by Ember Lane
She was dressed: her uniform black, military, certainly combat ready.
“The gel, where’s gel?” I asked Pog desperately, clawing for hope where there was only desolation.
“It’s drained, gone. She’s gone.” Pog thumped the top.
He darted to the next. We cleared it. A male this time, smart, trimmed, ready for combat. The pod was dry, its life force emptied. His future drained away with it.
Pog turned to me: his eyes, like the pods, devoid of life. We then surveyed the rest, stunned by the sheer scale of the loss, the waste.
“They’re all dead,” Pog said, but any life had fled his words, just hopelessness remaining.
There were thousands of them. If they were dead in Barakdor, were they dead in real life? It seemed logical. Ruse was broken, destroyed, carrying the methodology to end the human race. Had someone used it to destroy them? Or had they just pulled a plug? It was over for these folks. An entire army lay dead before us. It begged one question:
“What’s ShadowDancer going to fight with?”
Pog’s mouth gaped open as if the question hadn’t crossed his mind. “He’ll have a plan. He hasn’t made it this far without some craft.”
The others called us over. We left the pods, briefly explaining that we’d found a dead army. It appeared to comfort Mezzerain and Sutech, but I guessed it was just fewer for them to battle. This was the enemy. They had no connection.
Our path was straight. It led to a metallic-looking maw. Sutech and Mezzerain led, though neither had their weapons drawn. We knew a confrontation loomed and that nothing would interrupt its arrival. It took us a couple of hours to walk through the ranks of dead pods until we stood before the entrance.
It was square, around the size of the Nexus Fault. A sheet of metal blocked our way: a door, odd like the rest of Ruse, out of place, way too modern. Faulk approached it, feeling around, demanding his tool bag, and setting to work. Both Pog and Faulk searched the doorway, though portal was a more apt description.
The Nexus Rod pulsed in my hand. It urged me forward. I approached the door, veering to one side. Offering up the rod, I waited. A small disc slid away revealing a socket. I plugged the end of the Nexus Rod into it.
The portal slid open.
We entered Slaughtower.
Name: Alexa Drey. Race: Human. Type: Chancer.
Age: 24. Alignment: The House of Mandrake. XP: 138,341.
Level: 32. Profession: Chooser. Un/Al pts: 0. Reputation: Known.
Health Points: 30/550 Energy: 46/510 Mana: 35,945, Shadow Mana: 114,006
HP Regen: 55/Min EN Regen: 51/Min MA Regen: N/A SMA Regen: NA
Attributes: (Level, Bonuses)
Vitality: (12, 38), Stamina: (12, 5)*3, Intelligence: (98, 0)*4
Charisma: (6, 6), Wisdom: (23, 8)*3, Luck: (7, 5)
Humility: (2, 0), Compassion: (3, 0), Strength: (3, 20), Agility: (79, 0)
XXXXXXXXXXX
Talents:
Tongues of Time, The Veils of Lamerell.
Quests:
Seek out the Legend of Billy Long Thumb. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Unknown.
The Veils of Lamerell. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Death.
Sub Quest: The master is now the slave, his command now his prisoner. Free the gambler; end his torment, and confront one of five. Status: Complete.
Sub Quest: Catch a thief. Status: Complete.
Sub Quest: Seek the Prince of a Cheated House. Canelo James lives and holds the answers. Status: Complete.
Sub Quest: Seek Sutech Charm, and tell him his daughter’s wish. Status: Complete.
Sub Quest: Release the Witches of Speaker’s Isle that they might spread the word. Status: Complete.
Sub Quest: Destroy the first, kill the immortal, and you will bring hope to the world. Status: Incomplete.
Chapter Thirty
ShadowDancer or Zender
A corridor led away—empty, rectangular, its floor, sides and ceiling all smooth, sleek, and gray. A single file of lights broke the ceiling’s blandness, trapped flames like fireflies spreading light. Dark doorways punctured the walls. We hesitated in the entrance. The door slid shut behind us.
