Sanctuary

by Chris Fox

Then my crew arrived. Briff charged into the breach with a roar, and tackled the bear to the deck in a tangle of limbs. I don’t know how he could see in the darkness, or even if he could. Maybe he’d gotten lucky.

  Everyone else would be hampered though, and I could hear Seket and Rava pounding their way in my direction. That meant I couldn’t hear Miri, but she was probably with them.

  I dropped the darkness spell, and used life to deliver the brightest flash I possibly could. All four bears covered their eyes with roars, and Briff pinned their leader to the deck, despite the bear being larger. He wrapped his tail around the creature’s legs, and pinned them together.

  Then the creature answered. It bit down into Briff’s throat, and tore out a hunk of scales and flesh. Briff screeched in rage and pain, then leapt off the bear and rolled behind some crates.

  I sprinted low in his direction, and skidded into him as I reached for his wound. My gauntlets were instantly covered in boiling blood. Life magic poured into his neck, and both scales and flesh regrew. Briff breathed a bit easier, and his wings lifted.

  “Thanks, Jer. Those things are nasty.”

  Seket charged past us with a roar, and snapped his brilliant blue spellshield into existence even as he unsheathed his spellblade. The paladin began the same dance of death he’d used against me when we first met, and the bears were just as bemused.

  Seket didn’t do much damage, but he parried their claws, and the axe one of them wielded, with seemingly little effort.

  Miri charged into the room, dropped to one knee, and began peppering the white-furred bear with life bolts. The other three all had differing shades of fur, with the darkest being a thick dusky grey.

  The bolts sank into the creature, which grunted, but if it caused more than superficial damage the beast certainly didn’t show it. Damn these things were tough.

  “Push them out of the ship,” I ordered as I snapped off a pair of void bolts at the closest bear. We were hurting them, but it was like chipping away at a mountain.

  Briff lumbered back into the hallway, and this time withdrew the spellcannon from his newly acquired void pocket. I hadn’t seen him use it, and wished I’d found time to get one of my own. Briff aimed the cannon at the bears, and launched two spells.

  The first plasma ball knocked them to the deck. The second lit their fur on fire, and elicited pained screams from the lot of them. The two in the rear simply turned and ran back into the snow. That put the remaining pair in an awkward position as they prepared to make their last stand.

  “Wait!” I activated my translation ability from the academy, and spoke in the same growly dialect I’d just heard. “We don’t need to do this. Leave our ship. We’ll let you go. We didn’t choose to come here. Tell your friends we mean no harm.”

  The white-furred bear peered at me suspiciously, but also put up its gun. The pair of bears backed away, slowly, and out of the tear they’d made in the hull. Back out into the snow. My crew, thank the gods, followed my lead and let them go without further assault. We might have been able to kill them, but doing so would drain every bit of magic we still had.

  What were the odds that these four bears, the first to reach our ship, were the toughest thing we were going to face out there?

  I stood there waiting as they retreated into the blizzard, and snow blasted into the hold. We were going to have to venture out there, and attempt to find either shelter or allies. I had no idea if either were possible, and worse, I couldn’t show my crew my lack of confidence or any real plan.

  “Load up, people,” I bellowed, with my father’s confidence. “We’re marching into that storm. Rava, you’re on point. Look for cover. Get us somewhere out of sight, and go uphill. That will lead toward the neck, which we’re going to have to climb to reach the mouth.”

  “What’s inside the mouth?” Briff panted, his hot breath steaming the air around him.

  “Magic. Lot’s of magic. Also the mind of the god who hid the city I came here to find.” All of a sudden I had a plan…the beginnings of one, anyway. It sounded crazy, but at least it lent us purpose. “If we can reach the water Catalyst, then not only will we be better equipped to fight the cold, but we might get some of the answers we need. Along the way, avoid making enemies. We’re going to need friends to fix the ship.”

  Then I shouldered my pack, holstered Dez, and led us out into the storm.

