Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

  ~~~~~

  Clang. Clang. Clang.

  Dastou stood on a work table, striking the water pipe at the edge of where it spewed from, where the spigot used to be. Every two or three hits broke off another chip of green ceramic, opening the hole a bit more. The water was now halfway up the walls and technically at about the same height as his eyeballs if he stood in it. His forearms were starting to feel rubbery and there was a ringing from the constant high-pitched noise of his hammering.

  All the noise he was making and the whine in his ears didn’t stop the Saint from hearing those animals in a connected hallway growl louder and louder, followed by banging sounds and the sharp, distinct cracking of splintering wood from afar. Those things were breaking down a door and Dastou needed out of the Wax Room as soon as possible. He looked at the spot where he removed the mortar around the bricks, and the water was maybe twenty centimeters above it. Not good enough. He let go of his fatigue and kept hitting the pipe, opening the gushing hole faster and faster.

  In a couple of minutes he had opened up the hole by about another third, and the pipe began to vibrate. The shaking got worse as the Saint paid attention to it and the whole pipe buckled. Dastou decided that the room being halfway flooded would be, oh, perfectly fine for now, and turned to get away. He turned around to jump to safety, but the pipe buckled violently again, groaned, and blew apart right behind him.

  Dastou’s vision went black for a split-second when a wave of ceramic and hit his back so hard it sent him flying halfway across the room. He hit the water awkwardly and sank, sharp pain from his neck to the small of his back disorienting him, making it difficult to swim for a moment. As he sank limply, his vision returned and he saw the chunk of the pipe that hit him, a large piece, going down peacefully next to him. It was a large piece, thank goodness, because anything smaller had a chance of breaking his spine from a more pointed impact. It took another couple of seconds for Dastou to get his head on straight again, and then he swam away from the heavily gushing waters. The Saint surfaced and saw that the water was now three quarters of the way up the wall, a shocking difference from barely a minute ago. Maybe he should have thought of a better plan. He laughed out loud, and realized that the same thought probably occurred to Saints a lot in the past – they tended to do incredibly stupid things because they also tended to survive. Dastou hoped his own wits were working at full capacity, took a deep breath, and dove back down.

  The water was mildly cloudy from the dirt and dust it was removing from the Wax Room’s ancient walls and furniture, and Dastou had trouble seeing the bricks he worked on earlier from where he was. He swam to that section of the wall, came up next to it, and the closed distance let him see his work. He slipped the club in his belt, handled the knife, and stabbed into the old mortar to scratch out more of it. He worked around a single brick this time, the water helping him remove the excess. When he guessed that he had removed enough of what surrounded that one brick to be halfway to the next room, he splashed up for air and instantly went back down without seeing anything more than the liquid gurgling around his eyes, angled himself underwater, and aimed his boot at the brick.

  He kicked as hard as he could manage underwater, better than the club would have done at least, and made his foot sting. The motion and impact pushed him away, so he swam into position, kicked again, and was moved back again. Dastou felt the stone block wobble, and swam into place for a third strike. The Saint gave the blocks a taste of his boot again, accidentally letting out most of the remaining air in his lungs when he made contact. The kick landed true, forcing the brick loose into the next room over. Water rushed into the newly made hole, creating a vortex that pulled against Dastou when he went up for air.

  He surfaced to find only a meter of space left between his bald head and the tall ceiling. That meant this breath would be the last he could take – if he failed, he’d die. He actually smiled at the thought. This was the first time in his life he felt challenged outside of the beginning of his tutelage as a Saint, and that was safe in hindsight. He would not die here, he decided. His primary mentor, the one that found him on the street as a boy and recruited him, the one the Academy was named after, would be far too disappointed in him from beyond the grave. Not to mention his friends would die and the DSF would be destroyed when Citizen Vaiss came for its store of data.

  “Happy thoughts,” he muttered.

  Dastou took deep breaths one after the other and put his knife away. He was trained to hold his breath for up to fifteen minutes under low-stress situations, ten if doing some mild physical activity, but only with a lot of preparation and meditation beforehand. These deep breaths and the cold water would have to do for now, and he guessed he had at most five minutes to escape.

