by Tim Paulson
“There is veil power inside my son. It increases with time. When its released it can be used,” Henri said.
Buckley's eyes widened. “He's a living veil engine! This is... this is what we've been looking for! This is the break through we need!”
“Yes,” Vex said as he sat up, adjusting his purple scarf.
The veil company executive jumped back as if bitten by a snake.
“How?” he asked.
“Did I survive?” Vex asked as he brushed the dirt and blood from his now tattered cloak.
“You were shot... so many times! There's a hole in your damned forehead!” Buckley said.
Indeed it was true, a line of blood ran down along one side of the ghoul's long gray nose.
“There are many positive benefits to inhabiting a ghoul,” Vex said as his long blue tongue flicked out and licked the blood from his nose. “A distributed nervous system is one of them. They're resilient creatures. We made them that way,” he said, standing up and placing the large brimmed hat back upon his head.
“Kill him! He can't use his power!” Buckley shouted as he began to back away. The soldiers rallied together, muskets came up, swords and pistols were drawn. They moved in to surround the bloody ghoul and his wide sharp toothed grin.
“That's not quite the case,” Vex said, holding up a single finger which he then flicked toward the soldiers. The black spiral devices that the soldiers had brought with them, that had worked so well against the baroness, turned off.
“Sir, the shields have turned off!” reported one of the men.
“Then turn them back on!” Buckley said, spittle raining from his frothing lips.
“I can't!” the man said.
Buckley's steps backward accelerated as Vex calmly opened his left hand. Thin ghoulish fingers splayed widely as if to rake the air with their long sharp nails. Then he clenched his fingers into a fist, snapping them like a trap. All the soldiers around him were jerked together by dark tendrils that mashed them into a single moaning mass of twisted flesh, broken body parts and blood.
Buckley ran out the smashed double doors, his lace collar waggling up and down like a fan. Instead of stopping him, Vex turned on his heel, returning to the pack on the floor.
“Aren't you going to kill him?” Henri asked.
“He doesn't matter,” Vex said.
“But he knows about Adem, he saw!”
“Bring the boy here. We're out of time. Bring him here and pierce him. You must drain him but do it near the instruments or the power will be taken by the sphere,” Vex said. The blood that had been streaming from the ghoul's forehead had now slowed to a thin trickle.
Henri carried his son, now all but unconscious, over to the pair of instruments Vex had pulled from the bag. He laid Adem gently down beside them. The first item was the communication device they'd used before. It was a miracle the thing had survived the destruction of the other gate, but the other device was something Henri hadn't seen before. Or perhaps he had, back at the other gate. It was a large black cube set upon a metal stand. Shards of veil crystals studded the cube in a pattern like a spider's web.
Henri pulled the special dagger from his pocket, the one Vex had enchanted to keep his boy from becoming ill. Even now, half dead and white as a ghost, Adem pawed at it, trying to prevent his father from poking him. He pricked Adem's skin just above his wrist, he hoped for the last time.
The blood shot out in thick crimson spurts bringing with it the glowing golden energy of the veil. He could see it bend toward the sphere but not enough to prevent being pulled into the other two devices.
“Excellent,” Vex said. “I need you to go to the control area and engage all the remaining crystals.”
“Engage them... why?”
“We need the gate at maximum aperture to get those things out of your son. Isn't that what you want?”
It absolutely was. “They're already all engaged.”
“Are they? Pity. I suppose this thing looks more powerful than it is. It will have have to do.”
“Once we cure Adem we'll turn it off?”
“Oh, it will be off,” Vex said, now fiddling with the communication device.
Henri laid Adem down on the floor. The boy was exhausted but he already looked better.
“What about the baroness?”
Vex ignored him. Henri didn't like that. The wizard had waited until they'd incapacitated her before he decided to reveal he'd barely been hurt by the muskets.
Had he wanted her gone?
He decided to wander back over to the control room. Vex was so concerned with his little toy he'd never notice. Henri didn't like leaving Adem there on the floor but he had to. He needed some insurance. In the control room he grabbed the lance from where it still lay, leaning against the side of the console. When he returned he found Vex already speaking into the communication device.
“...Yes?” asked the disembodied female voice from the other side.
“This is your last warning Sybile. I'm going to force a dakul shiwasuul. Come out now, or it may be another three thousand years before you get another chance,” Vex said into the device.
“What?!” Henri said.
* * *
“Help me!” called Giselle as she scooped her cloak into a makeshift basket like she used to do as a child to gather flowers in the woods. She grabbed handfuls of the little bones from the golden chalice.
Celia jumped right in, using two hands to throw piles of the bones with their glowing green marks into the folds of Giselle's cloak.
“Perhaps we shouldn't be stealing from his room,” Aaron said.
The girls ignored him and continued their mad dash to remove as many of the bones from the chalice as they could. There were so many! A dozen handfuls and they'd barely made a dent. Had all of them been children? How horrible!
“Wouldn't it be better to wait? We don't know if they'll even find us here. The city is quite large isn't it?”
