The Way of Pain

by Gregory Mattix

  When we reach Llantry, I’m finished with the life of adventure. I’ll work an honest trade for once, though I don’t have many skills. I could probably manage as a barmaid. How tough can it be?

  She missed Enna, the kindly barmaid she’d come to think of as a friend, and the nearest person to an older sister she’d ever had. Hurriedly, she shoved those thoughts aside for fear she’d break down with the memory of Enna’s gruesome death fresh in her mind. Let Dak and Taren continue this madness—they’re cut out to be heroes. Me… I’m a nobody and good for very little.

  She stopped before the short hallway she sought. A square opening twice her height led into another chamber, one recessed into the floor a foot or two. The chamber seemed to be a metal cube, illuminated softly by more of the orange crystals, one on each wall at knee height. Cryptic patterns of black and yellow were painted on the walls at different intervals, along with more runes she couldn’t understand. In the center of the room, a metal spike protruded from the floor, chest high and studded with strange-looking knobs and concentric rings around it.

  Gingerly, Ferret entered the chamber, walking softly on the balls of her feet, alert for any traps or ambush by more of the automatons. All remained still as she stepped down to the recessed floor. Off to her right was a filthy window covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. She peered through it but could see nothing in the darkness beyond. No doors or any distinctive features were evident other than the metal spike in the center of the chamber.

  “Another dead end.” Her voice echoed harshly within the chamber in spite of her undertone, and she froze. The sound faded, and a long moment later, she let out her breath and approached the spike to examine it more closely. I had hoped to find another of the portals leading out of this wretched place. Mayhap this thing is a lever to open a hidden door.

  A metal shaft wrapped with concentric rings pointed upward at an angle, with an opening in the cylinder about as big around as her arm. She pushed and pulled at the spike, but nothing happened. Within the hole, something glimmered, reflecting her face dimly as she peered inside. Her features rippled and distorted over the facets of a massive gem, perhaps the size of her fist.

  A diamond? Her breath hitched in her chest as she studied it. Aye, looks to be. And bigger than any I’ve ever seen—this could earn me a bloody fortune! I could surely live comfortably for many years on that. And the diamond appeared to be within reach.

  Ferret rolled back a sleeve and hesitantly stuck her fingers inside the aperture, holding her breath. When nothing happened, she slowly thrust her arm inside. Unable to see what she was doing, she gently felt around the smooth cylinder until her fingertips brushed across the sharp facets of the diamond.

  A flash of light made her freeze. The gem illuminated, growing brighter until it cast brilliant rays around her arm. She squinted against the sudden radiance and averted her eyes, fingers groping across the diamond’s surface, seeking to get a grip on it. The gem was warm to the touch. She pushed her arm farther into the tube until her elbow was wedged in the opening. Her fingers slid around the sides of the gem, just about to get a grip to pluck it free…

  “Organic matter detected in transfiguration chamber,” a metallic voice boomed, nearly making her shriek in fright.

  Ferret instinctively tried to pull away, but her arm was caught. The diamond turned hot in her hand, singeing her fingertips. Then she did cry out, struggling to free herself. The shaft’s metal lip dug into the flesh of her forearm just below her elbow, trapping her arm in place.

  “Activating transmutation sequence.” The metallic voice cut off with an abrupt squeal.

  A deep, basso rumble reverberated through the floor and walls, the vibrations seeming to jitter Ferret’s bones. She looked around in panic. The dirty window in the cube’s wall was illuminated from within by orange, red, and green lights. The murky silhouette of an automaton stood inside, its fire opal eyes glowing. It shambled nearer the glass and reached out, grasping a brass lever and throwing it downward with a metallic shriek. A rumbling clank sounded deep within the walls, and the room suddenly thrummed with power, making Ferret’s teeth chatter and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. A thunderous boom sounded from nearby.

  “Let go, damn you!” With a desperate heave, she finally wrenched her arm free, tearing off a layer of skin in the process. She stumbled back from the spike in the floor and then bolted for the exit.

  The entry to the cube was blocked. A metal door had apparently dropped or slid into place, with only a small window at eye level.

