Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy: Volume I)

by Trey Copeland

  Chapter 19

  Guardian Trails were conceived in the midst of the Deagron Age, when the need for Guardians to travel swiftly from one end of the Provider to other was at its height. Another millennium would pass before Citizens acquired both the shifting skills and manpower required to construct the unique transportation system. For Guardian Trails were an anomaly spawned from a rare fusion of powers, a vehicle made by Shifter ingenuity, powered by Guardian brawn.

  Constructed from thousands of vines, assembled into pliable, braided cables, the Guardian Trails ran the entire length of the Provider. The Guardian Trails remedied what once required a Guardian to take a "leap of faith", jumping off the nearest edge, trusting in the Provider to show the way or worse, attempt an arduous climb wrought with danger. Today, with every major bough, and most sub-branches, having at minimum one entry point to a trail, once a Guardian reached a Guardian Trail portal he was only seconds away from any region of the tree.

  Steffor and his friends released a sigh of relief as they spotted the cable off in the distance. The Guardian Trail was still several miles away, a thread slicing the otherwise empty horizon, extending from Toliver's evergreen canopy down past the edge of the ivy infested bark peninsula they traveled. But sight of the last stage in their journey before reaching Razum was enough to lift the dark thoughts settling on Steffor's mind.

  With one last powerful bound, the group came to a halt on a narrow ledge along the peninsula's sloped border. Steffor released his companions from his staff, giving everyone a moment to catch their breath and adjust to the precarious setting.

  The ledge, shifted level to provide a flat surface in which to stand, overlooked a deep ravine that dropped sharply away from them with the natural curve of the Forging Bough's circumference.

  A few hundred feet from where they stood, the vertical Guardian Trail wended over the dark chasm, down past the protruding lip of the adjacent bark peninsula. It disappeared from sight as it penetrated the expanse of Sofelarus’s foliage below.

  Single file, Steffor led the group along the ledge to a long cantilever jutting perpendicular over the ravine. They crossed over the shifted beam to the platform that, through a round opening in its center, the Guardian Trail intersected. Steffor raised his staff and with a quick wink of intense blue light, brought forth the three dimensional map of the Provider. Razum City and the surrounding area was a throbbing black void that appeared to be expanding.

  "The Mysticnet around Razum remains blocked," Steffor reported. "Once there, I should be able to extend my power to create a mobile version of the net and contact any Guardian in the area."

  "Is it the Deagron Maker causing the disruption, creating the blackness?" Martna asked, biting her lower lip.

  "I am not sure," Steffor said. "But instincts I am still struggling to familiarize with tell me the two are related but separate in and of themselves."

  Steffor could tell by the round of faces that his honest but cryptic disclosure added more anxiety to fast approaching events. Calivera, the only one to meet his eye, walked to his side, grabbed his hand and beamed him a warm smile.

  With the rest of the Mysticnet still intact, he did a quick survey of the Guardians located outside Razum. Once done, he calculated the approximate time it would take each to reach their own respective Guardian Trail portals and concluded what he had already feared: of the Guardians residing outside the capital—the vast majority—only a handful had arrived in Razum by this point.

  "According to our last scan, before losing the Mysticnet feed over Razum, all twenty one Razum Guardians were accounted for, in addition to Teuton Traiken. As we can see," Steffor said, highlighting the Guardians to denote them from the millions of other blue dots on the map, "the bulk of our brethren are at best another ten to twenty minutes behind us. Once we arrive above Razum, we will gain the best vantage point, assess the situation and take action."

  Each nodded with understanding. Surely twenty-two of the Provider's knights will be enough to hold the beast at bay until more help arrives, Steffor thought with a sour bubble swelling in his stomach.

  Steffor extended his power to the group and coupled it to the vine cable. The sudden union of the two snapped each person off the narrow ledge and ringed them around the six-foot thick cable. Backs clamped to the braided vines, pointing feet first, a powerful burst of Source shot them down the trail.

  The subtle curves, bends and straightaways of their passage blurred by without incident as the Guardian Trail navigated them through leaf and branch at blazing speeds. Steffor had only a brief second to recognize the maze of man-sized, three prong leaves and interlacing twigs indigenous to Sofelarus before their confined surroundings vanished and gave way to open sky.

