by Azalea Ellis
I opened my eyes, looking out onto a dark sky with two moons.
We shot upward into the sky for a long while, as Torliam let our speed bleed off. Then, he leveled out the ship and guided us out across the ocean.
The wyrm didn’t appear through the whirlpool behind us.
“Do you think we escaped it?” Sam said, his bruises and abraded skin healing as if being sped through a time-warp video.
No one answered, as we focused on that screen, the moonlight glinting off the water teasingly.
Then the water frothed, and the creature burst upward out of the whirlpool. It had gotten caught by the water, but even that hadn’t been enough to stop it. I suppressed a groan. “This makes things more difficult.”
Chapter 8
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls.
— Henry Vaughan
“Maybe we should evacuate the ship, send it on along without us,” Zed suggested. “Like we did with Torliam’s little ship when we were trying to throw NIX off our trail.”
“Can we do that without the wyrm noticing?” Sam said. “Plus, we’d have to get over land first. I can’t keep a shipful of people alive if we’re going to be swimming through monster-infested water for hours.”
“What about getting to Earth?” Gregor said. “I don’t have time to get stranded in the middle of the ocean for days. I have the Sickness.”
Jacky opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Maybe this is another one of those things your people don’t need,” she said, “but humans usually put lifeboats on big ships, in case people need to escape, yeah?”
Torliam was silent, which drew even more attention his way. “Err.” He coughed. “It appears that is an idea both our people have had. However, I doubt the wyrm would fail to notice an entire haul of emergency life-ships exiting the hull. It would be placing the civilians in danger, and the likelihood that some of them would die is high.” He looked to me, eyebrows slightly raised.
I shook my head. “I don’t want the media reporting about any civilian deaths. Anything Queen Mardinest can use against us, she will.”
His shoulders relaxed a little. “I do have another idea, though some luck would be involved in the timing. There is a force of warriors that patrol the borders between the abandoned lands and the areas where the remainder of our civilization lives. Their ships are geared for battle, and I believe they may be able to damage the wyrm swiftly enough to kill it. We could also trust them to shepherd this ship and any civilians aboard to safety. The difficulty is merely in finding them before the wyrm catches us.”
“No reason not to try it. We can use one of those life-ships to get to an array by ourselves, if we manage. We just have to make sure they don’t try and take us back to Queen Mardinest, since she might have requested our capture.”
“We are already on our way. I felt no need to waste time when your decision was obvious.”
I stared at the back of his head, unsure if he was being intentionally abrasive, till he turned around and gave me a practiced, charming smile. I turned my back on him, and forced myself to ignore his mutter of, “Yes, that is right, I am too handsome to remain vexed with.”
Zed overheard, and almost choked with the effort to suppress his laughter.
We did more planning while Torliam searched for the border patrol, but, to my delight, a group of faraway ships appeared quickly, their dark silhouettes crossing in front of the lower-hanging moon. The ships stilled for a moment, hanging in the air. Then, they shot toward us and the wyrm, much faster than our stolen ship could manage.
“They are the border patrol I spoke of,” Torliam said.
“Somehow, that’s not as reassuring as I was imagining,” Sam said.
Gregor stared at the approaching ships, unblinking. “Don’t we need to hurry up and get out of here before they notice us?”
His words sent the rest of us into a flurry of activity. We didn’t bother to update any of the passengers, simply hurrying to the nearest life-ship and packing into it like sardines.
The life-ship had two cocoon-like contraptions we assumed were meant to hold the injured, so we put Chanelle in one and Adam in the other. It couldn’t hurt, and maybe the cocoons had some sort of advanced Estreyan healing capabilities. The rest of us squeezed in together, with barely enough room for Torliam remaining at the controls.
When Torliam powered up the life-ship it started sending out a distress beacon, and he scrambled to turn it off. Then, the floor opened up beneath us, and the life-ship, mostly made of glass and wire, fell through a dark tunnel.
We steadied after a few seconds, and I looked up at the half-destroyed belly of the larger ship passing by above us.
Then the sky appeared. Our ship held still, floating right above the water, only rising to avoid the occasional wave that rose taller than the rest.
The wyrm passed overhead, pieces of burned and melted flesh still falling off it as it regenerated the damage the fall through the atmosphere and whatever getting stuck in the whirlpool separating the two ocean levels had done to it. Pus-like fluid leaked from the junctions of its earthworm-like segments. Some of its wings had broken and hung limply, and were slowly reabsorbed into the body even as I watched. Even having lost a great deal of mass, it was a behemoth.
I could hear every sound, from the faint humming of the life-ship to the splashes as burnt worm pieces hit the water. I silently urged the wyrm to pass us over without notice.
When it continued on after the ship, its tail lashing back and forth as it propelled itself at high speeds through the air, we all let out careful sighs of relief.
Torliam turned the little pod of a ship, and we flew the other direction, staying low to the water.
