Blackstone Fortress

by Darius Hinks

  ‘No way forward. No way back.’

  Draik looked back to the portal he had entered through. It was gone. That area of the wall was flat and uninterrupted as the rest of the hall, made of the same pearlescent white material. He rushed back over and ran his hand across the cold surface, looking for depressions or marks. There was nothing. The doorway had simply ceased to be.

  ‘I hope you’re going to last longer than the others,’ said the voice.

  It was nearer now and Draik saw movement, just a few feet away – a pale shape, almost indistinguishable from the white floor.

  He aimed his pistol at the shape and edged towards it.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Kurdrak.’ The voice sounded amused.

  As Draik stepped closer to the prone figure he saw why he had missed it before. As he had guessed from the tone of the voice, it was a member of the sadistic race known as drukhari. He had encountered such beings before and revulsion flooded through him at the sight of its long, cruel face. The thing was humanoid but could never have been mistaken for human. Its features were unnaturally narrow and fine, with wide-set, pointed eyes and tall, spear-tip ears. Its body was impossibly long and lean, like all of its kind, but as Draik looked closer he saw that it was horribly emaciated. Drukhari were always tall and slender, but some of this one’s robes had been torn away and he could see bones pressing through its thin, stretched skin. It looked like a skeleton wrapped in thin parchment and there was a brutal wound in its neck where something had been hammered into its flesh.

  The febrile wretch tried to sit up as Draik approached, but its arms trembled and gave way. Draik raised his splinter pistol and pointed it at the alien’s head. His pistol had come from a similar creature and Draik was pleased at the irony that the thing would die by one of its own weapons.

  ‘Wait,’ said the alien. Empty, black eyes stared from its bone-white skin. ‘Aren’t you interested to know why you’re dead?’

  Draik was repulsed by the idea of conversing with such a monster, but decided a few seconds more would make no difference. The alien was clearly too wasted to ever walk again. It could do little harm now. He nodded.

  The alien smiled, revealing a mouthful of needle teeth. Its face was so dry the smile caused the skin to splinter and crack, reminding Draik of the powdered face of a Terran noble.

  ‘Good little mon-keigh,’ chuckled the alien. ‘It wants to learn.’

  Draik took a deep breath, resisting the urge to pull the trigger. Whatever the alien told him would be lies, but lies could sometimes point to truth.

  ‘Help me up,’ said the alien, reaching out with pale, spindly fingers.

  Draik remained as he was, the splinter pistol pointed at the creature’s head.

  The alien sniggered and withdrew its hand. ‘Clever little mon-keigh. You win a prize. I will tell you where you are. You have reached the heart of Vaul’s Talisman.’ The alien looked up into the shimmering haze overhead, perhaps seeing a distant ceiling that Draik could not. ‘You will breathe your last in a place few of your kind could even imagine.’

  ‘Why am I dead?’ asked Draik.

  The alien waved at the burnt corpses. ‘Because you will enter the canal and burn.’

  Draik looked over at the black liquid that was rushing across the aqueduct.

  ‘And, even though you now know that, you will have to try.’ The alien closed its eyes and mouthed something in its own tongue. Then it smiled at Draik again. ‘Unless you help me, of course.’

  Draik had no intention of doing anything other than firing his pistol, but he kept the alien talking, interested to hear what it might accidentally reveal. ‘And if I helped you?’

  ‘If you helped me, I would show you the alternative exit that all of your fellow simpletons have missed.’ The alien glanced at something it was clutching in one of its hands. ‘And then I would offer you the chance to see the true heart of the Blackstone – a place your species could not even conceive of.’

  Draik looked around the hall. Every surface was smooth and featureless, apart from the channel of black liquid soaring out across the drop.

  ‘You won’t find it.’ The alien was clearly revelling in the power it had over him. ‘You will sit here, paralysed by indecision, for days, perhaps weeks, until your food and drink are gone and you start to waste away. Then, when you see the end coming, you will realise that you have only one chance – to swim so fast that you reach the other side before you burn away.’

