I’d seen plenty of people who had given up their last thing. New arrivals who couldn’t handle the culture shock. Adventurers, monks, and mystics who’d learned one secret too many. Logos scientists addled by the Crucible’s absolute refusal to be studied, probed, prodded or understood. Knights who’d betrayed their vows. In some parts of Hub City – the kind my guild trafficked in – you could hardly move without stepping over the wreckage of what used to be a sentient being.
The Crucible is, among other things, a place for people with strong beliefs and high ideals. For the rest of us, well… There’s just this feeling. Adrenaline. Panic. Terror. Exhilaration. All mixed together.
Ponderous Url turned. His eyes were solid white with cherry-red irises and no pupils. No veins, no discoloration. Nothing, anywhere on his face, of the minor asymmetries that marred beings who had grown naturally.
I would have sworn, to any god that was listening, that he looked right at me. And then he turned away again, uninterested.
He must have noticed me. Some of the adrenaline dripped away. The pain came back. He couldn’t have made me any smaller if he’d stepped on me.
A barbarian witch with a flaming red peaked cap stood near him. She held up her hand. Something in her palm glowed gold. Even from this far away, I recognized æmber. There was enough of it there for Ponderous Url to shape into a key, one of the three he needed to unlock his vault.
Was this Ponderous Url’s first key? His third? I had just gotten here, and already I might be too late.
I drew my prism knife.
The flat of the blade gleamed red, then gold, then a hot white-blue, like a sun. Hints of intangible depths swam beneath its surface.
Don’t ask me to explain the prism blade. It was an artifact, stolen from the vaults of a saurian senator who had, until now, been my most challenging target. The saurian left no information about it. The only thing I knew for sure, with a deepness and surety I couldn’t justify, was that it was ancient. The Saurian Republic was the oldest civilization on the Crucible, with a history stretching millions of years.
The knife was the size of a dagger… most of the time. Its edges were indeterminate. It wasn’t an object as much as it was an absence. It was a hole in space, a gateway to other places. It only “rested” in its scabbard because the scabbard was a magnetic field generator, keeping the hilt – the only physically real part of the weapon – suspended.
I recognized the bow-and-arrow’s interdimensional magic because it hadn’t been the first time I’d seen it. The prism knife, too, was a gateway.
Instead of bringing things in, it gated them out. Slice by slice. I didn’t recognize any of the places on the other side, but I had never seen one that looked hospitable.
It did not matter what Ponderous Url’s skin was made of. I was going to pierce it. I was going to make him notice me.
Only a few dozen meters past the Archon, a battle raged. Plasma bolts blasted trunks apart in great clouds of razor-sharp ironwood chips. A four-winged angel hovered over the horizon, almost certainly a magical illusion meant to draw fire (sure enough, a few of those plasma bolts passed harmlessly through it).
I hardly noticed the fight. I had learned my lesson about distractions.
Ponderous Url stooped to pluck the key. Assuming he was vulnerable in all the places a normal humanoid was vulnerable, that meant I had a plan. A leap to a stout rocky prominence – to the crook of an outstretched ironwood limb – onto Ponderous Url’s back – scramble toward his neck…
But the second after I took my first jump, pain lanced up my leg.
The shock overcame the adrenaline. I did not have a chance to register seeing the iron-hard ground before I crashed into it. My prism knife slipped from my palm. I curled my two smallest fingers around the hilt, retaining just enough control to smash it into the ground.
The agony in my leg grew in urgency until I could think of nothing else. I fought against it, scrambling forward on my hands and knees. Something sharp dug even farther into my leg, yanking me back.
This time, the pain splintered my mind. The agony made me light-headed. It took real effort to keep from fainting. I twisted around, trying not to move my leg.
A bony whip, molded in the shape of a spine, had lashed around my leg. The whip coiled past my knee, up to my thigh. Spines ran down its length like vertebrae.