  12

  It took nearly an hour to make the first kilo, which led us up a steep slope broken by huge snowdrifts that blocked visibility, and forced us to snake around them, nearly doubling the ground we needed to walk. That was better than the alternative. Flying above the hills would be an invitation to swift death.

  This was bear country.

  No one spoke, and the comms were silent except for pants of exertion as the storm battered us. Gusts of wind thrust us first one way, then another. We had to walk low, even with the snowdrifts to shelter us.

  “Contact,” Rava’s voice echoed over the comm, so silent it might have been my imagination. “Three drifts up from your current position. Bear sniper lying in the snow. Almost missed him. Should I take him out?”

  “Negative. I got this.” I willed my armor into the air and forced it up against the wind. Flying was far, far more difficult in the storm than I’d have expected, and I shouldn’t have been surprised when the storm slammed me back into the deck with bone-shattering force. “Owww.” Yellow flared on my paper doll.

  I mean, it didn’t really. I didn’t have a paper doll at the moment. I had a helmet from a suit of environmental armor, hastily duct-taped onto my Heka Aten armor. My helmet lay at the bottom of my pack, and I desperately hoped I’d be able to repair it soon. This helmet had no functionality, beyond basic comms and life support.

  This time I trotted through the snow, and used an infuse strength spell to make it lighter. I struggled. A lot. Three minutes later I made it to the top, and my huffing and puffing probably drowned out the storm over coms.

  “I…can’t…believe…how bad I am…at this.” I planted my hands on my sides, and wished I could drop my pack. Screw that. Then I’d have to go back to get it.

  “You’re too hard on yourself, Jer,” Briff’s encouraging voice came over the comm, and the hatchling stepped up next to me and offered a thumbs up. The cold meant nothing to him. This was a summer day. “A year ago you wouldn’t have been able to do this at all. You’d have been amazed. So would your dad. You’re doing great, man.”

  I nodded gratefully, but I lacked the O2 to reply. Instead I started down the far side of the drift. Sliding down the snow was way easier than getting up, and I actually enjoyed the ride a bit as I slid down into the next valley.

  My joy faded when I started climbing again. Yuck. People who like hiking are like…what’s something that’s not really derogatory, but sort of sounds like it? They’re that. This is my eloquence in combat situations at work, people.

  I climbed up the next drift like a pro. A pro gamer who spent their life on the couch eating tacos. But finally, eighteen million hours, and two embarrassing slips later, I made it to the top of the second drift. Rava lay there in the snow, her parka invisible against the snow. Her sniper rifle had been trained on a target, and I tried to peer through the storm and see what she’d locked onto.

  Activating my sight made that trivial. It still felt like cheating. I could see the bear, plain as day, in what I had assumed had been a patch of snow less than twenty meters away. I gently eased Dez from my holster, and wiggled through the snow so I could aim.

  Then I slipped back a meter in the snow. Rava glared at me, and I heard snickers from at least two people over the comm.

  “Just being cautious,” I said as if I’d totally meant to face plant in the snow. I crawled back to my previous position, and sighted down Dez’s barrel. The bear seemed unaware of me, thankfully.

  Dez thrummed eagerly in my hand, but then switched to disappointment when she felt the magic I reached for. I fed her dream, and she su
pplied a thick, magnitude III dream bolt that zipped into bear-boy’s rumbly tummy. I followed up with a second identical spell without waiting to see if the first had landed.

  Bear-sniper-guy leaned forward in the snow, and snored noisily enough that I could hear it over the wind.

  “Wow,” Rava whispered into the comm. “Not bad. He’ll think he fell asleep on watch. We should move. Quickly.”

  “Go, people. Speed over stealth until we’re past this set of drifts. They’re unlikely to have a ton of sentries in the area, and if we get past this one we might be behind their lines.” I hoped. I had no way of knowing that, but if my crew looked askance at my conjecture being offered in place of a real plan they didn’t say anything.

