Broken Realms (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 1)

by Moneypenny, D. W.

  Mara backed away, looked over her shoulder through the spray of water still spewing from the hydrant toward the blue lights and the bridge. The way was clear. She turned and ran for it.

  *

  After passing through the fountain of water, Mara slowed to step over a fallen streetlight and to dodge the remains of a parking-payment kiosk blocking the center of the street. As she cleared the debris, she looked around. The roadway had been gouged and clawed into ribbons; the curbs and sidewalks lay in piles of rubble. Shop awnings hung in smoldering tatters. Glass littered the street, reflecting flashes of blue from pulses emanating from the bridge on the next block.

  The ground shook three times and stopped.

  Mara turned back toward the elevator. The dust and smoke was clearing, but with the indirect light, the spraying hydrant and the haze, it was impossible to see the dragon. It wasn’t making another dash at her. She continued toward the bridge, keeping her eyes down trying to navigate the uneven terrain. Her shoulder bumped into the charred remains of a small tree rooted in a sidewalk planter, smearing charcoal on her sleeve. She wiped at it absentmindedly when something ahead eclipsed the light from the bridge. A quake rippled through the ground, setting off a clatter of debris. A stiff wind blew down the street. Mara raised her arm to block dust from her eyes.

  The dragon stood in the intersection of Main and Seventh, directly in front of the bridge. It screamed into the air and spread its wings, knocking the traffic light—suspended on a metal arm over Main Street—off its foundation, sending it tumbling into a beige brick office building at the corner. Bricks and masonry showered to the ground; dust wafted into the intersection. The dragon craned its head out of the billowing cloud and spewed a torrent of flame down at Mara.

  She raised her hands and grimaced as the blaze flowed around her, not touching her skin. Her arms flickered; she began to feel light-headed. The fire abated as the dragon took another breath, its head rearing back. Mara kept her arms outstretched, stared up at the creature, focused on its head. One of its horns blurred. The dragon howled and shook its head, sending a smattering of pixels flying into the street. It stomped in place, sending cracks shooting across the pavement to the base of another traffic light, toppling it across Main. Jutting its face to within ten feet of her, the dragon spewed flame again. Mara raised her hands. An image of the spinning bowling ball came into her mind’s eye. She spread her fingers, turned her palms inward and pantomimed holding a ball in front of her. The flame arched before her, filled the space between her hands and spun in the air, forming a ball of fire. She raised it above her head and heaved it, sending it drilling into the dragon’s chest. A fountain of light and flame burst from the wound, shooting into the sky, igniting power lines above the street.

  The fire in the dragon’s chest spread throughout its torso, consumed its body until it appeared to be a winged pyre bent on the destruction of downtown Oregon City. It rose into the air, hovered twenty feet above the business district and exploded into a shower of glowing orange cinders.

  When the remains of the dragon had fallen away, a cloud of dust continued to swirl in the smoky air, descending slowly to the intersection of Main and Seventh. Mara could barely see it, but her heart skipped a beat. The particles coalesced, became more distinct. They took the shape of a man but continued to swirl, refused to solidify. The dust dispersed again, scattering in the air above the street. After swirling for several seconds, the particles organized again, moved in waves like two flocks of birds headed in opposite directions. It spread out over the width of the street, coalesced and darkened.

  It solidified.

  Into the dragon.

  It raised its head and spewed a column of flame into the sky. Turning away from Mara, it swept its tail across the sidewalk where she stood, knocking her across Main into the side of the beige brick office building. The dragon dashed down Main Street sending shocks through the pavement and launched into the air, flying straight up, arching vertically and swooping back toward the elevator. After two strokes of its wings, it landed on the observation deck at the top of the bluff.

  Mara looked up at it. “Good-bye, Ping.”

  It wailed and spit a plume of fire at the night.

