Wolves of the Tesseract Collection

by Christopher D Schmitz

  Jenner repeated, “The alarm!”

  Gita lowered her weapon and sprinted for the end of the corridor even as the enemy began returning fire. Support pillars that held up the rooftop of the exterior hallway erupted in clouds of shrapnel and debris.

  She lunged for the alert system at the edge of the corridor just in time to see Jenner dive for cover. Gita pressed her hand over the palm scanner and hit the attack signal.

  Warning sirens wailed across the castle. Still, the vyrm kept coming.

  ***

  Father Salazar walked to the door where someone rapped loudly and insistently for a few minutes. The priest and the others at the convent usually ignored the door unless a visitor proved themselves persistent. Despite the rough location their commune was located within in the poorest part of Mexico City, they felt safe behind their solid stone walls and thick doors—but they did little to discourage mendicants and vagrants from seeking handouts.

  He passed through the garden beds where the nuns happily tended their plants in the hours before vespers. Though the nuns subsisted solely on their efforts in the garden cloister, they were not unwilling to share, and the women would often sacrifice their own comfort to feed the destitute.

  Sliding the iron peep sight open, Father Salazar found a congenial-looking man in priest's robes. A black town car idled on the street behind and kept the air conditioning circulating. The visitor smiled warmly and he held a dog's leash, though the animal was too close to be seen through the aperture.

  “Hello, Father,” Salazar said, assuming the visitor was a guest from their order’s headquarters based on the quality of his transportation. “What brings you to our part of the city?”

  “Greetings,” the stranger said. “I’ve come on an errand of urgency and I’d hoped to quickly tour your facility. I am on a mercy mission, looking for the right place to yield my districts financial support.”

  Salazar’s brows raised at the unexpected boon. He had friends who were always looking out for him, sending him benefactors to keep his local efforts afloat. “Did Father Gomez send you?”

  “The very one. Won’t you invite me in?”

  “Yes! Please, enter,” Father Salazar urged.

  The well-manicured man in robes entered, holding his Rottweiler’s chain. He scanned the courtyard and looked face to face, from nun to nun, and bent to rub the scruff of his lethargic dog’s neck.

  "A tour, my friend. We engage in so many community outreach projects that you should know about. First, let me show you the—"

  “Is this everyone who lives here—all the sisters of the convent?”

  Father Salazar narrowed his eyes, getting the impression that the man's intentions might be less than honorable. He'd always been an advocate and defender of women—even, prior to answering the holy call. Before Holy Orders, he'd administered the occasional dose of vigilante justice on behalf of wronged women. Salazar had been a long-time Golden Gloves champion before the local gym fell when the gentrification of his home area forced out the dregs. "Where did you say you were from?"

  The man ignored him and followed his dog’s lead as it sniffed the ground.

  Becoming more demanding, Father Salazar growled, “Tell me where you came from and state your business or I will forcibly remove you.”

  The man giggled at the premise. “I am looking for someone. My pet knows who I need; he says she is here.”

  Tires screeched in the distance. Someone near a window shouted “Las Siete Muertes!”

  Father Salazar put a hand on the visitor’s chest. “It is time for you to leave. You are not welcome here!”

  The robbed visitor hissed. His dog’s shape suddenly morphed into something horrific and as grotesque as something out of Bosch’s horrific triptych paintings that Salazar had seen during seminary.

  The priest’s eyes widened in terror and screams echoed through the courtyard as the beast escaped the leash and pounced on a nearby nun, shredding her to pieces. Salazar shouted with righteous indignation as the doors kicked in; gun wielding cultists from Las Siete Muertes rushed inside.

  Balling his fists with rage, Father Salazar spun his hips to throw a right cross that would’ve knocked the imposter’s teeth from his head, but the demonic visitor tapped him on the head, first, and broke the priest’s neck.

  Salazar was in glory before his body even hit the ground.

