Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1)

by Dobing, M. S.

  ‘Marek believed she was working for him, obtaining some ancient Runic Script that Balor had created to help him defeat the magi on this realm once and for all.’

  ‘But Sarah was working for them, sorry, us. She saw the risk and fled with it?’

  ‘She betrayed me. But in a way, I can understand why. She was loyal to her cause as I was to mine. She intended to bring it back before that thing found her.’

  ‘Clementine? You saw it?’

  ‘It is the last memory of hers I have. She was so near to freedom, yet when she saw the fiend, all hope died.’

  ‘And that’s when she ran into me.’

  Sylph ignored him. She stopped at a point along the wall.

  ‘Here.’

  Seb moved to her side. To the normal world it looked like a rusted metal door covered with rotten wood and sheets, but as Seb shifted his vision, allowing him to perceive beyond the illusion, the wood faded away, the sheets becoming loose cobwebs hanging over a simple wooden door. The Weave echoed from the barrier, a subtle hiss like an out of tune radio. As Sylph pulled the handle the noise rose in pitch before vanishing as they entered the narrow tunnel beyond.

  ‘How did you know this was here?’

  ‘Marek found them years ago. We don’t know who put them here, but they’re scattered all over the place. Most of them have collapsed or have been blocked. Some, like this one, still have their uses.’

  Sylph stepped inside, vanishing into shadow. Seb took one last look down both sides of the alley before following.

  ‘How many of these things are there?’ he said.

  The tunnel was near-black, with only the same purple moss that he’d seen in the Nexus illuminating the way ahead.

  ‘What? Ways?’

  ‘Yeah. Like this one.’

  She shrugged, ‘Dunno, most of them were lost, along with most of the other useful things the magi once knew. I found this one when I was sleeping with a young acolyte. He tried to impress me.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘For a time. A sheol gutted him ten minutes after showing it me, so any chances of reciprocation were lost.’

  ‘You sound really cut up about that,’ he said.

  Sylph shrugged and continued. They walked in silence for what seemed like hours. Eventually the air began to lose its musty odour. A freshness came, and the darkness began to recede in favour of faint shafts of light. The angle of the tunnel shifted, and Seb’s ears popped as they began to ascend.

  The tunnel terminated at a wall of brick, the once vivid red now a faded brown, overgrown with lichen. Seb pressed his hand against the wall, and turned back, shaking his head.

  ‘Great, now what?’

  Sylph shot him a look of disbelief as she pushed past him.

  ‘They really didn’t teach you anything, did they?’ She reached her hand into the darkness that still clung to the outer perimeter of the wall. ‘Ah,’ something clicked, and before Seb could even comment Sylph stepped through the wall.

  ‘Apparently not.’

  He followed her through, squinting as he pressed his face into the brick.

  Chapter 48

  They emerged into an abandoned warehouse. Several crates stood nearby, stacked on top of each other, easily a few men high. Tarpaulin was draped loosely over some of them, but most were left uncovered, the wood rotten and crumbling. Beyond the crates lurked a wide open area scattered with debris of various shapes and size. The warehouse terminated at one end with a set of two massive doors that were pulled to. Dusty windows allowed fragments of moonlight into the warehouse.

  ‘We have to move quickly, we’re out in the open now, and Marek will have people out looking for us,’ Sylph scurried over to the nearest of the crates, vanishing into the shadows. Seb followed, his eyes blind to her location but her aura glowing fiercely in the darkness.

  ‘Do you have a phone?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘I can call someone. He’ll get us.’

  Sylph took out her mobile. She paused, just for a second, before handing it over. Seb tapped in Cade’s number, Avatari helping draw it from memory. Seconds later Cade answered, but did not speak.

  ‘Cade, it’s me, Seb.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Seb mouthed the question to Sylph.

  ‘The harbour. Warehouse near the Waterside Inn.’

  ‘Did you get that?’ Seb said.

  ‘Yes. We’re on our way. Don’t go anywhere.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Seb said. Something about Cade’s voice didn’t seem right. The warrior had an edge, almost anxious.