We watched the border patrol as they zoomed past the passenger ship toward the wyrm. I let my claws slip out and my night vision sharpen, but when the ships caught the wyrm, I realized I needn’t have bothered. Two of the fighter ships stretched out what looked like a long glowing thread between them. They flew around the wyrm in circles, dodging like flies when it snapped at them. Once the glowing thread-thing was wrapped all around it, the two ships sped in opposite directions. The thread tightened, then sheared right through the wyrm. It fell in chunks to the ocean, and one of the other ships began targeting one of those chunks. It attacked with a beam that absolutely disintegrated the severed section of the wyrm, which had been sprouting a new mouth even as it fell. None of the other pieces tried to regenerate.
The remaining two patrol ships sped ahead toward the passenger ship.
“We’re small enough they couldn’t catch us in those ropes,” Jacky said.
No one responded, but I’m pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing. They probably wouldn’t need the laser ropes to defeat us if they caught us. They could just blast us out of the sky. Were those the type of ships Queen Mardinest had sent to Earth? I knew I would find out soon, since we were heading toward the nearest array at the maximum speed possible.
We stood outside the little life-ship, only a mile from the small array.
Adam had reawakened, and, while he was still sluggish, he wasn’t pale or shaking any longer. He’d tried to use his Animus Skill again, but I’d ordered him to rest. Instead, he’d ripped apart some of the clear material protecting the wiring of the life-ship, and, with a little help from Blaine, cobbled together a receiver that allowed us to listen to the unsuspecting guards around the array.
Sam rubbed his jaw. “Are we seriously going to just walk right up to them?”
Jacky grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Hell yes. Like badasses.”
“What if the soldiers attack us?” Gregor said. “It’s stupid to think they’ll be too star-struck to listen to the queen’s orders.”
“The soldiers aren’t gonna attack,” Jacky said. “Right, Eve? We’re not openly wanted for treason.”
I nodded. “According to the chatter, they have orders to escort us immediately to the queen, under heavy gu
ard for our own safety. She hasn’t declared us criminals.”
“But that doesn’t mean they’re going to let us use the array,” Sam said.
Zed shrugged. “Then we don’t give them a choice.”
Adam grimaced from atop the tree trunk he was sitting on to conserve his Skill. “Though walking right up to the queen’s guardsmen, while currently wanted for treason, is stupid, the biggest problem here is that we don’t actually have a real plan to find the god once we get to Earth.”
Torliam stretched, reaching toward the sky. His back, which had been stuck in a hunched position for the entirety of our flight away from the passenger ship, cracked multiple times. “I will be able to find him, using the Tracker Skill. What is its purpose, if not that?”
“You don’t know that,” Adam muttered, glaring at Torliam. “Unlike the Skills the rest of us got, I’ve never even seen this supposed Tracker Skill of yours in action. Forgive me if I’m not optimistic that you can find him. I mean, last time you tried, you had a whole squad of spaceships looking! And you still failed, and got captured by some humans. We’re supposed to go there without even the stupid little life-ship, into the middle of an interspecies war?”
“I failed, that is true. But I believe the Champion is on Earth, and if he is, that means we can find him somehow. In the meantime, I will be useful to the group, instead of a drain on our already limited resources, as you so aptly pointed out.”
There was a beat of silence.
Adam turned white, his fingers digging into the tree bark as if it were a substitute for Torliam’s neck.
“Staying on Estreyer isn’t an option!” I snapped. “Yes, we’re in a shitty situation. So quit whining and start coming up with solutions.”
Torliam turned to me, meeting my gaze defiantly.
Adam took a couple deep breaths, and then released his death grip on the rotted wood beneath him.
The group was silent for a moment, awkward.
I took a deep breath, then followed my own advice. “I don’t think trying to fight them is a good idea, not unless we could be sure to take them all out instantly, which is unlikely. But what if we make sure they’re on our side? We have a common enemy, after all.”
Zed grinned. “We give them something bigger to worry about than us.”
“And a time limit, counting down so fast they don’t have time to think it over,” I said, already thinking through how it could work.
We crashed through the forest without any heed for silence or secrecy, straight into the clearing surrounding the small array.
“Halt!” cried one of the guards, short-sword already pointed my way.
“Who’s the leader here?” I snapped, gasping hard from my run and jumping a little to jostle Chanelle’s body higher on my back.
“I am,” someone else said, crouched and ready for attack. He kept talking, but I bulldozed right over his words.
“I am Eve-Redding,” I said, moving toward him. “This is my team. We need to use the array to get to Earth, and quickly.”
He straightened a little, frowning down at me. His eyes flickered over the rest of the bedraggled group trailing behind me.
Torliam didn’t even bother to stop, carrying Gregor right to the array and setting him down inside it, despite the guard who moved ineffectually to stop him.
“The queen has given us orders to escort you and your team to her immediately, under guard,” the leader said. “She said that your communications have been cut, or blocked. You are in danger, I believe.”
“We just spoke to the queen,” I said, walking past him and forcing him to turn to continue talking to me. “She must not have had time to send out the update yet. They caught us, and took out our ship and its comms, it’s true. Queen Mardinest gave us this location and told us to escape, before it’s too late.”
“There are no experts in the doorways here,” one of the other soldiers said. “You will not be able to use the array.”