  The alien dog-creature trotted back to its master with fresh, hot blood dripping from its maw. “Find what we came for,” he whispered to the abyssal auraphage.

  Chapter 10

  Harken leveled a pistol towards the scrum and snapped off a few shots as he barked orders into the communicator in his other hand. “I don’t care what it takes,” he shouted over the clamor. “You’ve got to get those towers manned again and use the laser batteries to mop up this mess!” He switched the channel closed and turned back to the attack with disgust. The timing was too perfect; somehow these vyrm knew exactly when to attack—when the laser batteries would be unmanned during a shift change—and right before they were set to mobilize against the enemy.

  The military commander traded a knowing look with Wulftone who led a small force across the courtyard where they blocked any enemies from accessing the deeper segments of the royal grounds. He’d had the same thought, and they both knew it. They may have been rivals, but they were allied in their duty and dedication to protecting their home.

  Claire, under the lycan Zabe’s protection, peeked out at the battle behind Wulftone’s barricade line. Tay-lore followed her closely. She pointed at an energy gate. “I thought we could disable these things?” she asked him.

  “In theory,” Tay-lore replied. “I never actually saw them in the last attack. The Black forced me into a slave camp and made me a glorified cook. I believe that a blast from the turbo lasers can overload the energy gates and close them.”

  She looked expectantly at Zabe.

  “There’s no one manning the laser batteries!” he howled and then turned to face his fiancée and Tay-lore. “Get her out of here,” he told the robot. “No matter how much she resists—she’s too important to lose in the off chance that this is an assassination attempt. If it all goes down the tubes get her out of here through the highland portals guarded by the Veritas.”

  Tay-lore nodded and tried to move Claire away from the attack.

  “But what about you?”

  “They haven’t stopped coming, yet. I’ve got to go plug a leak.”

  Claire noted the determination in his eyes and nodded an acknowledgment. “Okay, but I’m not going far!”

  Zabe grinned. “I knew you wouldn’t.” He watched her slip around the corner where she could be safe as she contributed in the ways she was uniquely qualified.

  As Claire leaned against a retaining wall in relative safety under Tay-lore’s guard she released her consciousness from her body: less clumsily than “going up the mountain” all those years ago, but also much less adept than Bithia ever was.

  Her psionic form walked invisibly through the chaos nearby as bullets and blast beams flashed around, piercing through her invisible energy form. She didn’t spot any vyrm lichs; other psychics would have stood out to her astral senses none of the invaders had any special powers or training. These were only foot soldiers, piling through the portals on their way to certain death.

  What could drive such reckless insanity? She reached into the mind of one of the attackers and searched for answers.

  “Cover me,” Zabe ordered into his com. “I’m going to get rid of these things!”

  He charged into the nest of vipers and leveled his shoulder, ramming through the crowd of enemies. Vyrm blasters tore seams through his thick, hairy hide, but he kept pushing forward.

  Jackie and a few others on the upper deck walkway opened fire with precise shots and opened up a path with their blaster fire. The attrition from overhead drew enough attention away that Zabe could continue moving through t
he enemy’s shots. Between his armor and healing factor, he could still only absorb so much damage before it overwhelmed him.

  The massive lycan tried bolting past the cluster of vyrm huddled near the burning, triangular portal. They barred the entry to the bastion-mounted artillery weapons and leapt on him with a malicious hiss.

  Zabe scrambled and shook himself free, kicking one of the scrawny reptiles into a nearby crowd; they flung apart like an arrangement of bowling pins. Some reeled backward and bumped into the jagged lines of the energy gate which cut through them with uncanny ease. The enemy vyrm fell apart into smoking, lifeless pieces where the portal edges eviscerated flesh with surgical precision.

  Not waiting for the next wave, Zabe scrambled inside the access door and sprinted up the spiral staircase until he came out atop the parapet wall. He didn’t waste a moment as he slipped into the control console, targeted the floating triangle, and unleashed a hellish, crackling burst of energy. It exploded on contact and flamed briefly before the fiendish geometry winked out of existence with implosive fury.

