by Dante King
“Looks like you’ve done more than a little. Good thing, because they’re coming.” Chugayev backed away from the door toward the center of the chamber. I went with him, and we kept our guns raised, covering the room’s only entrance.
A shadow shifted in the yard outside, and suddenly, figures appeared in the doorway. They were clad from head to foot in loose black clothes, showing only a narrow band of skin around their eyes. Each one carried a single-edged sword in one hand and a matching knife in the other.
“How’s this for a first day?” Chugayev asked me before he opened fire, the bark of his rifle echoing around the chamber. Some of the ninjas fell back, but none seemed to have been hit, despite the spray of bullets around them. As Chugayev paused, I pulled the Gsh-18’s trigger. The bullet hit a target, but it seemed to have no effect. It simply bounced off. Either the ninja was wearing some serious body armor, or he was just as peculiar as the orb and the talking sword.
The ninjas advanced again, spreading out as they entered the room. I released three more shots into their ranks, but the bullets bounced harmlessly to the ground.
“Holy shit,” I muttered as I tried not to lose my cool. “They’re fucking bulletproof.”
“Grab the artifact!” Chugayev’s voice reached a fever pitch. “The Overseer will want it at any cost!”
I grabbed the orb off the pedestal. It felt warm in my hand, as if it were a living thing. My admiration for the object was cut short when soldiers burst through the doorway and attacked the ninjas. Their efforts with their rifles were more successful than mine and Chugayev’s, but it still took dozens of rounds to take down a single enemy. When they moved close enough, the soldiers used their rifles like clubs, swinging at the black-clad attackers and using their guns to parry swords. Others lost their weapons and were forced to grapple hand-to-hand against the deadly invaders. One Russian fell, his guts tumbling onto the floor from a sword stroke across the belly. Another slumped against the wall, his face pale as he stared at where his right arm lay on the floor.
“Take the sword.” Nydarth’s voice seemed to come straight into my mind. “Your other weapon will do no good.”
“No, thanks,” I replied, imagining the words rather than speaking them out loud. “I’d rather have a sidearm than a sword.”
I pointed my pistol at the nearest ninja and pulled the trigger.
There was no bang of a bullet firing. Instead, my whole weapon turned a dark, mottled gray without the glint of gunmetal, then crumbled like ash and fell through my fingers.
“What the fuck?” I murmured as I stared at the gray dust that lingered on my skin.
The ninja that had apparently just performed the gun-melting trick came running for me, and I backed off, only to find myself pressed against the pedestal in the middle of the room. Still holding the orb in one hand, I placed the other on the top of the pedestal and jumped, vaulting back over it. The ninja’s sword hit stone and raised a shower of sparks just as I landed on the far side.
The recess holding the sword was beside me. I could hear Nydarth’s voice, still urging me to pick it up.
The ninja stepped around the pedestal, blades glinting. He twirled his single-edged sword in dizzying circles, taunting me. I grabbed the sword, and the grip felt eerily familiar in my hand, even though I’d only touched it once before. As I brought it around to face my enemy, a wave of power rushed through me. The dust and stains of centuries fell away from the sword and revealed a pristine blade of gleaming steel.
Growing up in a rough East End neighborhood, I had learned how to fight from an early age. In high school, I’d taken martial arts, determined never to let bullies get the better of me. I’d never in my whole life learned how to fight with a sword, but I figured that the principles seemed pretty simple. Slice with the edge, stab with the tip, and hope like hell that these ninjas weren’t as deadly as they looked. Judging by the state of the Russian soldiers, I figured they were pretty damn deadly.
I held the blade out and pointed it straight at the ninja.
“That’s right,” Nydarth whispered in my mind. “Just like that.”
“You have never lifted a sword before,” the ninja said. “You know nothing of its power.”
“It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? You stab, cut, or slice.”
