Fade

by Chad West

  Jonas lowered his voice. “She’s a very… She’s been through a lot. It was a defense mechanism.”

  “Hm. You lied to her, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t have to ask what she meant, and wanted to be able to say he had told her the truth, that he didn’t want the Fade dead. But that’s the person he had let the war make him. But seeing his own daughter doing what he daydreamed about had awakened something in him he long thought euthanized. “I did lie. But only because I see I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t wrong,” she said. “You’ve got to be a monster to fight a monster.”

  “You don’t want that.”

  She looked at him. “Nope. I didn’t.” Her lip began to shake. She wagged her head. She was gone again. Lucy walked past him as well. Jonas watched after them and was confused about how to feel. He decided, as he began to walk behind them, that he felt like mourning.

  ***

  “Someone is here,” Kah’en said, squinting at the horizon, an instant before the battle started. At least twenty Fade warriors appeared, a calm, collected Aern following behind them, that damned staff in his hand. As soon as she saw it, avoiding it became Angela’s number one priority.

  Compared to Aern, the weapons Kah’en—or any of the other Fade who’d come through the portal with Angela–had were the equivalent of, and in most cases little more than, sharpened sticks. But, by damn, they knew how to use those sticks. As Aern’s Fade came at them with their few electric swords and not many pieces of glowing armor, spears landed hard and true in eyes, mouths and the occasional neck. It was at that point Aern’s Fade figured out they would not be easily had and found dunes to duck behind. It would have then turned into a battle of attrition, but everything changed.

  Aern held up the scepter he’d blasted them to Never-Never Land’s hell with. Angela flinched, but saw its blast was aimed toward the sand, a faint pink light, kicking it up in high brown waves. But she could tell right away that it wasn’t just a light. Angela wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but it seemed something which was acting of its own accord rather than a lifeless beam of energy. She couldn’t take her eyes from it as it seemed to crawl into the sand, which hit the ground around it in thumps and taps. Then it was gone, and there was silence. Angela gave Kah’en a look he didn’t bother to return, then glanced back at the others, whose eyes were attached to that spot, their mouths hanging open to varying degrees. Turning back, she watched Aern blink three, heavy bats of his eyelids, and then take a few steps away.

  Sweat dropped from the tip of Angela’s nose with a tickle. She reached up with the back of her arm to wipe at her face and the first rumble came. She stilled. This time Kah’en did return her look. Without sharing the thought they were both having, they followed Aern’s lead and backed away, crouching. She wondered why that Guardian jerk had stayed to die on that wretched planet as the ground shook beneath them. He would have been helpful in this fight. A small well formed, twirling downward right where Aern had blasted the sand. The few Fade with Angela and Kah’en raised what weapons they had boldly, but Angela believed them unready for whatever would rise from that pit. She worried that even her own abilities might amount to less than their sharpened sticks.

  The sand slid away from that which emerged from the churning, swirling hole. Angela gasped, grabbing Kah’en’s arm. A hand emerged. which was something she might have expected, but the large, skeletal thing, thick tendons straining against raw, pulsing muscle; tributaries of veins crawling up and around the whole like swimming vipers, were not. She willed with every bit of her being that hand to jerk back below the surface, and that the no-doubt hellish thing creeping its way up go back to its eternal slumber. She had seen enough. Then another hand rose, and pushed its sick body up from the sand.

  The rotted, dried flesh of her former self hung like a torn sleeve from her forearm as she strained her almost-muscles. The back of her yellowed skull rose like a crystal ball telling each of them their unpleasant fortunes. Eyes plumped in that skull, bluish skin sprouted and spread. It was at this point that astonishment was pushed aside by the desire for self-preservation and Angela stood straight from her cowering.

  “I doubted,” Kah’en said in a dry rasp, then pushed himself up on the spear he held.

  “Get ready,” Angela said. “Now or never, K.” She felt him—the person she had come to think of as her friend, her lover, her warrior—at her back, ready to defend her, as she raised her arms to burn the creature back to nothing. Then a slight pressure at her back bloomed into indescribable pain that ran riot through her entire body. She saw her own blood and viscera explode out the front of her, hanging on the end of Kah’en’s spear. Her life on the end of a spear, she thought.