  A group of vyrm intruders caught between ground and sky plunged to their deaths below even as the second triangle on the ground shrank and disappeared, not wanting to risk a similar explosion at the second portal generator. The vyrm took up a battle cry and seemed to surge even more ferocious with any hope of retreat or surrender stricken from them.

  Zabe lit up the console and linked the heavy, wall-mounted weaponry to his central controls with a slave circuit. Before the next vyrm could launch any kind offensive maneuver from the courtyard he hit his trigger and launched a massive artillery blast from the walls. Intense laser fire scorched every living thing in the yard to slag and dust.

  Silence reigned for a few moments, and then a cheer rose up from the men and women of the Royal Military and the Guardian Corps. Zabe crawled down from his perch and met with his soldiers as they filtered into the battlefield, kicking over bones and charred weaponry in a search for anything that might’ve survived.

  Claire rushed to Zabe as he met up with Harken and Wulftone at the edge of the senseless carnage. His face showed how glad he was to see her unharmed.

  “I know why they came—their purpose.”

  She had their attention fixated. “They didn’t have one—I saw into one of their minds. They came with no mission and with no intention other than to die—they had no hope.”

  Zabe stared, looking for more info, and then realized what it all meant and arrived at the same conclusion Claire did. “They were just a distraction meant to slow us down. These lives were thrown away just to give our enemies a head start!”

  ***

  Shandra startled awake with someone poking her in the forehead. A boy repeatedly tapped on her face until she regained consciousness: not maliciously, but rather playfully.

  “What—who are you? Where am I?”

  He shrugged. The boy, maybe fourteen years old, said, “The room.”

  Its walls seemed to spread off in every direction and the whitewashed bulwarks radiated a dull light. The only identifying marker seemed to be the door which they sat nearby.

  Shandra sat up. “They took me—the vyrm! I’ve got to get back.” She leapt to her feet and jerked on the door handle to no avail. She pounded on the door for what felt like hours before sliding back down to the ground. The boy watched her the whole while—the passage of time didn’t seem to bother him one bit.

  He skootched over next to her in a show of solidarity. “They took me too. Who got you? Nitthogr?”

  Shandra looked at him. “You’re from the Prime?”

  He nodded.

  “Nitthogr has been dead more than three years now.”

  His eyes widened. “That can’t be. His forces, the Black, they took me just yesterday—the sorcerer was there. I saw him!”

  “What’s your name—who was your father?” She glanced at his outfit—a smaller suit of Guardian Corps armor; before the huge invasion a few years ago it was common for new recruits to apprentice under their fathers and continue a proud family tradition.

  The boy pointed to his Guardian Corps’ armor where his name had been poorly engraved where his name and rank would’ve normally been. His brother had scratched it there not so long ago as a point of honor. “My name is Zurrah. My father is Zahaben, commander of the Corps. He’ll come and rescue us any day now. He’s coming for me. He just needs time to find us—I’ve only been gone a day.”

  Shandra’s heart sank and she realized that time did not pass in this mystic chamber. “Zurrah—you were kidnapped almost ten years ago by one of Nitthogr’s failed raids. Your brother killed the sorcerer three years ago after finding the legendary Stone Glaive.”

  Zurrah looked up at the cleric. His eyes welled up with both intense sorrow and with joy and hope. “Zabe survived the attack? I’m so glad—how is he? How is my father? What is taking them so long—do you think your kidnapping will lead them here?”

  She looked down at the teen, not prepared to take away his only hope. Shandra wasn’t sure what to say so she said nothing.

  “My father will come for me. I know he will.”

  Shandra put her arm around him, painfully aware of her impending sacrifice. “I’m sure he will. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.”

  ***

  Sam and Jenner stood in the circle of others and insisted that what they’d seen was the same kind of portal controlled by Caivev’s scientists. Both of them brimmed with different shades of rage.