As if this all were not dramatic enough, flashes of red ran down the spine’s length, either magic or electronics or both. The spines had not actually gone very far into my skin. No blood marred my leggings. But the red pulsing was obviously the point of this production. Pain jammed through me in sync with the lights.
This whip was unmistakably of demon manufacture. Sure enough, at the other end of the weapon stood a cloaked, red-and-black-armed demon. It stood three times as tall as me. It gripped the whip’s handle with seven-fingered hands that were, even for its size, grotesquely out of proportion.
I had not seen a demon since the creature who had offered me this contract. The demons of Dis are among the Crucible’s many mysteries, and best not looked into. No one who’s found any answers among their subterranean warrens has returned to the surface.
There are only a few things worth knowing. They thrive on eliciting emotions from other beings. Most of the time, this tends to come from pain and torture – but they’ve also been sighted lingering on the sidelines of parties, weddings, and Brobnar concerts. They’ll even join an Archon’s retinue, apparently to feast on all the chaos and carnage and high emotions.
The other thing to know is that demons never, ever communicate. Autopsies of dead demons have shown that they have fully formed vocal cords, adapted for speech. But they’ve never used them. Same goes for their guts and digestive tracts – in autopsies, they’re always empty. The only things they seem to consume are the emotions of others.
The pain was a snake coiled around my leg, biting into the base of my spine. A spasm of agony ran up my back like an electric shock, jamming my nerves. But if I had not already had my hand around the prism knife’s hilt, I wouldn’t have been able to draw it.
My instincts alone were kicking me along. I plucked the knife out of the ground and, in one swift stroke, I severed the whip between its vertebrae.
The lights along the whip died all at once. I fell into the dirt, and was left only with the “mundane” pain of the lash wrapped around my leg. Steel glinted around the base of the whip. Shiny little filaments had extruded from the bony vertebrae and wrapped around my leg. They kept the whip tightly bound to me.
That alone was enough of a shock to keep me from standing until, in three long strides, the demon had closed the distance between us.
Its outlandishly oversized fingers wrapped around my chest, dug into my skin. My ribs popped as it grabbed me, and then lifted me.
When I say that demons do not communicate, I don’t mean in just language. It also did not snarl, or hiss, or growl, or make any noise that I might have been able to imbue with some kind of meaning. My weapon hand was pinned. I had just enough freedom of movement to drive the prism knife into its palm, but it gave no indication that it even noticed.
Then it tossed me toward the still-raging battle.
I’ve leapt from rooftops to passing trains, shimmied across the sensors and telescopes above Logos laboratories and danced through the brawling pits of a death concert without getting injured. But agility can only see you so far. Once I was in mid-air, there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could twist or contort myself except to curl up.
I landed hard. I tumbled across the packed dirt, accumulating scrapes and bruises, and rolled into an ironwood trunk.
For several seconds, I could not breathe. Only after I forced air into my lungs did I realize that I was not resting against an ironwood trunk.
It was a Brobnar giant’s leg. Its ugly, ogreish face looked down at me with something between amusement and annoyance. Ponderous Url’s opposition did employ giants, after all. I had been luc
ky that the silverwings led me in the right direction.
This giant held a club, scarred and pitted from numerous ray gun and plasma bolts. The moment I looked up, the giant raised its club.
I used to get angry very often. I can be ruthless, and I can be cruel, but those are calculating. Anger is a symptom of attachment. It had been a long time since I had felt strongly enough about anything to rouse myself to rage for it.
I was angry now.
It was almost refreshing. There was a real point to my being now. And that point was to hurt. I was tired of everything I faced being larger than me.
The prism knife was small, too, but it still penetrated deep into the giant’s ankle. I twisted the knife and yanked upward. The prism knife flared colors, greedily absorbing parts of the giant and removing them from this world.
I rolled out of the way. I didn’t see the giant fall. I just felt the impact reverberate through the packed earth. I staggered to my feet. The whip still dragged with me. I must have gotten disoriented in mid-air. I couldn’t see any sign of Ponderous Url or his demon.