  Centered below, rushing toward them, sprawled Razum City. Steffor angled their decent to the east, toward the Trunk. Over twenty miles away, Steffor enhanced their vision to get a closer look at the jagged rupture. Maligned Source oozed from the gash, black smog seeping down the Trunk, leaving a wake of charred bark and xylem. The vast cityscape blocked their view of the destructive flow past a few hundred feet below the hole but their collective imagination shuddered at the damage it would cause once it reached the city, if it had not already.

  They soared toward the wounded Trunk and within a few minutes were hovering but a few hundred feet above the tallest buildings, at which point Steffor began to deflect the Source off to propel them forward. They fluttered over the remaining miles in this manner and in those moments surveyed the activity below.

  The recent mayhem at the Trunk side of the city had created a mass exodus of Citizens toward the other side, inundating the complex grid of catwalks, bridges and roads connecting the magnificent structures with thousands of terrified people.

  To their relief, they spotted several Guardians supervising the mass retreat. More than once, they witnessed the safe and acrobatic rescue of victims, accidentally shoved in the rush of bodies, flailing in the air for several long seconds, snatched by a Guardian at the last moment. The heroic scenes were an unexpected but welcome boost in their morale.

  He recognized the disparate group of Guardians as the few who had managed to reach Razum before them.

  "What news of Traiken?" he hailed, applying the power of his staff to create a mobile Mysticnet hub and lock onto the group.

  "I am the only one of us to have seen Traiken before he and the Razum troop rushed off to confront the creature," a young Guardian named Delvid quickly replied, the image of his handsome face appearing before their collective mind's eye. "At the time, they were overwhelmed with the rush of people trying to escape. Upon my arrival, he delegated me to take his place with instructions to recruit any others coming from the outer regions and estuaries. That was over twenty minutes ago."

  "What direction did he go?"

  "Due East, toward the rupture in the Trunk."

  "More are coming. Send all newcomers to where Traiken went and we go now. The rest of you must keep the flow of people moving as far away from the Trunk as possible. Do not stop until you hear orders otherwise. Do you understand?"

  "Aye."

  As they moved to within a half mile of the Trunk, the disconcerting chaos caused by the rush of terrified Citizens had diminished but a few people still occupied several of the buildings and transit systems. To their dismay, the majority of these stragglers appeared badly wounded. The sorry lot plodded along as best possible, leaning on their neighbors for support, adrift in lethal shock and trauma. Makeshift litters carried those too decrepit or unconscious, or already dead Steffor detected via his omnipotent senses. He could not locate a Healer amongst them.

  "Release me Steffor, I must help those in need," Calivera commanded. Caught by the same impulse, Steffor landed the group on a small observatory deck atop the next closest building. Without pause, Steffor grabbed Calivera by the hand and escorted her down the small set of steps that led to an open hatch on the otherwise empty rooftop.

  He turned her aroun
d to face him. "Do not...."

  The forceful press of her trembling lips cut his words short. With vigor more intense than the last, Steffor lost himself in her embrace and allowed the rest of the world to fade from consciousness, if only for a moment.

  Calivera was first to initiate their separation, however reluctant, saying over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairwell leading into the building, "I will not move any closer to the Trunk than I already am. Please be safe Steffor, I cannot bear the thought of losing you, not again."

  Steffor took a few more seconds to watch the top of her golden locks disappear down the dark passage before turning back. He nearly ran into Leanor as he did so, the mysterious woman having followed them down.

  "Don't worry Steffor, I will go with her. The two of you will be reunited soon, this much I have foreseen." And with that, she followed in Calivera's direction.

  Relieved but as confused as ever by the strange woman, Steffor, once again, did not have the liberty to contemplate the meaning of her words or role.

  Rejoining the anxious Guardians, he locked his power with the group. "We are one lunge away. We will assess the situation on our descent. Once I am in range, we will sync with Traiken and his team and coordinate all efforts going forward. We cannot afford to hesitate, are you all prepared to do what must be done?"

  The three, the weight of their recent covenant with Steffor leaning heavy on all of them, each answered with a firm nod.

  Within seconds of their leap, Steffor tried to establish a connection with Traiken and his Guardian troop. For unknown reasons, they could only receive audio feedback. A disturbing dissonance immediately flooded their hearing, Traiken's commanding, desperate barks of "HOLD! HOLD!" and "NOW! NOW!" interspersed with familiar sounds of the Source shifted into power bursts and shields, all predominated by ferocious growls and snarls. Steffor detected the battle rapidly sapping the troop’s energy. Razum’s Guardians were fading fast.

