by Sam Ryder
“See?” Beat said. “Me neither. I grew up in the system. I literally have no one to go back to.”
“That’s kind of messed up,” I said a little too loudly, which drew a few looks in my direction. I couldn’t tell if they agreed with what I said or not.
“Maybe,” Beat said. “Or maybe it was a kindness.”
I snorted. How could abducting someone and dropping them in a monster-infested wasteland be considered anything but criminal? And yet she was right. I felt better here. More myself than I’d ever felt before. Weird. “Okay, fine. I’m with you. But why not bring a thousand Outcasts here. A million. Slime us all with the ooze and build an army. We’d have the monsters eradicated in a single Black.”
“I asked the same thing,” Beat said. “I don’t understand all the logistics of it, but whatever technology or magic Eve uses to transport her recruits here has its limits. She can only bring so many at a time, hence the limited cocoons. And she can’t just shuttle herself back and forth again and again. She has to rest in between. Which means our group doesn’t get much bigger than this—at least that’s what Lace told me.”
I remembered the Circle. How the blue lion had been killed almost immediately. The others too, including the capable, gilled warrior. “Then why would they allow so many of us to die in the very beginning? Why not train us first, and then let us face the monsters?”
Beat said, “That’s what they used to do, long ago. Remember, you’re talking about beings who have lived and survived here for many years. They’ve tested every scenario. They have it down to a science. They found that new Warriors couldn’t handle their first Black. They would all die during their first Black. After they instituted the Circle, they learned that those who survive have a significantly greater chance of surviving the Black for more than a night or two.”
It made sense, though it was still very fucked up. Then again, I was the one who’d rather stay here than go back to my pathetic life on Earth. “And the wards?” Our conversation had come full circle, no pun intended.
“The wards are part of the problem. If we stay inside them, the monsters will have free reign to attack them. They are weakening Black by Black. They were strong when the Three first created them over a century ago, but they were never meant to be a long-term solution. Lace explained them to me like a hand pushing in on a balloon. It’s flexible, strong, will hold for a while. But eventually it will break and then we’ll be overrun.”
Damn. The situation was even more dire than I thought. I was about to ask another question—I only had a million more cycling through my analytical head—but Kloop stopped suddenly and held up a hand to silence us. “For the Three,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He turned and stepped forward, vanishing like a stone dropped in a dark pool.
“What the…”
Beat grinned at me. “You’ll get used to it.” She said it like she was a seasoned veteran of the Black, and not a three-day old newb like myself.
The rest of the group followed the Protector, each disappearing through the invisible ward-field. Wait, I thought, tilting my head on an angle. Not invisible. Though it was constantly flitting in and out of my field of vision, I could see…something. A shimmer along the edges, the slight distortion of the very air before me, like the way a mirage looks in the middle of a superheated desert.
I stepped right up to it, reaching out slowly. My fingers disappeared and I felt a strangely magnetic pull, like the outside world was trying to drag me through. I resisted, darting my hand back where I could see it again. It was surreal, because I could see through the ward, could see the landscape and the mountains fading into the distance. I just couldn’t see any of my fellow Warriors.
I took a deep breath, preparing myself mentally to step through into a world that might already be full of monsters, but before I could make the decision on my own, a strong hand burst out of thin air and grabbed me by the arm.
It yanked and I stumbled forward, feeling a bit of pressure in my ears, sucking at me until my entire body popped! and I emerged from the other side.
More than a few of the Warriors were chuckling. Hilarious, I thought. At the same time, I was glad I hadn’t fallen over completely.
Kloop said, “Show’s over. We need to focus.” He gestured at the sky and everyone immediately grew silent and serious.
A shiver trembled down my spine. In a way, it was beautiful. What was left of the bronze light was twisting and swirling, as if locked in an embrace with the growing tide of darkness.
The more I watched, however, the less beautiful it looked. With each passing second, it looked more like the darkness was devouring the light rather than dancing with it.
Until there was nothing, but
Black.
~~~
For the first five minutes, the Black was scary and, to my surprise, a little boring.
Nothing happened.
Well, no nothing, just nothing interesting. Kloop and a few of the others lit torches that crackled with the same unnaturally red fire that had lighted Vrill’s cave. I could see the thin coating of black demon’s blood painted on the handles. They placed the torches on the ground in a circle around us. This provided a neat area we could gather in, with at least thirty feet of empty space between us and the Black in each direction. But even the demonlight had its limits, and its reach descended into gray shadows and then a wall of impenetrable darkness.
“It’s like a beacon,” I whispered, my voice sounding like a shout in the utter silence. “Won’t we draw the monsters to us?”
“That’s the point, dummy,” Lace said, lifting one edge of her lip to reveal a single fang. She’d drawn a set of wicked-looking daggers—her weapons of choice.
I realized my mistake right away. If the monsters came to us, they wouldn’t attack other sides of the ward field. “How many are there?” I asked, more to distract myself from the fear of the unknown than because I really wanted to know. In fact, I really didn’t want to know.”
