by K.Z. Freeman
The awakening is brutal and not at all what I had expected. Remnants of the dream bite my conscious mind and I am unable to shake off the feeling of restlessness.
“Finally!” Calyx shouts. “You’re a hard fucker to wake up. We need to get out of here. They’ve come looking for you, demanded you by name!”
They’ve finally found it then.
I’m not particularly interested in what happens next. Yet, at the same time, it is all I wish to know.
“What?” I ask groggily.
“Templars,” she says, her voice shaking. Of course. “There’s at least five of them and I was told more wait outside The Fane. They’re coming–”
A quad of them walks through the veil. Light within the building splashes and reflects off their silver armor. Each clanging piece of their attire is adorned with patterns like tattoos, with heads of snakes and drakes carved into their shoulderpads. Their breathing is harsh, serrated. They lock eyes with me immediately.
The tallest one – his shoulderguards two giant drakes, their mouth gaping – points his meaty finger at me. “Him,” he growls.
Three of them charge me. Heavy feet strike the tiles beneath, crackling them.
“Aside!” I order Calyx and brace myself. I press my body against the statue behind me and hear a strange, whirling noise. The sight of the Templar before me is momentarily trumped by the sound, the curiosity. I look at what I thought was a statue and note that it is moving. Parts of it cut themselves in half and open up. I turn as one of the Templars body-slams me, shoulder first. I am flung back and into the suit. A suction noise envelops me. A feeling of magnetized pressure cements my body in place. I scream out as things gyrate and clank around me. My face gets closed in, enveloped and squeezed tight by cold plates of strange metal. The suit clanks around me feet, around my knees, ankles, torso, hands and neck and I suddenly feel the heaviness of it. My feet compensate. I am bombarded by auditory and visual stimuli. My mind compensates. Light becomes an ocean of particles through which the Templar before me moves, excites each atom as his fist flies towards my face. The suit compensates. I feel nothing as it hits me. The sound of it is like a bell toning. Another punch. Nothing. I punch back. The air around me explodes as the armor smites through the sound barrier and lands in the Templar’s chest. He is thrown back into his comrades, collapsing. I charge them, targeting the tallest one before the other three have time to get up. He stands like a statue, waiting for me. Before I reach him, he puts his hand up in a gesture of ‘stop’ and says, “Halt.”
I freeze in place. “You believe the suit was placed there by happenstance? By chance? A fluke of good fortune? Hah.”
I am unable to answer, my jaw tightening by the second.
“I am here to take you, to reveal the truth to you. Long have we waited for your kind to come out of this world. It is a shame it took us this long to find you.”
My teeth begin to grind as I hear Calyx yell behind me. “Where are you taking him!” Two Templars have her by the shoulders while Ty lies unmoving at their feet.
“Where you cannot follow,” he says.
***