  ‘Is that possible? To reach the other side before the liquid consumes me?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The alien shrugged and nodded to one of the corpses. ‘Some of the simpletons made it halfway before they lost their nerve and swam back. Perhaps, if they had persevered, they might have reached the other side.’

  ‘And what is on the other side?’

  ‘The liquid spills into the core of the fortress. It falls away through a sluice gate and the heroic simpleton walks free, rid of the fluid and happily entering the Blackstone’s central keep.’ The alien shrugged. ‘You’ll see soon enough. When you’re starving and parched, you’ll have no option. It seems that your kind were not built to survive in places like this.’

  ‘And your kind were built to survive in here? You don’t seem to be doing so well.’

  The alien’s smile faltered. ‘I had some business to deal with – a tiresome brother.’ It looked around the chamber, seeming to forget about Draik. ‘I think that was a long time ago. But maybe not. Strange how this place plays tricks with one’s mind.’ Then it remembered Draik and scowled, seeming irritated that it had spoken so openly. ‘Do you want to know about the other way out?’

  ‘What would you ask in return?’

  ‘That you help me until I recover my strength.’ The alien waved at its body. ‘I am close to my goal, but my journey has broken me. Watching your friends cook themselves has been amusing for a while, but if I stay here any longer I will never leave. And I am destined to become the master of Vaul’s Talisman. If you carry me to the other exit, I will direct you.’ The alien glanced at its hand again. ‘I am in possession of secrets. You just need to help me to a transportation chamber.’

  ‘And then?’

  The alien laughed. ‘And then you will try to kill me, but we will deal with that when the time comes.’

  Draik still had his pistol pointed at the alien’s head.

  ‘I would rather die than offer you help.’

  The alien’s smile never faltered. ‘Of course. Hence my original statement. You are dead, little mon-keigh. Your race is run.’

  Draik walked away from the alien. The thing was an abomination. Drukhari were vampiric, sustaining themselves through the agony of others. The alien was too weak to physically torture him, so it was tormenting him in another way. Teasing him with a promise of escape. Making offers that were bound to be lies. He looked at the liquid rushing through the aqueduct, oily and black as it flowed across the gallery. He could not even be sure that it was as lethal as the drukhari said. Perhaps the alien had burned the victims that were scattered around the hall? Perhaps the liquid was as safe as the oil that had washed over Draik in the maglev chamber? He paced up the steps to the start of the aqueduct and approached the edge of the canal. It was about twelve feet wide and the liquid looked identical to the oily substance he had seen before, gurgling and lapping as it rushed away from him.

  The alien started laughing, quietly. ‘Some never pluck up the courage. Look to your left.’

  There was a corpse right near the edge of the liquid. It was not burned like the others, but it was still a husk. It was a man, a privateer of some kind. His face had collapsed in on itself, ravaged by starvation and dehydration, leaving a cold, waxy mask.

  Anger boiled up through Draik and his pulse began to hammer. He looked back at the alien and saw, rather than an emaciated creature, his s
ister, sitting proud and erect on the back of a piebald charger. His mind had conjured no other memories of the Draik estates – just Thalia Draik and her steed, plucked from his past and deposited in this stark, white hall. The horse was snorting clouds of steam and its flanks were splattered with blood. Thalia was trying to catch her breath after the exertion of a hunt. She was twenty and a true Draik – lean, imperious and predator-strong. Blood dripped from her horse, splashing across the polished floor. Thalia sneered down at him from her saddle.

  ‘I’ve worked it out.’

  As she spoke, the white chamber fell away and the Draik estate shimmered into view, replacing the ivory walls with rain-lashed gardens and a spire-crowded Terran skyline, glittering with the landing lights of bulk haulers and atmospheric shuttles.