Lace’s sharp yellow eyes seemed to bite into my own. Gods, she really was beautiful. Deadly, but beautiful. “It varies from Black to Black. In total, thousands. Maybe millions. But they’re not organized. The different species fight each other, which helps us. Usually we face one species at a time, but some of them have learned to work together. When that happens, we might see fifty or sixty. Those are the worst nights. Usually we have to leave someone behind.”
I remembered the way the Maluk’ori had taken down the injured troll. I hoped I wouldn’t be seeing the demon horde again tonight. Then again, was the alternative really any better?
All conversation was cut off as howls shattered the silent night.
“Fuck,” the dark-skinned dude from Vrill’s home planet said. “Hellhounds. I hate hellhounds.”
“Better than bludgeons,” the creature with white fur all over his body said.
I didn’t know what a bludgeon was, but that didn’t matter. Not when the sounds of the hellhounds’ howls seemed to be getting closer.
“Formation!” Kloop urged us. I didn’t know what to do, but it seemed to be a case of learning on the job, so I followed Beat’s lead as we backed into a tight circle, each facing outward. “Sam Ryder. Hold that spot no matter what. Our lives depend on you as yours depends on us.”
I heard the words but had trouble processing them because of the growing noise. Something was coming—and fast. I could hear snarling and snapping of jaws.
My heartbeat was as fast as the clop of a racehorse’s hooves on a track now, my fingers gripping the hammer’s handle so tight they were beginning to ache. I tried to relax them, but almost dropped the heavy weapon, so I reasserted my hold.
It was like every scary movie I’d ever watched rolled into one, my eyes darting from side to side, trying to see what was coming but seeing only darkness.
A single howl split the night, so close I flinched in its direction. Still, I couldn’t see anything but our torches and the ring of darkness beyond.
A dozen bloodthirsty cries answered the first.
And then they attacked.
A half-dozen monstrous beasts bounded into the circle of light simultaneously, snarling at us. They were dogs, but not like any I’d ever seen before. For one, they were the size of the buffalo I’d seen when driving through South Dakota on my way to Mount Rushmore. Their jaws were so large they could snap me in half. Their paws were like monster truck wheels.
And those were their least intimidating characteristics. The worst were their eyes, or I should say lack of eyes. Where their eyes should’ve been there were empty, sunken pits, glowing red with what appeared to be firelight.
One of them howled and a jet of flame shot from its maw.
Maybe I did want to go home. Just a little.
The fire spewed toward Beat, but she simply raised her shield to resist the heat, cringing back until the hellhound extinguished the blast of flames. Then she attacked, shoving her spear along the edge of the shield, straight out.
It pierced the fiery hound’s eye…pit? The beast reared up on its back paws and released an agonized scream, tumbling to the side.
“The newb’s got the right idea,” Kloop said. “Go for the head.” I assumed the instruction was more for my benefit than for anyone else’s. Presumably they’d all survived bouts with this type of monster before.
Having seen their comrade’s fate, the other hellhounds backed off a little, prowling around the edges of our group, snarling and snapping the entire time. If they were trying to intimidate us, it was working—at least on me.
Three more emerged from the darkness. With one dead, it left eight to kill.
Two lunged forward from one side, and everything Protector Kloop had said vanished from my head. The attacking hounds weren’t directly in front of me, but I reacted anyway, twisting in that direction and swinging my hammer. The heavy metal landed squarely on the beast’s maw, which was roiling with flames, the impact sending shockwaves up my arm all the way to my shoulder.
The hellhound flew backward. The moment it landed I realized my mistake.
Not only had I moved out of position, but I’d stepped in front of the Warrior beside me, Beat, blocking her path.
The second attack had been the hounds’ main intent, directed right at the spot I’d vacated.
They’d played me. Almost like they could smell my inexperience like a bad odor.
Lace tried to pivot to protect the area I’d left open, but she was too late. The hellhound dove into the gap, landed, and then sprang forward into the back of the Warrior on the opposite side of the circle from where I’d been standing. It was the white-furred fellow whose name I didn’t even know. He didn’t even see it coming, because I was supposed to protect his rear.
I made matters worse by trying to run to his aid, inadvertently bashing into Lace, who was still trying to defend two spots. “Idiot!” she snarled, shoving me away, the edge of her dagger nearly slicing me open across the chest.
Another hound, which had likely sensed I was the weakest link, charged in, but Lace slashed her blades in short succession—snick-snick!—and the beast’s throat opened up, spurting fiery blood, flames painting the ground in spots and whorls.
I tried to recover my position, but the fight was already over. The dark-skinned dude had slayed a hellhound with a longsword, Beat had taken out another, and Kloop had lopped the heads off two with his axe. The blue lion had gotten one with his massive clawed paws and our resident giant had squashed the last one under his foot.
The white-furred guy, however, was dead, mauled from behind.
Because of me.
TWELVE
FAILURE
We trudged back, the sky silvery gray as the new sun rose from somewhere beyond the dark mountains.
We were inside the wards now, safe.
I felt like shit.
