In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  Typo groaned as he sat up, tracing the deformed shadow extending from Justus’ leg to the opposite side of the door. There was only one Elite who could do that. It was an ancient technique no longer taught due to Reeve’s absence and no longer able to be passed down because the only one who could possibly teach it had never been capable of much after his near-fatal standoff with the legendary de Vaux.

  But he just made up for nearly a millennium as a vegetable. Thank you… Orione.

  Still winded, Typo stumbled through the battlefield, warily coming to his Lord’s side, but by then, Gannon was satisfied, panting out of exhaustion and anger. He did not settle his attention on his failure of an heir, instead flashing his beaming eyes to the new Griffin. The sorcerer did not move; he continued to stare with his blaster lowered, locked down so long as his code told him to do so.

  “Lovely work as always,” Gannon said through heavy, musky breaths. “But unfortunately, I too remember some things about you, including the fail-safe construction of your remotes.”

  Gannon paused, waiting to see if Justus had a response, but only an eerie silence lingered. Gannon snickered, looking back at Griffin. “See, don’t you feel more special now? That boy fiddled with the plans, but I don’t see why you can’t fulfill your original purpose.”

  Griffin only reflected his cold stare, unable to think for himself.

  Gannon reached out and grabbed Typo at the arm, shoving him toward Justus. “Get it over with.”

  Typo could not be happier with the decision. “Certainly.”

  “Elites,” Gannon continued, “help me secure Griffin; Haxors, get that damn door open.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  As everyone took to their tasks, Typo set forth on his own, glaring at Justus’ twitching, huddled body. There was the ever-so-slight exchange of air in his lungs, but his ability to properly function had most certainly been compromised. No doubt the bones in his face were fractured; they had taken such a beating that Justus no longer resembled himself, just a deformity in its most repulsive form.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be suffering much longer.” Typo roughly hurled Justus into his arms, gradually fading as he proceeded to teleport him to his fate.

  Justus couldn’t see; he couldn’t move—couldn’t hardly feel anything besides the continuous pouring of blood down his face and the sparking of torn nerves, but he was still thinking and listening… And aching inside at his failure.

  His double agent strategy backfired epically; now, he was crumbling, crying inside as he thought of Embry and the queen who so graciously took him in and what they must think. He wouldn’t have the chance to neither apologize nor explain—not this time. He knew this elaborate plan was a risk, but he didn’t think he would fail.

  But he should have guessed. That was all that he ever was in life, a failure. Still… There was the vague tingling of accomplishment in his gut. He did succeed in something: getting a lovely helping of revenge on that backstabber of an apprentice.

  “Here.” Typo shoved something into his twitching hand, forcefully closing Justus’ fingers before letting him go—letting him experience the glorious sensation of flight before his spine collided with rock, the treacherous impact closing off every sense and every thought.

  Twenty-two

  Cry Wolf

  “Come on, faster!” Pinion ordered as we raced down a dark, claustrophobic hallway only alight by the supernatural auras of our allies. I had never seen such carnage, and coming from the literal land of death, that made quite the statement. There were no bodies to race past, only sloppy, minced remains. The blood was so deep and condensed that every step made a fountain of clots and shredded muscle fly up, sticking to our clothes and armor. Already, our black face paint was wearing off, but it didn’t matter. Human blood built our new mask.

  “Over here, assholes!” Mabel released a wailing fire-bomb from her sword. It violently combusted into a barricade of flames, harrowing the tunnels with reaping, echoing cries as Bots were burned alive.

  “Thank Satan we’re in a tunnel,” I commented as Mabel scrambled back to the fleeing rear-guard. “I don’t think my body could handle the shock if you missed under these circumstances.”

  “Well, shoot. I let the perfect opportunity slip away.”

  I snickered in reply, and she smirked as well, our attention resettling on our current run.

  The Bots’ strength, while formidable, did not come from their physical modifications. It showed in their numbers, and with thousands—possibly millions—crawling through the grime of the cities, wadding through the dried sewers, and perching on the rooftops, there was no chance to catch our breath—so little of a chance that no one even inquired about Korbu’s fall. We could only run and keep running toward the palace.

