by JM Guillen
The sensation of my arm sliding back into place felt exquisite, if a bit dulled.
“Get back!” A large man stepped behind the man wielding the golden blade and pulled him away.
As the winged host pulled its foot free, the paltry silver construction shattered with a loud explosion. Their snare had snapped, less than a cobweb before the might of the divine archon.
The explosion knocked all three of the tiny figures backward, but the fell creature stood, unharmed, unaffected.
“Oh! Oh, fuck!” The woman’s voice quivered with a touch of awe as she began to understand what I already knew.
“It sings.” I looked at her, feeling a deep pity. She was not wise. How could they possibly hope to stand against the winged nightmares?
It was over. All pain, all suffering. Soon we would be gifted the sweetness of sleep.
WHUF. WHUF. The wider man with blue over one eye stumbled to his feet, firing his pathetic weapon again.
The radiant horror stepped forward, and I saw another of its kind land behind the first. Then the original one screamed, a cacophony of sound without sound, the echoes of which thundered through my mind.
As I watched, the large man dropped his useless device, his limbs going slack.
The golden glow from the other man’s implement faded like a candle going out.
I could not help but smile. Yes. They understood now.
“What—?” The young woman stared at them as if uncertain of what was happening. I watched as she again manipulated the tool on her arm, her fingers frantic.
“No.” My voice was soft, almost condescending. “This is an end. It is all things passed beyond knowing.”
“I like you better when you’re an ass.” She scowled at the two men. “They aren’t getting my links either.” She spoke slowly, as if realizing something that should be apparent. Then she looked to me and understanding dawned on her face. “Oh. Oh fuck.”
“Quiet now.” My tone turned reverent.
Another of the unfathomable abominations gently came to rest with its fellows, its midnight wings carrying it down.
“This…” Her fingers flew across the surface of her plaything. “This is going to hurt.”
I watched as another woman sprinted forward, grabbed the men, and tried to pull them back. She wasn’t having much of an effect, as they shrugged her away. She screamed something. Her words resonated an entire universe away, and I could not hear them.
“Damn it! That’s it!” The woman winced at me as her fingers made one final movement. “Bishop, I’m sorry, if it makes any difference.”
Azure thorns of ice sliced deep through my head. I cried out, my hand flying to my temple as I stumbled backward.
Nothing had ever hurt like this sourceless, vile torture. Pain simply cut into my mind, a frozen blade of hate that cut away part of who I was.
I blinked, uncertain of myself. Hadn’t I just—?
In front of me, I could see that Gideon and Wyatt stumbled as well, and Wyatt cried out from the agony.
Anya still tried to pull them away from the creatures.
I tried to link, but my Crown didn’t comply. Instead, I spoke out loud. “Rachel?”
“Bishop!” The relief on her face became almost painful to witness. “Yes, you idiot.”
“What—?” My eyes widened as the events of the last few moments caught up with me.
The same aberration that had just ripped my arm out of its socket closed on the other three members of my cadre. “Oh, no.”
I sprinted forward, making certain I had a good eye on my allies. Even with the gatekeeper ruined, nothing but flinders and bent metal, the quarrels I had shot with it were still operational.
Maybe I could get us out of this.
I reached for the most recent quarrel with the Temporal Corona and ignited an aperture at its location. In the distance, I saw the scarlet ring ignite. I set the second one behind Anya and the others.
“Anya!” I yelled.
Apparently linking was off the table, but she heard my cry. She whipped around and understood the moment she saw the burning fissure. She grabbed the other two, stunned as they were, and dragged them through. They moment they were gone, I closed it.
Then the ancient horror turned its eldritch, empty face toward me.
“Hey, buddy.” I spat the words. “Thought I was off the table, huh?” I turned toward Rachel, who looked up at the abomination with wide eyes.
“Oh…” She whispered the word, the beginning of reverence in her tone.
“Not today, Rache.” I placed an aperture beneath her feet and connected it to the one near my cadre. As she fell through, I leapt after her.
“—fuck were those things?” Wyatt was raving. “Nothing breaks a stasis field, Chief, not without blowing the tangler.”
“It involves the unconventional construction of this place.” Anya’s naturally quiet tone felt even more so against the stygian blackness. “Your stasis fields simply weren’t adjusted for ambient axioms.”
“Not exactly my fault.” Wyatt might have said more, but Gideon gave him a dark look.
“I’ve burnt out our secondary comm.” The words tumbled out of Rachel as she looked frantically over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
I had to admit I was also more interested in how long it would take the monstrosities to find us.
“Is that what that was?” Wyatt rubbed his head. “I assumed it was something they did.”
“Their psionic irrationality can function on the frequency of your receptive helix.” Anya blinked calmly at him as she spoke.
“Right.” Rachel looked almost sheepish. “That’s why Bishop didn’t get a saving throw.”
“A what?” Gideon cocked his head at her, confused.
“Nothing.” Rachel waved her hand dismissively. “Just we have no linking or patching until we can get connectivity to Rational space.” She sounded apologetic. “If the Lattice was in range…”
“Quiet.” I strained, listening. It was whisper soft, but… I gazed into the flame-lit shadows, trying to find the source of what I’d heard.
