She drew in an anguished breath, “How can this all be allowed to happen?”
The song picked up and the chords themselves seem to chime inside her soul. “They have asked those question, since probably the beginning of time, since beings first stepped foot into this dark universe.” The old man almost sang.
Without warning she felt another presence, this time it was different, morphed and anguished. Behind her something stirred and she felt the hairs raise along her body. Within her mind visceral and malevolent spirits took shape. She could sense three of them in total and they were attempting to encircle her; like a pack of rabid dogs. She reached out tentatively, almost immediately she could sense the hunger and desire, which burnt within them. The primal urges, to hunt and kill. She felt her gorge rise, and acid burnt her throat.
“They have come for you,” The songsmith declared laconically, without shifting from his makeshift bench.
“What are they?” She probed hesitantly, as she drew forth her sacred blade. She kissed the steel as she had been taught, a sign of honour as well as faith. She almost grinned to herself, as she thought of all the things that had changed in her life since she had been ripped from her own world and thrust into this nightmarish landscape.
The old man simply continued his distressing track, fingers plucking away at the strings with ever increasing speed. “They have no name that I know, they work for the Mistress and to put it in the simplest terms, they are her pets.” He almost sang the words now rather than speak them. “They will kill you, if they get the chance, although they may well wish to take you back to their dark ruler, if they sense your real power.”
Karolina felt her own primeval senses peak, and the hairs on the nap of her neck stood up. She gripped the hilt of her sword tightly and prepared herself for battle.
“You will not be able to see them, with your eyes,” the wizened bard hummed. “You will have to use that power that still lays dormant within you. I know you don’t understand, however you will have to trust me now. If you want to live through this.” He began to play the same chord structure on a steady loop and tap his feet even faster.
She began to feel like she was entering some kind of trance, her heart began to pound within her chest, while her lungs burnt. Gasps seemed to explode out of her mouth and she screamed.
The air rippled and shimmered next to her, like some kind of mirage amid the desert. She didn’t think, she didn’t need to. Behind her the rhythmical music continued, it seemed even louder now as if the song itself was resonating within her mind.
She dived to her right, just in time to see the ground where she had been standing explode. Thick clumps of burnt earth rained down and a haze of dirt rose up. She rolled, and was back on her feet in seconds. She swung round to face her enemies. The old man had been right they possessed some means to mask their appearance, so she was only able to see the barest, ghostly outline.
The songsmith spoke again, this time, his voice was deep and booming. “You do not need your eyes to see.” Then again the guitar began its serenade afresh.
She drew in slow, and shallow breaths. The acrid smoke that now shrouded this dying world, carried the scent of rot upon it.
Abruptly a voice hissed within her mind, “We have been sent.”
A second voice came quickly, deeper and even more disturbing. “The Mistress commands us.”
The final voice is shrill, and when it speaks, she thinks of nails running along a blackboard. “Your life is forfeit as are all that languish here. The darkness comes and it will extinguish all light.”
She glanced back and saw the old man still sitting, plucking away happily. The melody carried to her as did his voice. “They are like all things that serve evil, they speak lies to try and confuse you. Do not let your mind be clouded and allow the talents that resides within you to be awakened. It is natural, the way a river flows to the ocean, so just allow it to act.”
Karolina twirled the sword in her hand and drew a circle in the dirty, grey soot around her. She shuttered her eyes, and once again the music found her. She allowed the energies to gather within her, it was a strange sensation, one that she found both daunting and exhilarating. She was still not in total command of this new gift, and so it was a case of allowing the abilities to act independently. She felt a gentle tingling in her extremities and then a soft warm glow emanated from her stomach.
Her eyes flashed open as the wave of energy burst forth from her body, it spread out in all directions like the blast wave that follows a nuclear explosion. The three figures were buffeted by the force she had unleashed, and the power used to cloak them was extinguished.
Karolina was able to see them clearly now for the first time and quickly she wished that she hadn’t. They looked like some disturbing, surrealist nightmare of a human being, masses of features that were distorted and heavily drawn. Two of them had chunks of flesh missing from their faces, while the third seemed to possess no countenance at all, only a mass of angry purple scar tissue. Her eyes drifted over the misshapen bodies, which were covered in matted fur that was caked in rusty, dried fluid.
When they moved it seemed brutal and violent as if only rage and fury was driving them. Twisted, disfigured limbs, seemed to pulse and ripple. As if they were able to act, and move autonomously.
She stifled the urge to vomit and fought to control her emotions. The sword felt heavy in her hands, and lactic acid burnt within aching muscles.
The third creature, the one with no clear visage, stepped forward. It had no eyes that she could discern, and only vacant black holes fixed upon her. To her it was like staring into two bottomless wells. “You have power,” it seemed to spit the words, through darkened stumps that may have once been teeth. “That will help you little now, we are three and you are only one,” a sardonic attempt at a smile seemed to crease its rough flesh.