  An arc of polluted light encroached in the distance; Pinion slowed our advance until she was walking, taking heavy, overwhelmed breaths and reveling in the small slice of time we managed to catch. She raised a hand to us, commanding a halt, but she continued forward until she stood beside a busted door frame. She kept to the shadows, flattening her heaving back against the wall as she cast a wary eye outside.

  As a pack of wolves, Bots sauntered, stumbled, and prowled the wide roads, teeth in a continuous whir with the nails and screws branching from their knuckles eagerly spinning. Their heads must have been linked to gears, rhythmically clicking and snapping back and forth to each building they passed, but the spinning circles and lock-on points within their pixelated blue eyes were what we had to avoid. That proved to be the hardest.

  The earth violently shuddered, Encryptors throwing their hands out to maintain balance as a building came crumbling down.

  “They’re not taking any chances,” Pinion observed hatefully. “If the aircraft have even the slightest clue of where we’re hiding, they shoot it right off its fucking foundation.”

  “What quantity of foe has taken to the empyrean?” Embry asked.

  “…Too many,” Pinion replied tensely. She looked over Embry’s battered body. “Are you sure that you have recovered?”

  The robot sympathetically dipped her head. “Yes. Apologies, Queen… The unexpected shift in power and pressure cut through my makeup and momentarily disrupted my electrical flow.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I’m just happy they can’t pick out our vibrations from this massive horde,” Virgil noted with a snarl.

  “Indeed.” Pinion flashed her lime-green eyes through the crowd directly at me. “Ready?”

  I seized up. No, I wasn’t ready—her stupid idea was not only a pain in the ass but also a mockery to my physical strength. Still, Pinion was staying well on the safe side; there were no more second chances from here on out, and that practically forced me to oblige. After all…

  I raised an eye to a passing Bot that suddenly turned and raced off into a building on all fours, a blood-curdling scream breaking the air before being abruptly silenced.

  I couldn’t get to Gannon alone. Much like the Bots used their numbers to their advantage, I had to use the Encryption in the same way.

  Reluctant, I took a much needed, deep breath to prepare myself. I looked to Seek for confirmation, and she flashed me an encouraging thumbs up that was so painfully positive I wanted to puke.

  I closed my eyes, attempting to relax in spite of the chaos. I tried to detach myself from this world, to let my senses expand beyond their already enhanced limits, but I was met with a roadblock—a misty barricade in my head immune to any strikes I threw at it.

  Come on… I silently snarled, outraged. Let me through!

  …Sorry, no dice, Ryze called back. They won’t listen to us.

  “Fucking useless Eyla.” I retracted my hard-kept focus, crossing my arms in disgust. “I don’t know why you make me try this bullshit. No Eyla in all of their right existence would let me cross into the Spirit World, no matter who is speaking on my behalf.”

  “You need to try harder,” Pinion angrily pressed. “Seek
can’t do it all on her own with so many things happening at once!”

  “And you getting your thong in a knot won’t change a thing. I can’t do it.”

  Pinion bit down on her lip. She had to tuck her hand behind her back so that she didn’t blast my head off.

  “The real Eero would have kept trying…” Mabel grumbled.

  I snorted, spinning my head to give her one heaven of a glare. “Well, that makes my decision all the easier, doesn’t it?”

  “…Alleyways,” Seek’s gentle voice came. She had her eyes closed, her neck rearing up like an antenna. “Two blocks west from here. There’s an underground tunnel off a side road… Looks like something made for illegal purposes. It extends a large portion of the way through Aphrite.”

  “And where is the closest fleet of Proxez?” Pinion urged.

  Seek contemplated for a moment, mentally sifting through the silent chatter of Eyla. “Too close for comfort… But it’s not like they will be going anywhere anytime soon. If we can just get to the tunnel, we should be in the clear a good stretch of the way.”

  “But two blocks…” Mabel echoed with fright.