  Ferret shoved and pounded on the thick door, but she might as well have been trying to force aside a mountain. She screamed, hoping someone would come to free her, but knew it was useless. Even if her friends had known what was happening, they had camped several hundred paces away. Finding her would take them a few minutes.

  The room thrummed more intensely, and the orange crystals flared brilliantly then flashed in sequence. The diamond within the spike blazed as bright as the sun, eyeball-searing light pouring from the opening. Even after averting her eyes, afterimages from the brightness marred her vision.

  Panicked, she drew her short sword and slammed the pommel against the thick window in the door. Again and again, she hammered the thick glass, but it resisted her desperate attempts to break it.

  “Transmutation commencing.”

  Ferret turned slowly, nearly suffocating from the dread of what was about to occur. From vented openings in the walls she hadn’t noticed earlier, dark particles were filtering into the room, like dirt being poured from large sacks. But the particles floated in the air, becoming agitated and swirling around the beam of light until a black vortex was churning within the room. The mass made a horrible whirring, buzzing sound as it seethed, like a voracious swarm of insects.

  Even though she pressed herself as tightly against the door as she could, the maelstrom grew until it could no longer be avoided. She watched in horrified fascination as the particles expanded outward from the vortex, pelting her clothes and striking her exposed cheek, feeling like stinging grains of sand. She raised her sword to futilely try to ward off the strange force.

  A tortured scream ripped from her throat as the concentration of thousands of sharp grains scoured across her bare hand and arm, tearing and biting, embedding themselves in the bloody scrape on her arm. Bit by bit, the maelstrom stripped her flesh away, and she thought of a time when she’d been attacked as a child by hundreds of agitated ants from an anthill she’d disturbed, only this was a hundred times worse.

  In moments, she was totally enveloped. She closed her eyes against the attack, flailing wildly. Chin, nose, lips, cheeks, and forehead were being devoured as if by infinitesimal insects. Her rising shrieks of agony and terror were choked off as the black sand poured down her throat, up her nose, into her ears.

  “Ferret!” A pounding reached her ears in the moment before her eardrums were ruptured. Her eyelids were gnawed away, and she turned, reeling away, briefly catching a glimpse of Creel’s horrified face through the window before her sight was taken from her. She lost all sense of direction, spiraling into a deep pit of agony.

  All that remained was the sensation of her body being peeled away. And finally, even that was gone.

  ***

  Creel hammered furiously at the door, but it was no use. He couldn’t see any latch or bar by which to open it. He slammed the window with his fist, the bones in his hand fracturing from the force of his blows, but he barely felt it, easing up only when his view was obscured by smears of his own blood.

  “Ferret!” The cry tore from his throat. The girl had collapsed to the ground, enveloped by the swarming mass.

  “Stand aside.” Taren and Mira had come up behind him.

  Creel reluctantly stepped back, and Taren’s face took on a look of intense focus. His rust-colored eyes blazed like stoked coals. He held out his hands, and the vaultlike door suddenly warped and buckled then was torn from its hinges. The mass of dar
kness inside the room continued swirling, sounding like the buzzing cacophony of a locust swarm. Ferret’s slight form was buried on the floor in a blanket of what appeared to be black sand.

  “Careful—”

  Creel ignored Taren’s warning, plunging through the breach and into the swirling vortex. A thousand sharp pains struck him in unison, the particles biting his flesh and seeking to peel it away. His skin flared and sparked strangely from the contact, but he barely paid it any heed, instead focusing on the swarming mass covering Ferret. He closed his eyes against the assault, thrusting his hands into the mound of sand, grasping the girl and pulling her into his arms. Grit blasted into his mouth, scratching at his throat and windpipe, and filled his nostrils. He coughed, nearly retching, but managed to straighten up. He stumbled blindly, nearly falling, shocked by how heavy Ferret seemed. Either this perverse maelstrom was seriously draining his strength, or the waifish girl had somehow quadrupled in weight. He recovered his balance and clutched her to his chest. Feeling as if he were dragging a ship’s anchor, blinded and choking, he staggered back through the door.