  ‘Worked what out?’ asked Draik. Their father and the rest of the party were galloping back towards the house, followed by a drifting panoply of airborne banners. The pennants were carried on the backs of hooded, wire-limbed servitors, snapping in the smog, adding a splash of proud, heraldic colour to the polluted air.

  ‘Why you’re not the heir father thinks you are.’ She leant back in her saddle, flinging her damp, tawny hair from her face. ‘You’re such a diligent learner, Janus – so studious, so quick to learn, so good at practising all those pretty fencing moves. But you’re soft. Too soft to rule.’ Her face grew almost bestial, twisted and snarling as she tied her hair back in a plait. ‘When that menial fell, you changed your course. What kind of Draik does that? What kind of Draik loses a kill, just to spare the blushes of a servant? You’re no hunter.’

  As always, Thalia had a knack of infuriating Draik. ‘You rode him down. You broke a man’s legs for no reason. You mistake cruelty for nobility, Thalia. The ability to crush a man does not make you fit to lead him.’ Draik’s steed bucked and pranced beneath him, sensing his agitation.

  Thalia laughed, incredulous. ‘I didn’t even see him, Janus. Don’t you understand? He does not breathe the same air I do. We are not the same species.’ She tugged her reins, cantering away, still laughing. ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s why I find all this so ridiculous. You’re too soft, brother. Father will see it soon. You lack steel. That’s why you will always fail. That’s why I’m the only one who can rule when he’s gone.’

  Draik charged towards her, reaching out to grab her arm. She laughed, but the sound had changed. Her soft, rich tones had been replaced by a thin, gasping whisper.

  At the last minute, Draik halted, his outstretched hand inches away from the crippled alien. The Terran skies faded and Draik snatched back his hand, just before the alien grabbed it. The creature dropped back, disappointed but intrigued.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  Draik shook his head and stormed back up onto the aqueduct, wondering if the time had come to kill the creature. His pulse was still pounding at the memory of his sister and he was desperate to unleash his fury against something.

  ‘What are you not fit to lead?’ asked the alien with a sardonic smirk.

  Draik howled a curse and kicked the nearest thing he could find. It was the corpse that had not burned – the body of the privateer who starved rather than brave the liquid. Draik booted it with such force, and the body was so light, that it slid across the polished floor and splashed into the black liquid.

  Draik backed away as droplets landed all around him. He glanced back at the alien and saw that its expression had changed. Rather than scornful, it now looked irritated – concerned, even.

  Draik realised that he must have unwittingly done something unexpected.

  He looked back at the body. It was floating quickly away from him, rushing towards the next chamber.

  ‘It’s not burning,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not burning,’ he said louder, looking back at the alien. ‘You were lying to me. You must have burned these men.’ He stepped forwards and placed his boot in the liquid. There was a loud hiss and plumes of smoke enveloped him as heat pulsed through his foot.

  ‘Stop!’ cried the alien, as Draik wrenched his foot from the canal and staggered backwards.

  ‘Do not kill yourself, mon-keigh!’ The alien sounded furious.

  Draik stumbled back, pounding his boot on the floor, scattering drops of oil and glowing embers. His boot was blackened but he had removed it so quickly that the liquid had not burned all the way through. His foot was unharmed.

  He looked back at the canal. The corpse was moving so fast it had almost reached the other side, but it was still intact. It had rolled a couple of times, but the oil simply slid off, revealing the same greasy cadaver. There was no sign of any burning.

  He looked back at the alien. ‘Why didn’t it burn?’

  ‘It’s irrelevant.’ Rather than scornful and snide, the alien now sounded unnerved. ‘Your only way out of here is to help me, mon-keigh.’

  ‘Tell me!’ snapped Draik, pointing his pistol at the alien again.

  The creature shrugged. ‘Dead things pass. Living things burn.’

  ‘Inanimate things float across?’