  "Help is on the way!" Steffor conveyed to the defenders.

  "Hurry, we cannot hold the creature much longer!" Traiken's strained voice replied.

  At the peak of their jump, they had not yet crested the last line of tubular skyscrapers that blocked them from the action below. First revealed was the suburban homes that populated the tiered mesas of the mighty limb, the steep stretch of landscape that demarcated Trunk from limb.

  Near the center of the last plateau, a ridged band of wood and bark sprawling north to south the entire width of the limb, they discovered the initial destruction caused by the Deagron Maker. An impact crater several hundred yards in diameter located a mile below the hole ripped into the Trunk.

  Steffor amplified their aerial view of the disaster area. Along the cliff edge that ran parallel to Sevorist Avenue below—the primary road from which all streets running east to west along Razum’s foundation grew—Steffor attempted to identify anything that resembled small homes and shops that once occupied the space. They were mortified to find nothing but an array of mangled bodies intermixed with ruble and splintered wreckage.

  "The power required to reach there from the Trunk…" Vejax's astute observation cut short as they started to descend, broadening the perspective below to expose the bulk of destruction wreaked upon the forest of buildings before the cliff.

  A meandering swath cut through the city, three times the width of the widest street, left a measure of devastation in its wake beyond record. Of those buildings with the misfortune of being in front of the creature's violent path, all that remained were hacked off hallow stumps; in some cases the only discernable remnants of the structures were the exposed alleys and chambers shifted into the limb creating the expansive subterranean network connecting every building to its neighbors.

  Steffor scanned the debris strewn in every direction of the path in attempt to ascertain the collateral damage caused by the deagron's rampage. Tangled like pick-up sticks, the larger portions—some as long as fifty stories—lay haphazardly amongst their shattered foundations. Other portions, lopped off with such force they flew for miles, twirling projectiles wreaking secondary havoc on the city, brutally sawing off sections of neighboring buildings that would in turn contribute more damage as they toppled down.

  Steffor's staff compiled the data and projected rough schematics of the hundreds of buildings affected by the wave of destruction. He soberly concluded that if Shifter assistance did not arrive soon, many more would collapse due to the structural damage. Citizens appeared within the scanned area: the living depicted in signature electric blue, the wounded a brackish blue-red, varying in shade by their condition, while the dead registered dark crimson.

  By his hurried count, Steffor estimated over forty thousand fatalities and another eighty thousand wounded.

  "So many!" Grimlock cried, aghast by the senseless carnage.

  As they continued to survey the large aggregation dead and wounded, positioned near where the deagron first entered the city, their gaze finally fell upon Traiken and his team.

  Steffor angled their decent to the spot as they traced the deagron's path through the city, a loop roughly covering a square mile that led back to the cliff side. Evident by the eight dead Guardians detected along the way, they concluded Traiken and his team somehow managed to deflect, or entice, the creature back to where it originally entered the city. There, jammed in-between Sevorist Avenue and the cliff, Traiken and his troop made the tactical decision to make their stand against the Deagron Maker.

  Now only a few hundred yards above, they assessed the scene below with trained eyes and heavy hearts. The Guardians had partially pinned the deagron to cliff side and ground, cuffing five of the sinewy limbs with thick bands of Source formed between the out stretched arms of two Guardians. With ten of the remaining thirteen Guardians focused on holding the beast down, the remaining three darted along the ground, dodging probing tendrils while concentrating tight bursts of the Source at the remaining free limbs. Traiken directed the efforts of all from atop the cliff, arms outstretched, and his staff in his left as it radiated with the Source, shielding his men from the creature's relentless assault on both its captors and assailants.

  While limbs and tendrils appeared to act independently of each other in their counter attack on the Guardians, Steffor noted how the deagron's eye slits stayed locked on the thousands of wounded they had detected earlier, gathered not twenty yards from the battle. The violet lights behind the slits pulsed with longing as it watched the Healers who had rushed from the Healing Ward shifted into the Trunk just above the stepped mesas. They had collected as many of the wounded as they could and were frantically shifting the Source, administering the healing energy as best possible within the makeshift triage station. Little did they know the monster would reappear in the same spot moments later.