The ninja made an impossibly high leap into the air, almost 15 feet, and I lifted my sword in a feeble attempt to skewer him on the way down. As if from nowhere, a spray of flames burst from the tip of the sword while the weapon recoiled like a fired rifle. Still, I managed to keep hold of it as the flames engulfed the ninja, and he dropped from the air like a dead fly before his body crashed to the ground. He rolled on the tiles, screaming, his black clothes bright with fire. In moments, he was nothing more than a charred skeleton.
“Gives a whole new meaning to spray and pray,” I said as flames bathed the sword. I’d already experienced multiple inexplicable events today, so a flame-spouting sword that could also talk wasn’t all that surprising.
But I had no time to really consider the sheer ridiculousness of the situation because more ninjas suddenly advanced on me. They’d obviously seen my super-powered lightsaber, and it seemed I was now their number one target.
I swept the blade around, and more flames flew, the recoil forcing me to grip the weapon with two hands. One of the ninjas leapt back, but the others were caught by the fire, their clothes igniting. As they beat at the flames with their hands, I lunged past them, across the chamber, and toward the temple door.
Gunshots from elsewhere in the temple echoed through the corridors as someone shouted orders in Russian and other men screamed in pain.
I had to get out of here. Despite my serious attachment to my own life, I couldn’t just toss aside the orb and hope the ninjas would be more interested in it than me. The risks were too great. I wasn’t exactly a hero, so it might have been the incredulity of the day’s events that turned me into one.
“Your Vigor is still low, my bold boy,” Nydarth said as I fled through the corridor.
“I’m not your boy,” I said as I delivered a torrent of flames that painted the wall with a ninja’s charred outline.
“Ha! You’ll forge a fire pathway yet; I can see it,” Nydarth said. “For now, you are able to perform only the most basic feats. Lucky then that your enemies are not true Augmenters.”
“I have no bloody idea what you mean,” I replied. “But as soon as we get out of here, you and I are going to have a long talk about magic and orbs and whatever the hell is going on.”
I ran out of the corridor and into the courtyard of the temple, but Chugayev was nowhere to be seen. Ninjas and soldiers were fighting across the bodies of the fallen. The Russians were fighting hard but clearly losing against the mysterious foes.
I surged through the center of them with my sword raised, and a katana-wielding ninja stepped up to block my path. My opponent swung his blade in a wide arc, and I ducked beneath the flashing steel before slamming into him. He hit the ground with a thud and a gasp of air, and I continued sprinting.
Another two ninjas leapt from the walls above to block my path, but this time, I wasn’t messing around. I slashed my sword in a horizontal line, and the ninjas simply jumped back to evade the hit. The magical weapon didn’t need to make contact to inflict damage—flames burst from the blade and enveloped the two enemies in a roar of heat.
I darted past the smoldering corpses, continued through the gates, and then to the mountainside. The light of a noonday sun penetrated my eyes, and I shook off the blistering cold. I wondered how long I’d last without thermals in the freezing temperature, but the more pressing concern was still the ninjas.
An engine’s growl drew my attention, and I scanned the area before seeing a helicopter roaring to life on the landing pad. It was the same aircraft I had arrived in, and now, Russian officers and scientists were scrambling aboard as the rotors spun faster and faster.
I had to get out before the place was completel
y overrun. I sprinted down the mountainside, leaped across loose rocks, and slid on patches of snow. Only sheer force of will kept me from slipping on the icy scree, along with the thought of eventually being overcome by a veritable army of ninjas.
“Wait for me!” I shouted in Russian as I reached the edge of the landing pad.
The helicopter’s door slammed shut, and I felt my chances of escape start to disappear. I waved the flaming sword in the air like a beacon as I raced toward the aircraft, but the machine rose the first few feet toward the sky.
There was a whoosh and a trail of white smoke coming from the south. A rocket hit the helicopter, and my escape plan exploded in a ball of flames.
Flung back by the blast, I landed in a heap of rocks and snow. A rock bounced down the mountainside and landed beside me. At least a dozen ninjas were racing down the same route I had taken, and more were coming around the side of the mountain in a wave of black clothes and shining metal blades.