  “Happy, happy thoughts,” he said before one more deep inhale, and then he dove.

  The vortex helped Dastou reach a good position to kick again the wall again, one foot against it and other free. He aimed, and kicked at the brick above the missing space. If he could kick it downward, loosen it from the mortar without having to remove more, it would be shunted away like the first in a lot less time. He kicked again and felt stone quiver, distracting him enough to lose position. He swam back into place, aimed, and kicked again.

  The brick got loose, wavered, wobbled, and was pulled into the hole. The vortex was strengthened along with the increase in the size of the empty space in the wall. The sudden but minor increase in water pressure going into the hole pulled at the Saint, made his steadying foot slip, and he dropped the club while flailing. The tool was sucked cleanly through the two-brick-wide hole as if it wanted to go, but it didn’t matter; Dastou didn’t need it. He did, however, need light, and most of it was gone, meaning the water had reached high enough to slither into the oil lamps and extinguish their wicks. The next room over’s lamps were on, though, and a beam of wonderful illumination sifted through the hole he made, pointing his attention in the right direction.

  Dastou put himself in position to hit a stone to the side of his hole with his least pained foot, and went at it. Four well-made strikes and a third brick was gone. He changed position, used his other foot, and succeeded yet again – a fourth brick was kicked into the next room. Sometimes it was nice not to have Cypher maintained infrastructure to deal with. The swirling vortex was strong now, and Dastou’s lungs burned from the exertion of having to keep part of his body away from the pulling current. He had to keep going, until he was as close to dead as possible, because his people deserved as much.

  More pain, more kicks at the wall. It took longer this time, his legs sapped, and a few kicks later not one but two bricks were set loose and disappeared. That was a total of six blocks of stone gone, not nearly enough space for him to slip through.

  Dastou switched sides again, let the pain remind of him that he was at least alive enough to keep going, and got ready for another round with the wall. With a foot against the wall and his body struggling to angle itself so he could kick at all, he felt a vibration through his boot. Was the wall starting to collapse completely? Before he could bother to think about a possible answer to that query, the shudders got worse. And worse. The brick hole was made big enough to let just the right amount of water through so that air could re-enter the Wax Room from the vents on the ceiling. The vacuum caused by the lack of air was gone, and the pressure against the wall increased. The fact that this was exactly what he wanted didn’t alleviate how much danger he was in, and only made him hope that if there was a such thing as ghosts he wouldn’t be stuck haunting this underground festival of boredom.

  As he tried to decide what would be the best, most survivable position to be in – and whether it would be more fun to haunt Saan or Nes if given a choice – the wall sagged toward the next room over, the harsh sound of stone rubbing against itself loud and hollow in the water. The increasingly convex wall caused Dastou to lose his literal footing, and he flailed as the new, much stronger pressure pinned him against the drooping barrier near the
hole he’d been expanding. He tried to push away and could not – all he could do was feel the wall as it vibrated, as it sagged toward the next room, the scary creaking louder and louder, the warm light from the hole illuminating almost nothing.

  Something shoved his whole body, every millimeter of it, and Dastou realized it was a penultimate increase in pressure as the wall gave in completely. He watched it happen in Open Iris as he amped his brain up, everything shifting to slow-motion. The wall was pushed out more and more by the second, and he saw it warp in front of him, becoming further convex – or concave, depending on where you saw it from. In another few seconds it pushed out damn near half-a-meter in the center, and as Dastou’s ears rang with pain room this pressure, the whole thing burst at the point of the hole like a balloon. As close as he was to the breaking point, the pin prick that popped it, he got flung at high speed out of the Wax Room, bricks and sets of bricks going with him.