Billy took the lead, marching down like he owned the place. Mezzerain drew his sword. Sutech followed suit, Faulk too. We hesitated with every sound, every creak of the place, but after fifty or so paces, our hearts calmed a little.
As we passed the first side doors, the place suddenly came alive. A soldier crossed the corridor, marching like he was on duty. Another crossed the other way. A troop of them appeared at its end, striding straight toward us. A group of mantises walked past us, a mageborn in their middle.
“They’re all dead,” Billy said, and as if the scene was waiting for his words, it glitched and froze.
They all stopped, facing us, their auras thickening. No one moved. I hardly breathed. My heart tried to beat through my rib cage.
“Will you shut up?” Charlotte hissed. “You’ve just woken them.”
Her words broke the stasis. All focus turned to Billy and Charlotte. The mageborn reacted first, sending a bolt of magic straight at her from its Nexus Rod. Charlotte screamed and tried to screw herself into a ball. I dove in front of her, reaching out with my own rod, intercepting its magic and catching it. My rod crackled with magical static. I hesitated for a slim moment before I flicked it back to the mageborn with interest, and the battle began.
Billy attacked, a shrill shriek accompanying his ferocious assault. The mantises fell under his blurring blade. The mageborn accepted my strike, returning it to me with a smirk on its bug face. This time I was more than ready, catching its power with one end of my staff, letting the magic travel through its magnification and sending it back from its other end with a ferocity born of my recent desolation.
The mageborn exploded like it was mere tinder wood.
Meanwhile, Sutech, Mezzerain, and Faulk were battling with the soldiers. Their rage appeared to be winning the day, hatched from the frustration of captivity. Pog struck randomly, choosing his prey with his usual calculated coldness.
Then they all came, every monster we’d encountered since entering the Nexus Fault. They poured from the margins: scorpions, spiders, mantises of all types, the big cats, the lizards, and then right at the back, the Cers.
I picked out the cats, blasting them with gray magic. Pog darted around, vanishing, stabbing, and appearing again. Mezzerain and Sutech pressed forward at first, but the tide of our aggressors was too much. The force of their press pushed us back to the portal. Soon, we were fighting shoulder to shoulder. The corridor narrowed the field and that was to our advantage.
All we had to do was battle through a hundred yards of rabid foes.
My magic was stifled, not suited to the close quarter fighting. Swapping for my axes, I joined the melee properly. We hacked. We sliced. It was relentless, sapping, and endless. But they fell, and their bodies piled up. We started advancing, stepping over the heaped corpses, intent on the corridor’s end, though we had no idea what lay in wait for us there.
“Magic!” Pog screamed as a bolt of it came our way.
It struck me in my gut, sending me flying back against the steel door. It was weak, though, almost half hearted as if their stasis-like existence had nullified their power. I equipped the Nexus Rod, suddenly understanding, and rushed forward, spreading my magic all around with no worry of consequence.
My confidence appeared to infect all. We surged forward. I took the scorps in my stride, the cats as I passed, the soldiers and the spiders when I faced them. The others dealt with my remnants. We slaughtered all, our power too great for the undead.
The soldiers died too, but I saw each face and imagined it in its pod. This was wrong, but instead of calming me, my rage grew hotter, and before I knew it I was through the worst of them and facing the Cers.
They held a line like it was drawn in sand, uncrossable, defendable. I called a halt to our advance just before it, panting hard, but ready for more.
The lead Cer held up his hand, and the clatter of the battle behind me died its own death. Once calm and still, the Cer traced a symbol in the air, like a rune. Iridescent blue lines formed a gateway, and an eerie fog appeared, pushing and expanding the corridor to double, tripled its width.
All faded to black, to midnight, just a few stars in the impossible sky overhead.
A rider materialized. He was holding a wolf standard aloft, looking out over black steppes. He slammed the standard into the land’s midnight shale, dismounting and then striding along the steppe, finding a gulley and scrambling down it. He drew a great sword, readying his stance. A wolf jumped out from the scene’s side, snarling, claws extended, bundling the Cer over.
