by Davis Ashura
“What’s it like?” William asked. “You never told me.”
“We wanted it to be a surprise.”
“What if . . .” William trailed off.
“What if you never have a chance to see it?”
William nodded. He hadn’t wanted to give voice to his worries. It felt as if doing so might make the fears come true. At least that’s what his Mom always used to say. Some of her superstitions must have rubbed off on him.
“I can’t describe Arylyn. You have to see it for yourself.” Jason surprised William by reaching out to cup his temples. “This is what I saw the first time I set foot on the island.”
The world blurred, and William no longer saw the barren, winter prairie outside. Instead, he stood on Arylyn.
William breathed deep and clean, citrus-tinged floral scents filled his lungs. Then he saw Arylyn and his jaw dropped.
Cupped within the protective embrace of a series of bluffs lay a turquoise bay. A pencil-thin golden beach framed the border between violet-veined, ruddy cliffs and water. The cliffs, five of them, soared four hundred feet or more into the air and were sculpted into staggered terraces. It reminded William of pictures he’d seen in National Geographic of Bali’s rice fields, except Arylyn’s were more majestic and far more beautiful.
Upon the terraces were perched an eclectic blend of homes in styles from around the world. They varied from English cottages to some that appeared vaguely Asian. Flowering bushes, palm trees, and fruit trees—mango, orange, apple, and pear—decorated front yards, while tall, wooden fences draped with red jasmine and honeysuckle, divided the lots.
Innumerable staircases and slender, white bridges, each with intricate carvings of dragons and unicorns and other fantastic animals, linked the various terraces and cliffs. The spans shimmered fragile as glass, and some were even translucent. A river split the cliffs and cascaded down as a misty waterfall as permanent rainbows stretched from sea to sky, dappling rooftops with colored shadows as rich as those of stained glass.
The image slowly faded from William’s mind.
“Arylyn,” Jason said, with a deep-seated note of loss.
“Arylyn,” William managed to whisper past a throat dry with awe.
Arylyn, an island more beautiful than anything he could have ever imagined, as perfect as a place could be. Waking up every morning to see a village and island like that would be a miracle.
A sudden restless need filled William. He didn’t want to be on this train anymore. He didn’t want the life he was leading. It felt so bland and washed-out after the vibrancy of Jason’s true home. It felt like the rest of the world existed beneath a pale, frigid light, and only Arylyn held a golden, summer sun.
“You want to go there, don’t you?” Jason asked.
“Yeah” William said, his single word answer unable to encompass the depth of his desire. “Why did you ever leave?”
Jason gave him a wry grin. “Arylyn is gorgeous, but so is the rest of the world. There’s always more of it to see and experience.”
“I guess,” William said, in a voice full of doubt. “Do you think I’ll ever get to see it?”
“Yes.”
“How? Have you figured out where the saha’asra in Arizona is?”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Jason said, sounding confident. “Mr. Zeus will tell me.”
William frowned in confusion. “What?”
“He’s been sending me directions.”
William’s confusion deepened. “How?”
“Dreams. Magic, remember? He can send impressions and images in my dreams. They fade out pretty fast, so I have to make sure to remember whatever he sends.”
“If he can send you a dream, why can’t he just tell you?” William asked.
“Magi have a lot of skills,” Jason said, “but telepathy isn’t one of them. The best we can do is share impressions and images when someone else’s mind is totally at rest.”
“What’s he told you?” William asked.
“The saha’asra is next to a lake, along the north shore,” Jason answered.
William eyed him askance. “Not to rain on your parade, but Arizona’s pretty big, and it probably has a lot of lakes.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Jason said with his normal confidence.
“Then we just have to get there before the necrosed catches up with us.”
“Where is he, by the way?” Jason asked.
“Back there.” William gestured vaguely in the direction he sensed Kohl. “Still in Cincinnati as far as I can tell.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” William replied. “But you saw how fast he caught up with us in Cincinnati. Did Mr. Zeus tell you how to stop him?”
