by Zachary Adam
Via the headset, Archangel’s voice finally got around to interrupting everyone’s silent contemplation. “Explosion, 2 o’clock.”
Reflexively, the former detective looked. The College of Judges complex was ablaze. Whiplike, tenebrous arms reached from all across its spacious lawns, as they burst from the cocoons of other buildings even nearer by. Some of those arms, he reasoned, could reach out and touch them, were they to stray too close.
The sight left his mind in something of a static void. Voices and speculation around him fell on deaf ears, and he felt, rather than heard, the persistent sound of the helicopter’s engine. Whether his mind had been blasted, or had simply reconfigured itself, whatever was left of it and familiar was now concerned solely with finding the pattern. Today, giant tentacle-creatures poking out of the ground and laying waste to the oldest city in the Union was the New Normal. What, then, wasn’t normal? What was extraordinary about this? Nothing. The two things he cared most about – civilization and order – had gone out the window. Now he just had to catch them before they could hurt themselves.
As his eyes mechanically scanned over the city, they came to focus on the old Crown Plaza Hotel building. It was unchanged, not so much as a window, from here, having seemed to be blown out, and none of the nearby, alien arms seemed the least bit interested in it, with one even actively avoiding it as it made a groping sweep of the surround.
“Banker, take us to the Crown Plaza.” Archangel, who had been lost in thought, seemingly, suddenly turned to Prince, his face unreadable behind his stylized, skeletal mask. “Are you sure? What do you see?”
“I see an island of safety in a sea of danger. I see the place where I would set up shop if I was going to orchestrate this.”
Archangel gave an approving nod. “You’re going to be very good at this job, Prince.”
Now, Niles thought bitterly, ifonly I could get someone to explain it to me.
--Vidcund found the Campus in exactly the sort of disarray one would expect. The College of Judges, mighty institutional ruler that had lead the union for over a century, was in ruins as physical as they were politically real. It had taken numerous jumps to find a home for his awareness which was actually suitable for his work, and each jump brought fears with it.
He inherited some inertial awareness from each mind he displaced, and each had been gripped with, and in turn crippled by, uncertainty and fear. Many, he discovered, were in varying states of claustrophobic entrapment, some scarcely able to move at all, others trapped in corridors or even entire subterranean levels.
Each jump, too, brought liberation from fears. He was greater than the pressing need of egress, for nobody could stop him from doing so. No feared unkown, bilious and terrible as it flapped in tatters beyond the scope of the principle human, mechanical, chemical, or electromagnetic senses, could pose a threat to him, when he was no more bounded by the aforementioned laws than they themselves were.
By the time he finally found a working clone that was in a practical position, he found himself climbing out of a rather nice sedan which had been pulled up rather badly onto the lawns, not terribly far from the rather inaccessible helipad. There was no good way to drive there from here, and even if there were, the forest of tentacles that had sprouted up in the meantime would have made the act either impossible at worst, or, if they were acting with malice, downright suicidal.
That which had thrown around earth and cement with impunity would think little of a car.
Relying solely on the fact that he was smaller and more maneuverable than a vehicle, Vidcund set off at a run, clearing yardage as though the fate of the world was at stake. He was comforted, at least, to know that these interlopers, these other-minds who controlled his bodies when he was away like well-meaning neighbours set the task of sitting house, were as dedicated as he was to physical fitness.
Grudgingly, he had to accept that this particular body was in better shape than his old one. “Vidcund, hold on a second!” The familiar voice had called Vidcund out of his reverie, causing him to bite the heels of his formalized shoes into the quake-softened earth and turned to face the speaker, keeping the corner of his eye on the nearest of the writhing things which had softened the ground so. “Baha? Is that-”
As his eyes searched hard for the source of the voice, that tentacle behind him snatched him up off the ground, and before he could figure out the best way to escape it, it was drawing him into the hole through which it had emerged.
--Prince could recall a similar sensation only once in his life. Reality had burned in and out of existence in a slowly-strobing pattern once before, as he lay dying on the floor of his apartment, driven by his flagging heartbeat. However, this time, he was determined the result would remain different, and through the rapidlydiminishing haze in his mind, he’d already fought his pen-knife out of a pocket to saw away his jammed safety harness.
So much, he bitterly thought, for that island of safety. They couldn’t have been more than a block away from the building he’d picked out as a decent spot for investigation when a sudden impact had sent the helicopter spinning. When he looked behind him, he wasn’t surprised to see the whole ass end of the craft missing – something having sheared off not just the tail rotor, but the entire tail. The fact that the damn thing landed upright was a testament to either the luck or skill of the pilot.
As his sense restored, he became aware of gunshots just outside the aircraft, and looked to find that very same pilot on a knee beside the standing Prodigal, each of whom were unloading firearms into some unseen threat that was hidden by the lip of the roof.
Finally awake, he slid down the angled deck and onto the glass-and-fuel strewn pavement outside, drawing his Detective Special as he did so, and reaching out to put his hand on Banker’s shoulder – the pilot had clearly stricken him as the cooler head in the past, and the unclear hierarchy of the Angels still placed the man somewhat highly.