  The next two hours were the worst of my life. On and on we hiked, and even with infuse strength my limbs burned. I badly wanted to stop, but I knew that if we did, not only would the storm likely kill us…the bears would eat us afterwards. I mean, I assumed they ate people. Apologies to any bears reading this that don’t eat people. You’re a bro-bear.

  My mind wandered and my body ached, but I couldn't complain. I was alive. My crew was alive. None of them seemed overly impacted by the hike, not in the same way I was. Even Siwit seemed unfazed by the storm, though he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself any more than I was.

  “Oh, my gods,” Rava breathed over the channel. I couldn’t see her, but imagined she couldn’t be more than a few dozen meters ahead. “You guys need to see this. There’s a break in the storm here.”

  That got my attention, and I hurried forward to get a look at whatever had impressed Rava. She didn’t impress easily, especially in combat situations.

  The view was worth it. I emerged at the top of a drift, and on the far side the sky was dominated by thick, fluffy white clouds, each billowing from a single source. The sector’s largest sky diamond, set into the largest blade in any myth or legend I’d ever happened across.

  The legendary Blade of Virkonna towered thousands of kilometers over us, up into the sky. The storm emanated from the gem in the hilt, but swirled up and away, which was why we had our relative peace here. I had no idea if it would last, but the interlude allowed me to see something critical.

  A village lay below us. In that village several bears prepared a feast. A bipedal form had been bound to a spit, and now roasted over a flame as the bears gathered around it. Behind them towered a pair of deep-blue sentinels, carved from the oldest of ice. They looked around with intelligent eyes, scanning ceaselessly.

  After a moment I realized the pair were guarding a sigil on the ground. A magic circle had been inscribed, and over it swirled a globe of primal water. The whole thing reeked of power, and I could feel it linked to some sort of greater whole. I couldn’t tell exactly what it did, but I could guess.

  “What do you think that thing is?” Rava asked, as if privy to my thoughts.

  “A transportation device.” I didn’t know for certain, but the links to distant objects bore out my theory. “I think they can use it to go to other places on Hotep’s body. Maybe even inside the body itself. We could save ourselves dozens of hours of walking.”

  “What if the bears detect us?” Rava shot back with a hiss.

  The others were joining us now, each slithering up through the snow to get a look at the distant village.

  “Do you have a better plan?” Miri whispered over the comm, adopting Rava’s low volume. “We could keep going through the storm, but this could get us where we need to go a lot more quickly. We shouldn’t pass it up because of a little risk.”

  “Um, Jerek? Could we maybe talk to them?” Briff asked. He’d come up last because he’d been helping Siwit through the snow. The necromancer’s skin had gone even more ashen, and I realized he’d probably been used to shipboard life. He wasn’t used to dwelling on a planet, or a planet-sized god with slightly higher gravity than I was used to.

  It must be murder on him, but he’d yet to complain. Thankfully Briff had picked up on the man’s distress, so I didn’t worry about it. I had a decision to make.

  “Talking to them is too big a risk. If they take issue with our presence, we’re starting a firefight we aren’t supplied for.” I shook my head, fairly confident in the decision. “Dig out shelters. We’re going to wait for dark, and then we’re going to sneak in. No casualties if we can avoid it. Non-lethal spells only. In a perfect world a few guards fall asleep, and we use that transport to go to the Catalyst.”

  It was going to be easy. I just knew it. Heh.

  Hotep’s frigid corpse slowly rotated, the shoulder twisting away from a bright orange star. Something like true night would fall soon enough, and in the meantime I needed all the sleep I could get. Not even the constant stream of melting water coming through my duct tape was going to keep me awake.

  Interlude VI

  Aran translocated directly inside the Earthmother’s Bulwark, to an area of the Great Ship he’d glimpsed in the flames. It was a simple cargo hold, full of rusted containers whose markings had long since faded. He’d chosen this area because it was unoccupied.

  He’d come a long way since the mindwipe two years ago, but being a god meant nothing. Sure he was immortal in the sense that he wouldn’t age, but a stronger opponent could kill him, and he had no idea who or what lived in this place. Meeting Necrotis one on one wasn’t something he’d want to chance, and who was to say there wasn’t something just as powerful in control of this ship?