  CHAPTER 64

  FOG AND DUST swirled around Mara’s legs as she crossed Main Street to approach the narrow entryway to the bridge. It was barely wide enough for two cars traveling in opposite directions to pass simultaneously. Stepping over a toppled weight-limit sign with an illustration of three different size trucks, she stared up at one of the glowing obelisks pulsing atop the heavy cement balustrade that ran along the right side of the bridge. Glass crunched under her feet. The remains of large metal-and-glass light fixtures littered the pavement. She made a point of not getting too close, wondering if the column emitted something more dangerous than light. A subtle hum rose and fell as light moved through it. A matching column glowed across the street, less than thirty feet away, on the other side of the bridge’s entrance. Mara stepped between them onto the yellow line dividing the narrow road that rose between a green stucco restaurant on the right and a brick office building on the left into the open air that spanned the Willamette River.

  She could see only a short distance up the ramp. Vapor filled the road between the bridge’s walkways and balustrades on either side. The pulsing of obelisks and strobes coming from the center of the bridge illuminated the mist, making it even more opaque.

  She stepped onto the bridge now, staring intently at the center line, trying not to think about the river below as she walked up the rise. Something skittered along the cement balustrade to her left, beyond the pedestrian walkway. Her head snapped toward the sound; whatever it was scurried over the edge, out of sight. A clicking sound emitted from the mist. Another something moved to the right, stirring the fog, sending eddies of dust swirling toward her. At first she saw nothing; then two pins of red light pierced the gloom and grew more defined, into floating orbs. They peered at her, tracked her. They stopped when she stopped. A high-pitched cackle sliced through the air. Mara shivered. The eyes bobbed up and down, in sync with the rhythms of the taunting laughter.

  After a few more steps, she lunged into the fog toward them.

  A foot-long black salamander crouched on the cement balustrade, staring at her. It reared onto its hind legs, flicked its tongue and hissed. The sides of its head flared into a bloodred fan two feet wide. Mara tensed. The creature bound away toward Main Street.

  Stepping back onto the road, something wriggled beneath her foot. A red python writhed under her shoe; its tail whipped around, slapping her calf. She jumped back, releasing its head. The creature coiled, then jutted into the air, less than a foot from her face, its flicking tongue inches from her nose. She raised a hand.

  The snake dissolved into a shower of pixels.

  Clicking and scratching surrounded her. Caws and screeches came from farther away. Something wet slid around in the fog.

  It occurred to her that the thunderclaps they had heard earlier had stopped at some point. The blue lights coming from the center of the bridge, above the river, reflected more steadily in the mist. They were no longer coming in bursts of blinding intensity. Looking back, she could see the silhouette of the dragon perched at the top of the elevator, spreading its wings but not launching into the air.

  She continued along the yellow line.

  Until it disappeared.

  At first she thought the wisps of vapor had obscured the fluorescent line, then supposed it simply had not been painted the entire length of the bridge. When the roadway rippled, she understood. An undulating carpet of snakes filled both lanes between the raised walkways flanking the bridge. The leading edge reared up from the pavement. Dozens of diamond-headed serpents—some barely more than worms, others thicker than tree trunks—jutted forward, fangs exposed, tongues flicking. A chorus of hisses fused into a loud drone, punctuated by spits, snaps and rattles.

  Mara raised her hands.

  T
he sea of serpents parted. Snakes flowed over the raised walkways, writhing en masse up the cement balusters on each side of the bridge. The hard edges of the bridge now writhed. Wrapping themselves through openings in the balustrades, larger serpents levered their heads into the air high above the road, creating a lattice for the smaller snakes to climb. They wove themselves together into a serpent-lined dome arching and glistening over the road ahead.

  “Great,” she said aloud.

  She edged into the glowing blue fog, crouching through the writhing passageway. Heads separated from the undulating roof, bobbed and weaved toward her, stretching downward to get a look or a whiff. All she could see clearly was the yellow line on the asphalt, the wet scaly sheen rippling in the archway above and the bright blue light ahead.

  The light intensified.

  The fog thickened.

