Darkness Trilogy (Book 2): Death In Darkness

by Alexander, Lee

  The man studied the characters, and realized that he could only make out three in total, including the one he was sure indicated himself. He tested his control, amazed that it was a simple thought that controlled the temperature in the room. He laid out his sleeping bag. The dog immediately lay across the foot of the bag. She began snoring in the way only a creature fatigued to the very limit could. The man chuckled, feeling the exhaustion himself. He lay in the bag, and fell soundly asleep.

  The man woke with a shake, suddenly realizing he was freezing. His watch told him nothing. It had stopped some time in the previous day. A quick estimate told him he had slept for upwards of six hours. It was the longest he had slept since leaving the house. The dog was curled in hard against his side, shivering slightly in her sleep.

  He looked around, wondering what had changed. During the night, he had kicked out to the side, smudging one of the ward symbols. Decay had set in on the wall. The man tried to fix the error. The decay was too far set in on the exposed patch, already starting to degrade the symbols near it. The man sighed and stood. Fatigue still plagued him. However, he felt far more energetic than the day before. He set about clearing and packing their goods. The dog stirred and started to sniff about for food. The man made the short trek in the cold to the kitchen.

  He hesitantly used the spell to warm the kitchen, fearing he would black out again. He mentally scaled the warmth back to barely tolerable. He was pleasantly surprised when he found he wasn't exhausted or knocked out. He warmed food for them both, preparing a piping hot meal with his new found exuberance.

  Once they were fed and packed, the man spent a short time hunting around the house. Most of it had fallen to ruin. His search wasn't exhaustive, but it was fruitful. He found two spiral notebooks and a mechanical pencil. He stuffed the new supplies into his bag, then finished dressing for the cold and hefted the bag to his shoulders.

  The man talked to the dog throughout the day. They were walking along darkened streets, aware of the cold but less bothered. They walked until exhausted, then found a house that was relatively intact. During their walk, the two had pillaged a grocery store. Most of the goods were destroyed by the storms or the cold. Canned goods, as long as they were intact, were almost universally still viable.

  “Beans again, girl.” The dog whined in response, but readily ate the food once it was heated for her. The man loved that they could eat whenever now, instead of waiting for a can to thaw near a fire or against their bodies. The man found a large piece of charcoal during their scavenging. He had it squirreled away in one pocket.

  When they had decided on habitation, the man used the charcoal to ward a room. His drawings were sloppy, fast, but eventually effective. The room was not as warm as it had been the previous night. He guessed it was either due to insufficient coverage on the six surfaces, or due to the accuracy of his characters. The man began to journal everything that had happened since darkness fell. He filled several pages with tight, scrawling writing before his hand cramped.

  The man massaged the cramp out while he stared at the fire. As he stared, he found himself thinking on the nature of heat. He decided to try an experiment the next chance he got. The man was curious about the range of use for his heat spell. Perhaps it could be condensed into a fireball, or used to heat a part of a room instead of an entire room.

  Remembering the incident from the night before, the man set his sleeping bag far from the walls. He slept deeply, dog snugged against his side. He did not dream, nor was he aware of the shifting shadows gathering around him. When he woke, it was sudden and violent. The dog barked, loud and aggressively. He was up and out of the bag immediately. The man drew a pistol he had found a few cities back.

  When he swept his flashlight over the room, nothing stood out. He stopped as the beam lit a snake creature up. He had seen remains before, but never a living one. It swayed in the doorway, arms at its sides. He raised the gun and leveled it at the head of the creature. It finally seemed to register his presence. It drew lips back over long yellowed teeth. A slow hiss emerged, barely audible even in the silence.

  The man pulled the trigger on the gun. It clicked impotently. He began to panic as the snake started to move into the room. It slithered forward one foot, then two, closing the distance each second. Its eyes never left his. He did the one thing he could think of. He raised his hand and pointed at the snake while thinking of the character for heat.

  The snake stopped dead. It bubbled, skin expanding like tumors in rapid growth. Then it shrieked and exploded. Viscera and ichor covered everything. The man's panic turned to terror and disgust. He wiped at the black ooze, trying to get it out of his hair, his eyes, off of his skin and clothes. He tilted his head back and screamed in horror. A single drop of the ichor fell then. It sailed through the air, landing on the man's tongue. He froze.

  The man fell to his knees, then his side, as he clutched at his core. It was boiling. Something in him was changing. He could feel the void that had been opened in the cave growing, feasting on his essence. Then it stopped. The void met the dark liquid on his tongue and drank greedily of that. It stopped growing, stopped consuming him. The constant hunger had a taste of true sustenance.

  The man began to shovel the ichor into his mouth by the handful. It was smeared all over him, coating his hair and face. It burned, and the void inside began to shrink. Instead of reducing the emptiness, it seemed to grow more dense. Like a link to somewhere else. His body felt more his than it had since the trip through time and space had torn his mind. Still, the connection was there.

  The man regained his wits some time later. He found a length of intestine in his hands, rubbery and salty on his tongue. He spat the bite out, dropping the thick bundle of raw flesh. The man felt revulsion. He was aghast at the loss of control. However, above all of that, he felt powerful. He judged five minutes had elapsed since the alien creature had entered the room. A glance at his watch reminded him it was broken.

  Then he realized he could see in the room, despite the fact the flashlight had shut off. He picked it up and flicked the switch. It did nothing. He flicked it again. A few more flicks produced the same results. He hit the butt of the flashlight against his hand, and it suddenly lit the room up. It was as bright as day, or so it seemed to the man. Then he spotted the snake that had started investigating the neighboring room. It hissed at him, reacting badly to the bright light.

