by Casey Eanes
“Luken! What happened?” Grift screamed in amazement as he scanned the truck for some sign of a damage. Luken flashed his familiar, mischievous grin and answered back.
“Just get us to Taluum. We don’t have long.”
“You have a choice, Kull. I will not force your hand and I will not fault you for whichever decision you make.” Aleph’s voice carried the softness of a gentle breeze but the power of a hurricane as he spoke. He stepped closer to Kull and placed his hand on his shoulder. His powerful, golden eyes leveled on his. “Are you ready to begin?”
Kull scanned the doorways again and the images beyond them. Adley was working feverishly to prepare the machine for the coming battle. Smoke was lifting on the horizon and Adley fought to stay focused amidst the scream of jets and the sound of war pressing closer onto them.
Wael’s door was dark. The Mastermonk was prostrate on the floor, crying out to Aleph one final time. Kull could feel Wael’s emotions; the fear, the dread, and surprisingly the shame. A feeling of guilt and failure draped over the Mastermonk like sackcloth. Kull glanced back at Aleph and a curious question broke from his mouth.
“Can you hear him? Can you feel him like I can?” He scanned Aleph’s face for an answer.
“Yes.” Aleph nodded, and his face bore the glow of love mixed with an eager pain. “Every word. Every thought. Every pain.”
Kull turned back to the doors and watched his mother, Rose, as she laughed with young children and ate with friends, long since passed. She was beautiful, her skin radiant and her eyes full of life. The contrast could not have been any starker as Kull turned to the final doorway and stared upon his father.
Grift’s face was haggard and tired. He was dirty, covered in sweat and mud. Grift leapt from his truck and raced into an obscure entrance along the walls of Taluum. He flashed down a narrow hallway and rumbled up a flight of gray stone steps with Luken close on his heels. Luken. Yes, that is his name. Somehow, in this place shared with Aleph, Kull could know things as they really were. It was as if everything he was seeing was understandable, and his knowledge of all that was transpiring was elevated. His eyes followed his father, focusing on the sleek, black automatic rifle that hung on Grift’s shoulder as he ran. Grift’s face was painted with determination, but his eyes were hollow and exhausted. The two men burst through a small wooden door and scurried across the top of the wall to the lookout holding Adley and her machine. Adley did not bother to greet them. She simply pointed to the forest below.
Noxious plumes of smoke rose over the thick green forests surrounding Taluum. The sky had a crimson glow as the once proud pines and hardwoods smoldered and burned away in the blaze. Grift peered over the thick stone edging of the wall and examined the destruction sweeping in from the east. He shouldered his rifle and peered down the long-range scope, sweeping his vision between the trees, trying to glimpse a sign of Seam’s coming convoy.
Grift cursed beneath his breath as he realized any attempt to gaze through the curtain of thick, black smoke was a waste of time. He squinted and tried one last time to find a mark but shook his head as he lifted his eye from the scope. As he broke his line of sight, something shifted within the forest moving at an incredible speed. Grift looked back down range and felt his heart jump to his throat as he observed a mass of black-clad bodies darting through the forest.
The swarm moved in unison, unfazed by the smoke or heat of the blazing fires. Grift pulled back the trigger and snapped off five rounds. Three of the beings fell, only to be replaced by three more. Grift’s mouth went dry with fear when he realized that none of the surrounding assailants reacted to the shots he fired. It was as if those struck down meant nothing to them. The army moved like a black tide, surging through the forest unimpeded and undeterred.
Luken dropped to a knee and steadied his rifle, firing alongside Grift, targeting the swarm of bodies streaming through the rows of thick tree trunks. “They’re here, Grift.” Grift nodded and stared down, firing shots into the wave of bodies. Suddenly, a huge chain of explosions went off, ripping through the large mass of morels with a fiery blast. A row of ancient giant trees crumpled along with the morel invaders in the sudden barrage of fire. The smoke shifted and swirled in the new open space, and the nose of a massive black titan pressed through the void with its cannon primed.
“Adley!” Grift paused long enough to scream into the datalink strapped to his forearm. “Get that thing ready now!”
