by Ben Wise
“Why should I believe you?” I ask.
“What choice do you have?” he replies.
“Why show me this?”
“Hmmm, you might say that I enjoy screwing with Levia more than anything else. She shouldn’t be the one having all the fun.”
And what might the price be, I wonder?
“Price, oh yes, it comes at a price,” he says, wickedly. He flickers out of sight. When he reappears he’s holding one of the copper cages. A twist and it’s open. He pulls out Nem, her crow form twitching in his grip.
“You have a choice,” he says, squeezing Nem’s body sadistically. “Little Nem here is your gateway to the other side; your link through the veil. A tiny and insignificant gateway. In this world, in this form, she’s holding back that power from you. Destroy her. Tear the veil open upon her and it will all flow freely to you, everything she has been holding back from you. Turn on your true potential. All that you’ve been looking for. Then and only then will you truly be Death as she has claimed you to be. Then and only then will you have the power you seek over it.”
“It’s your choice. Sacrifice Death herself for the death of your friend. One death for another. Make it quick.”
It’s an easy choice to make.
“Good.” He seems happy with my choice.
The shadows lift. Nem’s life lies still in my hands while Cara’s life drips from my fingertips. The wall shatters inside my mind. Time finds itself again. Hundreds of black tendrils surround me, all coiling through Nem and seeking the void beyond her. I focus entirely on tearing Nem apart. As twisted it seems, I can see the truth in Lucian’s words, the steps to Cara’s salvation. The veil shows me the layers of time that wrap around her.
Levia stands over me and Cara. Move. My mind registers the command; a thick tendril of power pushes Levia into the nearest wall. I kneel down to Cara. Hold her. See time wrapped around her. Watch the layers of her timeline peel away from her. Each layer takes a little more effort, a little more power. Each layer pushes my mind further into the veil, tearing at the gateway to that torrent of power, further and further. Claire is screaming at me. It doesn’t register; at least at first. I need to focus.
“No sister, no.” Her screams fall off to nothing.
But I’ve already reached the point in Cara’s timeline I’m looking for. It comes so quickly, so easily in the end. The point in Cara’s timeline I needed to reach. Too easily. A shared breath. Her eyes open. Her recognition. My elation.
It worked; the other side is totally open to me and all its potential is clear. Levia’s broken body starts laughing, sinister, and pure evil. Behind me, Lucian takes up the laugher. The room watches intently, everyone frozen.
Where Nem once was, my hands disappear into a large void that envelopes the podium before me. I find myself on my knees staring into a black abyss. And in that moment I see the true price I’ve paid. The veil and its full potential stands open to me in this world, but now this world is open to the veil. I see hundreds of histories and possibilities laid out in planes before me, stretching to infinity. Beyond my comprehension. And there, stalking energy planes which show neither history nor future are creatures that have no place in this world. Dark and sinister entities. So many… hundreds upon hundreds of them, all waiting, eternally patient, waiting for the wall between our worlds to crumble so they might pour forth into this world, beings possessing intelligence far beyond any human understanding. I see the true nature of Levia and Lucian, and, with horror, the beings that pull the strings of their puppet bodies in this world. And I see, standing with them, others their equal. In that moment, everything I had ever been scared of becomes, by comparison, inconsequential.
Cara and I scramble back as a massive black clawed hand grabs the void’s black edges and starts tearing it further open.
“Oh sister, what have you done?” Claire gasps.
A dark shape, eyes burning red, crawls through the tear between our worlds, small and crablike with four legs, each ending in a single sharp claw. It leaps to a chandelier and then onto the face of a soldier in the front row. The creature dissolves into the soldier’s head. The soldier’s expression shifts dramatically, through fear to pain and finally to a blank stare. He calmly slides his langseax out of its sheath and buries it into the forehead of the soldier beside him.
“Time to leave,” Allison says rather urgently as she pulls on my arm.
Another dark shape, the entity that had been tearing open the veil, steps through the tear between our worlds. Its distorted humanoid shape, with perversely-shaped limbs that bend inhumanly at the knees and oversized arms, stalks towards the nearest person, the Marshal. The entity gives him no chance. It swings its massive arms, claws connecting with the Marshal’s head. With an audible snap, his neck bends at an impossible angle. The creature tears the Marshal’s head off and throws the body, twisted and broken, in front of the podium. The room explodes into chaos.