  Steffor turned his attention back to the deagron and for the first time noticed the hundreds of Citizens wrapped within the leathery tendrils that grew everywhere from the creature. Most had already perished from the constricting tendrils but a few still lingered, their last minutes of life an excruciating struggle to fill burning lungs with air. The horror continued as tendrils jammed crushed bodies into mucus-covered maws housed atop spastic tumors pulsating across the body.

  "This nightmare ends now!" Steffor bellowed to all. "Vejax, relieve Traiken. Not one more Guardian dies today!"

  He released Vejax and propelled him toward the cliff. Vejax extended his staff parallel to his shoulders and projected a razor thin sheet of Source, twice the width of his staff and three times the length of his body. With his Source blade before him, aimed toward the deagron, Vejax turned his staff perpendicular, pulled hands behind his head with elbows bent then chopped downward with all his might. The perfectly timed blow sliced through the flailing arm that sought to swat him from the air, cleaving the limb off the grotesque body. Using the momentum of his swing, Vejax completed a full flip before landing gracefully on the cliff's edge a few feet from Traiken.

  The crea
ture roared in pain as the fresh nub spewed blue-black blood along the cliff side, bringing its attention away from the Healers as it stared in disbelief at the dismembered limb convulsing wildly on the ground. With renewed vigor, the deagron jerked one of its pinioned arms free, launching the two Guardians who held it high in the sky.

  "Grimlock! Martna! Cut me a hole in that abomination so that I may purge it from our world!"

  Fifty yards above and thirty out by this point, the two shot outward in opposite directions before turning back to face the other with arms extended. Each then sent forth a rowdy coil of Source as thick as a man that fused to the others in the middle. The bite of Vejax's blow still fresh on the mind, the deagron recognized the mortal power behind the Source garrote and struck at the two flying Guardians with all its remaining limbs. Traiken, Vejax and the three Guardians below, anticipating this desperate act, expended their remaining strength with targeted punches of the Source in attempt to deflect the veracious talons.

  A claw managed to sneak past the barrage of defensive strikes and rip into Martna's flank. With their entire focus placed on maintaining their connection to the other, Grimlock and Martna relied solely on armored, but limited, garments for protection. Steffor winced at the blow, the tear in her garments plain to see, but relieved to see her link to Grimlock stay intact. Successfully through the gauntlet, the two stretched the coil of Source to encompass the full breadth of the deagron’s plated chest, then with one final orchestrated movement, a jet of Source burst from their feet and shot them at supersonic speed into the cliff.

  Steffor landed a few yards away as the Source coil pounded the beast into the cliff side, followed by shrapnel exploding from the holes Martna and Grimlock bore on each side. The beast slumped down in anguish and released a rumbling bellow. The blow dislodged two of the limbs, previously clamped down, from their sockets while the other two jarred free. Dark fluid gushed from the fresh gash across the top portion of its thick chest, the wound penetrating deep into its body cavity. Yet the beast sill lived.

  Driven by a force beyond Steffor's understanding, the Deagron Maker began to stir. Its head reared down on Steffor, eye slits pulsing violet, a look Steffor could only describe as primeval recognition and carnal hatred. The glare flushed Steffor with anger, funneling a rush of Source into his staff, making it glow so bright he could no longer see past his outstretched hands.

  Fearful the reciprocal hatred for his enemy would consume his heart, Steffor closed his eyes, locked out the world around him and seized control of his vengeful emotions. He stopped being the nescient soul floundering to find meaning to his existence. The beginning of his awareness, the clarity he had sought since his rebirth, had finally arrived.

  Upon opening his eyes again, his perception of his enemy, and himself, had changed forever.

  I know you, Steffor said telepathically to his ancient enemy. You are the face of my fear, the last threshold before what is familiar, and that which is not. I banish you from this world, for your purpose is no longer required.

  With a vile chuckle, spastic waves ran across the deagron's broken body. Then, in a voice that sounded all too familiar, it replied. Yes, my purpose has been fulfilled. I unlocked that which you feared most: yourself. Steel yourself Steffor, for you will face your deepest fear again, sooner than you realize.

  Beset by confusion, the deagron's words evoking a storm of foreign emotions, words he knew in his heart to be true. The ghoulish surroundings stifled his mounting doubt, fueling his resolve to rid the beast, and what it represented, from his world. Steffor merged with the Source, submitted to sublime adoration, and destroyed fear incarnate.