Adley’s voice crackled over the connection in a broken string of static. “Grift...trying to fire...time...” Grift bellowed into the device as he shot down at the flood of monsters pooling below him.
“I can’t hear you, Adley! Just get the thing running and get Wael and the monks on point.”
The screams of the morels grew, and Grift shuddered at the faces he saw below the stone wall. Women, men, children. All baggers. All fresh. “Aleph above, help us.” He shot a glance down the long wall and scanned the closest spire. A group of five monks pushed against an ancient war machine. Unbelievable. The catapult groaned as it finally summited the peak of the tower, and the monks quickly went to work lighting its payload on fire. The men moved with one purpose, working the ancient weapon with great skill as if it were a musical instrument. A large boulder coated in flaming tar hurdled through the air and smashed into the center of the morel formation, crushing multiple attackers and setting others on fire. Another catapult followed from an adjacent spire, and the giant rock smashed into the side of the titan. The tank swayed from the contact, but continued to barrel forward, indifferent to the assault. The massive machine lifted its long cannon and swiveled its view. A loud explosion rang out as the tank sent an explosive shell into the massive wall.
Dozens of monks armed with longbows rushed to the top of the wall as it trembled below. A couple of monks carried burning torches that they used to light large cauldrons on fire. The surrounding monks dipped their arrows in the fire and unleashed a barrage of burning arrows on the oncoming swarm.
“We need more than this!” Grift screamed over the noise to Luken. “Where is Wael?”
“I don’t know!” Luken never broke his concentration, continually firing his rifle downfield. “Probably guarding the mirror. Last line of defense.”
“Luken!” Grift grabbed Luken’s shoulder and pointed for the stairwell. “Can you bring up the chain gun?”
“From the truck?” Luken squinted down his scope and fired again.
“Yes!” Grift blindly fired a few shots in the direction of the lead titan. “We can’t fight these guys with sticks and stones.”
Luken nodded and shouldered his rifle. “But words will never hurt me?” Luken laughed at his own joke before jumping down from the wall. “Be back in a minute.”
Grift ran and slid behind one of the wall’s ramparts and grabbed for his datalink. He sighted his rifle and quickly emptied his clip on one of the rooks flanking the lead titan. The smaller black vehicle sputtered and skidded in front of the titan. The tank never broke speed and slid over the downed rook as it fired again at the wall. The explosion hit no more than thirty feet to Grift’s left. The concussive blast rattled his teeth and shook his entire core. He felt the ancient stones of Taluum shift beneath him. Please...please hold. He struggled to steady himself as additional shots from the accompanying titans crashed along the length of Taluum’s eastern rampart. The wall can’t take this for long.
The morels had closed in on the walled city and were pouring into the deep trench that spread twenty feet from the wall. They screeched with glee, clicking their teeth together in one accord, their hollow, cloudy white eyes barely hiding their hunger. Grift glanced down as his heart filled with fear. These were not like other morels he had encountered. Those had been ancient castaways left behind from a bygone era. As he looked down on the mob of what used to be human, he saw that they had been equipped. They wore black armor and their hands were not human. They instead bore claws that flashed in the dim canopy light of the forest. It w
as as if their fingers had been replaced with razor blades. The throng was filling the eastern moat, clamoring up the steep stone wall like a swarm of ants. Grift saw as the beastly body of what was once a woman began to climb up the walls, her claws finding unseen finger holds. Grift’s heart rocketed deep in his chest until he heard a call from behind.
“Make way! Make way!” Grift turned to see a monk leading four more with a bubbling cauldron full of pitch. In one swift motion, the monks upturned the tar, pouring the hot, viscous weapon from the wall and onto the horde of morels below. The smell of the bodies boiling in the ditch made Grift’s stomach turn, but he stood amazed as more monks filed in behind him with lighted arrows. The archers fired their arrows at the tar, igniting a wall of flames that swallowed hundreds of the morels below, causing a curtain of black smoke to erupt along the ramparts of Taluum.