  Nara had recommended he bring a full legion, and secure the ship immediately. Malila, had she known, would have advised a hundred legions. Instead Aran had come alone, save for the one companion he really trusted.

  I am no mere companion, Narlifex hissed in his mind, though the thought carried more amusement than heat. I am a part of you, void god. As Xal is my father, you are also my father. You were present at my birth, and have shaped me to be as you desire.

  That wasn’t quite true. Aran had never consciously shaped the blade, though he agreed it was both a part of him and family, in a way. They shared their thoughts with one another. They had no secrets, and never had.

  What do you seek here? Why come alone? To feast on the kills? To devour their magic and grow in strength?

  He enjoyed how uncomplicated Narlifex could be, though the casual savagery often had to be reigned in.

  “I’m hoping to meet the current owners.” Aran tightened his grip around the blade’s hilt, and glided through the cargo hold into the corridor. The ship’s walls were wider, and ceilings taller, than any humanoid needed. These had been built to accommodate full-sized Wyrms, and anything smaller.

  It meant that while the ship was utterly massive, it contained fewer chambers to search than some of the other Great Ships. This would only take a year, instead of ten.

  The corridors were well lit from magical fixtures in the ceiling, which meant that someone had recharged and maintained this place. His instincts were right. This ship might look derelict from the outside, but that was by design.

  Whose design though?

  Aran continued along the corridor, which curved along the outer edge of the hull. Periodically smaller corridors led inward, where the Outriders would be berthed, he imagined. The more he saw of the interior the more he began to understand dragonflight organization.

  Outriders were an afterthought, a support structure for Wyrms. The whole vessel was built like that, with little mouse warrens for the lesser races, while the Wyrms had free run of the divine ship.

  As Aran understood it, the Earthmother had been the eldest of the Wyrmmother’s children, and the most duty and tradition bound. She’d given birth to the hatchlings that had become the Krox, the enemy that Aran had once so feared and hated.

  How ironic that he’d become a demon, possibly one of the few creatures more reviled than the Krox in this sector.

  Aran slowed, and gathered the shadows around him as he heard low guttural voices in the distance. They spoke in ancient draconic, and their words carried
enough for him to easily make them out. “—Do not know what he will do. We are not warriors or decision makers. We do not initiate combat.”

  “And if we are not more than our creator’s imprint,” a second, more feminine voice argued, “then why make effort for anything? We cannot be servants if there is no one to serve. We must evolve beyond her original intent.”

  Aran crept around the corner, and noted that the speakers stood in the wide corridor intended for Wyrms, at least partially because they were larger than humans. Each topped three meters, and was comprised of a dense silvery metal. The edges were jagged and rough, like ore still locked in the ground.

  “Good morning.” Aran stepped from the shadows perhaps twenty meters from them, and made no threatening moves. Being smaller might make him less intimidating, but his purple skin and budding horns would identify his true nature. “My name is Xal’Aran. Apologies for entering your ship without permission.” He delivered a tight dragonflight-era salute, the kind still used on Virkon.

  They responded instantly, apparently without thought, and both returned the salute. Then they merely stared at him, both with bemused expressions. The female speaker stepped forward, and fixed him with acid eyes. “You are a demon. You are not allowed within this vessel, child of Xal. We will need to remove you, through force if you will not leave of your own accord.”

  Aran nodded patiently, and made no move to approach. “I understand your reluctance. Please, let me state my business, and then if you have a leader perhaps you’d be willing to escort me to them? I’d rather not resort to violence. None of us will enjoy that.”

  The demeanor of both metal creatures darkened and they advanced menacingly. It was the man who spoke this time. “You threaten violence on our vessel? And you demand we take you to our leader so that you may attack him? We gave you a chance. Now you will pay the price for your—”

  Aran realized he wasn’t going to win this through negotiation, but he also didn’t want to hurt them as that would doom any potential negotiation.