  The man knew what to do. He raised his hand and thought the character for heat. The snake didn't just explode, however. A fireball coalesced in his hand, shooting across the distance. It impacted with a shockwave. The man fell to his knees, suddenly drained of all energy. There was less of the snake left than the first.

  As the man tried to clear his head, he heard a yelp and a whine. Slowly, he tracked his head to the side. His dog was in the grip of another snake. She made another horrible yelp, then fell silent and still as the snake sank its fangs into her neck. Enraged, the man lifted his hand, struggling to control it through the darkness and fatigue. He focused everything he had on the head of the snake. It stopped sucking on the dog, lifting its head to stare at him.

  “Let go of my dog,” the man wheezed. He thought of heat, and the head of the snake popped like a meaty balloon. Darkness overtook him.

  ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

  “Who are you?”

  ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

  Words echoed in the man's mind, causing fractures and stitching holes. The man coughed, spitting dark red blood on the floor. Clarity slowly returned. He remembered the fight with the first snake, the drain the second had caused. Then he remember his dog in the clutches of the snake. He turned, head swimming. His gorge rose and he vomited, more dark red blood mixed with ichor. He struggled to his knees, and crawled over to the dog.

  She lay panting, a small pool of blood collecting
under her. He gathered her up, sitting back with the dog in his lap.

  “Come on girl, stay with me,” the man begged. Tears streamed from his eyes. He pet her head, trying to give her comfort. “Stay with me, you'll be alright.” Tears dropped onto her matted fur. She looked at him one last time, then fell still.

  The man screamed, so long and loud that he tore his vocal cords. When it finally tapered off, nothing remained save his rage. He gently laid her body aside, then moved toward the body of the snake. Beyond the doorway were several more snakes. They, like the ones before them, seemed entranced by something in his room. Each was staring at a particular character. The one he felt was his name.

  The man came to, his fist slamming down into the flesh of the final snake. He was coated in ichor. His clothes were ruined, his flesh burned from repeated use of his spells. He felt no pain. He felt no cold. Ice had already begun to crust over several of the corpses strewn around him. He returned to the room, hardly noticing the sudden temperature change. He knelt over the dog.

  New characters came to mind. A torrent of information. The void in his soul had changed again. Grief riddled his mind, clouding his eyes. Tremors shook him. Sobs tore their way out of his ruined throat. He found three characters, and he put them together. With his new word, he spoke them in the twisted tongue of the void.

  The dog twitched.

  ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

  The man stood, his grisly work done. He flicked the ichor from his hands. New scars decorated his arms and torso. Knowledge burdened his mind. He was satisfied. He looked around and found the dog curled up atop one of the humvees. He whistled to catch the dog's attention. Her ears perked up and swiveled toward the man.

  “Heel.”

  She immediately stood and stretched, then sauntered over to the man's side. He patted her flanks. He began to walk again, choosing a direction seemingly at random. The two walked quietly. Some hours passed, before the man halted. They stood on a lonely stretch of road, cracked and rimed with frost. He looked down each direction, then sat with his bag.

  “Here.”

  His spare comment was all that was necessary. The dog found a good looking patch of ground, circled a few times, then laid down. He pulled a tattered notebook out of his bag, a pencil, and began to write. Characters crawled across the paper, leaving thin trails of graphite. The sounds of scratching carried on for long hours. Finally, the man set the pencil aside. He glanced over what he had written, nodded to himself, and put the notebook away.

  The man stood, stretching his limbs. He appeared entirely unbothered by the cold, though he was stripped to the waist. A low whistle brought the dog out of sleep and immediately to his side. The man began to walk down the cracked and broken roadway. He said nothing and made little sound. The dog walked along like a silent specter, ghostly in the shadowed starlight. She was even quieter than him.

  Her ears perked up and swiveled, then her head turned as well. The man took note and followed her gaze. A cloud was slowly descending. It coasted overhead, before settling to the ground a hundred feet in front of the pair. The wisps of cloud faded to vapor and disappeared into the surrounding air. A door opened on the ugly craft, and several snakes slithered out. One towered over the others, nearly ten feet from the ground to the crown of its head.

  The man cracked his knuckles, and the dog looked at him expectantly. His eyes were on the largest snake. It opened its mouth and let out a guttural roar. He echoed with his own ghostly howl. The dog lunged forward, claws extended, throwing chips of asphalt in her charge. The two forces met in blood and ichor.

  ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

  “I rather liked that eye,” whispered the man. He ran a hand over the gaping wound in his face. It immediately began to close, filling in a horrifying manner. Tentacles seemed to writhe in the dark socket, bulking and filling. His left eye was a piercing blue. His right was black from edge to edge. It seemed to subtly move. There was no visible pupil. Still, the man seemed to see without issue.

  He looked at the snake at his feet. There were large pieces missing. It was amazing the creature still drew breath. He sank a hand into its ribcage, dragging it up the ramp into the craft. He looked around, a spark of curiosity in his eyes. He dropped the snake and licked the ichor from his hand.

  The inside of the craft was much like the outside, appearing to be welded together by amateurs of the lowest order. There were several gaps where he could clearly see through the hull of the ship. The man finally turned his attention back to the snake.

  “Talk,” he rasped. It was forceful, almost like another force was behind it. The snake responded with a strange sound not unlike laughter. It used its one good arm and drew a claw across its own throat, severing the arteries and vocal cords underneath. It maintained eye contact until all life had drained away.

  The man looked down on the dead creature with empty eyes. No emotion appeared on his face. He simply kicked the body out of the craft and began to explore.

  “Feed,” he said to the open air. Immediately, the sound of rending flesh was renewed as the dog began to feast.

  The man knew only one thing, now. He had to gain power, to become stronger. So that he could go back, back to the mountain. So he could return to the King. He finally had an answer.

  Who are you?

  He now knew. He had found who he was. He had found his name.

  The Emissary.