  She quickened her pace, was about to break into a jog when something low on the road ahead moved; a shadow shifted in her direction. She stopped so suddenly she pitched forward into the gloom and caught a glimpse of a large gaping mouth lined with teeth. Getting her balance, she stepped backward onto something soft. The tunnel of snakes had closed behind her. It was now a wall.

  A large mass skittered, scratched on the road ahead, heavily enough that Mara could feel it thumping through the pavement. A jaw snapped, up from the ground. Leaping out of the fog two feet ahead of her, a flat-headed, craggy-skinned alligatorlike thing flung itself forward, growling. Picking itself up on stubby legs, it ran for her feet, snapping. She backed up into the writhing mat of snakes, felt several wind themselves around her shins. She kicked, screamed. Something slid from behind, around her waist. The alligator-thing lunged forward again.

  She raised her hand to ward it off and a bolt of lightning shot out of her palm, striking the creature on the head. It exploded in a ball of flame and disappeared in a cloud of ash.

  She turned on the mass of snakes behind her and held out her hands. Bolts flew from both palms. Dozens ignited, exploded in a hail of sparks and flame. The rest pulled back, retreating to the walkways and farther down the road.

  “Enough.” The command echoed in the gloom ahead.

  Mara recognized the voice. It was her mother’s.

  CHAPTER 65

  THE PAVEMENT SHOOK beneath Mara’s feet as she advanced through the glowing mist toward the center of the bridge. Trembles came in waves, powerful enough to cause her to hold out her hands for balance. A metallic screech echoed as a streetlight fell across the roadway, extending beyond the edge of the bridge and snapping in two. The bottom portion lay in her path, propped over the road by the balustrades. She stooped to pass under the metal pole, keeping her eye on two serpents slithering across it.

  After she cleared the obstacle, she looked beyond, peering through streams of mist. Before her stood a transparent blue barrier, a wall of static between her and the center of the bridge. From a riverbank or some other vantage point, she was sure it looked like a giant blue bubble encasing the bridge, but from this perspective, it was a wall of blue light that prevented her from moving forward.

  Just inside the bubble stood four obelisks, two on each side of the road, strobing from base to tip like the pair at the entrance, thrumming in time with the waves of illumination coursing through the fog wafting outside the electric barrier. In the center of the road stood a block of stone, six feet wide and four feet tall, the same gray as the bridge’s superstructure, equidistant to the obelisks.

  An altar.

  More metal and glass shards littered the roadway at its base, the remains of light sconces previously mounted to the obelisks. The metal fixtures and glass clattered, jangled against the asphalt as quakes rippled through the bridge.

  Mara reached out and touched the barrier with her fingertips. An electrical snap split the air. A gaseous ripple of darker blue expanded in circular bands through the wall from where she had touched it. Ozone filled the air. Mara could feel the hair on her arms rise, but felt no shock. She pressed her palms against it. She sensed a resonance, heard a deepening hum the harder she pushed. It resisted her.

  The quaking of the bridge intensified. The obelisks and the pedestals on which they stood swayed against the blackness of the arch rising out of the roadway some thirty feet beyond. Mounted above the entrance, above the right side of the road, two orange warning signs luminesced and warned about the low clearance of the structure. The one on the left pointed to the road and indicated a clearance of fourteen feet eleven inches. The second hung askew, pointing off the right toward an abutment nestled against the arch. It read fourteen feet four inches. Below the signs, no light penetrated. Inside the arch was inky, thick blackness, stark against the night sky and the silhouetted forest on the far bank of the river.

  Something at the edge of the arch caught the ambient blue glow of the bubble, jutted out of the opening and retreated. It happened so fast that Mara wasn’t sure she had actually seen anything. A moment later, she saw it again; a black ribbon waved in the dark, out of the archway and then back in.

  The quaking intensified. Mara flashed back to the turbulence on the plane as it had plunged into the Columbia.

  The obelisks glowed brighter, strobed faster.