If the demon had wanted to kill me, it could have crushed me, or tossed me into a tree. It should have pursued me. It wasn’t even here to feed from me.
A trio of violet-skinned Brobnar goblins bolted past me, running from a torrent of ray gun fire. Rage overcame me. Without thinking, I swiped my knife across their path. I struck one of the goblins. They folded backward, almost casually. None of its companions seemed to notice. In another flash of battle-chaos, the remaining goblins were gone.
Ordinarily, I prided myself on not harming anyone but my targets. The goblin and the giant would be healed at the end of the battle. If they died, they would be resurrected. But that was rationalization. Not justification. I had only thought of that after the fact. Back home, I had often been angry, but never uncontrolled. The part of me that had attacked that goblin was not a part of me I had met before I’d come to the Crucible.
A growl welled deep under my throat. Up ahead, a tall, crouched silhouette had taken cover behind an ironwood root. In my battle-rage, I hallucinated Ponderous Url. It was not until I’d climbed onto it and dispatched it with my prism knife that I saw that, no, it was just another of those cursed giants.
I was doing a good job of clearing out Ponderous Url’s opponents for him.
The ogre had been digging. No doubt searching for æmber. Ironwood roots were attracted to æmber deposits. I’d already seen Ponderous Url collect enough æmber to forge one key. The battle couldn’t last for much longer.
Hobbled by the weight of the whip still bound to my leg, I staggered on.
A blast of green-white light blinded me. It overwhelmed all of the plasma bolts and martian ray guns. It was so bright that, for a moment, I didn’t realize I’d been deafened, too. The noise of the blast had been too loud to hear.
When the afterimage faded, half of the martian ray guns had fallen silent. Whatever the blast was, it had silenced a large part of Ponderous Url’s army.
Not wanting to see, I turned.
The six-legged mechanical titan stood just underneath the next layer of ironwood foliage. It must have been built to order, made just for this particular place. The bits and knobs grafted onto it reminded me of the rifle I’d faced down minutes ago. It could only have been Logos technology. The Logos loved to tinker and redesign. Their robots and cyborgs were hyper-specialized. Every part had its specific purpose.
Any of its pincer legs could have trampled a martian tripod walker. There was nothing on the battlefield of any size capable of opposing it. When I looked where it was headed, I saw a familiar glint of silver skin.
Point of professional pride: a kill was not a kill unless I performed the deed myself.
I bolted after the walker, fast as my bad leg would carry me. That was just fast enough, as it turned out. The walker’s size was its biggest weakness. Though its spiky legs surmounted roots and ruts with ease, it had to navigate around the thickest bundles of ironwood trunks.
A plan trickled into place. Whether there were other huge vehicles around or not, I would be a fool to assume Ponderous Url had no other defenses. All of Ponderous Url’s retinue and remaining weapons would be directed at the walker shortly. They would not notice me until I was ready to make them notice me. All I had to do was make Ponderous Url’s job a little easier, make sure the walker didn’t actually harm him…
I ducked between the walker’s pincer legs. A point-defense gun mounted on the walker’s side swiveled toward me, too slow. My prism knife flashed, afterimages of colors behind it. Some kind of defensive shield flared over the walker’s skin. Not enough. The prism knife passed through it like air.
The tip of the walker’s pincer legs dug into the ground as it walked. The next time the walker tried to lift the leg I’d struck, it ripped off as if it were paper. My ears were still ringing, but even through that, I could hear a terrible metallic screeching.
The walker fell to one of its many knees. Perfect. It was an open target. And if any of Ponderous Url’s allies had seen me, they would think I was on their side.
All I had to do was get out of the way fast enough.
That was too tall an order. It was not the pain that caught up with me. It was exhaustion. I was winded. My vision blurred. My body felt like it was at a great remove, and I could not move like I needed.
One of the titan’s remaining pincer legs thrust into the small of my back. It propelled me forward, slamming me into an ironwood trunk.
My vision mottled red with agony. The pincer leg pinned me against the trunk for a moment, and then withdrew. I fell.