They rolled in a heap, the Cer holding his sword like his life depended on it. They battled, the Cer eventually gaining advantage, forcing the wolf on its back, and the Cer brought his blade to bear in one smooth stroke. He rose, wiping its edge on his checked cloak.
He looked up, covering his eyes with his palm. I followed his gaze. A star, distant, yellow not white, pulsed like a beating heart. It expanded, spreading crimson across the sky, and then exploded in a shower of sparks. One sped toward us, falling like a comet.
The Cer strode to the scene’s edge, the image then blurring and shifting as if a portion of time had passed. It then showed him kneeling by a small bundle. Picking it up, it became clear it was a swaddled child. The Cer took the boy, jumping back on his horse. He then walked his horse down a slope, along a dried riverbed, and then up to a hollow punctured by caves.
The picture changed again, drawing me closer as I tried to reach out to touch it, but the Cer’s illusion held fast. The boy had grown, and he battled. At first it was with other children, then wolves, lizards, and cats. Finally, it was with other Cers, and though his clothes matched theirs, they somehow didn’t suit the boy. Then the boy ended the Cer who had rescued him, and he then led the rest. The warriors followed him into battle after battle even though he was barely shoulder high to any.
The boy Zender had been born, but he was no ShadowDancer yet.
Black fell like a curtain as I watched this theater of strands. The single comet still plummeted, golden, a tail like a streaming firework. The ball of fire fell to Earth with a mighty explosion. Zender rode up to its crater, sauntered actually, cocky, assured. A fat man scrambled up to its lip. He looked out of breath: short, bulky, and though dressed all in golden armor, he resembled no warrior, just a pretender. He screamed at Zender, but the boy just stared back down, bemused, amused, by this one show of petulance.
At first they squared off, intent on each other’s destruction, but the golden man backed down. They talked and appeared to strike some accord, and the fallen god joined the boy, and they formed an army, and they led the Cers toward the light, where the boy bound his eyes, and ShadowDancer was born.
The scene faded, but the Cers remained. The lead one smiled at me then drew a long, curved sword. He attacked without hesitation, aiming straight for my heart. Pog dove between us, his knives flashing. The Cer fell, bloodied. The rest rode forward.
Carnage ensued. The Cers had no answer for our aggression, and we cleared our way through them in no time at all. We didn’t hesitate nor stop as we forged to the ends of the corridor, where we entered a hexagonal chamber, around twenty feet wide. Sutech slumped to the floor as did Mezzerain and Faulk. Pog paced around, testing the five closed doors that split the walls before slumping next to Faulk.
“Not sure I like how easy it was to kill the dead,” Billy said.
“But you saved me,” Charlotte swooned, snatching his hand from his side and holding it close to her breast.
“So what was that all about?” Sutech asked, and I suddenly realized they’d seen the vision too.
“The rise of ShadowDancer,” I replied, and Pog winked at me.
“The story told you more than that.”
He said no more, but he’d whetted my appetite. I replayed all the scenes in my head, trying to see if I could work out what I’d missed. Pog was sharp—much faster than I. He’d seen something I’d missed.
“The second scene,” I muttered.
Pog nodded. “The boy was lost.”
“And the Cers found him.”
But who could be lost on a colony ship?
And then it dawned on me, and I wondered how I’d missed it. I knew ShadowDancer, not him directly but kids like him. I’d dedicated my life to them. They were the waifs, the strays, the rejects of society. They were the ones I’d helped, nurtured, kept alive only for Earth to end. They had no business here. No one would allow their passage. They were insignificant, a by-product of a society that didn’t even deserve them.
They were to be forgotten, left behind.
But one had stowed aboard.
He’d found a way, like the street urchin he was.
It was how they lived, how they survived. They’d see an opportunity and grab it, wringing the life out of it until it bent to their will. The boy Zender had found a way. Against all the odds, he’d escaped Earth.
And suddenly my sworn enemy was my old friend.
Anguish flowed through me like a river of blades. ShadowDancer was the boy, Zender, and the boy was a stowaway: a waif, a stray. While all these thoughts cascaded through me knotting my gut and squeezing my brain dry, Pog had sidled next to me.