“This way!” Erik yells at us. “There’s got to be another door at the back.”
Claire scrambles to grab the cage containing Macha. With her and Cara beside me, and with Caitlin already following Allison, we all run toward Erik. The soldiers are so focused on the entities stepping through the veil that none of them pay any attention to us as we scramble to find an exit.
The first door we come across, an old wooden door, is locked. Erik holds his hand toward it, palm forward, expecting to be able to break it down telekinetically, forgetting the bracelets we all wear. When that doesn’t work, Allison shoulders the door, trying to bust through it. Still the solid door doesn’t budge. And we’re starting to get noticed.
I gently hold Allison back with one hand while reaching over her shoulder with the other. In my mind I picture the door blowing outward. The process seems simple now. The force travels down my arm and out my hand, a black tendril spiralling towards the door. It cracks into a dozen pieces, each traveling their own paths for metres down the hallway on the other side.
“What about the others?” Claire asks.
Erik shakes his head. “There’s no going back for them.”
As we run down a hall way, the screams quiet down, replaced with the sickening sounds of flesh and bones being torn apart.
“Where the hell are we?” Caitlin says.
“I don’t care, just try to find a way out,” Erik replies.
We end up in a small room. Judging by the uniforms draped over a desk in the centre, it must have belonged to the Marshal. The wall to the left of the door we came in is dedicated to an elaborate bookcase filled floor to ceiling with ancient books. The massive wooden desk in the centre is ancient; a well-used wooden armchair sits behind it. The wall behind those, to our right is filled from one side to the other with ancient wooden drawers, with more Templar banners hanging from the ceiling above them.
“It’s beautiful,” Cara says, running her fingertips over the desk.
“Grab anything useful you see. Try to find something that will get these bracelets off,” Erik suggests.
Allison climbs onto the armchair and looks at a glass display cabinet that’s attached to the wall above the drawers. Failing to find a way to open it, she smashes the glass with her elbow and pulls out two long swords, held in plain leather scabbards wrapped with material of white and red.
She jumps down off the chair and carefully draws one of the swords; its dark-steel blade a metre long from point to cruciform hilt.
“Do you trust me?” Allison says with a grin, pointing the sword at Erik’s bracelet.
Erik just raises an eyebrow at her. Allison shrugs, slides the sword back in its scabbard and slips it across her back.
“I could try cutting them off with telekinesis,” I offer.
Erik gestures down the hallway we just came through, littered with the shattered pieces of door. “Not a fucking chance.”
Noises echo from the hall.
“Nevermind!” Erik says.
Allison throws him the other sword. The doo
r out of this room is unlocked, thankfully. We burst out of the room, into the pouring rain but still within the massive concrete walls of the fortress. Erik motions to us to be silent, and points off into the distance, at a large passageway set into the castle wall. The main thoroughfare into the keep. A patrol of soldiers mill around nearby, unloading a small convoy of military trucks waiting just inside the passageway.
Then the main doors of the temple burst open. Cara flinches, swearing to herself. Soldiers come stumbling out, some screaming and yelling, others… quieter. One soldier trips, falling backwards. The black creatures are quickly upon him, one latching onto his head. He twitches once and then lies still. An enormous black humanoid, a giant by human standards with massive black tendrils held up from his back like wings, walks over to the soldier’s body and picks it off the ground. The entity shakes the lifeless body and then places it back in its feet. The soldier opens his eyes, deep red burning brightly. Then, with weapon raised, he charges off towards the trucks at the main gate. The possessed pounces on the first soldier he comes upon, stabbing him through the chest with his langseax. The retaliation from the other soldiers at the main gate is swift. They cut the possessed soldier to pieces. As each blow from their knives connect, wisps of black tendrils flare out from the soldier before they fade away. For a brief moment the massive entity looks in our direction, then turns away, letting out a wicked laugh.
Alarms ring out along the ramparts. Activity explodes around the fortress. Across the courtyard, other soldiers pour from of a long building while the soldiers near the main gate slowly edge their way towards them.