There was something…
“Ambient Rationality spiking.” Anya stared into nothingness at her frantic fingers. “Positive 4R—now 5.” Her tone held the faintest touch of concern.
“There.” I pointed into the darkness at a shape gliding toward us. A black ghost floated in the darkness. Just at the sight of it, I already felt that bubbling madness inside me.
“No hiding from them.” Gideon fired up his Seraph, bathing us in golden light. At the same moment, I heard the tangler start to sing.
And I had nothing. No disruptors, no gatekeeper. All I had was the packet in my head, the Temporal Corona, and more than my typical amount of stupid.
It would have to be enough.
“I think I need a bigger aperture, Wyatt.” I couldn’t help but note how calm I kept my tone as the death-winged horrors glided down toward us.
“Top cube?” He shook his head. “Second one, maybe? That seems right.”
“Good.” I sighed. “I’m glad you’re certain.”
Then they were on us.
The first one screamed again as it landed, but this time the sound created only a faint echo in my mind.
As such, I could appreciate the awful screech in a new way. I felt the sing-song pull of it burning in my blood. It sought to lull me into accepting a sweet death.
This time I was able to resist being entranced by the irrational, gibbering darkness.
Barely.
Gideon stepped forward to meet it, bold as brass. He moved like a dancer, swooping in as he swung his blade, but the creature leapt out of the way, all wicked claw and deadly grace. Gideon advanced again, and soon the two were in the thick of it—reality-slicing technology versus ancient, gore-coated talon.
Then a second one lit from the darkness above us.
“Shit!” Wyatt shoved Anya to one side, and they barely dodged being soundly pounded into
the stone floor.
The abomination charged me with a gangled, sideways swipe, and I felt the wind of the swing as I dropped and rolled.
While I tumbled to one side, I fiddled with the second cube on my interface, turning it to the left and watching the sphere for any clues.
It shrank as I turned the little cube. As I spun it the other way, the sphere in my interface grew larger. That was handy at least. I gave it another half turn, hoping I had the right size for our faceless friends.
Wyatt screamed as he fired spikes right into the underbelly of one of the aberrations. As one of the spikes stabbed into it, the horror looked down at it and pulled it out, as if merely a splinter. Wyatt frantically altered the specifications for the spike, but the creature hurled it into the darkness before it exploded.
“Fuck!” He fired three more into the floor.
I looked around, trying to find the third vulture-winged terror.
There.
It hovered, its midnight wings beating slowly as it peered down upon us, a horrifying shadow.
I could hear the burbling darkness in its mind as it looked down upon us.
It was searching for a target.
I grinned as I realized I was going to give it one.
“THAT! You can EAT THAT!”
WHUF. WHUF.
Wyatt grunted after he fired, and I heard Anya cry out in pain. One of the creatures had batted them about like toys.
We needed to end this as soon as we could. We were hopelessly outmatched here.
I ran away from my cadre, noting everyone’s position as I did. As I had hoped, the moment I veered slightly away from the others, the hovering abomination swooped down toward me, intent on attacking me from above just as the other had done with Wyatt and Anya.
“Good.” I glanced up at it, my heart rumbling like thunder in my chest. “C’mon.”
In that moment, I surrendered my status as a well-trained Asset of the Facility; I allowed myself to become prey.
I glanced back at my friends, making certain I had my range right. As I set my first aperture, I judged the vector of the faceless horror as it plummeted toward me with its claws outstretched.
“That’s right. C’mon.”
I could hear its psychic scream echoing in my mind, promising the bliss of unending nothingness. Its dark and terrible song burned at the edge of my mind, and again I could see my own name written in blood on the creature’s non-existent face.
As I opened the second aperture between me and certain death, my trembling fingers spun the bottommost cube on my tactile interface two full cranks before the creature hit the fissure.
Barreling through like a locomotive, like the fist of an angry and forgotten god, it blasted out the other side with a supersonic crack, slamming into the one that was harrying Wyatt and Anya.
The thing must have weighed over five hundred kilograms, but I had multiplied the conservation of energy factors, increasing acceleration several-fold.
The creature had exited with the force of a comet slamming into the world.
They smashed into each other with a loud crunch. Tumbling end over end, one of them screeched, and its wings spread wide.
Wyatt pulled Anya to her feet, and they sprinted away from the two aberrations. She moved with an obvious limp.
Rachel noticed it as well and stepped over to the Preceptor.
“Slick enough, Hoss.” Wyatt spat. “But you didn’t kill ’em.”
“I know.” I turned toward Gideon, who lunged at the one he was fighting.
It was a thing of beauty, that battle. Primitive minds would have painted it as a battle between angels and demons.
A loud crack erupted as the Seraph caught the creature in one of its gangled arms, and the blade cut through its flesh like soft cheese.
The creature wailed, and Gideon stumbled from the psychic force of the cry. The limb fell to the ground; still twitching as Gideon lunged forward again, pressing his advantage. For a moment, I thought it might be over, that the wounded creature would fall.