  ‘Can’t talk now. Something’s happened. Just stay put.’

  The line went dead. Seb handed over the phone.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We have to wait here.’

  Sylph sat down on the edge of a crate. ‘We have no choice anyway. He just better hurry. There are fiends outside of Marek’s control that can sense the use of Ways like a shark sniffs blood.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Seb suddenly looked up.

  ‘How did you find us? In the Nexus I mean?’ he said, voicing a question that had bothered him for hours.

  ‘Marek knew. I don’t know how. He just knew you’d be there.’

  ‘I don’t get it. We didn’t tell anyone. How could he know? And how could he know that I would be there, too?’

  Silence.

  ‘Sylph?’

  He felt her tense, her senses straining. He felt it then too, another presence, growing nearer. Something familiar ate at his gut, conjuring memories that he’d sought to suppress.

  Then the whistling started.

  ‘Clementine.’

  He couldn’t see him with his eyes, but when he channelled, a humanoid shaped aura glowed from the other side of the warehouse doors. Clementine was walking in that twisted, sickening jerky style that he remembered from the chapel. The monster slowed to a stop. Slender fingers, pencil thin, grey as ash, slipped through the narrow cracks between the doors. The massive barriers creaked and groaned as they started to drift apart.

  ‘That’s the one that killed Sarah. He’s also the one who gutted me.’

  ‘He is one of those I warned you about. He’s what they call a hound. They hunt those who get lost between shards. They exist outside of Marek’s – or anyone’s – control. I can’t sense anything else. Is he on his own?’

  Seb sensed out, ‘As far as I can see.’

  ‘What’s he after?’

  ‘Probably after what he missed the first time.’

  Seb stood and stepped out from the shadows. Clementine’s head cocked to one side.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Sylph said, trying but failing to grab Seb’s sleeve as he walked past.

  ‘He knows we’re here.’ He stopped a few feet from the crates and began to channel. ‘Besides. We have unfinished business.’

  ‘Seb, this isn’t the time to deal with some grudge you have. We have to get out of here!’

  He could hear the fear in her voice, but it fell on a shell of calm. He wasn’t afraid, not this time. At first the fear that flared to life at that familiar whistle had nearly swallowed him, but he’d nipped it before it grew into anything of harm. Instead he took it, channelled it, and added it to his own potential. Clementine was a bully, and when they met the first time he was blind, weak.

  Defenceless.

  Not this time.

  ‘No. You stay there. This won’t take long.’

  He started walking forwards as Clementine’s silhouette filled the gap between the doors. The full moon loomed behind him, casting a long, distended shadow across the floor, ending just before Seb’s feet.

  ‘Ah, my little whelp, it is good to see you again,’ Clementine’s musical lilt, magically amplified, carried to his ears. ‘Tell me, how is the stomach?’

  ‘Healed,’ Seb amplified his own voice and sent it back with a jab. He felt a sense of satisfaction as he struck Clementine’
s core, the daemon not even bothering to raise a shield. He sensed a brief jolt of surprise before Clementine’s own defences came up.

  ‘Someone’s been busy,’ the musicality dropped like a brick. Instead the fiend’s voice was coarse, almost angry.

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘I see you have brought yourself a friend. Marek’s little project.’

  Sylph edged out from the shadow in a fighting stance. Her eyes darted between him and Clementine. Seb could sense her fear of the daemon, but she layered it over with a veneer of ice. Clementine’s eyes narrowed at the sight, the crooked smile vanishing.

  ‘Apparently Marek wants you to be brought in alive. I should obey, but it would be a shame if you forced my hand by…resisting.’

  ‘Looks like you’re going to get your wish.’

  Clementine smiled. ‘Come then, mageling, show me what you’ve brought today.’

  Seb surged forwards, anger fuelling his channelling. His legs shook with pent up energy, devouring the distance between them as he dashed towards Clementine, who remained impossibly still, not moving to avoid the attack. He sensed Sylph moving too, cumbersome compared to him. Still Clementine didn’t move.

