by Alex Raizman
“So please, Nicandros, spare me your morality. We both want Tomah. We will have him. But spare me your pitiful attempts to convince me that the methods of conquest that have served the Alohym on a dozen worlds will not work here because you want to keep your hands clean. You will not budge me.”
Nicandros slammed his fist into a wall. Don’t argue. Get her moving, get her acting. That’s how you save these people. “Fine. Then we need to find Poz. Even with his intelligence enhanced the way it is, he’ll want to seek something comfortable to think. Send your soldiers into cellars, send them into sewers. The Underfolk like the dark places of the world, and we’ll either find him or some trace of him when we-”
Nicandros didn’t get to finish the thought. There, on the bell tower.
He’d been so very wrong. Poz had gone to the last place Nicandros would have dared to suspect – the very place where Ashliel and Nicandros had just been. The same place he’d left his cocoon. It had been so long since he’d last seen Poz in Manflesh, he’d forgotten what it looked like. The Underfolk stood tall and straight, his back almost painfully rigid. His frame rippled with muscles – not the thick cords of a soldier, but thin and lean.
It was the eyes that Nicandros could never forget. Black as pitch and unyielding as stone. There was no familiarity in that gaze, no comradery. No friendship.
Poz slapped something against the side of the bell and leapt away. It detonated afterwards and sent the immense iron bell ringing as it was propelled from the tower by the force. “Move!” Nicandros shouted, lunging for Ashliel.
It was too late. The bell was heavy, and the tower wasn’t built for that kind of strain. As the slab of iron flew through the air, it began to pull the tower down to the side, chunks of masonry flying along with its arc to rain down towards Ashliel and Nicandros.
Ashliel didn’t budge at Nicandros’s shove. Instead, she wrapped one arm around him and drew him close, extending her free arm over her head. The arm began to widen and lengthen, going from a simple appendage to a disc that stretched out and anchored itself to the ground on chitinous tendrils. At the same time her skin pulled away from her face and the arm around Nicandros’s back, revealing a second layer of skin beneath it. Skin that had gone pallid with lack of sunlight, but nonetheless was human skin.
Stone crashed into the barrier Ashliel had erected. It drove the struts of her shield into the stone around them, but not enough to push the full weight of the stone on top of either of them.
Ashliel looked at Nicandros with eyes that were unmistakably human and, equally unmistakably, were in pain. “Why?” Nicandros asked. “You could have flown and-”
“Tomah…would never forgive me…if I let anything happen to you…” the words came out in harsh gasps, like her breathing was labored. Most of her carapace had pulled away to form the barrier, and what human bits of her Nicandros could see were weak and frail. “I can…get us free. But…you need to tell me how to beat…what we’re dealing with.”
Nicandros nodded, and his mind worked furiously as Ashliel’s armor moved like a mass of liquid stone to pull away layers of debris.
Right now, however, he was running terribly short of options.
Chapter 58
Poz caught himself on the line he’d secured before detonating the bell, slowing his descent enough to avoid injuring himself when he landed. High probability I killed Nicandros with that explosion. The Alohym hybrid creature, on the other hand, is an unknown variable. The only abilities I’ve seen from it is the ability to fly and shoot unlight from its hand. It might have been able to save itself or Nicandros. Poz considered the thought and shook his head. The idea an Alohym would save another was a variable not worth considering.
You killed Nicandros.
There should be some emotion attached to that thought. Sadness at killing an old friend, satisfaction at achieving a victory and eliminating the only threat that could educate the Alohym on Poz’s current abilities, but at the moment all he really felt was a need to move to the next stage and prepare for the Alohym’s likely counterattack.
Every time it’s come at me before, it’s done so from the air. It favors rushing in and letting loose with a large burst of Unlight, then follows that up with moving into close combat when I’m exposed. His mind worked furiously, trying to find a way to counteract the advantages the Alohym posed. Forcing it underground would neutralize the advantage it had in flight but doing so would also give him little room to outmaneuver its beams. Engaging it in the open would give him room to evade, but no means of counterattack while it remained in the open. The only remaining option was engaging it within a structure. It would give him some room to maneuver, while limiting its flight. Except it would have no reason to not just bring the structure down around you. Human hostages were considered and discarded. The Alohym would not hesitate to slaughter any humans that stood between it and victory.
And, even if he engaged it in a structure, he currently had no means of injuring it.
Poz grimaced. Assuming the bell hadn’t ended the conflict before it even began, Poz was in an uncomfortable position. Enhancing his intelligence really only served to make sure he knew exactly how low his odds of success were against the Alohym.