A chorus of beastly shrieks and screams echoed up the wall and sent chills up and down Grift’s back. He turned his attention from the titans and rooks and aimed back down the wall, trying to pick off any of the morels that managed to avoid the fire trap. The beasts were still clawing up the fifty-foot wall, scaling it with ease. Even some of the morels encased in flame still managed to scramble and climb. Grift fired at one morel after another as he yelled for Adley again.
“Adley! Come on! We don’t have any more time!” Grift reloaded and scanned the burning forest below. In less than an hour, the majestic landscape had been reduced to a hellish blaze filled with nothing but death and fire.
“I’ve got it, man!” Luken’s voice quickened Grift’s resolve. He spun on his heels to help Luken prop the large gun against the wall and aim it toward the closest titan. Luken ripped open a crate of belted bullets and fed them into the gun as Grift readied his aim. As soon as the rounds were ready, Grift cocked the gun and squeezed the trigger. A stream of fifty-caliber rounds rained down on the tank, but they bounced off its thick armor. Grift cursed and swung the gun wider, strafing his fire over several rooks, ripping through the nimble black machines.
A titan explosive smashed into the top of the wall fifteen feet from Grift and Luken. The force sent Luken flying back toward the inner walls. Grift was sent tumbling across the top of the wall, hanging over the rampart. Everything around Grift slowed down, and the sounds of combat faded into an ear-piercing ring. He opened his eyes and looked down at the hundreds of hungry morels standing openmouthed below him. Even as his mind tried to catch up to what happened, stone continued to rain down from the titan’s direct hit. Dust and debris covered Grift as he struggled to climb back over the rampart. Just as his strength began to fail, he felt a strong arm lock down on him. Luken. In an instant, he was pulled back to safety. Grift hunkered against the stone rampart, his ears still ringing when Luken set up the chain gun once more and sprayed it over their enemies.
Luken screamed over the roar of the machine gun. “Go get Adley! She needs to get that Pred tech up and running!” He turned the large gun on the mass of bodies climbing the wall nearby, ripping them away by the dozen.
Grift nodded, still shaking the stars from his eyes. He ran at a fever pitch down the length of the wall toward Adley’s spire, his legs shifting beneath him like jelly. Grift stumbled onto the tower’s landing and found Adley fidgeting with the machine’s console.
“I think I have it!” Adley screamed. Her eyes were wide with a frustrated determination.
“Where is Wael?” Grift ran behind Adley at the weapon’s console. “We need all the help we can get!”
Adley kept her eyes locked on the console. “He is underground with Rot. He is getting ready with some other monks. He knows they can’t take their tanks down there.”
“Fair enough,” Grift grunted. A loud, rolling avalanche filled his ears as he answered and his heart sank. The wall had finally been breached. A large section of it broke loose. The city’s outermost defense had been compromised. Morels swarmed for the opening, shrieking at the top of their lungs, racing to the top of the walls. They moved like a swarm of ants, leaping on the monks, mutilating their flesh or hurling them from the top of the walls into the burning tar pits below. Six rooks sped to the front of the battlefield and fluttered through the wall’s opening, firing a barrage of machine gun fire and mortar rounds into the small city complex.
Women and children ran screaming from their homes as the rooks unleashed a furious assault on the inner structures. Each retreat of the innocent was quickly met by the mass of morel bodies that rushed through doors and windows, snatching the life of any man, woman, or child that dared to show themselves. Bodies piled in the streets as the swarm moved forward, threshing all those in its way, ripping through them in a tempest of bloodied claws and teeth.
A loud electromagnetic hum emanated from the Predecessor weapon and Adley let out a loud sigh of relief. “Grift, get on the platform.”
Grift obliged and joined Adley on the platform behind the weapon. Again, the shield illuminated around them and the same screen Grift had seen before flashed to life. Thousands of white bodies covered the screen as Adley punched in commands. Grift roared over the sound of the shield that covered them, “Can this thing focus only on the morels?” Adley said nothing but dialed a knob up, focusing the precision of the interface. Soon the morel forms went from white to red, leaving the living bodies of the monks and the other people painted in a white glow. Adley navigated through the floating foreign text that whirled around them in a rapid pace and the machine buzzed with life. The canister discharged and the small metallic orbs broke loose from the machine’s compartment. The orbs hovered for a second, only to shoot off like lightning, ripping through the swarm of morels. Dozens of them dropped with each second that passed, their color fading on the weapon’s display.