“10-13!” he shouted, in the gap between gunshots. Banker glanced behind him to the investigator while he reloaded a rifle that Prince’s brain belatedly registered as illegal. “Come again?”
“What the hell is going on?”
Banker lowered the rifle, using his left hand to point, instantly drawing Niles’ attention down to the end of the block. “Leapfrogging. Three-of-twos. You and I are going to push up there, yeah?”
Niles looked. Archangel and Scion were where Banker had pointed, though to be honest, Archangel couldn’t have been providing much to that partnership. They were under assault by strange beasts, unlike anything Niles had seen before, in person or photographically, but those beasts seemed to shy away from them, probably terrified by the fact that from time to time Scion would glance at one of their number, which would then proceed to launch itself three stories into the air and splatter back to earth with a satisfying, arthropod crunch.
Still, having an objective helped when it came to maintaining composure, and he nodded to Banker. “Your party.”
“Reloading,” the other muttered, and once he’d slid what seemed to be his final clip home, the man nodded. “Okay. Motion up!”
The two ran, neither firing a shot, relying on Prodigal to clear out anything that came entirely too near to them as they slid into the relative home plate that was Archangel and Scion’s position. In Prince’s case, the metaphor was actually an accurate description, as he went down hard on his back and probably (it was a poor time to check) tore the hell out of his jacket while he let his momentum carry him the last two or three feet – an action he’d undertaken to dodge a beast which had overcome its trepidation to lunge at him.
As he watched, an invisible force slammed it into the ground so hard that it stopped trying to move, and for the first time, Niles got a good look at the creature, and began to understand why the sight of it was making his brain itch so devilishly. The whole thing seemed to suffer from some strange condition of trinary radial symmetry. It had three legs, clad in the same seemingly-thick carapace as the
rest of the body, and between each leg seemed to peek out an eye with a peculiar pupil-shape. From the top emerged a short spike, surrounding which were five whip-like, and evidentially once-prehensile arms.
“They’re called crawlers,” Archangel spoke, snapping the man out of his shocked revelation. “And while they are certainly nothing of the world you know, they are as mortal as any other living thing. If you must use a firearm, concentrate your fire near the joints in the armour around the eyes. They have very little by way of internal structure, and the gaps in their armour make promising targets.”
“What are they?” Archangel glanced ahead, no doubt choosing his and Scion’s next path. “I just told you.”
Scion gestured broadly, sweeping a few of the braver ones clear so that he didn’t have to focus anymore. “That tentacle’s going to be trouble.”
He was referring to one which had emerged from the intersection of the street they were on and the one which ran in front of the hotel, and was presently picking up anything with any mass at all useful and flinging it down the street in their direction, though by now it was out of objects within its reach to use. It was long, however, and had good reach, and Niles realized immediately that just such a creature must have brought down the helicopter itself.
“What is that?!”
Archangel glanced back to the now-crouching ex-cop. “Perhaps answers are best suited for later. Scion, we’ve got to take that thing out.”
If the prospect intimidated Scion at all, he was putting on a brave front – though Niles, intuitively, realized it was just that. “All right. Usual giant-slaying plan?”
“The very last thing I want you to do is try and touch whatever rudimentary excuse for a brain that thing has.” Archangel was extracting something from under his coat. “You with Prince. Banker, on me.”
“Heard,” Banker echoed, with the tone of a man who had said the word until it had lost meaning.
“Security out!” Prince watched with great nervousness. The beasts that had surrounded them were diminishing – there was, after all, a finite number of them, and faced with the great losses Scion could apparently inflict upon them, they now tried for the softer target of Prodigal, who was trying to join them. Those few beasts he couldn’t sweep out of his way with his handguns were summarily dispatched by telekinetic bursts from Scion, dramatically thrown aside or smeared against building walls.
Prince had eyes for none of this, and so he focused on Archangel and Banker. The pilot was clearing ground like he had wings on his heels, angling for a position just barely distant of the tentacle’s apparent reach, no doubt meaning to take a knee and, therefore, a firing position. Niles saw a flicker of motion as Archangel gestured with the large object he was holding, and saw the whole thing unfold as though it were spring-loaded, providing him with a long-hafted scythe.
He had almost forgotten that Archangel was the same person as Eli Sharona, and in this moment felt a halfdecade of hatred and rivalry shift into respect and admiration. Sharona, no doubt leveraging the same magic that had given rise to his criminal necromancy, was a fearsome fighter at close range, with a reputation with that particular weapon. It came as no surprise, then, when in a single, fluid motion, he span the final few feet toward the tentacle, and severed it completely, in spite of its significant girth. The falling, flailing thing tore a massive gouge in the façade of the hotel, crashing down through the main doors.
Before anyone had time to feel relief, however, the ground beneath their leader buckled, and suddenly he was being borne up in the air on another, identical tentacle, which shook him like a rag-doll. Still, Prince felt as though Archangel was composed, determinedly swiping at the damn thing with his weapon, trying to angle a strike that could take off the limb without severing the man’s own foot.
