The Dwellers were without a definite form, being neither male nor female, and wearing only a loincloth. It provided little modesty, yet the basic portion of fabric reminded them to mourn something long forgotten, but nonetheless, forever lost—their humanity.
“He is evil!” the group of Dwellers murmured as one.
“What, me? I’m not evil. I’m an aristocrat.” Malum put his left hand to the center of his chest. “Why I even brought you a gift…and this is how you repay me?” Malum calmly raised his translucent brimstone striker.
The Dwellers shuttered and hesitated, while some halted altogether. Slash kept moving steadily forward, and soon was ahead of the pack, a place no other Dweller wished to be at this point.
“Come on you cowards.” Slash waved them forward. “It’s only one immortal, and we are many. We are legion.”
Malum chuckled. “You aren’t many, you’re only…” He quickly bobbed his finger in the air from right to left, counting the heads. “You’re only twelve…well…twelve and a half if you count that tiny weird one back there.” He held a hand over his mouth, snickered some more, and wiped a single jolly tear from his good eye.
“You dare mock us? Mock us!” Recur growled.
“No, but rather, I came to offer you all that your hearts, or for that matter, bellies desire,” Malum said solemnly.
“All immortals are liars. We fend for ourselves, for ourselves.”
“You devoured my peace offering, and yet you felt no difference when compared to other humans you have recently consumed?” Malum’s voice lowered, steadily idle, his diaphragm pushed up against his vocal cords, discharging boxed thunder with each word. “Was her blood not invigorating?” He balled a fist near his face, shaking it at them. “Do you not feel its power?” Malum pointed his striker, illuminating the leftover blood spatter on the wall nearest him.
“Indeed,” Slash said. “What was the origin of her power?”
“To answer that,” Malum stared, “you’ll have to come with me. And if you do, I’ll show you an overly packed, fresh world.” Malum smiled excitedly. “There’s a world full of billions of distracted humans for you to do as you please. That is, if you’ll do something for me first.”
From his hunched over face, Slash glared up, his cold, black saucers rising with menace upon Malum. “I may not remember my first life. I’ve been so many people since then, but the one thing I never forget is a face. Your face.”
Malum rubbed his lips together. “Do you remember anything else about my face?”
“Yes. You made us like this.”
“A-ha.” Relieved, Malum sighed. “Are you sure that’s all you remember?”
“No…wait.” Slash looked off to the side with uncertainty. “You promised us everlasting life for our faithful service, and then you gave us the drink, the black tar, the potion, and it turned us into…this.” He motioned from his chest downward.
Malum interrupted. “I kept my promise, but it was those jealous knights who poisoned my perfect gift to you.” He then reaffirmed himself. “Yes. Yes, it was the knights.” Moving his hand from side to side, he recreated the events seamlessly for them. “I had stabilized the potion of life about eight hundred years ago in my apothecary…” He twirled his index finger, and then emphatically shook it. “That’s when the knights must have tainted the additive and corrupted the batch, thus destroying the original formula. You had a reaction to the toxin before I even knew one of the knights had poisoned the brew.”
“You lie.” Slash growled.
The Dwellers, as a group, hunched forward, their protruding, spiny backbones lending to their gruesome shape. They inched slowly with aggressive strides toward the immortal intruder.
Two handed, Malum swung his blade up over his head. He then drove the striker into the ground, splitting floor and cracking side walls. The tunnels vibrated, and the Dwellers swayed. The creatures braced each other, grabbing ahold as others fell from off ceiling and walls, but the show of might stopped all Dwellers from their advance.
The Dwellers debated Malum’s authority, yet dared not challenge his power.
Full of bravado, Slash grumbled and growled. “Why should the Dwellers do anything for you?”
“You need not do a thing for me, but trust the Shroud,” Malum replied. A smile carried in his tone.
Slamming his long, thick talons into the wall, his ribcage expanded and recoiled from accelerated respirations. “TRUST THE SHROUD!” Slash repeated. This time the Dweller cared not if his fellow Dwellers joined him as he gradually neared Malum.