It was the old man who spoke next, his voice still quiet, yet commanding. “Do not let them sense your fear, they will feed upon it. Calm your mind and body. Close your eyes and allow yourself to say the words that reside within you.”
She did as he commanded and barred her eyes.
One of the beasts cackled, like a hyena and hissed. “Look at it, the human closes it eyes, maybe it begs for the quick release of death.”
She struggled to calm herself as the fetid odour from the fiend’s filled her nostrils and made her stomach churn. She slowed her inhalation, and once again the music found her. Slowly words began to flash and when she spoke her tone was calm, “I walk within the light, so I will not fear the shadow.” As she continued the mantra, she sensed an almost unnatural calm fall over her body. “The darkness holds no sway within my mind, my soul is clear and I face the night knowing the sun will rise.”
The second creature let out a howl that may have been its attempt at laughter. “You speak the old words.”
The first beast lumbered towards her, its haphazard advance, seemed almost languid, yet its murderous intentions were clear. When the three, cloudy eyes found her, the hatred within them was unmistakable. “The old words hold no strength here, look around, this World has fallen, and soon the final remnants of the council will join it.”
The third creature drew forth two small, serrated blades. “I think the Mistress would like this one’s soul brought to her.”
“Yes,” the other two beasts replied in unison. Nightmarish facades, curved in what could only be described as sardonic grins.
“She will feed on you for years.” The third creature sneered, “You will beg for death, but your prayers will go unanswered because your Gods have long since fled this place.”
Karolina shifted her gaze to the scarified creature, and felt a stab of regret for what must be done. “I do not blame you,” she whispered.
The beast let out an animalistic cry, “you should. All the suffering you are about to face will be down to me”
Karolina shook her head, “no, I do not blame you, for what you have become. Whatever you w
ere before the darkness took and perverted you.” She drew in a shallow rasp and could almost taste the beast’s foul reek; a rancid combination of mould and rotten flesh. “I promise you this I will deliver you from this torture.”
“That is what you will beg me for.” The fiend retorted, as it brought its weapons up.
Karolina relaxed, as once again she felt a gentle heat rising along her arms. She allowed her abilities to be released, and she saw all three creatures now clearly, as if she was a bird flying overhead. Two of the beast’s had shuffled behind her and were preparing to strike. While the scarified one was edging ever closer. She could sense the primal yearnings once again and the wrath that drove them. She could almost hear the Mistress calling to them, and she required blood.
Her own body tensed, sinews, tendons and fibres grew taut. She brought her own blade up and readied herself. It was at that moment the two beasts behind her struck out. The first had some sort of electrified spear, she could hear the sizzle and crackle of energy as the weapon approached.
She whirled round and in one single fluid motion parried the strike. The fiend attempted to raise the lance again, yet she was too quick, her own sword struck out in a vicious arc and decapitated the creature. Viscous, mahogany ooze that must have been blood erupted from its neck like a geyser, and it’s twitching body slumped awkwardly to the ground.
A warning screamed within her consciousness, and automatically she bounded to the right. The earth where she was just standing shattered. She bowled forward and came up on one knee. The second beast held some sort of projectile weapon she had never seen before, although to her it seemed like an advanced version of a grenade launcher. The fiend was attempting to reload it, its clawed fingers wrestling with the cumbersome machine.
Karolina detected her opening and rushed forward. She covered the distance, before the beast could even react, she grabbed the creature and plunged the blade through its chest. Lathered, charcoal fluid exploded from its mouth, she withdrew the sword, and lowered the monsters body onto the ground almost tenderly, as one may lay a pet to rest.
The pang of warning came again, yet this time she didn’t need to move. She twirled round and came face to face with the third creature. The beast was so close that he could feel its warm, putrefying breath on her skin.
“You die now,” the fiend wailed, as its serrated foil’s glinted in the twilight.
“No,” she whispered.
The cackle made her blood run cold and when the beast hissed, a forked tongue penetrated the air around its mouth angrily. “You have strength for one of them. My Mistress calls to me even now and she wants you.”
Before she could reply, the monster soared forward, the two blades swirling furiously. She didn’t panic, she stood her ground, and once again the music found her.
To her it was as if time, had almost ceased to flow, she could see the creature and its weapons. Majestically she stepped to the side and watched as the beast flew past. Then she took her own sword in two hands and released a flurry of blistering strikes. The sharpened steel, cut through the fiends flesh as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter. A mist of bloody vapour shrouded her vision for a moment.
When it cleared she saw the beast upon the ground, its body convulsed and flailed disturbingly, as if even in death, the ire that controlled it, was still all-consuming.
She was quickly aware of the liquid and tissue that had misted over her face, and she fought almost hysterically to clean it off with the sleeve of her jacket. After a few seconds though it felt like it had been absorbed permanently into her own skin. It was then the foul fetor found her and she shifted and vomited heavily.
She closed her eyes and once again found herself under the water. The dark depths welcomed her with open arms, and she saw there in the gloom the faces of all those that had been lost.