  ‘Dead things, yes. What difference does it make? You are breathing. You will burn, simpleton. You will–’

  With Thalia’s accusations still echoing around Draik’s head, the alien’s whining was too much for him to bear.

  He fired, ripping the alien’s head apart with a needle storm.

  Blood sprayed across the floor, exactly where it had previously been falling from Thalia’s horse, and the headless alien finally lay still. He strode over to it and opened its dead hand. There was a scrap of skin in there. It looked worryingly like human skin and it was covered in notations he could not understand – vile, xenos runes. He felt like casting it aside, but perhaps it was the key to escaping the chamber? He stashed it in his coat as he walked back and forth at the edge of the canal, his anger growing rather than abating, his sister’s words cutting him after all these decades. You lack steel. That’s why you will always fail.

  Then, as he thought of the corpse rushing towards the sluice on the far side, an idea occurred to him.

  ‘Dead things pass,’ he muttered. ‘Living things burn.’

  He reached beneath his coat and grabbed the device he had used to save Audus’ life. The leather strap of the axial interrupter was cluttered with gauges and dials, and Draik peered at them until he found what he was looking for: a timer.

  Then he shook his head at the insanity of what he was considering. He strode back down the steps and walked around the antechamber again, running his hands over the walls, looking again for a hidden exit. The alien was almost certainly lying but there might be another way out. Draik spent nearly an hour scouring every inch of wall he could reach, his optic implant switched to full magnification as he worked. There was nothing, and with every moment that passed he felt his chance slipping away. Isola would be horrified at losing her captain, but Taddeus would not pause. With Corval to protect him, he would not fail as he did last time. The priest might already be approaching the Ascuris Vault. He had no understanding of its true worth, but he would break into it for the sake of his holy visions and the glory of the discovery would fall to Taddeus and House Corval. Conquering the Blackstone was a chance Draik had never expected. This was his opportunity to prove his worth to his father, return to Terra and reclaim his place at the head of House Draik. And he would not let it be stolen from him.

  He strode back across the chamber towards the aqueduct.

  As he climbed the steps, he turned a dial on the strap, clicking it back a few notches until it started ticking. Then he fastened it to his wrist. He rushed towards the canal, breaking into a run, not giving himself a chance to rethink what he was doing. As he leapt, he triggered the device. Arcs of electricity lanced from his wrist to his heart.

  Pain jolted through him.

  He heard a muffled splash.

  19

  ‘The lull
aby again,’ growled Bullosus as he blundered through the shadows.

  His brothers were behind him. Aurick was carrying a grenade launcher almost as big as he was and Lothar had a lascarbine in one hand and the cage in the other. The toad-thing was wearing an expression of abject terror as it looked around at the Blackstone. The approach vector followed by Draik had looked far too dangerous, so Bullosus had been forced to land miles away at a different docking point. They had been travelling through the Blackstone for what seemed like weeks, and the journey had been brutal. The hired hands they had recruited at the Helmsman had been killed by a staggering menagerie of aliens. Only the three brothers and the singing alien had survived to get this far. Bullosus had a huge arc light strapped to his back, but even that only managed to drive the darkness back a few feet. The echoes of their footfalls made it sound as though they were crossing some kind of empty plateau, but it was impossible to be sure. After everything they had seen, the creature was too panicked by its surroundings to realise it was being addressed.

  ‘Sing!’ bellowed Bullosus, glaring back at it.

  The bloated little creature flinched, then launched into song. Its voice was usually strong and resonant but here, in the abyss of the Blackstone, it could only manage a thin warble. The sound carried nonetheless, reverberating off unseen walls and echoing in hidden pits.

  Bullosus shook his head. The sound failed to calm him as well as it usually did. They had docked with the Blackstone at the same location they always used, but on this occasion the portal had decided to change its shape and Bullosus’ shuttle was now a smouldering wreck.

  ‘How will we get back to Precipice?’ whispered Lothar, glancing back the way they had come.