  The tornado of stinging particles subsided when he stepped past the threshold. Taren and Mira watched wide-eyed, the former with a protective arm raised to bar Mira’s passage.

  Creel lurched past them, heading for the great hall and leaving a trail of black sand all the way back to the cube. As soon as he exited the room, the sand attacking him had become inert. The exposed skin on his arms was red and raw as if a few layers had been stripped off. Compared to what he’d suffered in that brief moment, Ferret’s prolonged exposure had proven devastating. The sand still clung to her body, which was deformed and rigid in his arms as if he was bearing a skeleton. Beneath the layer of black sand were unnatural edges of bare bones, gray and distorted.

  Oh gods, it stripped her to a skeleton!

  He fell to his knees in the main hall while Taren and Mira crowded around. Gently, he laid Ferret on the ground. He couldn’t grasp how her skeletal form could be so abnormally heavy after having suffered such tremendous damage. The sand clung to her persistently even though he tried to wipe it away. Wherever he touched was hard bone, the girl’s flesh removed. She lay silent and motionless.

  Creel glanced at Taren. “Is she—” He couldn’t finish his question. His raspy words choked off as he coughed violently from the grit he’d ingested.

  The young mage’s face showed puzzlement. “Her life still lingers, but not for long. It grows weak. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do.” From his tone, he didn’t sound at all optimistic. He placed his hands on Ferret’s head, which in the gloom looked to be naught more than a mottled gray-and-black skull. Taren closed his eyes, and his face tightened in concentration.

  Creel sensed magic flow from the mage into Ferret. For several interminable moments, Taren remained like that, and Creel could only watch silently, anxious to help but knowing naught could be done. His stomach heaved, and he turned away, retching violently and expelling a mass of phlegm and black sand. He coughed and spat until his breathing normalized and the pain in his throat faded.

  After several moments, the black sand particles covering Ferret abruptly fell away as if repelled by Taren’s magic, pouring to the ground with a dry hissing. Taren released Ferret and slumped back, clearly exhausted. Mira caught his arm, steadying him.

  Creel could barely process what he was seeing before him. Ferret had been transformed into something alien—not a skeleton, but no longer human either. Her body was an iron-gray mass without hair or flesh or muscle, burnished a dull bronze color in places. She had been transformed entirely to metal, hence her substantial mass, and the nearest thing he could compare it to was that she was clad in a suit of armor plates. Her skull was smooth, the features of her countenance softened as that of a statue worn by time and the elements. He couldn’t help but think she was wearing a mask as he himself once had to hide his own features. Her neck was a series of interlocking metal vertebrae. Large rounded joints protruded from the armor at her shoulders, her arms were rods sheathed in smooth plates, and her fingers were finely machined jointed cylinders. Gears and springs and pistons were grouped in her abdomen, just visible beneath the plates covering her.

  As near as he could determine, she had been mutated into an automaton similar to the construct they’d destroyed, only smaller, perhaps due to her small size.

  “Anyone know what in the bloody Abyss that room is and what it did to her?” Creel glanced over his shoulder at the cursed chamber, noting it had gone silent once more. The vortex of sand had disappeared, save for the amount he had tracked outside the chamber.

  “I think that is where those factotum were constructed,” Taren said tiredly. “Some fusion of magical and mechanical processes I don’t understand.”

  “Poor lass… So she’s lost, then. Is there any chance for her?” Creel knew not to get his hopes up, but he couldn’t accept the fact that she was gone so suddenly. If she had been struck down in combat from an arrow to the heart or a sword through the guts, he could’ve accepted that fact. But the utterly bizarre manner in which she had been felled seemed unreal.

  Taren scrubbed at his face. “I’m just not sure… This is well beyond my ken. I was able to prevent that sand from totally consuming her. It was like an acid eating away at her living flesh, all the while transmuting it to metal. And yet a tiny spark of life remains in here.” He ran his fingers gently across the smooth dome of Ferret’s head, where once her boyish mop of hair had been. “I managed to shield whatever is left of her inside, away from the effects of that dust, but it is doubtful she will ever waken or be able to live in such a form.” He sighed. “I’m sorry… I did what I could.”

