Dreadmyre

by J A Raikes

  I tried to look calm, but truthfully, I was sweating and racking my brain for answers. Heat rose in my face.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, quietly. I felt like a little kid again, getting in trouble with dad and being scrutinized for something I didn’t do. “When those things grabbed me and flew me up to that landing, a creepy guy appeared and asked me something about a shard. He knew who I was, called me out by name and he claimed to know why I was here,” I offered.

  Giles took in a long breath and mulled it over for a solid minute.

  “That’s troubling,” Giles finally said as his forehead furrowed. “I’m not sure who he was, but we’re aware of creatures of the Void that are more apt and dangerous than the Voidkin, though no one has ever come in contact with them. We’ve only had sparse interactions with the Voidkin to begin with and never something this openly confrontational. Any expeditions we’ve ever sent outside the Embervein have been unsuccessful.”

  “Well, I wish I had more to offer, but I don’t. I’m more in the dark about all of this than you seem to be,” I mused.

  I shifted uncomfortably on the examination table and looked around the room. Strange contraptions lined the walls and tables. Tools and medical instruments intermixed and glinted in the sterile light of the room. I sighed and looked to Harris and Giles who both seemed deep in thought.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked, trying to shift the focus from me to something else. Their explanation helped me understand a little bit better what was going on, but I didn’t know why or how I had become a part of it.

  “I’m not sure. The Council is going to need more information if we are going to combat this threat. There isn’t anything we can do against the Void without knowing what brought them here in the first place.”

  Harris chimed in, “What would that take?”

  “It’s more a matter of narrowing down who might have been able to summon the Void and then seeking them out, ruling them out one by one. We have some teams out now who were tasked with finding a few people but none of them have returned yet. Communications are down or at least severely limited, save for direct lines that are hardwired into the mainframe, so it is taking longer than we had hoped.”

  Silence filled the room. Harris looked lost in thought and Giles’s furrowed expression left little room for discussion. I didn’t really know how to engage, so I steered toward a different question.

  “How about my injuries. Is there some explanation that might lead to why or how I recovered so quickly?”

  Giles shook his head. “In all my years working to rebuild broken bodies, I’ve never seen anything like this. You were recovering adequately back at my house. In the last two weeks, I’d say your body was healing only slightly faster than normal. I checked up on your progress two or three days ago..” he said, trailing off as he thought about it.

  Harris interjected. “And you were bruised and scabbed at the Barrow. Your stitches were pretty bloody and that was only a few hours ago. There weren’t that many open wounds, though, considering how much blood you lost at the Fleming’s when Eva and I found you.”

  “That kind of healing just shouldn’t be possible!” Giles said, his gruff voice a mixture of confusion and excitement.

  Just then, a young man with coiffed hair and a dark military style jacket like the ones I saw earlier poked his head around the corner and cleared his throat.

  “Dr. Fleming, the Council is requesting your presence immediately.”

  “Very well, Simon. Thank you,” Giles nodded to the young man who immediately excused himself. Giles slapped his hands against his knees in a gesture of resolution.

  “Well, I guess the rest will have to wait, gentlemen. Finn, when this is all over, we’ll run some tests and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with your body. As it stands, I would take it as a blessing from the Ember and carry on. It seems like it’s going to be a very long evening.” Giles offered, pushing himself up with his hands and moving to the doorway. He paused for a moment and then turned back to face us.

  “Actually, would you be interested in joining? You lads are the only successful group to get here from beyond this Ward and you might know more than you think. I can’t guarantee the Council will need you, but at this point it wouldn’t hurt to have another few sets of ears. We’ve been at this a while and not much closer to having a solution.”

  Harris and I looked at each other, shrugged and got up to join him. I gingerly hopped off the examination table and moved to the wheelchair. As I walked, though, the pain was even less than before and I felt more confident about my body. I sidestepped the chair and decided to muscle my way down the hallway. Both other men in gave a nod of approval and we headed out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was a long, difficult walk back down the hallway. My muscles were definitely atrophied but I wasn’t about to take any moment of movement for granted. My legs gave out from under me a few times and Harris had to catch me to make sure I didn’t split my head open on the wall or floor. It was slow going, but we finally made it back down the hall toward the ornate doorway leading into the Council chamber.

  As we walked, Eva emerged from a room on our left with a small bandage wrapped around her head and a cold pack she held against her injury. We looked at each other in astonishment. Her mouth hung open for a moment, looking me up and down and then she fumbled for some words.

  “You’re walking!” She exclaimed. “How -”

  “Not sure, but no time right now to figure it out,” I replied, holding tightly onto Harris’ arm and shuffling my way down the hall.

  “I didn’t realize how tall you were,” she mused, her accent rounding out the words with a sense of genuine curiosity.

  “Well, it makes fitting into small spaces a pain, but I’ve come to terms with it,” I rattled off, focused on the task of making it from point A to point B.

  The four of us made it down the hallway and finally reached the large doors to the Council chamber. The door clicked open at a wave of Giles’ hand and the guards standing to either side pulled open the massive metal door.