Slithering back a step, Malum curled one side of his lip upward, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t be a fool,” he snidely remarked. “Your extra human strength and super lifespan, whether accident or not, comes from the Shroud. You are no match for me, or any other immortal. I could kill you all where you stand, but I have come here to tell you the Shroud has every intention of fulfilling its original promise.”
“How?” Killian trod ahead.
“The prize I brought you…the young girl,” Malum raised his hand to his heart, looking to the ceiling, then down at the Dwellers for a reaction, “she possessed the power of an immortal in stable human form. Why even now you are more robust for consuming her than a thousand other humans at once.”
“It’s true. I feel stronger, feel stronger.”
Slash bent his talons inward, flexing his underdeveloped biceps. “I, too, feel a power I have not felt before.”
The Dwellers looked around at one another. Some moved their necks from side to side, others thrust shoulder joints up and down, and then they clustered together, whispering amongst themselves. The Dwellers broke huddle, and each bowed before Malum.
“I, Malum, am still your lord, and you are my children.”
“What would you have of us?” Slash was the last to kneel.
“To make yourselves great in number again. And to do that…you will need to hunt the entire surface of the world above. No more will you be exiled to this demeaning life of only eating items found in the confines of these catacombs.” Malum browsed from constricted side wall to side wall. “Rather, it is time to infest the world above, and exterminate the last of the knights, ergo, earning your revenge, along with your legacy. You will walk forever in the light of day once again. You will not be subject to wear the husk of another human just to walk for a short time in the sun. But in order to be kings and gods, you must first obey meeeeeeeee.” Malum hissed until his breath tired.
Each Dweller stooped their neck, raising a single arm into the air, saying in a unified voice, “We pledge our allegiance.”
Slash spoke up. “Tell us how to proceed, Lord Malum.”
Malum stood tall over all of them. “Dwellers do three things very well. They kill to eat, they kill to briefly take the shape of a human, and they kill to create more Dwellers by reinfusing black tar blood back into the victim. I want you to do all three of those things for me. And in return, when the last knight is dead, I will give you the gift you all deserve.”
Raising his hood over his head, covering the deeply lined scar on the left side of his face, he smirked, his heart thumped slowly with elation. The one part Malum did not want Slash to remember, had been forgotten by the Dweller completely it seemed, yet not by Malum.
Opening an aperture, a small circular fissure appeared and grew into a large, swirling vortex. It filled the darkness with blues and greens, along with hazy clouds emitting tiny flashes of lightning. The Dwellers shielded their eyes from the brightness. Ppffsshh. A loud whooshing air filled the tunnels, pushing back the stench of death as the wind howled through the hollow shafts.
Recur bred fear among the others. “But we cannot live in the light of day. It will kill us, it will kill us!”
“Your lord knows your limitations, and has already planned your nocturnal hunting grounds. Have faith lowly one.” Malum wi
thdrew his striker. Disbanding the sword, he flipped his palms up, facing the ceiling. He continued to raise his hands into the air. “I will open apertures each night from your new home. It will be as black and as dark as these tunnels. You will disperse into the corners of the earth at nightfall, and then you will bring me an army suitable enough to destroy the knights’ castle. Immortal or not, they will all die!” Malum ushered them into the aperture. “GO!” He watched as they charged toward and then past him into the gateway vortex.
Each Dweller galloped on all fours like hyenas. They howled and snarled like baboons.
Killian tugged the hand of the smallest Dweller to follow the rest of them. However, this one appeared lost and despondent.
“My name is…” it said aloud to itself. Disoriented with intermittent confusion, the smallest Dweller kept repeating while standing still, “My name is…”
“You must come now,” Killian said.
“My name is…Em…Em…” It tilted its head.
“What’s wrong with that one?” Frowning, Malum raised a bushy eyebrow. “Is it defective? Does it need to be put down?”