I leapt to my feet and ran. The only way was across the landing pad and past the flaming wreckage of the helicopter. At the edge of the landing pad was more snow, and I ran out across it, heading away from the facility, the fighting, and the deadly warriors pursuing me. I hated to run from a fight, but there was no way I could survive this on my own.
Fifteen feet ahead of me, the ground suddenly gave way. I skidded to a halt just before I reached the cliff’s edge. My heart pounded as I stared over the precipice into a river valley a hundred feet below.
As I turned, a lump of rock and snow fell away from beneath my right foot and tumbled into that terrible chasm. I kept my footing and raised my blade, ready to face the approaching ninjas.
They were only 10 feet away now, a semi-circle of blades gleaming in the clear air. They had me surrounded, but they kept their distance. My new sword had already roasted a few of their number—I just hoped it had enough juice to finish the job. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I realized I wouldn’t be able to use the weapon’s special ability. There was always a slight recoil when I’d shot flames from the blade, and the snow beneath my feet could give way with only a little force.
“Give us the orb,” one said, his Russian accented with something I didn’t recognize.
“Don’t do it,” Nydarth whispered in my head. “The fate of the world depends on it.”
“The orb,” the ninja insisted. “Then, we might let you live.”
“Might? I’m not sure I like the uncertainty.” I figured shit-talking would earn me a few extra precious seconds, but I couldn’t keep running my mouth—more ninjas were coming. Thirty now, closing steadily in on me, their footprints trailing out through the snow.
To resist seemed like suicide, but the fate of the world was one hell of stake to gamble on the promise of mercy from professional killers.
“Last chance,” the ninja warned, almost within striking distance. “The orb. Now.”
I raised my sword, and fire flickered along the blade. If I wasn’t a hair's breadth from death, I might have smiled at how fucking cool this thing was. The weapon suddenly thrummed, and a ring of flame exploded from around me. The ninjas were immediately vaporized, their forms reduced to ash.
My previous fears were confirmed when the snow beneath me shifted. My feet slipped as the snow tumbled, and I plummeted over the side of the cliff.
Chapter Two
As I fell, I would have liked my entire life to flash before my eyes. Instead, I was blowing out the candles on my fifth birthday cake when my body hit a crag.
My flashback was cut short, but there wasn’t any pain. I had hit the rock with too much force to feel a thing. Death had come swiftly.
Except there wasn’t any bright light. And I wasn’t greeted by a bearded man standing in front of pearly gates.
My vision settled and I stared up at a bright, blue sky from a position on my back. I forced myself to sit up, my muscles aching as I did so. I was sitting in a clearing, surrounded by narrow-leafed trees with pale bark and winding branches. Beneath me was a mulch of half-rotted leaves that gave off a pleasant, earthy scent. Beyond the trees were the high peaks of mountains that could have been the Himalayas, but the cliff I’d fallen off was nowhere to be seen. Nor was there any sign of the crag that had ended my life.
Fortunately, neither were the ninjas.
I stood and felt soft ground beneath my bare feet. I stretched my toes and enjoyed the feeling of leaves crumbling between them.
Bare feet? Where had my socks and boots gone? I’d heard of having your socks knocked off by a powerful experience, but that was just a metaphor, right? No more real than...
A talking, flaming sword?
When I peered across the clearing, I saw the sword and the orb lying among the detritus. I hurried to grab them, but as my fingers took hold of the weapon’s ornate hilt, it faded like a mirage. I reached for the orb, and it disintegrated, too. It didn’t exactly crumble into ash, but it disappeared as though it was never even there to begin with.
The thing I’d risked my life to preserve—hell, possibly lost my life to preserve—was gone. The sword, too, was no longer there. The magic I’d wielded—calling it technology seemed ridiculous now—was no longer available to me. And now, I didn’t have any weapons to defend myself.