  “I doubted!” Kah’en said in a penitent screech.

  The fiery attack that had been hot in the palms of Angela’s hands, about to burst forth, seemed to withdraw, and then—the last thing she felt—burned hotter than she ever imagined she could. The world was a blazing orange for those scant moments, her vision fading to nothing. And in that last second it all came back—every instant with Jonas and with Kah’en—and she found herself glad for it in a way, but also sad that her story had now been told.

  ***

  They heard the skirmish from a distance and ran toward it. The heat from the flames, hotter than the desert ever hoped to be, threw them down. Cynthia screamed the moment before the creature coming from the ground did, as she watched Kah’en push Angela up off the ground with the force with which he had ran her through. The next instant, she had become a fireball.

  Cynthia wondered if any of the others had seen that Angela was alive, and that they’d lost her again. The squirming mass of monster growing out of the ground like some mutated crop was difficult to miss. But Cynthia’s eyes had found Angela first. The girl they believed lost forever, found fighting in this, their final battle. (Of that, she was sure.) Then she was lost again. As if once was a lacking amount for the Universe to have ripped her from them.

  The creature they’d come to stop from being released was a blackened, bawling mess from Angela’s final flames. Cynthia wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like, but she was certain it was not the charred chaos before her. It shook in pain, flinging sand and the stone of what must have been her sarcophagus, revealing two more, almost fully formed, blue arms. Then it tensed and collapsed. Dead or passed out, she wasn’t sure.

  Kah’en, she also noticed with a great amount of pleasure, was merely a slick of ashes on the now glassy surface of Angela’s ground zero. A few Fade stood huddled far enough behind where she had been to have survived. But it looked as though the blast hadn’t done their nerves any good. The Fade on the other side of the creature, nearer Aern, also looked to have had been at fortunate distances for the most part. She hoped to make it the last time they were fortunate that day.

  Jonas grabbed Cynthia’s arm, surprising her. She hadn’t realized she was crying until she looked at him. “You can save her. Angela. If she’s still alive. Your kind’s blood. It can heal.”

  She was already running toward Angela before Jonas finished and she didn’t notice the small black pack he’d tried to hand her. The Fade were stirring again by the time she got to her. She eyed the Fade who were standing behind Angela and Kah’en but they seemed to be urging her to help Angela. The spear Kah’en had stabbed her with had been eaten up by the flames, it seemed. The wound looked to have been cauterized, for better or worse. But Angela was still. Cynthia lost the ounce of hope Jonas had given her when her own gaze met Angela’s open, blank eyes. If she’s still alive, Jonas had said.

  She ignored her doubt and punched at the smooth surface of the glass Angela’s heat had made from the sand. She snatched up a particularly sharp piece and stabbed it into her own arm. It shattered in her hand but a single drop of blood floated to the surface before the wound healed itself. Would this do? Did she need a drop or did she need to lop off an arm and pour herself into Angela? She smeared the drop onto
her finger and stuck it without hesitation down Angela’s throat. Angela did not choke.

  She screamed for Jonas’ help. He was already halfway there. Lucy was behind him, watching the Fade watch them. But they did not attack. They were gathering around the corpse of their beloved Queen, grieving with Aern who just stared into the hole she had created. Jonas fell at Angela’s side, listening at her chest and feeling for a pulse as Cynthia explained that she could only get a drop into her. Then one of the Fade on Angela’s side of the battle barked a warning in that growling language of theirs right before Cynthia was snatched up into the air.

  “Your… blood,” Her voice was as wet and dying as her body.

  Cynthia stared, horrified, into the face of the Fade’s warrior queen. Had it heard Jonas, or perhaps her explaining to him or— She screamed as the thing squeezed her. Even its brittle hands were like being trapped in a trash compactor. Its crusty, scorched face opened and its head leapt to her shoulder like a striking snake. She felt her bones crack as she struggled. That first fight with the Golem came rushing back to her. She was again much like that scared, clueless girl in the face of such strength, and too easily found herself right back in that hopeless state of mind. It was so much worse than Aern at his most terrible. But she needed to stay together. It was less about her than Jonas and Lucy, Angela, and Jan—the whole damn world was doomed like Jan if this thing won.

