“What do you mean?” I managed to say. My appetite was suddenly erased as all of my thoughts were consumed by thoughts of what steel and glass contraption could be riding around inside of me.
The Deepseeker held up one wrinkled hand, lifting a single long, gnarled claw from his clenched fist. “First, you are invulnerable to all but the worst cold. Nothing short of a Great Storm, one of the Old Winds could even disturb your body’s temperature.” A second finger lifted into the air, the claw on this one broken off at half the length of the first. “Your body is also stronger, and will heal a little faster, making it a bit easier for you to survive, without me putting you back together again.” A third finger rose into the air, and I was surprised to see that this one ended at the first knuckle, leaving it little more than a stump. “Lastly, I tweaked a few of your reflexes. You will find your reaction time higher than any of your former brethren. If you are caught by any of the Erin-Vulur under the command of the corrupted Council, you will need this edge to avoid capture or death.”
I stood quickly, aware as I did that my feet seemed steadier on the metal floor than they had ever been. I became aware, suddenly and without a doubt that I could pick up the steel table before me with one arm and throw it, feast and all, against the far wall. I considered it. The edges of panic started to trouble my brain again, and for a moment there, I wondered if being revived from the edge of death had been worth the old shaman tearing down and rebuilding my body as he saw fit. “Why do this?” I hissed, my hands curling in claws. “Why did you put your…” I spat the word like a curse, “blessings inside my body?” I laughed bitterly, the memory of all that I had lost in the last few days coming down on my skull like a sledgehammer. “What’s the point of this? Why didn’t you just let me die?”
The Deepseeker watched me impassively for a moment, and then the rage, I knew that lived behind those mad eyes, boiled over in an instant. Suddenly, the ancient shaman was lunging toward me, tossing aside the heavy table and its succulent burden with a casual motion of one hand. His roar was impossibly loud; his fangs bared a hand’s width from my throat before I could even shift into a ready stance to receive his attack. My head spun with the sheer speed and ferocity of his abrupt assault. I felt all the fury and panic go out of me, chased away by the pent-up wrath trembling on the edge of violence just a breath away from me. The cavernous roar ended, chased by echoes into silence, and for a moment all I could hear was a toneless ringing in my ears. The shaman’s lips were moving, though, and I struggled to make out his words by reading his lips.
“I made you like this,” the Deepseeker growled, shaking with mad rage, “to save the Erin-Vulur. Too long have we been slaves to the fear of the dead Dark Ones, trapped in their tombs beneath the ice.” He drove the knuckle of one spindly finger hard into my chest. It felt like being tapped with an iron mallet. “We will be slaves no longer. We will no longer let them slumber beneath us. You will go, to the place where the new god’s tower stood. You will descend into the darkness within the ice and you will find her. You will help her build a new tower, grander and greater than its predecessor.” The Elder seized my shoulder in his inexorable grip and leaned close, whispering in my ear, all rage suddenly gone from his voice and replaced with something much more terrifying. His voice cracked with rapture as he whispered with mad urgency and certainty, “You will find her and she will bring Ravanur back to life, a green paradise beneath the loving gaze of an unveiled Palamun. And when the Dark Gods are revealed, when the ice melts back into the mythical seas, the Erin-Vulur will destroy them, burn their bodies, and rid our Mother of their blight once and for all.”
The weight of the command crashed down on me like a hammer on an anvil, and I slipped from the shaman’s grip to fall to my knees. My new heart was pounding in my chest in perfect rhythm, making the blood in my eyes pulse with each tremendous beat. I had been brought back from the darkness of death, made stronger than ever before, imbued with the Deepseeker’s strange dark magicks, all for the low, low price that I was to save the world. Where could I begin? How could I even try to do this? And how did the Elder know where to look for Joanna? If her tower had been brought down by the corrupted elders and the warriors of my tribe, the god could be anywhere, starting her work again. She could even be dead! The Erin-Vulur knew full well that gods could be killed. After all, even Ravanur had fallen.
“How do you know?” I pleaded with the Deepseeker. “How do you know she is still alive?”