“That is not a problem,” Torliam said. “As long as it is not blocked, I can activate it.”
The leader hesitated, looking around at my team again, and then to me. Specifically, at the crystal symbol laid into the skin at the base of my throat. “Eve-Redding, I apologize, but I must verify these orders with the queen. We have direct instruction not to allow anyone through the array, and there were no exceptions given.”
I let Chanelle down in the circle, where most of the others were already standing. “There’s no time!”
He opened his mouth to protest again, reaching forward to grab my arm. “Protocol—”
I spun on him. “The allies of the Sickness are almost here!” I leaned in, almost hissing at him in my urgency. My eyes flicked around, as if looking for their forms amongst the darkness of the forest.
His eyes widened, and he looked around, too.
“Soldier,” I said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I need you and your squad to protect our backs, just long enough for us to escape. No one will fault you for running, after that.”
Torliam straightened and called out to me to hurry. “It is almost ready.”
That was the cue. I spun and gasped, as a huge rent opened in the fabric of reality, near the edges of the trees. I pointed, then screamed, “There!”
Blackness bubbled out, a roiling mass that fell to the ground like heavy fog and built upon itself, coalescing into a giant, bipedal form as the rip behind it closed.
“Allies of the Sickness!” Kris screamed in a high-pitched voice. Really, it was just one of Adam’s ink constructs exiting the Other Place.
Most of the soldiers, including the leader, attacked immediately. “Go!” he screamed. “We will hold them off, Eve-Redding! You must not fail!” A couple of the soldiers didn’t bother to fight, instead turning and running away into the woods.
I stepped back into the circle of the array, just as another, much smaller rip opened, spilling Zed and Adam out of it. The plan had worked perfectly.
There was a crack of displaced air as someone appeared at the far edge of the clearing and I was spinning toward them, even as Torliam activated the array.
The armored figure lifted a hand. Something shot forward from it.
A wet sound like a watermelon bursting beside me accompanied a warm splatter over my face. I smelled iron. Something shot sparks. My heart gave a single, painful thump of horrified denial, and, with a thrum in my bones, we were gone.
Chapter 9
I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.
— H.P. Lovecraft
We arrived in daylight on the other side, surrounded by tents, military pods and equipment, and a group of human soldiers that startled momentarily, but quickly trained their weapons on us.
I turned to the side, where the blood had come from, and looked down. Blaine’s suit was sparking where whatever had killed him had damaged it, too. Most of his face was gone, and I could see little bits of scrambled gray goo mixed with the bloody remains. Blood pooled thickly on the stone below him.
“Freeze! Get down on your knees, and put your hands on your head!” one of the military men yelled.
Kris turned to me, following my gaze down to the ground. She screamed, stumbling a couple steps away from her uncle’s corpse.
The soldiers yelled for us to surrender, first in English, and then in badly accented Estreyan, but my teammates’ attention was drawn to Kris, and then to Blaine.
Gregor gasped, staring, wide-eyed and still, as if he’d been frozen.
Adam looked up at me. As if I had some answer for him.
I shook my head, silently.
Sam turned green and trembled.
The soldiers shifted nervously. They would attack soon. It was obvious from the tension in their hands and the sweat at their temples. Adam wasn’t in any shape to shield us. “Torliam,” I murmured, so low that an unaugmented human would never hear me. I lifted my empty hands toward the air in the human motion of surrender. My we
apon wasn’t so obvious as a gun. Could I take them all out, quickly enough that no more of us were hurt?
Maybe it was my movement that set off the soldier, or maybe they’d just grown impatient.
Torliam stopped the mini rocket with a wall of blue mist. It exploded, fire hot enough to fairly melt the air backlashing toward the soldiers.
There was a beat of silence, and then, beside me, Sam straightened. Darkness crept over his blue irises from the edges of his eyes, till it had taken over. His hands were steady, his breathing even. “Oh. That feels much better.” He turned outward, toward the soldiers. “More.”
I felt it, with that extra sense I had, when Black Sun grew even more powerful, like a cold miasma around him.
He made eye contact with that first soldier, and his Skill lashed out like a whip.
The soldier shuddered, his face going slack as he sank to his knees.
Sam had already moved on, attacking with his gaze till half our enemies had knelt or dropped their weapons, slow tears running from eyes that stared vacantly into the distance.
I couldn’t hear anything but Kris’ hysteric sobs.
Sam stepped around Torliam’s shield, the brush of his arm against Torliam’s making the much larger, more powerful Estreyan jerk back as if he’d been burned. Sam reached for the closest soldier. “Does that hurt?” His voice was almost wondering. He touched his hand to the man’s neck, and the soldier’s skin blackened, dark veins becoming visible as whatever Sam had done spread from that spot.
The man trembled, a whine like an injured animal hissing between his teeth, and then he fell forward, unmoving.
“Die, you alien bastard!” another man screamed, leaning through the window of the transport pod he’d been sitting in, unknown to everyone but me since we arrived. He aimed a gun big enough to worry me toward Sam, but before he could pull the trigger, his head jerked back, a red bloom on his forehead.