  Someone from the crowd loudly cleared their throat, all eyes shifting as they advanced to the front. “Leave it to me! I would looove to see them try and kill me!”

  A flustered spark of white rushed through Seek’s frail body, jolting her back into reality. “Huh?!”

  “I’ve gooot this!” Sage pushed. “Let my skills make up for your timidity!”

  “Ōi, baka!” Merritt snapped, shouldering her way to the front. “What makes you think that you’re the best?”

  With a sinister chortle not worthy of their whimsical personality, Sage twisted their neck a complete one-eighty to look Merritt in the eye. “Me, because I am the only one who cannot die.”

  “But does not you having to reconstruct your intricate frame by the means of thread incapacitate you for a pronounced duration of time?” Embry inquired.

  Sage cracked an even wider smile—probably because they didn’t understand what Embry said. “Not the point!”

  “That’s not well thought out,” Pinion tensely noted. “At all…”

  Sage plucked their needle from their windpipe and thrust it into the air, smacking the ceiling. “Exxxactly! They won’t expect it!”

  “Sage, I forbid—”

  “CHARGEEE!”

  With the rest of the Encryption proudly choosing to remain behind, Sage tore past their aghast queen and out the door.

  “SAGE!” Mabel whipped out her sword. I threw my arm out, hooking her at the gut as she charged forward.

  “Why would you join that moron?!” I snarled. “Want to get yourself killed?!”

  Frustrated, she swung her flaming sword at my arm; I hardly pulled away in time. “Says the moron!”

  “Guys…?” Seek squeaked.

  Not her pathetic pitch, but the upwelling pool of despair in Seek’s voice dragged my head front and center, capturing a scene I surely did not expect.

  Spools of white thread hugged each of Sage’s fingers like rings, the end strands levitating above the coiled threads. Several Bots were already down at Sage’s feet. The puppet used their bodies as a stage, but oddly enough, there was no fresh blood in sight.

  The Bots strayed from their usual tactics. They did not race forward to devour Sage like a pack of piranhas; instead, they circled Sage like sharks, cautiously drawing closer with gluttonous snarls. Nearby Bots raced out from slums and leaped down from buildings to join in the assassination, merging with the slowly advancing pack.

  “You’re all sooo silly!” Sage giggled, bouncing up and down on the bodies. “Thinking that you can beat meee? Blahahahahaaa!”

  A sole Bot dared to lunge at Sage’s back. Sage dug their heels into the corpses and spun, throwing out their hand and letting a single white string fly. It harpooned the Bot at the shoulder, instantaneously turning the thread red, before Sage swung their large needle down upon the string, severing it.

  The momentum of the Bot’s spring managed to carry it to Sage, but when it landed at Sage’s feet, it was dead—no blood, no fleeting struggle or last breaths, just dead, so still that it was hard to believe that it had been in full-blown attack mode a second earlier.

  “Holy shit,” Virgil breathed in awe. “Dolly can one hit KO.”

  I was thinking the same thing. I had never known how Sage came to have such a massive body count within their home, but their method… It was unlike anything I had ever come across—a genius tactic for someone so stupid.

  Sage smashed their foot down into the freshest corpse. “Come ooon, sissies! I can take you!”

  The Bots paused, contemplating the battle challenge, and then they swarmed as an entire group.

  “Ohhh shi—!” With a glass-breaking scream, Sage grabbed their needle and plunged it into their mountain of trophies, pole vaulting over the incoming sea of monsters. Sage barely gained enough height; they landed on the head of a Bot and ran using the others’ heads as stepping stones to direct the swarm away from us.

  “MOVE!” Pinion commanded, snatching the opportunity and fiercely rounding the corner. “GO, GO, GO!”

  We were off at the first syllable, weapons readied and blood pumping as we flooded into the street, desperate to reach the designated tunnel. Despite how many Bots Sage’s distraction spared us from, there were far too many for any one person to take care of. As spiders, they crawled down the vertical walls with their screws anchoring them to the buildings. They plowed through windows and doors, shattering glass and rock without any regard to their own bodies. All that mattered was stopping us.