“No. But I’m sure he’s working on it.”
William hoped Mr. Zeus would figure it out before they got to the Arizona saha’asra. “Have you seen Serena?” he asked.
Jason shook his head. “I saw her get on the train, but other than that I haven’t seen her since the performance.”
“Me, neither,” William said. “I think the kiss bothered her.”
Jason smirked. “You mean the one that wasn’t in the script?”
William blushed. “Yeah.”
“Whose idea was it? Yours or hers?”
“Hers.”
“Then you’re lucky,” Jason said, sounding wistful. “To be kissed by a girl like her.”
William shrugged. He didn’t want to discuss it anymore, and he sure didn’t want to talk about his ambivalent, nonsensical feelings toward Serena.
“Well, I haven’t seen her,” Jason said, replying to William’s earlier question. “She’s probably busy with her own things.”
“You’re probably right,” William agreed, although it felt like she was avoiding him.
“Of course, I’m right,” Jason said. “By the way, Merry Christmas.”
William startled before breaking into laughter. “I can’t believe I forgot about it.”
A NIGHTMARE ENCOUNTER
The minuscule saha’asra in the winter-bare forest where Kohl had almost trapped the boy and his asrasin friends held barely enough lorasra to sustain a werewolf, much less a creature of a necrosed’s stature. He’d been tempted to stay anyway, though. Perhaps those young ones the boy had been with, the non-asrasins, might return. Kohl could always supplement his decaying form with a plethora of new organs and extremities.
In the end he declined to remain. Too many folk walked the trails around it. Too many people with dogs, on leashes or unleashed. In either circumstance, they left Kohl, not fearful—he feared only one creature in any world—but uncomfortable, with an unsettled sensation in the middle of his back that penetrated to his pustulant heart. His stomach roiled, and he didn’t like the feeling.
Therefore, Kohl returned to his home in the low-shouldered mountains farther to the east, a place far from any roads or trails. No one came here. Even the animals scurried past the entrance of his home, giving it a wide berth.
Once there, in a cavern deep in the heart of a rounded mountain, the saha’asra he’d made his own, Kohl prepared to wait. The boy sought safety. Only two such places existed where he might find such an illusion on this world, Arylyn and Sinskrill. But to make it to either of them, he needed a saha’asra, and the moment he entered one, Kohl would be ready.
The necrosed slept, resting after the exertion of chasing the boy. He gave himself over to his favorite fantasy, the one in which he devoured an endless line of asrasins and slew Sapient Dormant. But he couldn’t fully enjoy the dream.
The boy.
His ongoing survival aggravated like an affront, one that stained Kohl’s sleep. The boy should have been dead by now. His pure lorethasra should have been Kohl’s, filling his corrupted being as the boy’s flesh should have filled Kohl’s stomach. Instead, the boy had escaped, not once, but twice. How? The unjustness of such a calamity filled Kohl with outrage.
Kohl sighed and shook off his unhelpful sleep.
His dreams would have to wait. He cracked open his eyes as he considered the boy’s situation.
A possibility came to him then, one he had pondered deeply.
The boy traveled south and west, steadily and smoothly, which meant he likely traveled by car, or possibly a train. But if he continued his current journey far enough, a saha’asra lay near his path.
Kohl unfurled his limbs and stood. He stared unseeing at the far cavern wall, his focus entirely on the boy. Would he truly offer Kohl such an easy hunt? Would he truly pass so close by that faraway saha’asra?
A smile came to Kohl’s face. Yes. The boy’s course never wavered. On he journeyed, unknowing and ignorant, toward that distant saha’asra. On he journeyed, to his doom.
“Wake up.”
William shrugged off the annoying voice and rolled over.
The voice followed him. “Wake up!” it said, sounding urgent.
Hands shook William awake and he groaned, cracking open eyes still bleary with sleep. Jason crouched by his side, his face filled with worry. “What is it?” William asked.