“I know,” he replied simply. “She is alive and whole, deep beneath the ice, deeper than any have gone but I, alone.”
“And why would she need my help?” She was a god. What good could a warrior do for her?
The Deepseeker only smiled, his eyes turned to dark slits between pale, bruised-looking eyelids. “Every god needs a champion.” The rage began to twist his face again, slowly, starting with the corners of his mouth. “Now get up. I must show you to your gear before I can no longer remember.”
I stood, warily, suddenly aching all over as if I had run the gauntlet of my initiation into the rangers all over again. Without preamble, the Deepseeker strode out of the room, and realizing I had little choice, I followed him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Volistad
In the Dark
It turned out that the Deepseeker had been tending to my wounds in one of his hidden Sanctums far beneath the village, a short distance from the side of the mountain that housed it. Though the small series of chambers was separated from the home of my people by a seemingly endless layer of solid ice and stone, it was barely a spear deep compared to fathomless depths of Ravanur’s frozen skin. Apparently, when the Deepseeker had realized that the council had been corrupted, he had retreated here, but not before he had retrieved my frozen body- by means he still would not reveal to me. I really was lucky that Elder Lot had stabbed me where he did- if he hadn’t ruined the blessing I had been wearing at the time, I wouldn’t have frozen, and I would have bled out where I fell. As it was, the blood had frozen in my wounds, and I had slipped into a sort of near-death trance, making me a prime target for the Deepseeker’s arcane assistance. And look where my luck got me.
The crazed Elder led me through the small complex; every spare scrap of space packed with a hundred different varieties of old metal and glass magicks, artifacts from deep below, that the shaman hadn’t gotten to preparing for use. We wound up in a sort of workshop. Different half-assembled artifacts and relics were piled around the cramped space, some of them dangling from chains set into the pipe-strewn ceiling, spilling intestines of copper, silver, and gold in grotesque tangles towards the floor. I wanted to stop and just stare around at all the ancient magick on display around the room, but the Elder was on a mission, and he didn’t slow down a bit as we came into the workshop. He gestured to a small corner table set next to the broad stone worktop that took up one wall of the room. The tattered remains of my furs laid on it, stained with drying clumps of my own blood. There was no sign of my pack or the complement of weapons I had carried. Likely Elder Lot had ordered it all stripped away from me- the Erin-Vulur wasted nothing on sentiment.
Before I could remark on the lack of tools, the Deepseeker pulled aside a tattered cloth that had been draped over an uneven series of shapes on the table. There, bright and polished new, laid an array of beautiful weapons like nothing I had ever seen before. The Elder lifted the first of the weapons, a bow made entirely out of metal, several alloys that I couldn’t identify, braided together in a way I couldn’t even begin to name. It was recurved, an elegant serpentine shape about half a spear longer than the standard Erin-Vulur shortbow. The ends were wrought in the shape of antlers, sharp points glittering dangerously in the steady light of the workshop’s glowing orb lamp. A shimmering braid of string was wrapped around the stave of the weapon, waiting for someone to bend the bow and string it. I had no idea how I was supposed to bend a bow made of metal, but when the Deepseeker held it out to me, I took it. With the same mov
ements I had used many times on my old horn weapon, I twisted my leg around one stave of the bow and braced it, and heaved, bending it back into tension. The motion was far easier than it should have been- it should have been impossible- and I felt my eyes smiling like I was a child. The Elder had not been lying. With just a little effort, I slipped the loop of one end of the bowstring over a point of the antler on the bottom of the bow and fitted the other end into its place at the top. I held it there for a moment, fascinated by its lightness, and gave the string a little flick with one claw, eliciting a buzzing ‘twang’ from the taut cable.