  Something swayed in the pitch-black interior of the arch. She sensed the movement, felt the pavement shudder in time with its sway. A snout emerged from the dark, lifted and caught light with its wetness. A jaw lowered and a black tongue flicked between its teeth, below two shiny nostrils. It swayed left, then right, revealing more of its flattened head as it came out of the dark, into the blue ambience of the obelisks. After several more sways, the head of what Mara could only think of as a truck-size iguana lumbered out of the unlit arch, hanging low to the pavement. It sauntered toward her until its stocky front legs were visible—and so too was its passenger.

  Mounted just above the shoulders sat Diana, hips rolling forward with the movements of the beast below her. She stared down at Mara with darkly lined, mossy-green eyelids half lowered over yellow irises and slitted pupils. The coiled serpent remained inverted on her brow. Her hair, now wild and much darker, almost black with no sign of gray, flowed away from her face like a mane. She wore a black robe that gave off an emerald sheen as it shifted with the stride of the iguana. It was open at the collar, revealing the scars and bite marks along her neck and where a necklace of coppery scales, the hide of some reptile, fanned across her bare chest, glinting in the ambient light.

  Sending shudders rippling through the bridge with each step, the giant iguana took three long minutes to lumber from the arch to the obelisks. When Diana pulled on its reigns, the creature stopped. She turned sideways on her mount, held up the hem of her robe and stepped down onto the creature’s knee and to the pavement. After straightening her robe, she stepped in front of the beast and flicked her wrist at it. Sending a violent rumble through the bridge, it reared up on its hind legs, turned to the left and fell onto the balustrade with a crash.

  Mara crouched for balance, sure the bridge would give way.

  The creature pushed off with its hind legs, whipped its massive tail and levered itself off the bridge, tearing away a chunk of cement barrier with its belly. A moment later, a loud splash echoed from the river below.

  Diana, keeping her eyes on Mara, walked to the altar and stepped onto a riser behind it. She clapped her hands once. From the darkness beneath the arch, two lines of robed, hooded figures walked in lockstep on each side of the roadway toward them. They filed past the altar to stand between the glowing obelisks on each side. They fell to their knees, bent forward and placed their palms on the pavement with their heads facing downward.

  “Bring forth the husk,” Diana called into the sky.

  Two hooded men emerged from the arch carrying a stretcher with a body covered by a heavy blanket. They walked slowly, down the slight incline from the arch to the obelisks, turned to the altar and placed their cargo on the ground in front of it.

  Diana stepped down from her ri
ser and walked in front of the altar, not approaching the body but walking toward the translucent blue boundary. She stopped just a foot away.

  Mara could not help but stare at her mother’s duplicate, at the coiled serpent on her brow, the blazing yellow eyes and the dozens of scars on her neck, arrayed in pairs of puncture wounds from jawline to shoulders. A knot rose up in Mara’s throat; she wasn’t sure if she was about to scream or whimper.

  Diana’s gaze tracked behind Mara, causing her to turn. The writhing mass of snakes inched toward her. Mara raised her hand.

  “No, do not hurt them,” Diana said. “You have done enough damage. I cannot allow you to do more harm.”

  “I’m not interested in your pets or your gods or whatever these things are.” Mara turned to face her. “Give me my mother and go back where you came from.”

  Diana laughed. “That’s not going to happen.” She feigned forbearance, tilting her head as if explaining something to an idiot, speaking a half-beat slower. “Let me show you something so you’ll understand.”

  She pivoted just enough to nod to the men standing next to the body on the road. They each bent over, grabbed a corner of the blanket and marched forward, revealing the body beneath.

  It was Diana.

  Mara’s heart skipped, thinking it was her mother. However, this body too had the tattoo and scars.

  “My previous…flesh. My body from the old realm, now just a cadaver,” Diana said. She walked toward the left side of the body, leaned over its head. Opening her mouth widely, she emitted a low gurgle and retched a viscous, lavalike sputum across the length of the body. The corpse ignited. Black smoke billowed upward, blotting out the light of the obelisks, so dense Mara could no longer see Diana or the altar. Ash and soot floated, bumped against the periphery of the bubble.