Celia looked up at him. “It is large but it's also destroyed. It wasn't hard for Liam and I to find this place. It's one of only two intact buildings in the whole city.”
“Two? What's the other one?” Aaron asked.
“Some big tower. My point is they'll be here any minute now so we had better defend ourselves with everything we've got.” Celia seemed to think for a moment. “Shouldn't we get Liam? He may be just a boy but he's a big one and he's good with a blade!”
“And don't forget the pistol and the musket, he certainly won't,” Aaron said with more than a hint of annoyance.
“No. No Liam. Mother said no and she has her reasons I'm sure. If he went out there and got hurt, she'd be furious and I'd never be able to live with myself,” Giselle said.
She looked to Celia, her cloak packed with masses of tiny bones. “Do you think this will be enough? I don't think I can carry any more.”
“I don't know. What about Aaron's satchel?” Celia said.
“Full. I've got two empty pistols in here and my books,” Aaron said.
“Hmmm... You do have all those pockets though. Come here,” Giselle said nodding her head toward the large pockets in Aaron's technician's shirt and pants.
They stuffed Aaron's pockets and then the three of them rushed up the stairs as quickly as they could without spilling the tiny rattling bones everywhere.
Daniel led them past the great room with the table and down a long hall lined with painted murals, some of which were only fully visible through the veil glasses. The pictures clearly told stories about past events. Giselle only wished she had time to learn about them.
Then they emerged from the building's front entrance into the bright sun of a clear fall day. The transition was stark. All three of them found themselves squinting mightily against the onslaught of the light. It was several moments before they were able to follow Daniel down the darkly paved entryway that lead from the black spiraled building they'd come from toward the rest of the city.
“This is magnificent!” Aar
on said. His head seemed unable to stay in any particular orientation for more than a few seconds. Like a bird his eyes flitted about as his mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Giselle felt much the same. It wasn't that this broken city was very big, indeed it was scarcely a quarter the size of the town of Aeyrdfeld that surrounded her family's castle, it was the sophistication that was surprising. Clearly the wizards who'd built this place were extremely skilled.
“I knew you'd appreciate this,” Celia said. “Liam just whined about how odd it was.”
“Oh there's so much to learn!” Aaron said. “No wonder the company wants this place. We know so little about the people who came before us Celia. Nothing but scattered rumors and bits of pottery. This... this is remarkable!”
“It is, truly,” Giselle said. “However, we've more pressing concerns at the moment.”
A not so distant thudding sound startled the three of them from their awestruck gawking. Daniel was up ahead pointing down the street where a goliath with with blue glowing eyes strode forward, head bobbing above the edges of destroyed buildings.
“It's moving slowly, probably using its feet to clear debris so the soldiers and cannon can advance,” Aaron said.
“Doesn't look very slow,” Giselle said. “Daniel, please return inside and enlist your friends to move the children out of the building somehow. Is there a back exit?”
Daniel nodded.
“Use that then. We'll need to flee if this doesn't work,” she said.
Daniel nodded again and ran off into the building.
“When they're safe come back please!” she called after him. He was the only one of the creatures whose name she knew.
“Down this way!” Celia yelled from up ahead.
She'd found an outcrop of grayish material, once a part of a statue or possibly a walkway. Whatever it was it was high enough to allow them to see the enemy army down the street. The three of them lined up, removing their veil glasses to see better without the green tinting.
“I wish I had a spying glass,” Aaron said, squinting.
“Too much time with the books,” Giselle said. “Where are your regular spectacles?”
“I believe I lost them when I was abducted by a giant tree,” he said dryly.
“One goliath, about forty musket men, a man on a horse, possibly more soldiers behind them as well. It's hard to see with the road bending like that,” Celia said.
“Let's see how this works,” Giselle ventured as she took three of the bones from her improvised cloth basket and threw them to the ground. There was a snapping sound as each of the bones exploded into a full sized creature just like Daniel, only each had a unique skull perched atop its tentacled body.
“Do you understand me?” she asked.
Three skulls nodded in unison.
“Will you do ask I ask?”
Three nods again.
“Extraordinary!” Aaron said.
Celia yawned. “Meh.”
Giselle looked at Celia. “Yeah? Then watch this!” She jumped up, tossing handfuls of the bones to the ground until her cloak was empty. In seconds they had an entire army standing ready before them, waiting for instructions.
“Invaders have come here. They wish to kill us and plunder this place. Please defend us, defend your home!” Giselle said. “Now go!”
She hoped she wasn't making a mistake. Was she really sending children off to war? It was a horrible thing to do, but she had no choice. Surely it would work out.
The army of black tentacled warriors raced off with surprising speed. The goliath moved to stomp them like ants while the musket men closed ranks into lines, firing volleys at the creatures that rushed them. The musket balls seemed to do little however as the dark army advanced unabated.
“What's happening?” Aaron asked. “It's just a blur that far away.”
“Kill them!” Celia said with glee.
“Oh no!” Giselle said.