CHAPTER TWO
Karolina opened her eyes and drew in a deep lungful of foul air. The music found her again, and the pain in her head, and the ache in her stomach eased slightly. She craned her neck and saw the old man had not moved from his position upon the crumbled wall.
He grinned at her broadly, “You did well,” He whispered.
She got up gradually, the taste of her own sick still filled her mouth, so she turned and spat out several mouthfuls of saliva.
She was all too aware that she shouldn’t have come outside. The leader had warned her against it, and yet she had wanted to see the destruction for herself. She had never seen the great Capital city of the Council homeworld as it was before the enemies’ bombardment had scarred it so completely. Others had told her stories though, and even shown her pictures that had brightened her very soul. Once its gleaming glass pyramids had reached high into the alien sky above her head. The metropolis itself had stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction, and over three billion souls, of over a hundred different races had called it home. Now all that was left were the blackened, mummified statues, thousands of them, frozen in death, faces set in mask of agony and terror.
The sickly, almost sweet stench of burnt flesh and hair, still hung heavy in the breeze and Karolina stifled the urge to retch again. She attempted to avert her gaze from the destruction, yet it encompassed her. Next to her where a vast habitation tower had stood all that remained were metal girders, buckled and bent in impossible angles. They seemed to point angrily towards the heavens, one final defiant gesture of rage to whatever deity may still care.
“If you won’t tell me your name, at least tell me what you are? You look human, at least to me you do?” She asked fervently, attempting to take her mind away from the apocalyptic scenes of carnage.
He favoured her with a genuine smile, which seemed to project warmth out into this bleakness. “I am human, or at least I was once a long time ago.”
She watched in awed fascination as ahead of her the azure aura which now shrouded this final outpost of the living, shimmered and rolled, like a wave lost upon the ocean. She had witnessed its creation, observed as over one hundred spell weavers gave their own lives willingly to fashion it, a final barrier against the advance of the Dark Ones.
“Are you here to help in the final battle?”
This time his visage shifted, pain etched clearly in his furrowed features, as if he had been forced to witness this butchery before. “There is nothing that I can do to help now, it is not permitted.”
“I don’t think there is anything that anyone can do now anyway, this war is soon to be over.” She traced the landscape past the shield over a sprawling plateau which stretched off towards the horizon. It was pot-marked and scared like some giant had been let lose upon it, and made it his plaything. The remains of hurriedly built defensive positions were still visible, trenches criss-crossed the blackened earth, along with the decaying bodies of those that had been slain trying to hold them.
In the distance the twin suns that had lit this solar system, could just about be seen to set, through the thick haze of gun-metal grey mist, which now shrouded almost the whole planet. The veil itself was the result of the prolonged orbital bombardment, which had levelled the cities and consumed more souls in fire than she could conceive.
In her heart Karolina knew that she would never again see them rise, the nuclear winter as it had been known on her homeworld, would block out the suns for perhaps the next few months, and she was certain of one thing, this war would be over far sooner.
“You think that all hope is lost?” The old man asked, as once again he began his hymn for this dying place.
The chords found her, and for an instance a flash of hope flared within her soul.
“Perhaps there is still a chance.”
“You must always have hope,” he replied gently, “Otherwise all else will be lost.”
She wanted to believe him, yet they had nowhere left to retreat to now, no further outposts that they could withdraw to, and prolong this misery. The final battle of this war would take place here, she was sure of that. When the haze finally
cleared, and the light shone again, this planet and the Council would be dead, and so would she.
The crushing weight of the souls lost here, found her anew and all hope vanished. She knelt down, and forced her gloved hands through the thin layer of ash to the scorched earth beneath. Around her the skeletal remains of what had been mighty trees, still smouldered, bark crackled and popped as the fires continued to burn. Soon nothing would be left, all traces of this place would be extinguished in the enemies’ fire, this world and its remaining inhabitants would die.
Before the conflict this had been a park, an area for the residents of the city to escape the hectic, fast paced lifestyle of the capital and find some peace among nature. Images flashed in her mind, children of different races playing, families sitting around a picnic table, lovers walking hand in hand, perhaps even people walking their dogs, she didn’t even know if they had such things on this alien Planet, but she liked to think so. She could almost feel the love and joy that had been present here, as if the ground itself refused to bow to all this destruction and misery. Slowly tears began to trickle down her cheeks, creating clear streams through the dirt and soot.
“There was so much life here,” she coughed.
“One day it will return.” The wizened bard sang.
She shifted her gaze to him, through the veil of her own tears, she could only see his outline. “How do you know that?”
He stood up slowly, his knees popping sounded like a shotgun blast. He placed the guitar down and made his way over to her, and crouched down at her side. When he spoke his voice was little more than a susurration. “That is one of those things that I cannot tell you,” He ran a rough, callused hand over her cheek. “You must keep the hope alive, of a better world, keep it inside you, where no others can seek it out and extinguish it. Because you may well hold the key to the very survival of not only life here, but life in this entire universe.”
The First Dawn (The Sci-Corp War Saga Book 1) Page 2