  “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her leave the camp.” Mira looked devastated.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Creel said, more harshly than intended. “Don’t blame yourselves. Blame these Nebaran bastards for forcing this life on us if you have to blame anyone. If they hadn’t attacked, Ferret would still be back home in Ammon Nor. Gods… why’d you have to be such a fool, lass?” He squeezed Ferret’s metal hand in his own, noting it was strangely warm to the touch, like iron lying in the sun. “I warned you one of these days your curiosity was liable to get you killed.” He had to fight down a lump in his throat as he leaned over and placed an ear to her lips, listening for breath, but she was deathly silent. Nor could he hear any heartbeat or any sounds at all within the strange metal body.

  They sat there awkwardly for a long time until Creel finally got to his feet. “Might as well pack up and continue searching. Mayhap we can find some way to aid Ferret. If not, the least we can do is give her a decent burial back on the surface and away from this wretched place. I’ll carry her once we find a way out of here.”

  The others nodded in silent agreement, all lost within their own sorrowful thoughts.

  Creel tried to push down his thoughts and memories of Ferret and stow them away in a small cell in his mind, beside all the other friends he’d lost over his long years. Despite his attempts, he couldn’t help but think of her fierce spirit, her loyalty and staunch courage—but most of all her serious brown eyes, much too old for such a young lass, her childhood having been stolen from her years earlier by a hard life on her own. He found he’d enjoyed her company more than he cared to admit. Just in the past day, he’d even dared hope he could aid her in finding a new life once they made it to Llantry.

  Such is not to be, now. Why do you gods take a young, promising lass like her before her time? Are the victims of war not enough?

  He wiped angrily at his eyes and turned away, determined to find a way out of this damnable place. If he could do nothing for her, then he’d do his damnedest to make someone pay.

  Chapter 5

  Dusk was falling when Elyas and the others of the rearguard were themselves ambushed. He didn’t know how they’d been outmaneuvered, only that they had narrowly escaped a group of pursuing cavalry a short time earlier by leading th
em on a chase through a small stretch of woods. He suspected the winged demon that had attacked them earlier was relaying their position, for he’d glimpsed it occasionally throughout the course of the day.

  The rearguard’s original two hundred men had been whittled down to less than forty following a series of desperate engagements throughout the day. They would attack their foes with volleys of arrows then briefly skirmish with their pursuers before fleeing once more. They’d attacked each flank of the Nebaran column, but every subsequent assault grew less effective, with their foe expecting attack. On the final occasion, the rearguard was fallen upon almost immediately by a group of cavalry soldiers. Only by fleeing into the woods in the deepening dusk had they been able to get away.

  “Brave work, men,” Dorian told them. “Let’s ride north and rejoin the main army, where I imagine they’ve reached the fields of Varrackot and set a defense. You all have earned a night’s rest and a commendation.”

  Elyas was weary and sore from a day in the saddle and a number of small wounds, none of them serious, fortunately. Not a man or woman among them hadn’t received at least minor injuries. Prince Dorian’s words were welcome as Elyas knew they all could use a warm meal and several hours of sleep, if only they were so fortunate. However, Anhur’s favor must have been with them, for their plan had succeeded, albeit after suffering heavy, though not unexpected, losses. The Nebaran army was effectively slowed due to their tactics, although Elyas suspected the fact that the king’s forces having avoided their surprise attack was a main factor in their delayed pursuit.

  Just as the weary group was clearing the woods, a group of attackers fell upon them with crossbows and swords. Prince Dorian, riding at the head of their column, gave a strangled shout of alarm, and Elyas looked up just in time to see a crossbow quarrel ricochet off the prince’s breastplate. Dorian drew his sword, but too late, for a swung axe connected with his helm with a loud metallic crunch, sending the prince tumbling from his saddle. From Elyas’s brief glimpse, he thought it might’ve been the flat of the blade, yet the prince was out of commission all the same.