  Giles strode into the room and Harris helped me through the doorway while Eva came in last and the door shut behind us.

  As we entered, I tried to take in all the sights without looking too much like a tourist on his first trip to Disneyland. The chamber was a large hollow room stretching roughly sixty feet upward, give or take. The space was mostly dominated by large windows which were built on an angle leading inward to a point. The center of the roof was a glass belfry with a large mission bell hanging proudly above the city. The walls beneath the windows were tall and were interlaced with mechanical gears throughout. The entire room reminded me of what I imagine the inside of Big Ben is like in London, if the gears were on the walls. Any wall space which wasn’t occupied by mechanics was layered with beautiful burnished bronze which glistened with the light from the room. Along the walls were sconces in a similar industrial fashion which housed open-air Edison bulbs every two feet or so which lit up the room nicely. There were stadium seats lining the outside of the hall which worked downward to a center stage-like area with an oblong boardroom table littered with papers and small objects. Looming just beyond the stage in the center of the room was a platform. A second long table of ornate dark wood held thirteen intricate chairs which faced the stage, giving the feeling of a large, intense courtroom scene. The upper platform was empty, however, and everyone in the room was focused around the boardroom table, all embroiled in the work of trying to solve the crisis at hand.

  With the sound of the door closing, a few of the Council members looked up. I recognized a few from their portraits on the wall, but couldn’t remember any names from their plaques.

  “Giles, thank goodness. We think we’ve made a breakthrough,” a heavier set woman said as she looked up from her work. I recognized her as the woman who helped Giles take out the Voidkin earlier. The gun was still clipped to her belt in a strange holster and her
curly brown hair was tousled haphazardly.

  “What’ve you got, Lydia?” he asked, striding quickly across the room from the entry to the table, glancing at the papers scattered about.

  An older gentleman, probably in his early sixties looked up from a document he was reading and glanced over his spectacles at Giles. He was wearing high waisted dark grey pants tucked into his large boots with the flaps turned down and a black double-breasted jacket which opened in the front but flowed in tails long in the back. His face was slim and gaunt and wrinkles touched his eyes and cheeks. The glasses resting on his nose pinched the brow of his nose instead of wrapping around his ears. All told, he gave me the impression of an undertaker or an Ichabod Crane impersonator.

  The gentleman cleared his throat and engaged Giles, his voice high pitched and shrill. “It appears that there has been a bit of an error in our original theory. We missed a key detail.” His voice had a clipped old-world English accent and it just somehow fit his entire persona. He extended a thin, lanky arm toward Giles with the document he had been reading a moment earlier. The page looked as though it had been torn from a book, the edges jagged. Giles glanced down at the sheet as the man continued speaking.

  “Yes, well, we knew that this sort of phenomenon was not within the boundaries of the natural order and would need someone wielding Lusynos with a substantial amount of power to push the Void beyond the Embervein.” He paused a moment, allowing Giles to read over the page. Other members of the Council continued in silence as they scoured the pages on the table for more information.

  Undertaker McScaryface continued, “Well, August managed to secure this information from one of the older editions of the Arcmanion -”

  A much younger man, probably in his late twenties or early thirties looked up from his work and his face lit up. His blond hair draped in front of his face and with a motion, he brushed it aside and chimed in.

  “And we hadn’t thought about it until now!” He was excited and burst with energy. Like Eva and Harris, the young man had only a faint accent. His chipper persona, though, trumped any other trait I could describe. The guy was like a barely contained explosion of energy and personality. Next to him, the old man scowled for being interrupted but allowed the younger man to continue.

  “It does take a user of considerable ability to complete a ritual this intensive, but there is absolutely no way he could do it alone.” August said as he rushed to Giles’ side and pointed at the sheet still in Giles’ hand. Eva, Harris and I all moved closer behind Giles’ shoulder to see what the fuss was about.

  August continued, rocking back and forth on his feet, “That means that there would have to be multiple users, all continuously channeling Lusynos with the intent to open a way for the Void to breach the city. We still don’t know who, but there is no doubt that it couldn’t have been just one person!” His green eyes lit up with excitement, clearly excited at this find.

  Over Giles’ shoulder, I saw a diagram drawn on the page they had been passing around. It depicted a group of hooded figures encircling a table with various items on it, like a lamp, a skull, a vial of something and a few other items. The text beneath the diagram was written in a script I couldn’t understand, either because it was horrible handwriting or it was an entirely different language altogether. Giles nodded slightly to himself as he looked at the diagram and listened to August and the old man explain what they had found.

  “Can we reverse it or stop it altogether?” Giles asked, a hand on his chin, stroking pensively at his beard.

  “We’re still narrowing that down, but there must be a way,” August offered. “A ritual of this magnitude would need to be channeled for quite some time. The Arcmanion where I found the diagram was tattered and missing a generous amount of pages. We are hoping that another of the older manuscripts from the Athenaeum might have -”

  Just then, another massive crash sounded off in the distance and the room began to shake. Everything not bolted down clattered. I nearly lost my balance and had to hold onto the table. The others grabbed onto whatever was nearest and waited for the shaking to stop. The sensation was a lot like what I felt at the house earlier but this time it was more focused and intense.