Scores of plasma bolts seared the air, all aimed at where I’d left the walker. From where I lay, I could not see what had become of it. All I knew was that the pressure had lifted. But I could not breathe. I could not raise myself to twist around and look.
Eventually, the plasma fire stopped.
I could not hear anything besides a deep-abiding hum behind my ears. It was not even ringing. The malfunction was deeper than that, in my brain. Millions of neurons, overwhelmed with pain, misfiring.
I had had my breath knocked out of me plenty of times. This felt different. I was not fighting with my lungs. I could not feel them at all.
The red blotches had not gone away. Now they were piling in from the fringes of my vision, racing to fill up the center.
I drove my fingers into the dirt. Pulled myself forward. If I didn’t force myself to focus on something, I was going to be lost.
Somewhere, at the far end of the red tunnel, I saw Ponderous Url. The foliage-dappled sunlight glinted across his silvery skin.
There was the demon beside him, still holding its half of the severed bone whip. It should have been over here. It was missing out on an emotional feast. It was offering something to Ponderous Url. Æmber glowed between its claws. A vault key.
The demon’s hood fell as it raised its head.
I was not so far gone that I did not recognize the demon – it was the same silver-toothed demon who had offered me the contract on Ponderous Url’s life.
I still couldn’t breathe. I was quite beyond laughter.
The rest of my vision disappeared into the tunnel. I wished I could have convinced myself that I was hallucinating, but I was still lucid enough to know otherwise. One more way the Crucible was laughing at me. One more mystery I would never be able to solve.
I still felt the soil under my fingers. I clung to the feeling as long and as hard as I could. Eventually it, too, faded away.
Of course, I didn’t stay dead. I’m here talking to you.
I woke with a cool feeling emanating from deep in my chest, spreading through the rest of my body. The bow-wielding barbarian stood over me, his torn fingernails aglow with strange magic.
I gasped and coughed, more from the shock than because any of my revived parts were working incorrectly. I rolled away, forced myself to stand on shaky legs. I reached for my prism knife, but only grabbed air. I
n fact, the whole magnetic sheath had been taken from me.
There was no pain. I wasn’t dragging a severed half of a whip with my leg. Even the damage the widower tree had done to my foot was gone. I could see my unbroken skin through the boot’s torn sole.
The barbarian grinned, but gave no sign that he recognized me. I had hit him on the head pretty hard. Or maybe, and more likely, he just didn’t care. It had all been in the spirit of good fun.
He moved on to his next patient. A line of dead and wounded fighters was arrayed next to me. There was no guano-and-pine-needles stink of druidic magic this time, so I doubted the magic was his.
We were still under the gloom of the ironwood foliage, though I didn’t recognize this part of it. I must have been dragged here. All around, Ponderous Url’s fighters wandered amongst the fallen. Their hands glowed like my barbarian’s.
Ponderous Url himself was not difficult to find. He sat with his back to a bundle of three trees, his legs folded. Luminous strands of magic emanated from him to his healers. As if he had called a council of war, he sat with a golden-skinned elf, a martian war-commander and a cloud of faeries. The demon who had hired me lingered nearby too – no doubt soaking in the ambient emotional energies.
I didn’t care. I charged toward Ponderous Url, scattering the faeries with a wave of my hand. “This was a set-up,” I told him. “You hired me – you wanted me to try to kill you.”
Ponderous Url considered that for a long time. He hadn’t gotten his name for nothing. Finally, he raised a silver finger. “I wanted you to fight,” he said.
For all his size, Ponderous Url’s voice was incongruously small. No deeper than an ordinary human or elf’s. He even spoke in an accent that tickled an ancient memory. It was the accent of my home.
I was aware of the demon abandoning its meditations, stepping closer to me.
For the rest of Ponderous Url’s retinue, even intense fighting was all in a day’s work. Acclimation dulls emotion. But my rage and despair were boiling over.
Tales From the Crucible Page 2