Except it’s not an Alohym. It is a hybridization of some kind. Approach the problem from that direction. Also, the stonework on this structure has erosion patterns that indicate it’s at least a century old given average precipitation and weather patterns in this area. I wonder if there would be some way to increase its longevity. It occurred to Poz that some kind of coating over the stone could reduce the weathering from wind and rain, a sealant of some sort. Perhaps something based off of oil. If he could find a way to solidify it, the sealant would prevent water degradation due to oil’s hydrophobic properties…
Poz shook his head, trying to clear away the distraction. There were important things to focus on. His life was in imminent danger, and there was a very real threat of failing to find somewhere safe to feast on new flesh before his brain overheated and left him comatose and dead.
He felt the Songstone in his pocket. He still had a card to play. If he used it properly, it would create just enough chaos to escape. If he did not use it properly, it would result in the pointless loss of human lives and still leave him trapped. Too early, and the chaos would be subdued before he could take advantage of it. Too late, and he’d already be a smear on the cobblestones.
The only possible option for the hybrid is a human. So…what weaknesses does a human have that an Alohym would not cover? That was a more interesting question, because it was solvable. Alohym had a hardened carapace that made up for humans comparably thin skin, inherent sensory dampeners that made up for most of the human sensory flaws, and an extended thorax that provided additional mass…
Mass that has to be supported by the human knee and spin.
The two major structural weaknesses in the human frame. Knee and spine. The Alohym’s hardened carapace would help protect it against attacks focusing on the spine, but the knee…it was a joint. Joints were weak points. A plan began to form. It would be risky, but it was viable if he could just-
A faint sound reached his ears and reflex drove Poz to leap to the side, rolling with the motion. A beam of unlight lanced down from the damaged bell tower and tore a chunk of cobblestone from where he’d been standing, digging a furrow as wide as Poz was at the shoulders through the streets and sending stone flying into the air. Poz kept moving as the beam started to chase him. He could see the Hybrid above him on the edge of the ruined tower – might as well use its name, Ashliel – and dove into the tower she was standing on before she could catch him in the solid beam of destruction.
He’d been so focused on solving the problem he’d forgotten to move. A flaw of Manflesh. An easy one for it to figure out and exploit. Light and Shadow, it probably hadn’t needed to know it was a weakness – all it had to do was check to see if it could see him from the elevated altitude. Now he was in the tower
and had blocked his escape path with his own debris. You’ll hear her wings when she starts moving again. Then you can-
A motion in the darkness of the room. Poz leapt back, his mind racing through the possibilities. Before he could figure out the most likely threat, pain blossomed in his left bicep. Sharp pain, sudden warmth. I’m bleeding. There’s a metal object inserted into my arm right now. His attacker had thrown three blades, along the primary assault path and the only two spaces Poz could reasonably move to in evading it.
Poz realized he was shouting in pain and made himself stop. Instead he lashed out with his hand, catching the fourth dagger before it could impact him in the chest. He hurled it back into the darkness but wasn’t rewarded with any sound of pain or drop of a body hitting the floor. Poz pivoted, heading towards the entrance.
A beam of unlight blasted down inches in front of the door before he could exit. If he’d jumped to the other side, he would have been moving through it at that exact instant and would have been vaporized.
Poz leapt into the air. It was an absurd move, one he never would have tried normally, but had the benefit of moving him out of the path of the daggers that were coming out of the darkness.
Another weakness of Manflesh. Pitiful vision in the darkness. His attack knew that and was exploiting it.
Poz leapt again, ducking behind some rubble.
“Nicandros,” Poz said. “It appears I had miscalculated your odds of survival.”
A damaged arccell flew over the pile of rubble and landed next to Poz, pulsing and glowing with unlight. Frantic calculations told Poz he had five seconds before it detonated. Four now, it had taken him a second to calculate it. At three seconds, his fingers closed around the arccell. He had to reach out of cover to grab it, and this arm sprouted a dagger as well. He ignored the pain. Two seconds. He tossed it wildly towards the entrance. One second.
It detonated just after passing through the entrance. The explosion rocked the street outside, but Poz was spared from the blast.
Poz had escaped certain death and traded it for an uncertain survival.
It appeared there were other odds he’d miscalculated.
“Give up, Poz,” Nicandros growled from the darkness.
“Question,” Poz said, pressing his back against the stone he’d taken cover behind, his heart pounding in his chest. Keep him talking. It would give Poz time to think, which even with his enhanced intellect he desperately needed. He’d already found an appropriate means of egress from his predicament, but it would high a high probability of resulting in his dismemberment, with a slightly lower risk of death. Slightly. He tore off part of his shirt and wrapped it around the knives to prevent bleeding. “In your experience, how often has demanding someone give up work at this point?”
“At this point?” Nicandros said.