Killian placed his hand up, motioning for Malum to stop. “This is just a new recruit. It takes a while for things to make sense to them.”
The smallest Dweller was stuck on one thought. “My name is Em…”
“Yes, that’s right.” Killian briskly sighed. “Your name is M. The scrambled thoughts and the unsettled feelings will go away in time, trust me.”
“How do you know?” Frantically changing beliefs about identity rushed around M’s mind. Its eyes swelled. It began holding its breath.
“Breathe, M. Just take a breath,” Killian urged.
“HAAAH!” M gasped loudly. “I used to know things, but I can’t remember what I think I knew?” M became agitated, not wanting Killian to touch its skin.
Killian stepped back, giving M space. “When you take your first body, you’ll feel better, I promise. And then the shakes will go away. The troubled thoughts leave, and soon you’ll feel new again.”
“But there are things I need to remember…”
“No, M. All of those things are gone now. You must let them go because they will be gone soon anyway.” Killian lightly held M’s hand.
Killian ushered M into the aperture. M, still blank and distant, followed the light, but Killian knew Emma would adapt to survive as they all had to at some point.
Something triggered a host of fleeting memories, which blended as one after a while. Killian now just felt like an it when he thought about his many lives, and so many times that he was a he or a she. The other Dwellers were just a they, us, or we now. It bothered Killian only when he thought about it, which was almost next to never, until now, for he was not sure if Killian was even its own real name.
Finally, Killian dismissed his own doubts. He and M were second to last entering the swirling aperture. Slash was the last Dweller left in the tunnels.
On all fours, Slash walked carefully up to Malum. With a bob and weave of the presently cloaked immortal’s face, Slash sniffed Malum before the Dweller guardedly followed the others into the vortex.
Malum, with immovable fixation, watched as the last Dweller, Slash, entered the swirling aperture. He ran his index finger up and down the timeworn crease that gashed from the top of his left eyebrow to the bottom of his cheekbone, destroying his once good left eye in the process. No, Malum had not forgotten. He scowled. His breath hung hard and heavy. “Bwahaha!” He chortled emphatically, while considering the joys of retaliation. His dingy, cracked teeth gnashed crosswise. With narrowed eyes, his laughter abruptly halted. “Humph.” Malum looked around. He was the only one left in the tunnels, so he sauntered through the aperture, grinning from ear to ear, whistling merriment as the doorway closed in on itself behind him.
Three thirty in the afternoon, on a dreary, cloud-ridden day in the busy, downtown heart of Glasgow, Scotland, Maximillian cloaked himself in a long, black leather trench coat.
It had only been hours since his meeting with Revekka and Acuumyn in among the Greek ruins, but he preferred those warm, sunny skies in comparison to the cool drizzle that coated his face.
His collar up, Maximilian hid his face behind the black, pointed trench coat. He watched everything behind dark, tinted lenses, while marching through the middle of the bustling city street. Spack-a-speck-speck. The sprinkled drops of vapor fell in spurts from the ether. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people walked past, beside, and in front of him.
Upscale, new apartments lined along the right, while shops and office buildings cluttered the left-hand side of the street. The people were all about the town—working, shopping, laughing, eating, and living their everyday lives to the full.
With his hands firmly pocketed, Maximillian tucked his head low. His eye’s darting, they carefully sifted the environment, before he roused ahead in a hurried pace. With a stern, joyless expression, he passed through with a quick apathy. Indifferent to the goings-on, the countless distractions afforded him a certain invisible quality.
A robust scent wafted fine food through the air. The chatter of voices mixed with car engines, while nearby rushing water filled in any gaps in clamor. Still, there was something out of place in the large, intimate city. Something wishing to remain hidden, but Maximillian was too powerful and wise of a knight to ignore when five thousand years tingled a warning to him.
In this world, Maximillian knew that there were immortals, and then there were experienced immortals. Despite varying strength and ability, not all immortals were equal, at least in the art of skill.