  Jonas tried to attack, but their Queen batted him away with one of those lower, less sickly arms. Cynthia’s skin had given resistance to the beleaguered jaw of this rotting thing, but she belched out in pain as its teeth broke through. It sucked at her like a hungry pup as she struggled against it. Pushing against the chest of the Queen with her feet, which felt like kicking at burnt wood in mud, she couldn’t free herself. Cynthia felt herself becoming woozy as her blood was leeched by the mouthful. She felt her struggle tapering off, and then the burnt thing’s shrill wailing jogged her to full consciousness, and she was thrown into the hot sand.

  She rolled across the hot sand and heard their Queen say, “Kill them all.” Cynthia looked up at this so-called Queen, seeing that she was still as frail and burned as before. For some reason, her blood hadn’t done for her what Jonas said it did for others. Perhaps she was something too far removed from humanoid or… No, it didn’t matter. She needed to get to Angela.

  The cheering of Aern’s army was a distant sound as, still broken, she flipped herself over, pulling herself forward with grunts of effort. She could see that Angela was unmoving in the sand. Jonas and Lucy had begun fending off what remained of the Fade, Angela’s four Fade comrades joining them (apparently more trustworthy than Kah’en). She tensed her jaw and tried to crawl faster, feeling the last sting of her shoulder wound subsiding as it closed.

  Cynthia stopped at Lucy’s crying out again and rolled her head that way. Lucy was on the ground, holding her head and looking up angrily at the Queen who was gripping her own skull in her hands, thrashing about as if on fire again. “Not… in my… head.” Mira’s voice gargled and she seemed to free herself. Lucy lurched back, surprised, then got to her feet, looking toward where Cynthia had gotten to her knees.

  Cynthia gasped when a beast of rubble and sand erupted from the ground next to her, but quickly realized it was Lucy trying another tack. It slid toward the Queen. But Cynthia knew from first-hand experience that it would be no match. She didn’t have much time. Cynthia called out to Angela, getting to her feet, feeling stronger. She jogged, wobbling over to her and letting herself fall next to the girl. She lifted Angela’s head so it fell back, mouth agape, and wiped at the sandy blood on her own now healed shoulder. She let it drop into Angela’s mouth until there was nothing but smears left on her shoulder and arm.

  She lifted her now steady hand to Angela’s neck and searched for a pulse. The hand began to shiver. She moved the fingers up and down Angela’s neck, hoping that she’d just missed it. Then, one of the Fade sacked Lucy, and the makings of one of Lucy’s growing number of sand monsters came down on top of she and Angela.

  Cynthia panicked in the dark, the weight of the sand. But she couldn’t let the terror of being buried alive take over. She had to get Angela out from under this pile of sand back to where there was air. (Was she even still breathing? No. Stop thinking that way.) Cynthia drug her arms through what felt like a ton of sand, feeling for Angela. Nothing. Panic threatened to overtake her again. But she held her lips and eyes closed tight, pushing through the sand, deep, with open hands. There was no air. There was no light. Angela would die soon. Then: Angela’s arm! She latched on to it and pulled, staggering to find a foot hold. Her own arm shot through the surface and felt the air, the sun, and she stood, raising Angela up and out.

  The sound of battle met her, as repulsive as the oxygen was inviting. She cradled Angela and trudged through the sand to get her to safety, away from the fray. Then that familiar bony hand was sweeping Cynthia up. Angela flailed to the ground.

  “You are not dead yet?” that husky, dry voice asked when Cynthia was, once again, face to face with the creature. She marveled at seeing that its skin still tried to grow, flesh still attempted to mend. But Angela had broken something in this creature, pushed her too far as Aern had almost done to Cynthia. “You serve no purpose to me.” This thing pointed at her with one of her more whole, lower arms, then cupped her head with another to rip it from her shoulders.