  He reached Clementine in what he knew was at most a couple of seconds. He raised the staff and swung it down, the weapon arching towards Clementine’s pale head.

  The blade struck...nothing.

  At the last moment, Clementine rippled. The staff sliced through, but it was like striking water, and Clementine’s image broke up into several shifting images that fluttered into the air. Seb skidded and rolled, diving through the disintegrating shape, coming up in a defensive stance a few feet beyond.

  ‘So predictable. So lacking in imagination.’

  The voice echoed from all around with no visible source. Seb and Sylph exchanged glances as they scanned the area. Seb cast out a sense, but it seemed like parts of Clementine were everywhere, tiny shards that absorbed and reflected his own sensing, making identifying a location impossible.

  ‘Ah, the little whelp tries. He tries! He tries!’ The voice sang from the roof. ‘Fool! You don’t think I’ve survived this long by being bested by a clumsy oaf such as you?’

  Seb yelped and stumbled as the voice screeched in his ears. The staff clattered to the ground and he rolled forwards, anticipating Clementine’s dagger-nails in his back.

  ‘You too afraid to face me?’ Seb shouted. ‘Show yourself!’ He picked up the staff and met Sylph in an open area away from the crates. They took position back to back, circling clockwise.

  ‘You show your inexperience, whelp!’

  Clementine’s face formed in front of Seb from a mass of shadow. Black eyes glinted. Teeth bared in the dark. He struck out on instinct. The staff sliced through the phantom, but the image simply rippled and reformed. A wide grin broke out on Clementine’s face.

  ‘See, I am showing myself, you simply lack the nous to recognise the fact.’

  Seb’s mind exploded into a relentless barrage of horrors. Poisoned claws raked him. Horns impaled imaginary flesh. Teeth sank into muscle, ripping sinew and crunching bone. He collapsed to the floor. Somewhere he heard Sylph screaming too, her own weapons clattering to the ground. The attack was purely mental, but what did that mean anymore? The world was nothing but a mental construct imagined by the observers. He knew that if he looked at himself from above he would see nothing but his own body, writhing in agony on the floor with not a visible sign of injury on him. But that didn’t matter.

  The images twisted. Other thoughts came through, Clementine’s attack probing his mind, an ice finger that impaled memories and plucked them from their sanctuary, forcing them to the fore. He knew what Clementine was looking for, he could almost sense the sickening delight on the creature’s mind. He tried to erect a barrier, but it was feeble, his concentration swayed by the barrage, and Clementine batted it away like a fly.

  He felt Clementine’s delight before he saw the image. Sarah appeared before him.

  ‘Don’t let him kill me!’

  Sarah lay on the floor, eyes pleading with him.

  ‘I can’t help you,’ they were his words, but a younger him, a weaker him. He couldn’t move, frozen into immobility once again, forced to watch this scene play out to its fruition.

  ‘Sarah, Sarah, you just won’t die, will you?’ Clementine stooped over, impossibly long arms extending up and around in a twisted embrace.

  Seb watched frozen by fear. He knew what was coming; he’d played it over and over in his head many times over. He tried to close his eyes and look away, but an unknown force held his stare, compelling him to see this through to its inevitable end.

  ‘No one here to protect you, Sarah?’ Clementine leaned closer to her, pressing his ear close to her mouth where failing breaths puffed from blueing lips. ‘Not even dear Seb over here?’

  Clementine looked his way. His heart felt like it’d been drenched in ice. His world turned to darkness, the last thing he saw being Clementine glaring down at him. He retreated into himself, a room of darkness, closing off from the outside world. He hunched into a ball, feeling but not fearing the juddering beat of his heart, the deadening of his limbs. He knew he was dying, that it was the mind attack from Clementine that was convincing his own body to give up, to let loose its own unique hold on reality, yet he simply didn’t care. A sweet release beckoned, and even though he could hear Sylph’s frantic shouts from some distance away, he simply didn’t care.

  ‘Let it come, mageling, let the void welcome you...’