The creature cracked itself like a whip, and Archangel soared through the air, hitting the ground hard and sliding the width of one, maybe two buildings further down from where he landed.
Niles barely remembered moving. At once, they were all at his side, Scion kneeling down to test for the man’s flagging pulse. Archangel’s mask lay a few feet away, having knocked itself clear on the impact. Eli’s eyes, clouding no doubt faster than the powerful man would have liked, sought out Scion’s. “… It’s happening. It’s all… it’s happening. You know what to do?”
“It’s a foregone conclusion,” Scion said, struggling to keep the emotion clear from his voice. “And you’re coming with us.”
“No. You need speed, not an extra couple hundred pounds.” Eli coughed, bloodying the ground beside his head. “… Go.”
“I’m not going to leave you…”
Without realizing he had, Niles set his hand on James’s shoulder. “That was an order. And he’s right.”
Eli grinned a pink grin up at him. “… I was right. You’re going to be good at this.”
The smile slowly faded from his face, as the necromancer slowly faded from his life.
--“Your honour, I need you to focus.” Great Justice Michael James Scamwell recalled similar hazes, from years long since past, when habits of heavy drinking and blood of Irish providence had made for a miracle he’d ever graduated law school at all. Still, at quarter-one in the afternoon, there was no reason to be black-out-drunk, and less reason still for this paradoxical young man to be standing over him, gripping him by the shirt front and dragging him across… what? Michael’s fingers said grass. Wet grass.
He looked up at the young man. Well, his face at least was young, but his hair was a very pale grey, possibly even white (though it was hard for the man to tell with his vision still less than perfect and the sky above so deeply over-cast). He was pale, too, but that might have been because of the garish red vest he was wearing over his white shirt and black pants. The vest, itself, was peculiar, extending into something akin to a stiff mao-collar, and fastening along the young man’s right shoulder with three polished brass buttons. It was thick, and padded, and reminded Michael of a fencer’s garment.
Suddenly, it clicked. “… Edward? What the hell are you doing?”
“My Father’s job, as usual.”
There were footfalls on the lawn. A deluge had begun, but even in the rain, Michael could recognize the distinctive black-and-grey uniforms of the Justice Guard – his personal military retinue, forced upon him by his foolish decision to accept election to the highest seat in the land. “Captain Coultier. How’s his condition?”
“Not a field medic but I’ve seen worse injuries come from training accidents. Take him.” After a brief, and rough, examination, Michael felt himself being lifted up into that most undignified of aid positions, the fireman’s carry, and could still hear Edward’s voice over the roar of the rushing fluid in his ears, and what he realized was also the blaze of an inferno and the blare of klaxons. Little wonder – as the son of the Lord Field Marshall of the Ground Self Defence Forces, Edward Coultier came by his aura of authority honestly. “There are still two others in the helicopter. Assistant Justice McKim and Agent-Liaison Becket.”
“What about the Lord High Comissioner and your father?” “Neither are on campus. My father and Commissioner Vaillo are in Anfangsburg on business.” Edward gestured, adding a questioning tone to his voice. “The Assistant Justice?”
Several men departed after them, and Nicholas Tobin, Sergeant Major of the Justice Guard, nodded somewhat. “You’d have been good at this job.”
“I already have a job,” Edward said, with a touch of pride, and lowered a hand to the sabre at his hip. “Do you have secondary evac?”
“Try tertiary,” Tobin countered. “Roads are entirely too damaged for the backup transit plan.”
“Give me ten minutes and some quiet and I can get you out of here. From indoors, preferably.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
--It was rather impossible to clean house without getting your hands dirty. That was a very real statement, and one that figured heavily in Gloria’s thought processes a
nd her ministrations to those among her followers who couldn’t help but get cold feet once they realized just how visceral the cult’s magic could be.
In this case, she actually had to remind herself, as she tried to reduce the degree to which her dress clung to her due to the slime in which she was covered. Travelling here was always an ordeal, for the Labyrinth did not make it easy for her. Deep in the bowels of Kraterburg, the ancient God in the Cave was less God than Cave than it had been when she had delivered the first of its larval kind to these depths, hundreds of years ago.
Now, she had to be borne here in the belly of the slug-like C’bthnk-creatures which occasionally bore it fresh victims, now that Agency had cut off its food source. This suited her well, for the C’bthnk were hers by design, and what was more, the Labyrinth’s reliance on her for its food meant that the creature now had almost
preternatural loyalty to her, which was useful. Her regular visits, to conduct the rites called for by her sleeping god, had extended her life and her ministry, to the point that now, four and a half centuries later, she herself could see the fruition of plans mere mortals could only have hoped would one day succeed.
The ground beneath her shook as she made her way into the throne room, where a seat of basalt sat among the three irregularly-spaced torches and the spirals of crude pseudoglyphs. As she knelt before it, she felt herself suffused with a great understanding of the sheer power of the Labyrinth as their wills became one.
With a great surge, she forced it to bring this chamber – contained like a memory inside an extensible organ – up to the surface of the world.
Soon, the sleeper would awaken, and take to his seat once more.