  “We’ve got to assume that they can travel anywhere with these things. They could be prepping Shandra for sacrifice right now! We’ve got to get moving,” Sam insisted.

  Claire put a hand on his shoulder and tried to calm her father, but he obviously felt responsible for Shandra’s kidnapping. If he hadn’t sent Jenner back to the Prime for help, or if he hadn’t thought disarming was the wisest course of action, this might not have happened.

  Zabe looked over at Harken who’d just joined the group after a status update from one of his soldiers. “How soon can we get under way?”

  “They’re reporting minimal casualties,” Harken said. “We should be able to move out immediately. I’ve got confidence in my crew to clean this mess up and hold down the fort in our absence.”

  Zabe glanced at Wulftone for a second opinion. Both men had been responsible for training their current military force. Wulftone nodded an assent.

  “Then we’ll move out as soon as possible; the plans haven’t changed, they’ve only been delayed and hopefully by only a small margin.”

  Walking out among the blackened debris field of the courtyard battle zone Zabe whistled with a loud, sharp trill. “Get ready to move out as soon as possible, people. We’ve got a cleric to save and a minor deity to banish.”

  The crowd of gathered soldiers gave a shout of acknowledgment. "If you are on my team assemble in the hall of mirrors in half an hour. Secondary team gear up—you're moving out immediately afterwards. Move out!"

  They shouted an agreement one more time and then dispersed.

  Sam caught Zabe as he tried to leave for one last errand before the planeswalk. “I’m not on a team, Zabe.”

  Zabe nodded and tried to gently push past him, hoping the short timeline would allow him to move beyond any confrontation. Sam didn’t let him by and pushed against his pending son-in-law’s chest.

  “I’m coming along. It’s my fault she was captured!”

  “It’s not your fault. She would’ve done the same for you.”

  “And that’s why I’m going. You’d do the same for my daughter.”

  "I am in love with her—I'd die for her. Duty, honor, love... all demand it if such a thing is required." Zabe looked into Sam's eyes and saw complete agreement echoed in his expression. He could not tell Sam that he had no right to fight for his own love.

  Zabe bit his lip, sighed, and relented. “Okay,” he whispered, “But Claire cannot know you’re in dang
er. She would be distracted with worry and I already fear for her safety. I can’t have her mind compromised by worry and doubt.”

  Sam nodded his assent. “That’s fine. I wanted to go with the other team anyway; I trust you and Claire to rescue and protect her if you find her.” He didn’t complete the thought… only a few knew of Zabe’s suspicion that his inner circle included a traitor and only family remained beyond suspicion.

  “Be safe.” The two men shared a brief embrace and headed to their respective positions.

  ***

  “I really wish he was here right now. I’m sure he’d know what to do,” Zabe said as he stared at the statue of his father in Respan’s lab.

  The scientist removed Claire’s Dimension Inversion Pendant from his stony neck. “Obviously it did not have any effect,” Respan offered. “I’m still working on a few other ideas, however. The pendant seems to give off the same kind of energy signature that the Seven Brothers do, according to the data gathered by Tay-lore. If it’s as the android suspects and contact with the hierophanticese might harm these foul creatures I would strongly urge the Princess to wear this at all times.”

  He put the item into Zabe’s palm. The soldier agreed enthusiastically; anything that could be done to protect her would be considered.

  Respan pointed to the Stone Glaive. “You should take that. I have done all I can with it for now. I don’t think it can help me as much as it could benefit you at the moment.”

  Zabe nodded grimly and shouldered the baldric that held the weapon slung across his back. He took one last look at his father who’d been encased in such a defiant repose, and then departed for the Hall of Mirrors.

  In the time since Zahaben's sacrifice and his tenure as commander of the Guardian Corps and Master at Arms to the princess, the amount of planeswalking from the Prime had increased exponentially. He sincerely hoped that his actions did more good than harm; the ancients had put a moratorium on the practice for many reasons—especially barring anyone against traveling to Earth.