  Something flickered in the darkness. A faint, amber glow that shone through his eyelids. It compelled him to look, and he gasped when he saw the small fire there, flickering in the void.

  You do not die like this, I have too much resting on you! The voice raged at him across the ether. An image came to mind. A serpentine warrior. A tower in the clouds.

  Leave me. I’m not who you want me to be. I’m afraid.

  Afraid? Of what? This fiend, this meddler of minds?

  He has bested me.

  Boy, you do not succumb to fear. Remember where you come from. You ARE fear!

  I don’t understand.

  Grow some stones, and then perhaps one day you will.

  Help me! Don’t leave me!

  He knew the voice had gone. That serpentine lilt nothing more than a whisper on the breeze. Yet it awoke something in him, a hot ember that he found, burning away under layers of fear and doubt. He reached out, touching it, feeling the warmth it offered. At once the darkness fell away, and he was back in the warehouse again, a sea of daemons frothing around him, still assailing him, the many shards of Clementine still ubiquitous, everywhere and nowhere.

  ‘Sylph?’

  He found her cowering behind a crate. Her weapons lay by her side. Her hands were clamped over her ears. Tears streamed down her face and she’d bitten down so hard on her lower lip that blood trickled down over her lip.

  ‘Sylph!’

  He called upon his Sentio and formed a bubble in her mind. He expanded it, forcing away the nightmares that assaulted her. He entered her mind and found her hiding in a small shack. She’d taken the form of a small girl, secreted inside a crumbling wardrobe under oil-covered rags.

  ‘Sylph?’

  The little girl looked up. She was still a child, maybe not even ten, but he could recognise the woman she would become. Those azure eyes shone at him, the anger he knew today a paralysing fear back then. What had happened to her to make her this way?

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s me, Seb,’ he said, reaching out a hand.

  She shied away from him. ‘Go away, he’ll find me.’

  ‘I need to get you out of here, Sylph. This is all in your mind. Clementine is using our own fears against us.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. He will find me, I can’t leave. I can’t.

  Thunder rumbled and the earth shook. He looked outside the shack - shit - the world had cracked in half. Her min
d was crumbling. Without any kind of magical defences she had no chance against the attack. Her anger had protected her at first, but Clementine had eroded that, and only her raw fear kept her alive now.

  ‘Sylph - please, trust me. Take my hand; in Balor’s name I promise that I won’t hurt you.’

  At his name the little girl fixed him with a new look. Something switched on inside her mind then, he could see it. She reached out a hand. He took it.

  ‘Seb,’ the little girl said it, but it was Sylph’s voice that spoke.

  ‘I’m here.’

  The shack vanished and they were back in the warehouse. The daemons roared, but they kept their distance. Now that he knew they were nothing more than an illusion it seemed to affect them, as if they realised now that their impact was limited.

  Now for Clementine.

  There were many apparitions, countless in number, of the creature. Seb sent out wave after wave of sense, feeling them bounce back, each adding another Clementine to the list. Yet as he did it, increasing the frequency of the waves, he felt one of the shards resonate more than the others, as if it had more substance than the rest. He narrowed his sense, focusing on the image. He found Clementine stood atop the tallest crate, staring down at the pair of them.

  Sylph, I know you can receive this, I’m going to send you a signal, just do what you do best, okay?

  She didn’t respond. Obviously pulsing was something not on Marek’s curriculum. He felt a murmur of acknowledgment none the same.

  Without pause, Seb concentrated. He pulled in the Weave, reducing his shield, allowing the daemons closer. They screeched and clamoured against it, their noise almost deafening. He gathered a ball of energy, felt it pulsing in his mind. Then, in the same instant, he dropped his shield and sent the bolt of energy out like an arrow towards Clementine. The phantom-daemons leapt for him, but the arrow struck first. Clementine shrieked and staggered, and the phantoms shimmered into nothingness.

  Now!

  He fell and rolled onto his back, his energy spent. He saw Clementine, stood atop the crate, clutching a taloned hand to his head. The creature shook his head, sighted Seb, and then crouched as if to leap.