  Cynthia threw an elbow into the thing’s jaw. It almost lost its grip, and she could see for a moment. Bits of burnt skin crunched to debris and flittered away on the rising wind, the bright of the sun gleamed off the sand near Jonas and Lucy battling for their lives. The Queen adjusted her grip, twisting and pulling harder. The dark of her hold on Cynthia’s head felt like being under the sand again. The pain in her torso felt like what Cynthia imagined being inside a trash compactor might. Cynthia kicked wildly, believing she’d had her last chance until her foot caught on something. The Queen growled, taking her hand from Cynthia’s head and yanking Cynthia’s foot out from between the exposed ribs it had found.

  But as soon as the Queen raised her arm again, Cynthia kicked at the charred rib. The creature gasped. She could hurt it. It was akin to realizing Santa was real after all. The Queen squeezed Cynthia harder in reply and Cynthia stiffened, grunted at the cracking of bone. Its other hands attached themselves to her now also, crushing her, trying to tug her legs from her body. Cynthia growled in pain.

  The sound of her own rib popping in two startled her. Then she felt her hip bone sliding into an unnatural slant. She tried calling out to the others for some scrap of help, but her breath was gone. She could hear their voices over the din, but she was alone. Her hip finally splintered. She felt her spine tingle, then crack.

  “Be the first to die,” the thing hissed through ruined lungs.

  Cynthia believed she would, that these might be her last moments. Then, as Aern’s Queen crushed her, she wondered, could she become like this ruined thing? Could she suffer so much damage but still live in a spoiled body, never quite healing? The thought was almost as awful as the pain. Almost. Then she remembered her fight with Aern, and how—given the chance—her body had recovered from the worst damage, healed completely. So there was the chance that if they didn’t keep tearing away at her while she was down, the Queen’s body would finish with the triage that now only kept her alive, and make her whole again. This meant Cynthia couldn’t stop.

  She pressed back against the fingers that killed her, trying to give herself even a moment’s relief. She was unaware she was capable of feeling so much pain. It was no use, this thing was too strong. Fading into unconsciousness, she barely heard the cry of pain from her right. Then she felt herself falling again. When she opened her eyes, a glowing blade stuck out from under the creature’s exposed rib. She floundered to remove it, finally succeeding in knocking it free. The Queen’s eyes were on fire as she stared at Jonas, whose face was flush from the exertion of that attack. The shout of pain Cynthia h
ad heard belonged to him.

  “I… give… pain,” she said. A yellow liquid oozed from her side with each word, countering that claim.

  She scanned the battlefield. A dead Fade lay near Lucy—the one that had sacked her, Cynthia had no doubt. Two of her sandy creatures along with the two remaining Fade on their side held their own against the fifteen or so remaining warriors. Who could have imagined they would make it so far?

  “Aern!” The Queen’s voice was a ragged mess. But her servant heard and called for others to take his place in battle and he was soon at her side.

  Cynthia took the opportunity to begin crawling toward Angela again. This time, each movement was exquisite pain. Her spine popped and cracked, the loudest among her healing bones. Each movement of each muscle, bone, and joint was pure hell, decreasing in only the tiniest of increments as she healed—so much more slowly than before. Something moved behind her and she almost started crying at the thought of having to battle again. But it was another of Lucy’s creatures—a wavering pile of sand standing watch over her. She smiled, starting to move forward again. Then she stopped, seeing Angela on her hands and knees, coughing into the sand.

  ***

  Lucy believed she had the ability to end this battle in half the time, but she also knew that she couldn’t do what she’d done before. She couldn’t push herself that hard. She had the ability, but not the experience. Well, those were the things Jonas had told her. She wasn’t sure she believed them.

  She hazarded a glance at the others and almost jumped up and down with joy when she saw that Angela was moving again. But she also saw Cynthia, badly hurt, slowly moving towards Angela. So she raised another of her sand-puppets to give Cynthia some protection while she mended. One more wasn’t even a strain. She could feel power Jonas didn’t even know she had begging to be used.

  Her power was even greater without the blonde bombshell mask she had been wearing. Maybe if Jonas knew how powerful she really was he wouldn’t be so worried. Maybe if she took control and did what needed to be done he would stop treating her like… like what? He was treating her like he cared about her, was what. That realization stopped her.