“We’ve got a problem. A big one.”
William rubbed his eyes and sat up, trying to get his brain and body in gear. “What?”
“I should have paid more attention.” Jason said with a scowl as he pounded a fist into an open palm. “The train passes close to a saha’asra, no more than a half a mile.”
It took William a moment to understand what Jason was saying. Oh, God. Kohl. “When?”
“Soon. A few minutes from now.”
William immediately reached for his sense of the necrosed, searching the itch in the back of his mind. “We’ve got a little time. He’s still east of us,” he said. “Where’s Serena?”
“Sleeping,” Jason said.
“We need to wake her up and figure out what to do.”
Serena slept nearby, and she roused more easily than William had. She sat up, fully awake, and glanced from one to the other, her gaze holding its usual intensity. “What happened?”
They told her, and she frowned, tilting her head as though in thought. “Kohl’s still far behind us,” she said, confirming William’s senses, but he won’t be for long. Not if we’re passing that close to a saha’asra.”
“We need to hide,” Jason said. “Find a place to hole up and . . .” He trailed off when Serena shook her head.
“It won’t work. He’ll find us.” She gestured to herself and William. “He feels us the same way we do him. He’ll know exactly where we are.”
“Then we find as large a group of people as we can,” Jason suggested. “Necrosed don’t like crowds.”
This time it was William who shook his head. He didn’t like that idea, either. “We can’t. I don’t want to put anyone else in danger. What if Kohl doesn’t actually care about the presence of other people? It didn’t help us back in Winton Woods.”
“Besides, everyone is spread out in a whole bunch of cars,” Serena added. “There isn’t a crowd of people around to help us out, even if we were willing to put them at risk.”
“Which we’re not.” William put a definitive end to that idea.
“Then what do we do?” Serena asked.
“Whatever it is, we better choose quick.” Jason said. “We’re coming up on the saha’asra any second.”
William’s brow furrowed and he pondered furiously. Where was the safest place on the train?
“What about one of the animal cars?” Serena suggested. “Maybe he won’t come after us if we’re hiding in one of them.”
Hope dawned on Jason’s face, clearing the lines of worry. “That might actually work.”
William thought it a good idea too, but not good enough. He still frowned, heart pounding and mind racing as he tried to figure out what had him bothered. “We hide with the animals and hope Kohl doesn’t come after us there,” he said, hoping talking it out would expose the flaw he intuitively knew existed in Serena’s plan. “But what about later? What happens when the train pulls into Las Vegas? Kohl will still be on the train with us. He’ll attack any time he wants after that.”
Jason’s hope seemed to spill away. “Shit.”
“We have to choose what we’re going to do. Now,” Serena said, her face growing tight with fear.
Jason’s head shot up. “I got it,” he said. “We let him find us.”
“What?” Serena protested. “Are you crazy?”
“Hear me out,” Jason said, holding up his hands. “We let him find us, but we retreat to the large animal car, the one with the elephants—”
“The bears are in there, too,” William interrupted. He had a sense of what Jason was proposing.
“Right. It’s the final car in the train. We lead Kohl to the elephants and bears, and we fight him there.”
“Fight him?” Serena asked in disbelief. “Weren’t you the one who said that no magus ever stood his ground when faced with a necrosed?”
Her incredulity echoed William’s own thoughts. Jason’s plan wasn’t at all what he had in mind.
“I am, but what choice do we have?” Jason argued. “Besides, we don’t have to kill Kohl. We can’t do that anyway. We just have to toss him off the train.”
William opened his mouth. “But—
“We’re running out of time,” Jason interrupted.
“Then we’ll go with your plan,” William said, “but we also have to keep Kohl from reboarding the train after we toss him off.”
“There’s a small river not far past the saha’asra,” Jason said. “There’s no way Kohl will follow us across the water.”
“Why can’t he just use the bridge?” William asked.