“Makes it quite interesting, doesn’t it,” he said.
“Quite hard.”
“Indeed,” he said. “He must have fought for every scrap of power.”
“And yet I’m supposed to kill him. How? I know these kids. They know every trick in the book. They exploit every loophole. I’m just… I’m nothing.”
Pog tapped my knee. “You’re Alexa Drey. Joan trusts you to make the right choices. Think how long he’s been on board. Did he find his way there during the ship’s construction?”
“Any pod would have been safer than the streets. They take chances, weigh up the odds. He survived so he wins.” There was no doubt about that in my mind. “But how? They surely must have known he was in a pod: the registration, the ID.” My head swam.
Pog discarded all my worries, changing the subject. “Belved is the problem. He would have cherished the child throughout. Zender was his first, his only citizen for an age. His directive would be to the boy. He will make sure he survives at all costs.”
The implications were coming thick and fast. The game had gone now. Everything was real. Belved was trying to protect his own—but who killed whom? Who destroyed Ruse? Who tore it down?
Who was the enemy?
Could I destroy one of my own?
The sixth door closed, sealing our hexagonal chamber. The room began to spin, sending me flying, all of us bunching up together. It blurred, pressing us against the floor as we rose up and spun. The centrifugal force grew. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. We stopped abruptly, the spinning abating, then we shifted. I heard the whir of gears. We dropped into a slot. I heard the rumble of an engine, the crack of a magnet, sounds I hadn’t heard since before Barakdor. They were alien now. They didn’t fit. Sutech was wide eyed. Mezzerain’s expression was grim, like he was just about to breach the gates of hell. Faulk looked curiously…curious.
We shot forward like a bullet along a barrel. All of us were slammed against the floor. Our velocity reached peak, then we slowed, and we slowed, and we ground to a halt. The chamber righted itself, falling into another slot with a thump.
“What the hell was that witchery?” Mezzerain asked, standing, sword drawn and facing each door in turn, ready, clearly wanting an honest fight.
Even Sutech looked rattled. “How could we move so fast? Are we in a wagon?”
Faulk took his helmet off, tipping his head one way and then the other like he was trying to leach magic out of his ears. “One of those two will explain. Ruse has been like venturing through an alchemist’s mind. We must be trapped in someone’s dreams.”
Even Billy looked glum, huddlin
g in the corner with Charlotte. “You can judge us at any time,” he muttered. “We want to get off this ride.”
Charlotte hugged him. “Only when you’ve discharged your obligations, dearest. We don’t want to start eternity together until our slate is wiped clean.”
Billy didn’t look so sure. “When one of these doors opens, I think you might regret that choice.”
Pog stood. “Things have gotten progressively stranger since we got here. Faulk is right; we’re in a dream of sorts. It’s one Alexa and I are trying to understand. You’ll just have to trust we know what’s safe and what’s not.”
“Just spit it out,” Mezzerain said. “Tell us what we need to do, what to prepare for. We’ve faced worse, and if we haven’t, there’s still dying to be done, and not by me.”
“If you can enlighten us as to what you think might happen, even if we can’t plan, we can prepare ourselves,” Sutech added.
I stood. “I think we’re about to see someone’s truth. It may differ from anything you’ve ever seen before. Remember the rectangles Pog and I cleared outside? That was the beginning. Ruse is the shadows. I have a feeling you’re about to enter its nightmares.”
“Will my blade still work?” Mezzerain asked.
Pog shrugged. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we? Things may look strange, but folks still bleed.”
Mezzerain threw back his head and laughed. “That’s my boy,” he said, clapping Pog around the shoulders.
“A rousing speech, but this is no Ruse I have ever ventured in,” Billy said as a door slid open, and a burst of steam hissed in.
I left first. Pog was right behind me. The others fell into file, now happy to let us lead. We stepped out into a corridor, much thinner than the one before. The trapped flames of before were now bulkhead lights: their halogen illumination spread even, the occasional one flickering to add the ambience of desertion. Wires hung down from disturbed ceiling panels, and more burst out from the walls in tumbles, like bloated bellies.