The Deepseeker smiled proudly, a little lucidity, returning to his ancient face. “I made all of your gear myself. These aren't like any of my blessings- bits and pieces of the work of old gods cobbled together into one-shot trinkets. These are my own work, from the beginning.” He gestured to the array of weapons laying in neat rows on his worn stone worktop. Everything was there, all the weapons that made up an Erin-Vulur ranger’s standard kit- a sledgehammer, short spears, climbing axes, arrows- all of them were beautifully crafted. I looked back up at the shaman with awe, trying to find words to express how I felt about this exquisite arsenal. I felt tears start at the corner of my eyes, and I dashed them away with a sleeve, embarrassed. The Deepseeker pretended not to notice, for which I was grateful. “That bow will drive an arrow completely through an adolescent burug. In one side and out the other, and it will kill a man standing on the other side.” He pointed to the rest of it. “It is all similarly strong, and nearly unbreakable. You will need it all.” He gestured to the arrows, which had been made from some matte metal I couldn’t identify. “Be sparing. There are thirty shafts in that quiver. You won’t be able to find replacements where you’re going, and in any case, the standard iron arrows most of us Erin-Vulur use would bend if you used them with this bow.”
But the Elder wasn’t done, as I found. As I stepped forward to run my hands over the weapons arrayed for me, he tore away another sheet of fabric that had been covering another lumpy shape on a different section of the broad worktable. The armor he revealed was yet another unparalleled work of beauty, and I could tell, just by looking at it, that it had been made to fit me perfectly. It was all made of a colorless, crystalline material, similar to what one of my hairs would look like if I plucked it from my head. The plates were light, but clearly strong, and the Deepseeker happily demonstrated their durability by snatching up my new sledgehammer and bringing it down two-handed on the breastplate. Though the blow rang like a great bell, leaving the whole weapon singing with vibration as he set it back down, the faceted armor plate showed not even a single scratch. With each plate of armor came pale, expertly tailored leathers, in the places where the plates wouldn’t cover stitched with sections of impossibly fine, light mail. Completing the whole ensemble, there was a cloak made of the same strange cloth that hung throughout the Deepseeker’s sanctum, embroidered with numerous sigils and signs.
I took it all in, feeling overwhelmed. “Elder, how… how can I possibly repay you for this?”
The Deepseeker’s fatherly pride vanished in an instant, blown away by the flash storm of his mad fury. His face twisted, his fangs bared, and his eyes flashed with molten, unfocused hate. He clenched his teeth and growled, “You can go save the world, boy. Take your things and get out before I change my mind and kill you.”
Though the sudden shift in his mood was alarming, it was also the standard for dealing with the Deepseeker. He handled forces and powers no ordinary person could understand. He exposed himself to the evil and the danger of the places down far beneath the ice, all to protect our tribe. He might have been touched by madness, but he was one of us, one of the Erin-Vulur, and he had saved my life. My tribe had abandoned me, had killed me, and the old shaman of the dark places had been the only one to lift a claw in my defense. I would put up with his foul moods no matter what. How could I not, compare to everything he had given me? How could I repay him? I could go save the world. Save the Mother, Ravanur. Save the last tribe of Palamun’s Chosen, the last of the Erinye. Even if the Erin-Vulur had abandoned me, I would not abandon them in their hour of need. I had been made their champion, whether they liked it or not, and the responsibility for their lives had just been laid across my shoulders. I would not drop that burden, no matter what it cost me.