Then the aberration’s wound burst in a font of foul, viscous fluids. Where the liquid struck the ground, a nauseous vapor erupted as the blood and lymph burned into the stone.
Gideon fell back as he raised his arm to shield his face from the spray.
“Fuck.” Wyatt eyed the creature, and his tone held more than a touch of despair. “Oh, fuck me!”
From the wound burst a thick, writhing knot of tentacles.
While still inside the horror, a few of the hook-tipped tentacles sliced toward Gideon, as if the creature had grown a spray of wriggling arms to replace the single one he had severed.
I turned, noting that the two I had slammed together were back on their feet and closing on us. If I had wounded either one of them with my apertures, I certainly couldn’t tell it. They prowled forward, and I could hear the mad whisper of their shattered minds as they grew closer.
“I think we need to consider retreat.” Wyatt laid two spikes between the advancing monstrosities and us. His fingers madly keyed in specifications, and I felt a burst of furious heat from the spikes.
For a moment, the creatures paused.
“You may be right.” I hated to admit it. I had the vaguest hint of a plan, but it was complex. I needed time I didn’t have. The apertures required foresight and planning, and I still wasn’t as experienced with them as I could be.
Time. A thought occurred to me.
I turned to Rachel, the beginnings of an idea on my lips, but she cut me off with a gasp.
“Gideon!”
I spun, just in time to see the emaciated horror backhand him, and our Alpha flew four meters through the air before crashing into the stone. The crunch he made as he struck the ground sounded distinctly unhealthy.
“Rachel!” I turned and grasped her face between my fingers. “Back home, you accelerated my Crown’s processing. Can you do that without the Lattice?”
“You’d need enough mecha—”
“How long?” I watched as Gideon scrambled backward from the graceful aberration, trying to get to his feet. “How long can you give me?”
“Maybe a minute. Maybe.” She seemed uncertain. “Bishop, this could—”
“We’re getting slaughtered, Rachel!” I didn’t really have time. Wyatt was firing spikes at the advancing creatures, but they seemed to do little good. “Do it!”
She only paused for a moment. I could see she wasn’t entirely certain, but she pressed her hand against my chest and released injectables from the stinger. Before she even raised her hand off me, her other had typed in the specifications.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Michael Bishop.”
“I don’t.” I grinned as I felt the mecha begin their work. “Give me a moment, then lead the others through.”
Then my Crown whirred, and every thought came blindingly fast.
I set an aperture in front of myself and another fifty meters away, where we had first encountered the creatures. I didn’t bother to alter the size of the fissures, but I did reset the multiplier on the conservation of momentum as I stepped through.
For a moment, Rachel stood there, obviously in a bit of shock. Then she yelled to Wyatt and Anya, who helped Gideon to his feet.
My cadre was definitely banged up. Gideon required support from Wyatt and Anya, who still limped. The aberrations weren’t letting them get away that easily, however, and lunged toward them as they stepped through the crimson-flame fissure.
Gideon turned toward the injured one, and the light of the Seraph flared brightly.
For a moment, the creatures backed away, but they looked unlikely to give up.
Perfect.
As my cadre came through, the horrors peered at the gateway, curious, cautious.
We obviously weren’t going to win fighting toe-to-toe, but stand-up fights weren’t the only play on the board.
As two of the aberrations closed on the aperture I had left open, I cranked up the factors of mo
mentum. I closed the aperture in front of me and ignited the other I had prepared as an entrance.
Which I had situated inside one of the flaming pillars of molten stone.
Even from fifty meters away, we could hear the mental cries of anguish as spouts of magma burst from the aperture, exploding outward at a speed of hundreds of kilometers per second. The magma blasted two of the hideous creatures in what must have been tons of red-hot stone.
They reared back, stumbling away from the fiery fissure. Then I closed it and opened another exit directly in front of them.
This was why I had wanted the accelerated Crown. The timing on opening and closing the apertures had to be quite precise, and I didn’t want to accidentally have to deal with paradox looping and magma while I did it.
The creatures turned away a third time, and again I blasted them with fury and flame.
They fell.
The one Gideon had wounded reared back and stretched its wings.
“No, you don’t,” I growled.
I created another aperture, ignoring the system prompt as it grated in my mind:
PLEASE LINK FISSURES IN DESIRED ORDER
“No.” I closed one and then linked the newest to my magma-geyser aperture in front of the third creature. Liquid hatred pummeled it in the face.
The creature stumbled back and fell. Its mental cries were equal part fury and agony.
Even as it fell, I placed a fissure over it and poured tons of molten wrath onto its face.
“Fuck, Hoss.” Wyatt’s voice sounded a touch awed. “Maybe we should have just sent you.”
“Not over.” Gideon’s voice sounded weak, which terrified me as much as the monstrosities.
As I looked, however, I realized he was correct. Midnight tendrils were writhing their way loose from the burning bodies of the servitor horrors. Already a small knot of them wriggled through the air unnaturally.
“Fuck.” My Crown began to slow as the acceleration faded. I evaluated my cadre and nodded. “Right then.” I reset everything to the default setting, since I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to hurl mind-crackling abominations through these fissures. I created an aperture in front of us and another in the distant shadows.