  Only the void knew how much water pressure followed right behind Dastou and got ready to slam his oh-so-fragile cranium against something that would crack it wide open. He was parallel to the ground, riding the wave near the front as it pushed him forward, surrounded by cast off masonry, and there was nothing he could do at this point. And what was this new room anyway? The light helped him see that there were cutting utensils everywhere, big ones with wicked edges. Ah, pedal-operated circular saws and tables with attacked vice grips: a wood shop. Directly in the Saint’s path and on the ground was a quarter-circle safety hood that flipped over on a swivel to become a half-circle. The hood had a big, glass viewing window so anyone cutting something on the saw below it could see everything and be completely safe. The table that the hood was once attached to was next to it, and Dastou thanked whoever happened to leave the protective shield lazily on the floor however long ago that was. When he was halfway across the woodcutter room, the wave that got him there was low enough that he was going to land very, very soon.

  Pain was not fun. Maybe for other people, in limited, controlled amounts. Dastou was not one of those people.

  When the wave ran out of pressure from the initial wall-breaking blast, Dastou was no longer supported by it and fell. He was smashed into the stone floor, his left thigh and upper arm banging onto cast off bricks, and the wave pushed him toward the far corner of the room, to the safety hood. The pain from his landing was so much worse than anything he’d ever experienced that he had to force it deep inside or he’d end up drowning as he screamed in agony.

  This was the scenario: Dastou was sideways, with water reaching from arm to halfway up his chest, which was what came into the room before the wall blew apart. At his head was the final third or so of the Woodcutter’s Domain, the safety hood he wanted in arm’s reach. At his feet was a flood that was at this point a high enough percentage of pieces of wall that, at best, it would smash his body against the far wall as if it were a rocky shore. At worst, he would live past that to pummel him to death with stone it was carrying. Simply put, Dastou was guaranteed to be killed… except for the part where he was him.

  Still on the bounce his body made after it “landed” half in water and half on brick – those bruises would be magnificent – Dastou reached out for the safety hood. He grabbed the pull bar near the top part of it with one hand, and with one foot pushed off the floor with the tips of his toes. The Saint got over the hood awkwardly, twisted in the air desperately, and landed again in water. The hood was between him and the oncoming flood, and he pulled the big metallic hood’s handle as he squeezed his body small. The hood was half over him and he was, not for the first time, glad that his former vice was alcohol and not food – chubbiness would not serve him here.

  The moment Dastou compressed his svelte self to be covered up at least partly by the safety hood, the remaining huge wave of water from the other room slammed against his protection. The water pushed the thing, and him, back to the far wall. The sledgehammer of water didn’t hit as hard as it could have, the impact spread by the shape of the hood and some of it slamming the ground thanks to gravity. Dastou and the hood were shoved against the wall pretty hard, but he didn’t break any bones. The sounds of stone against metal came then, loud, constant, and abrasive as bricks or groups of bricks hit the outside of the hood. The distinct cracking of stone against stone matched it, bricks crashing against the wall the floor. A couple of the stone blocks hit the glass shield of the protective half-circle, too, but it didn’t break completely. Dastou was becoming submerged, the massive amount of water from the Wax Room equalizing into this space. He was very quickly fully underwater, but this is what he expected, and it meant the worst possible impact was over. Chunks of the destroyed wall, small and large, sank to the floor all around him along with a few torn away lanterns from the Wax Room’s ceiling.

  The hood was no longer useful, so Dastou let it go. He surfaced and took a gasping, desperate lungful of air, forgetting to keep himself aloft in the process and taking in a mouthful of water at the end of the breath. He started coughing and gagging as he flailed to keep his head above water while catching his breath. In a few seconds, the embarrassing sloshing was over and he was calmer, looking around, his brain back to normal speed.

  The water was halfway up this room already, having been split between two spaces of equal size. It was rising fast, the rush of liquid coming out of the pipe unimpeded. The doorway was to his right, underwater, and he hoped there was no metal gate blocking his escape. He swam in that direction, head above water, and stopped just before the indentation in the wall that marked the door. There was no metal gate dropped into place here, thank goodness, so he took a deep breath and dove.

  It was the same type of door he’d seen on the room where he left Broken-Nose, with just a lever handle to open it with. Dastou impatiently gripped the handle and pushed it down, letting out half of his glorious new air. The door was thrown open by water pressure before he could let go of the lever, and the Saint was hurled out of the room at high speed. He to hit the hallway wall shoulder-first before falling to the floor in a heap as water splash against him. Smooth.

  ~~~~