Their skull headed friends had encountered a kind of barrier about ten feet from the soldiers. Those that passed it fell lifeless to the ground, disintegrating. The rest of them, smart enough not to repeat the mistakes of their fellows, attempted to circle the men but they found the same problem on all sides. Worse the soldiers who hadn't already drawn swords were now attaching long knives with glowing veil blades to the end of their muskets.
“You have to bring them back!” Celia said as the soldiers advanced toward their tentacled friends.
Chapter 25
“Looks fade, women come and go, and your family and friends only care about what they can get, but gold never lies, and it'll never leave you unless you let it.”
-Memoir of a Merchant, 1617
Mia limped along the wood paneled corridor of the final floor of the Veil Headquarters research complex. She'd been following the mangled corpses of horrors. There had been quite a few.
Trails of red blood mingled with black ichor were everywhere but had chiefly led her down the stairs into the bowels of the building. Now she approached what sounded like unharmed people up ahead. Company men from the sounds of it.
Mia adjusted her grip on the rapier in her right hand. She'd slain two horrors on the way down but still her blade glowed a pale blue with veil power.
“Take her upstairs to the holding cells meant for her kind. They have the black diamond symbol on them. Do you know the ones?” said a man wearing a shining gold doublet and striped breeches.
“Yes sir,” said one of the two soldiers. They were carrying someone between them, a badly beaten woman wearing a familiar cloak.
When Mia rounded the corner all three of them looked at her, but none marked her as a threat. Like many before them, they would learn exactly how dire a mistake it had been.
“You'll drop her, now,” Mia said.
“Kill her gentlemen. I can wait,” said the expensively dressed man, his high collar, pure white, waggled gently as he gestured in her direction.
The men dropped their cargo and came, drawing pistols and rapiers. Mia smiled.
The beauty of the flint lock veil pistol from the perspective of someone being shot at was that once the trigger was pulled and the hammer slammed home, there was always a short delay before the powder in the pistol's chamber ignited. This gave the astute observer and Mia was nothing if not astute in matters such as these, a fraction of a second to move out of the line of fire.
For the first pistol, which had been well aimed at her head, she merely sidestepped left at precisely the right moment and felt the ball tear through the air by her right ear. The second was more smartly trained at her midsection. She twisted her body to the side to avoid it.
That one might well have gotten her had it not failed to ignite fully, in what musketeers called a flash of the pan. There was a blue powder flash but no crack. There would be no ball from that one.
She stepped forward, parried each man's sword thrust expertly, stabbed one in the heart and the other in the gut, then the chest. She wasn't fond of leaving adversaries alive enough to reload.
The tall man, their leader, some company executive no doubt, was already on the run down the hall toward an open door.
Mia smiled.
Not so fast fearless one. She pulled a dagger from a side sheath at her waist and whipped it. Mia wasn't as strong as Liam or baron Halett and as a consequence never had quite their range in such contests but she was none the less deadly accurate with a thrown blade.
The dagger embedded itself to the hilt in the man's back. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, reaching with his hands for the knife. She'd placed it perfectly however, just out of his reach, a little to the left so that it might, if deep enough, pierce the heart from behind. He was a larger man though, so that was not likely. Pierced lungs would kill as well however, it just took a little longer.
“Mia...”
She looked down. “Baroness!”
Mia knelt beside the broken bloody wreck that was her adopted mother and helped
to turn her onto her back. “I'm here.”
“They... have Henri... Adem. Please stop them.”
“Will you be alright?”
“Takes more... than this... to kill me,” she said, blood trickling from the corner of her swollen lips and crushed misshapen nose.
Mia nodded. If the company men had hurt Henri or Adem, she would flay them alive. Every single one.
The baroness's eyes drifted down to Mia's wounds. “You're... hurt... should have told me.”
Mia laid her down gently against the wood paneled wall.
“It's nothing,” she said and stood, face molded of pure determination, and stalked down the hall. Double doors of black wrought iron hung open, covered in claw marks and splashes of blood, like the very gates of hell.
“What are you doing!” Henri's voice yelled.
Mia walked into an intense cacophony of sound and light. It was an assault on her senses to even understand what was happening.
Dominating the rather large metal walled room was an enormous device, like some great spider of metal where each long bent leg ended in a glowing crystal shard. At the center of it all was a violent boiling mass of silvery air. The whole contraption was shaking, hissing and roaring all at once.
Below the great mechanical monstrosity lay a small smooth metallic sphere, covered in brightly glowing lights. It steamed and smoked as if overfilled with some noxious brew.
To the left stood Henri, a look of terrible wrath and horror carved upon his face. He was holding some kind of spear and rushing across the room at Vex who squatted next to a crystal covered cube. The wizard was fiddling with the cube device with one cadaverous hand while the other was currently levitating Adem's struggling body into the air.
“You want the demons out of the boy do you not? I only know one way to accomplish that,” the ghoul said as he pressed something on the cube. It began to flash. Instantly the gate began to vibrate even more intensely. Mia could feel the vibration through her feet. It felt like the entire building would soon shake apart.
“But we came to destroy it,” Henri said.
“No!” Vex said, pointing one finger at Henri. “You came to save your son. I came to do this.”