Within the hour, I was dressed in my new armor, my cloak about my shoulders and the brand new arsenal of weapons strapped to a fresh pack of supplies, lashed to my back. The Elder led me to a branching network of tunnels and pointed to one, indicating that it would lead me toward the place where Joanna’s camp had once stood. I had my mission. I set off without a backward glance and marched into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Joanna
In the Dark
I woke up in complete darkness; the only thing I could see was the flashing red indicator on my Heads Up Display. It took me a moment to focus on the flashing holographic marker. My head hurt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer, and my body felt leaden, drained of strength. I squinted and forced the letters into sharp clarity with more effort than the act should have required. Did I have a concussion or something? Could I even get a concussion? Cybernetics or not, that was a question for another time. The message on my HUD. That’s what was important. I focused again. “WARNING”, it said. “ENVIRONMENTAL ENVELOPE BREACHED.” Through my muddled confusion, I felt my blood run cold. The ‘environment envelope’ was the layer of hermetic sealing underneath the plates of my armor. It kept me isolated from the murderous environment of Chalice, and if it had been breached, I could be exposed to poisonous air, virulent microbes, or worse. I lay there in the dark for a panicked moment, trying to determine if I felt sick. It occurred to me that my suit’s oxygen cycling system was probably still working fine, so poisonous air would only really be a problem if it could kill me through my skin. I was more or less breathing directly from my power armor’s enclosed tanks of air, and those were evidently fine. Microbes, on the other hand… the surface of Chalice was so cold that there were no terrestrial species I could introduce to the environment. I had brought samples, and they had had to stay where they were in the tower. You could practically cryogenically freeze someone in this environment. I had a hard time believing any microbe could exist. Though, as I thought about it, Volistad and the Erin-Vulur lived here, and they were carnivores. Carnivores required a complete ecosystem and a full food chain to survive, and that suggested a livable biome somewhere on this frozen rock. So microbes could be a threat...
Eventually, as my head cleared, I realized that lying there contemplating the possible existence of microbes was as likely to end in my death as any alien pathogen or parasite, so I got up. Well, I tried. My legs were pinned under something heavy- something I wasn’t able to squirm out from under. Besides some soreness, I didn’t feel like I had been hurt. My armor, even if it had somehow been punctured, was still very difficult to destroy, and there was a good chance that even if I was trapped, I wasn’t badly injured. I wriggled my fingers, and they responded. So did my toes. Okay, so I didn’t think I was paralyzed. I was just trapped, and I couldn’t see a thing. I tried to move my arms, and found them mostly free- though several things seemed to have fallen on top of me, and I had to sweep them aside blindly. Once my arms were free, I fumbled for one of the switches hidden behind a panel on the inside of my bracer. I flicked it, and my headlamp burst to life, so bright at first that I had to squint against the glare. I looked around and got my bearings.
My legs were pinned by a sizeable boulder of ice. The heavy chunk hadn’t crushed my legs because it had been partially caught by a twisted metal spar- probably a piece of my tower, my Terraforming Engine. I remembered then what had happened, and my heart immediately started to beat faster as a jolt of adrenaline shot through me in reaction to those memories. I remembered the Stormcaller, monstrous in her grief and fury, bringing down that crackling black hammer. I remembered the blast as the fusion core
beneath the ice detonated, shattering the ground beneath my feet and sending everything falling into the darkness. I remembered screaming for Barbas and getting no answer. I called his name then, heedless of who or what else might be listening, screaming it into the dark. “BARBAS!” No one answered me except for the echoes of my own voice.
I was alone. I was truly alone. No one was coming to help me. I was trapped God-knows-how deep beneath a glacier on a shitty moon in the back-ass corner of nowhere, in a leaking suit of damaged armor. I didn’t even have my imaginary friend to keep me company until I inevitably froze to death. I was going to die here, a complete failure, and in ten years, those colonists following in my wake, were going to die. They would die cursing my name, and I would deserve it. I fumbled about at my waist and found the butt of the gauss pistol where I had left it. I gripped it tight in my armored hand and caressed the trigger with my finger. I thought about it then, how easy it would be to be done with all this. I had barely been on this planet a month, and already everything had gone sideway. What had the Foundation been thinking, sending us out like this? Pan-America’s finest? I laughed. We were the bottom of the barrel, and they knew it. They sent us out like this because it didn’t matter if we died. And it would be the same with those colonists. They would be the poor, the war refugees, the extra mouths to feed. “Just get in this cryo-pod,” they would say. “There will be a new life on this new world.” And then no one would think twice when all of those thousands of people died. “Acceptable casualties”, they would say. “The price for stepping into the future,” they would say, and they would call us heroes. They would call us pioneers. And they would forget most of our names. The gun felt so light in my hand. It would be so easy. The barrel clicked against the quartz of my faceplate. It would go through, wouldn’t it? Would it really be that easy?
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 12