At least I wasn’t stark naked, like I would be if this were an anxiety dream. I still wore the same jeans and hoody I’d been wearing when I reached the research facility. In a moment of paranoia, I checked for underwear and t-shirt, and was relieved to find that they were both still there.
But now what?
The trees surrounded me on three sides, but on the fourth, the ground sloped downhill toward a dirt track. For a minute, I considered staying where I was, just in case whatever had brought me here might carry me back home. But waiting was a mug’s game; it meant leaving your fate in someone else’s hands. I had to take control and face whatever the world had to throw at me.
I stepped out of the clearing and onto the dirt track.
The sun warmed my face as I walked for a mile or so along the track. It wound between terraced hillsides, their stepped fields planted with rice paddies and rows of unfamiliar vegetables. There were occasional isolated houses, presumably the homes of the families who farmed this land. Most were simple wooden structures with reed roofs, sometimes raised on stilts to create a flat base on the uneven hillsides.
After a mile, the hills fell away, revealing a wide area of open land either side of a meandering river. A city sat there, one side pressed up against a mountain, the other against the river. Buildings with layers of curved roofs stood jumbled together, some towering toward the sky, others only a single storey tall. Most were made of wood, some of them painted in red, black, and white. Brightly colored paper kites fluttered in the wind above the fields beyond.
I rubbed my eyes, blinked, and looked again. Sure enough, the city was still there. Primitive, fantastical, and very, very real.
My mind wavered with a dizzying realization that something incredibly strange had happened to me. Rather than continue walking, I sat by the side of the road and tried to work out what on earth was happening.
Was this the afterlife? Why did it look like some primitive region of Asia? The landscape and architecture definitely looked Asian—did my afterlife have something to do with having an Asian father? I knew so little about the religious traditions of my old man. He’d left before I was born, and my mother hadn’t upheld any religious beliefs. My mother had been a classic English agnostic, the sort of woman who went to church at Christmas but didn’t have a Bible in the house. On my fast track through the education system, I’d managed to skip over most of what passed for religious education. For all I knew, this was where Confucianists went when they died. Maybe I really had spattered across that landscape at the bottom of the cliff and some family connection had brought my spirit here.
It didn’t seem like much of an afterlife though. Where were the ghosts of people I’d known and lost, like my grandm
other or the goldfish I’d owned when I was small? Mister Yellow deserved a shot at vengeance for my failure to feed him, didn’t he? And where were the gods or demons waiting to judge my soul?
Then, I remembered the orb and the trick Chugayev had pulled with it. Maybe whatever had powered the sword had let me use the orb as well, saving myself by traveling back in time. I hadn’t actually felt my body crash into the crag, so maybe the orb had transported me here before I’d actually hit the rock. Maybe I wasn’t really dead. Just somewhere else. Sometime else.
It sounded crazy, but no crazier than some of what I’d seen in the past hour. I knew that the orb could take me back a few minutes—why not a few hundred years? That would explain the architecture, the dirt roads, the lack of any sign of industry or technology. It wasn’t a perfect position to be in, leaving behind the world of cell phones, streaming services, and 7-Elevens, but better to live in the Middle Ages than die in the modern world.
But if I was going to survive in this place and time, then I needed to learn more about it. The city was clearly the best place to do that. I rose to my feet and carried on along the road.
As I was rounding the corner of a paddy field, four men stepped out from beneath the shade of a tree. They were dressed in loose trousers, sleeveless tunics, and straw sandals, but that wasn’t what made them stand out as unusual. Their brows were low, their skin tinged green, and their overhanging lower jaws made them look like the human equivalent of a garbage truck. If I’d seen them in a film or a video game, I would have assumed they were orcs, but that was absurd. There were no orcs in ancient China.
Which brought my mind around to a new theory. Was I just dreaming, slapping bits of fiction and reality together to create something comfortable for my mind to retreat to while I lay dying on a valley floor? I liked to think that my mind knew me better and would have filled my final hours with hot women, not monsters looking for a fight. But then, the brain could do strange things.