For what I’d done; or rather, for what I hadn’t done. I hadn’t obeyed Protector Kloop’s simple command to hold my position. I had the body of a Warrior, even some of the skills, but that didn’t make me one. My war hammer felt heavier than before, and for a while I let it drag in the dirt at my side. A portion of it was lit with fire—the blood of the hellhound I’d bashed in while letting another break through to kill the furry alien whose name I didn’t even know.
“That guy was a douchebag anyway,” Lace said, appearing at my side. Her whiskers twitched with amusement as I gaped at her. “What? He was. Always trying to bed me. Always talking about what a great Warrior he was.”
I hated to judge someone I’d just gotten killed, but he didn’t sound like such a great guy. Still… “I failed,” I said.
Lace laughed, as if I’d cracked a joke. “See if you feel the same way after fifty Blacks,” she said. “There’s no such thing as failure here, unless you’re dead.”
Her words were so different to those of Protector Kloop with all his support-each-other-rah-rah bullshit. She didn’t sound that different from Vrill. I lowered my voice enough so that no one else could hear me. “Then why did you try to protect my position? Why are you still here defending the Three?” I asked. Someone with her attitude, like Vrill, would be more likely to make a run for it.
“It’s no secret I despise the Three,” she said, making no effort to keep her own voice down. Nearby, Kloop grunted. “But there’s something to be said for strength in numbers. I was only doing what I thought would give me the best chance of survival. Out there, you’re all alone, unless you can find a tribe that will take you.”
“A tribe?”
“I always forget how clueless you newbs are,” she said with a chuckle. “You think everyone chooses to stay? Let me tell you, fighting in the Black every night isn’t for everyone.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of Vrill. “I just didn’t realize there were that many who left.”
“There aren’t. At least not alive. Most are killed quickly, in their first solo Black or two. But the strongest survive. Some of them have formed bands, tribes.” Not Vrill, I thought, wondering why she hadn’t joined one of these groups. “Most of the tribes are friendly with the Three, even if they’re not willing to be a part of our pathetic little army.”
Again, not Vrill and her tribe of one. “I see.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you? That Lri-Ay you were with, the one named Vrill…”
“What about her?” I asked, suddenly defensive.
“She’s trouble,” Lace said simply. With that, she walked away, her long tail switching from side to side behind her.
Beat filled her spot. “She’s right, you know. From what I’ve heard, bad luck follows this Vrill character like her own shadow.”
“She saved my life in the Circle,” I said, feeling a strange mix of emotions. Frustration at having screwed up in my first true Black. Sadness at having lost someone their life—even if he was a douchebag as Lace had said. Anger that Vrill was an outcast from everything and everyone else on this planet. And, to my surprise, relief that I was still alive.
“Doesn’t mean you have to save hers,” Beat said.
There was some truth to that, mostly because Vrill didn’t need me to save her life. She was more than capable of surviving on her own, even alone. But that didn’t mean she didn’t deserve someone to help her.
But was that really what I wanted? I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t know enough about the situation with the Three. Why were they dying? What was the purpose of it all? Were they really the good ones when they abducted people from their homes and brought them to a planet overrun with monsters?
I set my jaw, hefting my hammer back over my shoulder, fiery hellhound blood dripping behind me. One way or another, I was determined to figure things out.
Then I would make a decision.
~~~
“Is this where we live?” I asked as we approached a shadowy overhang nestled against the cliffs. Makeshift structures had been built from flat, smooth stones, connected with some kind of gray mortar. T
hey weren’t much more than a series of walls dividing the area into a dozen or so pieces.
The dark-skinned male version of Vrill grinned a white grin. The silvery sun was a quarter of the way into the sky, chasing more of the darkness from the Black away. “It’s more comfortable than it looks. We have beds made of moss. Hunch—he’s our servant—keeps the fire burning and there’s always plenty of leafrats to eat. We even have a system to capture fresh rainwater when it storms.”
It didn’t sound comfortable, not even compared to my crappy apartment with its threadbare, beer-stained couch. “Nice,” was the only reply I could come up with. I remembered something else I wanted to ask the strong-looking male. “Your…kind…the Lri-Ay—do you all require…rejuvenation?”
He chuckled, stabbing a long, curving scimitar into the dirt near a small cookfire. Sure enough, leafrat kabobs were being turned slowly on a spit managed by a gnarled old creature with warts all over his face. The one this guy had called ‘Hunch’ I assumed. “You had some fun with Vrill then,” he said. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her. But yes, sex is a necessity for my kind. It gives us energy, like food does for you. Food does nothing for us but fills our bellies until we shit it out. Most of us avoid it altogether.”
“And how often do you need to…”
“Have sex? Depends on how much energy I use. I conserve as much as I can during the long days, but the Black always takes a lot out of me. I’m Dravon, by the way.”
“Sam Ryder,” I said, extending my hand for a shake.
He looked at it and extended his own hand slowly. When I tried to shake it, his hand was a limp fish, despite the bulging muscles at his disposal. “That’s how we greet each other on Earth. Or at least one of the ways.”
“Interesting. You and Beat are the first two Earthlings to survive since I arrived.”
“So, do you need to…you know…get it on?” I couldn’t help but to be curious about the whole sex-for-rejuvenation thing. Every guy on Earth would be in awe of such a concept.