The screen started to flicker and dim as its picture went in and out. Then a white flash washed out Grift’s vision. The light was like a never-ending lightning bolt, eclipsing everything in a hot white fury.
Grift panicked, trying to grasp exactly what was happening below. The din of noise and chaos escalated and Grift couldn’t tell if the Pred tech was even working anymore. Morels were shrieking at the top of their lungs in the chaos.
Then Grift remembered. The Desolate. Large figures cloaked in white fire swept through the streets of Taluum like a wave, working toward the titans and rooks. The rooks inside the city walls melted down to piles of liquid steel in seconds. The Desolate consumed Preost’s enemies with an indescribable fury, forcing a retreat of all of Seam’s forces. The morels spread their attack formation wider, sprinting from Taluum’s wall, trying to avoid the Desolate attacks. Adley slammed her fist on the console as the weapon’s screen lost life and the shield around them dropped. Grift commanded her, “Move! We’ve got to get underground. We’ve done all we can up here.”
Adley nodded and followed Grift just as the Desolate ripped through two rooks that were pressing for the wall’s opening. The Desolate sped toward the lead titan like a tsunami wave of fire. The bay doors on the machine dropped, and Grift stood with his mouth agape as Abtren and Bastion leapt out from the side of the machine, each one colliding with the blazing attackers.
The four beings ripped at one another, jockeying for power. The Serubs’ skin boiled beneath the fury of their enemies, but both sent powerful blows down upon the Desolate. The two gods’ eyes were crazed and determined as they struggled with the elemental beings from the other side. The morels at the city wall did an about face and poured toward the Celestials, leaping into the fray, slashing and clawing to help free the Serubs from the consuming fire. Most of the morels were instantly disintegrated, but the confusion provided Abtren and Bastion an upper hand. Even as the fire burned into him, Bastion was able to gain a grip on one of the Desolate. With a gigantic snap, the Serub brought the being down, the figure’s flames extinguished.
Abtren danced around the fire of the other in a blur before finally landing a deep, piercing blow to her enemy. She drove her claws deep within the fire until the guardia
n’s form disintegrated in the forest breeze. The Desolate were both extinguished, their forms evaporating within the smoke and destruction of that cursed place.
The two Serubs collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath and clawing to pull themselves back to the titan. Grift snatched up his rifle and swung his sights on them. Adley screamed at him, “Grift, we need to get below!” Grift ignored her, his finger flirting with the trigger of his rifle when a motion in his periphery distracted him.
Oh, no.
Luken had jumped from the wall and was charging straight toward Abtren and Bastion. The remnant of morels attempted to pounce on him, but Luken was able to blow them back with an invisible force that stemmed from his open palms. Those that got close enough were torn apart as he pressed toward his fallen kin.
Luken jumped on top of Bastion and lifted the once mighty Serub’s head from the ground, only to crush his fist into his skull, crumpling the giant in one swift motion. Abtren tried to yell out, but Luken shoved her back with another blast from his hands, sending her rolling across the ash covered ground. Abtren roared out as she crashed against a burning tree stump. She wilted there on the muddy soil before trying to claw her way back up toward the titan, her once beautiful form sapped into that of a withered old woman.
“Why!?” screamed Luken. “You are both fools! Why would you do this? Fight him!”
A hand grasped Luken’s shoulder and he could feel an explosion of pain roar within him, draining him of his energy. Luken recoiled in pain and tried to scramble to his feet.
“Because I told them to. There is no fighting my will.” Glazed, dead eyes locked on Luken as the High King of Candor stole his life away. Seam examined his palms and smirked before pointing his open hands toward Luken, knocking him back ten feet, mirroring Luken’s own display of force. Seam grinned as he cocked his head to the side to meet Luken’s eyes. “And now you will listen to me too, Exile.”