  “You take one side, I’ll take the other!” Mabel broke free from my side as soon as she finished her sentence.

  I snarled in disgust watching her go, but she was right; no matter how strong the Encryption was, this was a job that only the supernatural could successfully handle.

  Frustrated, I veered off from the center of the formation to a flank. I sprung before an endangered Encryptor and twisted in the air, severing several impeding heads and limbs with Coruscus in one go. The soldier could only give me a hasty nod of thanks before they proceeded to shoot down any Bots that got too close—but, of course, no one could take care of them all. Their spinning nails and grinding metal mouths further distorted the already chaotic atmosphere. Coruscus was forced to protect me from behind while I took care of the front, grabbing skulls and smashing them together, blowing arms clean off with fueled punches and legs with powered-up kicks.

  “Eero! Look out!”

  I jerked to the left. A comet of fire whizzed over my shoulder, slamming into a free-falling Bot who had leaped out of an upper-story window, aiming for my head.

  Air left my chest in a hollow breath. I snapped my gaze to the opposite side of the battlefield, just barely making eye contact with Mabel as she turned away, swiping her sword and releasing a deadly arc of white fire. I didn’t know whether to be happy or pissed that she came to my aid, but I was most certainly surprised—hopefully, she wasn’t keeping a running score and expecting a retribution of some sort.

  Sickly gargles and screeches threw my head back to my own flank. My jaws quickly chomped down and snapped off an incoming fist before I plowed my foot into the Bot’s gut, launching them back into the rubble they crawled out from. I couldn’t waste time thinking: those bastards were like frogs, throwing themselves off balconies and out windows to infiltrate the heart of the formation. Some succeeded, taking an Encryptor down before being destroyed themselves, but every beat wasted, every second that they stalled dragged us further from our goal.

  “Continue persevering!” Embry encouraged above the disarray, a flighty tune racing past me and to the head of the formation right behind Pinion. I had never seen a violin played so aggressively; Embry’s arm and fingers were blurring, a million discordant notes belonging to all scales smashing into one another.

  But it had an effect—not a great one, but enough to ca
use power surges and briefly disorient nearby Bots.

  A shard of metal pierced my bicep, violently recapturing my attention as my fist knocked a hungry Bot’s head straight off its spine. I couldn’t stop and stare like that—I had to focus on the never-ending waves, and that meant neither Coruscus nor my limbs could stop moving. I was plowing forward, lashing out with fists and kicks, even having to grab some Bots with my jaws and fling them away like chew toys. I was hardly even breathing anymore because I could not spare the time to divert energy elsewhere.

  A deep tearing sensation exploded in a line across my nape, so powerful that my knees wobbled and nearly took me down. I reached over my shoulders and grabbed a Bot in mid-feast, ripping them from my skin and chucking them to the ground, smashing in their face with my feet. But after that first breach, the strikes landed on me became much more frequent. Neither Coruscus nor I could keep up anymore.

  It quickly became less about fight and more about flight. I couldn’t keep using my energy to decapitate one here and rip a heart out there; I just had to get them away and keep chugging. Others came to the same realization, and slowly, our limited supply of make-shift grenades was being set off in desperate attempts to give us even an inch of space. I was stumbling, losing my sense of hearing as limbs exploded beside me and brought about a shrieking chorus of white noise. Severed arms, ears, heads were flying past my face; meteor showers of concrete rained down and pummeled ally and foe alike, each step forward becoming more dangerous than the last the further we were pushed.

  I was so exhausted… I couldn’t help but risk a glance to see how much farther we had to go. Immediately, I regretted checking: an endless flood of Bots was washing into the street and racing toward us shoulder to shoulder, creating a landslide of death.

  Pinion screamed out of pure anger, thrusting her colorful sword forward and strengthening the wide green semi-sphere at the front of the charge. It could only successfully shield the front line, but what it lacked in size it made up for in reliability. Ravenous, the Bots flew toward their impending meals, claws outstretched and shredders spinning in a blur, only to smash into the liquefied glass and crumple to the ground before being trampled by our frantic stampede.