Poz could hear him moving to circle around his cover, but the acoustics of this place made determining his exact location extremely difficult. Perhaps if I were to fashion some sort of amplification device, perhaps utilizing a series of horns linked to spider-web to detect faint vibration, I could pinpoint. The designs were half formed in his head before he reminded himself that doing so would be impossible. He lacked spider-webs, horns, and time. “At the point where it’s certain that defeat means death. What incentive do I have to surrender?”
Nicandros’s movement halted, and in the darkness, Poz could hear a low chuckle. It didn’t sound amused. It sounded more sad than anything. Nicandros was likely feeling sentimental about their time together before. “I forget how much of a pain in the ass you are like this. How long have you been in Manflesh? Clock is ticking, right?”
“Ah, yes. I fully intend to provide you vital intelligence in the middle of an armed conflict.”
“I suppose not. Can’t blame me for trying.”
Poz sighed. “No, I suppose not. I guess I should reward the effort. I have thirty-one days, seven hours, and eleven minutes left in Manflesh.”
Nicandros’s movement halted. “You’re lying, Poz. You told me you’d burn out after, at most, half a day.”
“Perhaps I am. Or perhaps I solved that problem already. Perhaps I’ve be sandbagging. I suppose you’ll need to let me survive to test that hypothesis.”
“Sorry, I can’t do that, Poz. If you wanted to survive, you should have handed over the egg when you had the chance.”
“I suppose so,” Poz said, making sure his voice sounded with a bitter irony he didn’t feel. Right now, his only hope of survival depended on Nicandros’s human side. Fortunately, Poz knew exactly where he was most vulnerable. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
The echo of Nicandros’s earlier words drew him up short, and Poz could hear him hesitate again. Poz took the opportunity to pull the two daggers from his arms, clenching his teeth against the pain and moving quickly to staunch the bleeding. Battlefield treatment dictated a puncture wound should not be re-opened like this, but Poz was running low on options. Now, he at least was armed. “It didn’t have to be like this,” Nicandros said. “Light and Shadow, Poz, you could have just given me the damn egg.”
“Yes. And if it had been just you to ask, I would have given it. But you didn’t want it for yourself. You wanted it for the Alohym.”
“I wanted it for Tomah,” Nicandros growled. He was angry now, and his footsteps came quickly.
There’s the opening. Poz rose up, the daggers in his hands. “Then I hope you tell Tomah that Uncle Poz died on his feet.”
Nicandros was in the open, as Poz had predicted, and he stumbled at the words, the reminder of the bond Poz shared with his son. Poz flicked his wrists. The first dagger missed Nicandros by a hair, tumbling past his ear, driven off course by a spasmodic twitch in his injured arm. However, the motion brought Nicandros’s hands up to his face reflexively.
It left him exposed for the second dagger to sink into his gut.
Nicandros doubled over with a quiet grunt of pain. Poz frowned. The plan would not work with just a quiet grunt. He leapt over the barrier. Nicandros lunged for him, his hands outstretched, but the motion was rendered clumsy with pain. Poz wrapped his fingers around Nicandros’s wrist and moved past his bod, twisting as he did. Nicandros’s arm bent so it was stretched behind him, his elbow facing up, and Poz applied pressure to the wrist to drive Nicandros to the floor. “Scream,” Poz said.
“What…” Nicandros gasped. “You’re a sadist now?”
“No. However, the Alohym saved you from the explosion of the bell tower. She has an interest in your survival. Your screams will draw her attention.”
“Never,” Nicandros said, growling the word.
“Then I promise, when I’m back in a more empathetic flesh, I’ll feel terrible about this.”
He drove his free palm into Nicandros’s upturned elbow, bending it almost a perfect forty-five degrees in the opposite direction. To Nicandros’s credit, he didn’t scream at first, not until Poz continued to apply pressure to bend the arm further. However, Nicandros was only human. He couldn’t withstand too much abuse before instinct took over.
At the point his forearm was almost perpendicular to his back, Nicandros started to scream.
Now. Poz released the pressure and dove towards the entrance. The top of the bell tower was being torn apart by some force, a plurality of ink black arms rending stones from stone. “Leave him alive or your screams will echo across a thousand worlds!” Ashliel screamed as she ripped the top of the tower off with greater speed than Poz had calculated would be possible.
She descended towards Nicandros like a comet, one of her arms forming a protective dome to drop around his prone form. Her other arm extended towards Poz, forming an unlight cannon.
Poz dove through the door. The unlight cannon fired. Poz felt something tug on his arm, but he was in the street and running, and Ashliel was sure to waste time checking on Nicandros before she pursued. A simple brace will repair the damage, so long as the stomach wound does not go septic. Alohym medication will probably
prevent that. Poz felt lightheaded, and as he ran through the street, people screamed and ran from him.