“He could, but I’ll shield the entrance to it,” Jason explained.
“What’s that mean?” Serena asked.
“A shield is that golden screen Mr. Zeus formed in West Virginia. You remember? The thing that slowed Kohl down?”
“It didn’t slow him down by much,” William said. “He punched through it in two blows.”
“Yeah, but I’m a lot better at shielding than Mr. Zeus is,” Jason said. “His might be stronger, but I have better control of mine. I’ll angle my shield so that when Kohl tries to ram through, it’ll toss him into the water.”
The itch in the back on William’s mind heightened, and Serena’s tense expression mirrored his. “He’s here,” they said as one.
“Oh, shit,” Jason said.
“Run!” said William. “We can still make it to the animal car. It’s only five cars behind us, the last one in the train.”
“How?” Jason asked. “Not every car has front and rear entrances.”
“The outside ladders. We’ll climb to the top of the cars and jump the gaps,” William said. “We don’t have time to debate this!”
“Come on!” Serena said. Panic raced through her. With every wasted second, Kohl drew nearer. He couldn’t be more than a minute away. She led them toward the rear of their car, where they stepped out into the pitch-black of late night. She leapt over to the next railcar.
“Hurry,” William urged.
“I’m hurrying,” Serena snapped.
She climbed the ladder to the top of the boxcar and shuffled forward. She had to move carefully, bending low against the icy wind as she strained to keep her balance and footing on the slick roof. She cursed under her breath. She could have traversed the roof of the car far more quickly if she’d been allowed to utilize all of her skills, but Isha had forbidden it. He had stated she could only tap into those other abilities if there were no other alternative.
Jason shoved past her, and the pressure from the wind suddenly eased. “I’ve got a shield around us,” he explained. “It’ll keep the wind from slowing us down, and keep us from falling off the train. Now, go!”
William tentatively reached out to both sides, but Serena didn’t need to. The shield Jason had created didn’t glow like Mr. Zeus’, but even with her eyes closed she knew what she’d find all around them: they stood in a cl
osed tunnel that stretched along the length of the railcar with a roof to protect against the wind.
“Hurry up!” Jason called from the end of the railcar.
Serena set off at a sprint, with William following on her heels. Fear gave wings to her feet. She dashed along the roofs of the railcars, sprinting as hard as she could, leaping from one to the next.
“He’s close,” Serena said. The itching in the back of her mind had become a throb.
“Only one more car to go!” William shouted.
Jason had already reached it and clambered down the far ladder. From the gap between the two cars, he screamed for them to run.
A shudder shook the stock car upon which they stood. Serena glanced back, and her eyes widened.
Kohl. He must have leaped from the ground to the top of the train. He’d landed on braced knees before slowly rising to his feet and grinning. “Where do you delicious morsels think you’re going?” he asked.
The animals in the car below, goats and sheep from the petting zoo, went crazy. They bleated, racing around inside the car in panic.
“Come on!” Jason urged.
His voice broke Serena’s panic. She turned away from the necrosed and leapt across the void between the two stock cars. She tumbled down the ladder with William close behind. Behind them raced Kohl. Jason slammed the door shut just as the necrosed crossed the linkage between the final two cars of the train. He threw the bolt, locking it in the creature’s face.
As one, Serena, William, and Jason stepped away from the door, deeper into the depths of the stock car. Dim, red-hooded lights provided barely enough illumination by which to see.
Serena glanced about, her thoughts fragmented by fear. Her heart pounded. Sweat beaded, and she had to swallow to work saliva into her mouth.
Several elephants and a few of Momma Bridget’s bears rode in the car with them, and the animals were clearly agitated, likely sensing Kohl’s presence. However, unlike the sheep and goats, they grew angry rather than afraid. The bears roared in fury while the elephants trumpeted.
From without, mocking laughter answered. “The animals are wise to fear me. And so are you, it seems. Here now ends the hunt for my tasty meals.”