Bweee. Like radar, Maximillian sensed a tiny ping whenever another immortal was near. Though it was possible to go undetected with skillful stealth among a large group of humans, Maximillian’s awareness could not be blocked by just any unskilled immortal. Calmly looking back, and from side to side, he briefly considered his options.
A fight was coming.
Nonetheless, there were so many people in the immediate area, detection of a single immortal left him at a disadvantage. It soon became clear that this other immortal knew what Maximillian did not, the target, and this time, being disguised as anyone in ordinary view, made matters worse.
To protect the people around him, and more importantly, to protect his portion of the Sphere Atlas from the Shroud, Maximillian sharply turned while in the middle of the crowd. Pushing and shoving people, he traveled with immense haste up a narrow, twisting side street. Watching behind him through the reflection of his own sunglasses, Maximillian tried to identify or flush out his pursuer. He sprinted, taking one rapid turn after another, but still no one seemed to follow.
Now racing through intersections and alleyways, the tingle of an immortal presence buzzed him like a shockwave.
Once through the busy downtown section, and past all the people, up ahead an abandoned Victorian Era structure emerged. With dusty brown bricks, two spired gothic towers, hundreds of windows, many of which were shattered and boarded up, it loomed as a large, unnerving, ghostly shell of a building in the adjacent skyline. A sinister assembly of run-down pieces, the massive structure whispered keep out well before Maximillian read the numerous city ordinance signs to avoid the area. Notwithstanding the warnings, it was the only haven from a menacing danger to come. A ten-foot chain-link fence enclosed the crumbling, fortress-like structure, but to Maximillian it was an inviting refuge.
To look upon the wasted remainders of this once elegant, if not ghastly vestige to the Victorian Era, inspired paranoia, shifts in mood, and a total collapse of goodwill toward men. Without so much as a pause, Maximillian climbed and flipped his way over the ten-foot fence. His forward stride heaved him beyond the high barrier with relative ease.
At the main entrance, carved into the gothic archway keystone, a symbol of judgment with condescending eyes and a hapless frown—perhaps an angelic or noble woman—
looked down from overhead with angry sadness. Maximillian briefly glanced up at her.
He brushed aside dirt from the crusted stone engraving next to the door. It read, “Sanitarium.” Reflecting on the insanity this closed asylum witnessed over the years, Maximillian hesitated at the entrance, yet against his better judgment, he marched inside anyway.
The light receded significantly once past the entry point. The illuminating currency was exchanged for ominous dark corners of a grand room, which appeared fit for a luxuriant hotel, but was now filled with flaking paint, tarnished moldings, and broken fixtures. The floors were littered with mixed soot and water-damaged chunks of wall and ceiling from a structure in vast decay.
Past the grand lobby, hundreds of hospital type rooms, many with their dingy, white doors still ajar, extended the length of Maximillian’s view. Kirrrik. Pooommfff. The madness called out in creaks and pops of the building. The arcane permeated every inch of the structure, from wide spaces to recessed sections of rooms. Woooeerrr. Wind drifts wailed like banshees warning of approaching death. Maximillian felt an inconsolable wretchedness as he waited, watched, and uncovered his own extreme misery from this archaic, gothic hospital for the insane.
Crouching in one of the sheltered places, Maximillian heard only distant sounds of the nearby city. Police sirens waxed and waned, horns beeped, but all life seemed aloof and unreal from where he intently anticipated the worst.
Reality pulled him apart as he held his focus ever close. His forehead dripped sweat. The low sound of his breath caused him to wonder if he was already dead. His mind drifted. He tried to center his senses, but he felt them tumbling away. One mental mistake could be the end. Five thousand years of knowledge and life, could vanish in an instant. This was not the time to lose his head. He knew because he had seen it more times than he cared to recount. Friends, enemies, and perfect strangers, all with a mission, many with great will and ability to succeed, but each had failed, or been cut down in their prime, leaving the world’s stage with a tragic, final act, and without so much a curtsy to the spectators centered round.
Something Eternal Page 24