  The Council members looked at each other and no one spoke. A few moments passed and the shaking subsided. Lydia pressed her hands to the table and breathed a sigh of relief. She straightened the sheets of parchment in front of her and then turned to August, Giles and the older man.

  “We still don’t know where Ekorius Thornsby is. No one has been able to reach him yet and I fear the worst with what’s out there,” Lydia said, a quiver in her voice as she spoke. She seemed rather sophisticated and her voice was slightly less bubbly than her appearance let on. There was a perpetual seriousness about her and she seemed to be occupied completely with the situation at hand. I imagine if I had met her in different circumstances, I might think otherwise.

  Giles and the older man looked at each other. Something passed between them but I couldn’t figure out if it was concern or something deeper.

  “Elston, have we sent anyone to fetch Galen?” Giles asked the older man.

  Of course his name was Elston. Only thing better would be Archibald or Thurston. It definitely fit his demeanor, that’s for sure.

  “Naturally,” Elston replied, shrill and curt, his expression matching the reply.

  “Well then, has there been any word from the team?” Giles shot back, exasperated.

  “No. And I’m assuming there won’t be,” Elston droned. “None of the teams we have sent out have reported back and I’m working on the assumption that they’ve all perished or have been incapacitated at this time.”

  “Cogswallup!” Giles roared. “What kind of a leader are you? One of the Council is still out there and there hasn’t been contact for several hours! Men and women you’ve sent out to do their jobs but haven’t come back or checked in and you simply write them off as dead?”

  He rubbed a hand across his face and slammed it down on the table. “And you expect that we’re going to be able to somehow just magically stop the Void from overtaking our entire city until there’s no one left except us by sitting here in this tower?”

  Giles was seething, his eyes shooting daggers through Elston. The older man merely stared back with the same cool, puckered expression he’d been showing this entire time. I thought for a moment that a small smirk touched his lips, but he was so old and wrinkled that it was genuinely hard to tell.

  Giles continued, his rage bubbling over, “You have a lot of nerve, Elston Blackwell. When this is all over -”

  Lydia threw her hands up to either side and interrupted Giles mid-rant. “Gentlemen, please! The city is counting on us to solve this issue as quickly as possible or more people are going to die.”

  Giles took a deep breath and sat down on one of the short backed stools tucked under the table. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

  Elston merely continued to stare down Giles and after a moment, turned his attention back to the papers on the table in front of him.

  I leaned over to Harris and whispered, “That guy seems like a walking skeleton with the personality to match.”

  A smile crept up Harris’ mouth but he remained quiet and said nothing. He glanced over at me with a ‘oh, totally,’ look and then turned his attention back to Lydia who was readying for another attack.

  “Now here’s what we know,” she started, a southern American accent cresting her voice. “It has been 3 hours and forty two minutes since the darkness descended. The first quake was seven minutes after the darkness and the first known attack from the forces of the Void was an hour and twelve minutes after the darkness. It was not long before attacks were reported citywide from citizens who had a direct line to the mainframe. It seems likely that there were even more attacks than reported, since most people simply communicate by messorium. That said, we have a serious crisis on our hands.

  “It stands to reason that whoever has invited the
Void across our lands is still channeling the Lusynos necessary to accomplish such a feat, due to the diligent work of our dear young Ekorius Horus.” August smiled and nodded once.

  Lydia continued, “None of our search and rescue parties have come back from the Thornsby estate to retrieve Ekorius Thornsby, nor from the other Wards where we needed to ascertain the whereabouts of the most prominent Lusynos users. We cannot confirm nor deny at this point that these teams are safe or have met resistance from the Void forces. In addition, the only successful party to have made it any significant distance beyond their home is the young trio from Dr. Fleming's estate out in the Etherborough Ward. His estate rests on the far reaches of the outermost Embervein and we know for a fact that his residence has been cleared of all personnel and his daughter, as well as two young gentlemen are here to share what they know.” She unfurled her arms and gestured to the three of us.

  The Council members all looked up from their work and looked at us. A few of the council members seemed genuinely surprised at our presence. I don’t think they had noticed that we came in with Giles and you could see the gears working in their heads to figure out why we had been invited in.

  “Gentlemen, if you please. Dr. Fleming has indicated that there may be some important details that you have which could aid us in stopping this threat.”

  Harris coughed slightly and glanced over at me, eyebrows up and giving me a ‘you go first,’ look. I looked back, trying to give him a ‘what?! No, I don’t think so’ look, but apparently that wasn’t good enough because Giles grabbed me by the shoulder and started in for me.

  “Finn here is a guest of mine...” he said, pulling me closer to his side. I drew in a sharp breath as my body kicked into gear. I am definitely not all better yet. “...and he had a very strange experience just before getting here.” He turned and looked at me, signaling me to start talking.