He focused, set his point of view at the central doors, and tried to see from there.
Nothing. His inner eyes were dark.
“We’ve got to get to the cloister.”
***
Lunakis and Barale peered down at the cloister. The stone structure was built out of and into the valley wall, and it made use of the natural caverns that dotted the island.
Several ‘spitters,’ as they’d dubbed the dimensional monsters, lurked around the entrance. Some jabbed their spike arms futilely into the stone doors.
“I wonder if something’s controlling them,” said Lunakis. “They don’t seem intelligent.”
The two were surprised by a whisper from behind. “I don-”
Barale turned, her open palm ready to deliver a bone-smashing blow. Before Lunakis could stop her attack, he heard it land. A hiss of pain followed.
Barale held her hand and glared at the man she’d struck, seemingly to no effect.
“Ohbrill,” said Lunakis, sighing. “Glad you’re alive, but don’t sneak up on allies.”
“Sorry.” He smiled at Barale. “Are you injured?” She shook her head.
“Barale, meet Ohbrill,” Lunakis went on. “Second initiate and master of this cloister.”
“We’ve met,” she said. “A few hours ago, when I arrived at the docks. He told me where you’d be.”
Ohbrill nodded. He was a short, bald, barrel-chested man, with a grinning face. A red headband emblazoned with a golden eye covered his forehead, and he wore an open-chested maroon robe with simple trousers. His feet were bare.
“As I was saying, I don’t think they’re intelligent.” Ohbrill’s grin disappeared. “These monsters are terrorizing my cloister. I can’t farsense anything near here, and I imagine you can’t either.”
Lunakis shook his head.
“You and I are the only initiated Xenocytes, so I’m hoping the prospectives kept cool and sealed themselves inside.”
“Why are those things here?” asked Lunakis.
“It’s inside, whatever it is,” said Barale. She started down the natural ramparts that led to the cloister. Ohbrill’s grin returned and he jogged after her.
Lunakis cursed and followed. At least two dozen spitters, and who knew what else could be waiting for them? It might be a trap.
Ohbrill scooped up two stones, got a far-off look on his face, and then hurled them both. They homed in on two of the spitters and the monsters went down hard. The rest of them looked up, their spike-lined mouths quivering.
Ohbrill roared. Barale shouted a war cry. Lunakis grimaced and extended his mind into the air just in time to start deflecting missiles. He forgot his own body and became the wild wind, battering down anything that flew.
When a break in the salvos came, he revisited his senses to find Ohbrill blank-faced as the outward earth walls of the ramparts, which extended up to form barriers.
Lunakis smiled. If the spitters wanted to attack, they’d have to crowd together and go up the ramparts. Defense was taken care of, so he reached and found the sky’s hidden lightning.
Thunder echoed off the rock walls as the first bolt hit home. A spitter died. Lunakis pulled down another lightning bolt, and another, and another. His ears rang as he called the final one–a near-hit that knocked a spitter down and turned the rock it struck to glass.
The remaining spitters funneled onto the ramparts where Barale smashed them. She swung her hammer with a sword’s grace. Its shining head caved in alien skulls.
Ohbrill called up to him. “Come on!”
Lunakis hurried down. He was fuzzy-headed from exerting his power, and cursed his own limits. He needed that second initiation.
He heard a shrill whistling and looked up. Against the backdrop of the stormy heavens he saw another spitter at the top of the bluff, its head raised. Another joined it and looked down at them.
Lunakis paled. Those things could ignore Ohbrill’s barriers and fire down. And more were coming.
Two spitters peered over the edge. Lunakis contemplated his options. If he raised a wind shield he’d have to stay still. So instead he focused, and a fog cloud billowed up at the top of the bluff.
Spikes whistled through the air as the spitters fired blindly. One struck his forearm and embedded in the bone. Lunakis screamed and kept running. Barale called his name. The shrieking call of the spitters echoed in the valley.
“Get to the cloister!” yelled Ohbrill. Barale grabbed Lunakis by his uninjured arm and hauled him forward.
While they ran for the cloister they’d have no cover.
The whistling call and the whistling spikes and the stamping feet of the spitters seemed to be all around them. They ran for the cloister’s stone double doors and slammed into them.
“Let us in!” yelled Barale, and when her cry wasn’t answered immediately she pounded on the door, the stone chipping under her fist.
Ohbrill pressed himself to the doors. They heard grinding, and the doors swung open. Barale pulled them both inside. Lunakis saw more spitters halfway down the ramparts before Ohbrill shut the doors and locked them. The elder Xenocyte went blank-faced, and stone rose from the floor. It flowed over the doors, filled in the cracks, and reinforced them.
“They won’t be getting in easily,” said Ohbrill.
Lunakis surveyed the antechamber in relief. Though completely sealed, it was well-lit by ensconced light globes, their empowering runes burning slightly brighter than the glass they were etched onto.
The silence was briefly comforting, then chilling. Where was everyone?
“Let me look at that,” said Barale, grabbing his injured arm. “Make a fist.”
“I’d rather not,” said Lunakis. His eyes widened in shock. Barale had a half dozen spikes sticking out of her furs. “You’re hurt! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’ve had worse, Luny.” She started pulling out the spikes. “I’m not going to disturb your concentration over pinpricks. Besides, you’re the one with the spike through his arm.”
They glared
at each other until a proffered bottle of purple-tinged liquid interrupted their gazes. Ohbrill smiled. “Lover’s quarrel later. You’re both injured, so drink.”
Lunakis had Barale yank out the spine. He lessened the pain by stepping outside himself for a moment, then he took a few swallows of what he assumed was a healing draught. It tasted bad enough to be one, brackish and oily. He grimaced as it went down, but the hole in his flesh started knitting. Barale drained the bottle when he passed it to her.
They found no one in the vestibules. Meals lay half-eaten in the dining hall. The prospectives’ quarters and the meditation cells were empty. In the library, Lunakis found a few open books and some scrawled notes, as if someone had just gotten up and left.
If they weren’t outside, they could only be in the tunnels. When Lunakis voiced his suspicions, Ohbrill looked grim.
“What’s down there?” asked Barale.
“Same thing you would find anywhere in Kinja and its collectives,” said Lunakis. “Storage places, dwellings, remnants from the Warp Time.”
“Our initiation pits,” said Ohbrill.
“What kind of remnants?” continued Barale. “If some dimensional is controlling the spitters, it might want whatever it is. We should make sure it’s still there.”
They all agreed, and taking a light globe each they descended the carved stone steps that lay past the cellar entrance. Beyond storage rooms empty of everything but salt, pork, rope, and other supplies, the worked walls and floors gave way to raw stone. Pale moss clung to the chill walls. The barest hint of an acrid smell that Lunakis didn’t recognize hung in the air.
Ohbrill led them through twisting paths without hesitation, and they found themselves in an expansive cavern with four yawning pits in the floor. Prospective Xenocytes would be sealed in them when they were ready for their first initiation.
On the far side of the cavern lay a tunnel blocked by a human-sized silver plug. Runes covered the plug’s surface in a spiral pattern. Lunakis had seen it before, but now the usually dull mystical letters radiated sick purple light.