More red-eyed soldiers pour from the temple, most of whom, judging by their wounds, shouldn’t be alive. None appear to be truly living. The two groups stand across the courtyard from each other, the living versus the possessed, with us hiding in shadows but very much in the middle of it all. I’m not sure what the soldiers at the gate believe they can do against the gathering possessed.
“How are we going to get past all this?” I whisper.
An order is shouted out from the living side, audible over the howling of the possessed, as soldiers form battle lines next to their barracks and cut off the main gate. Neither group moves. Dark entities stalk outside the temple, taunting and howling at the soldiers at the main gate. The entities appear to be toying with the living. I watch as three dog like entities, as large as wolves, stalk unnoticed around the side of the courtyard and wait in the shadows, only their glowing red eyes giving away their presence. Not all the entities leaving the temple join the growing entity army. Some crawl up the walls of the fortress and disappear over the edge. Out into the night.
“I have an idea,” Claire whispers before hesitating. I follow her gaze. A small group of men, including the guard who brought me food, march rapidly towards the living army, their path leading them near the hidden wolf entities. As their path crosses directly in front of the wolf creatures, the group of soldiers hesitate for a moment. They all stop and shake their heads, looking around as if confused. Then, recovering quickly, they continue safely passed the hidden wolf entities, towards the rest of the living. Claire lets out her breath. I breathe my own sigh of relief.
“If we move slowly, I can cloak our presence from the minds of the soldiers,” Claire whispers. “Though I’m not sure about those creatures.”
“How are you able to do that wearing…” my sentence trails off when I realise she isn’t wearing bracelets. “How come you’re not wearing any of these?”
“Long story short, they only a have a few. With all you here, there wasn’t enough, so they took some off us. Sometimes, the threat of having a bullet placed into your brain is often the best deterrent. Now’s not the time to explain. You all need to stay close to me. And this is only going to work for a short distance. So once we’re past the trucks, get ready to run.”
It’s a tense walk as move in plain sight towards the living soldiers. There are moments, when I’m certain the soldiers are looking me directly in the eyes. Yet none of them raise any alert. Perhaps they’re too focused on the dark creatures and possessed soldiers across the courtyard. We slowly weave through the trucks, trying to avoid any sudden moment. I can’t believe we’ve made it this far with none of them noticing. Claire stops us just outside the castle. We huddled close.
“This is as far as I can get us, with this rain as it is,” she whispers. “They’ll start to be able to see us the further away we move.”
“Where are we going from here?” Caitlin asks.
“Head to the trees,” Allison whispers, pointing towards a line of pines about a hundred metres in the distance. “Get ready…”
Then all hell breaks loose behind us.
“Run for it,” Erik says, dropping any pretence of stealth.
Our presence is quickly noticed.
“Stop them!” Soldiers shout in alarm on the ramparts above us.
“This way!” Erik yells.
The first gunshots ring out as we’re halfway across the field to the trees. Close. Really close.
“Erik, Duck!” Cara yells.
Another volley. Erik flinches as a bullet whizzes past his head. Cara cries out as a bullet wings her, red slicing across her right arm. I stop to help her.
“Don’t stop, keep going!” Erik yells back at us.
I grab Cara’s hand as we run. We’re at the tree-line before I realise the shooting had stopped well before we made it. Hiding ourselves behind the tree line, we take a moment to recover and look back at the castle. And watch in horror as veil creatures appear on the walls and overwhelm the guards on the ramparts. Allison grabs Erik’s shoulder and points towards the gateway.
“What the hell is happening?” Allison asks.
A hellish scream carries over the field. An army of Templars, their aberrant red eyes cutting through the misty rain, swarm out of the entrance and start running at an unnatural speed towards us. Dark entities surround them as the army charges across the field; proverbial hellhounds of different shapes bound on either side while giant humanoid entities take up the rear and winged creatures of many shapes fly overhead. The first supernatural howls flood over the fields.
“Run!” Erik yells as we take off through the trees. “Stay together!”
We turn and bolt, aiming blindly through the trees. Branches cut painfully. The further in we run, the more we struggle to stay together in the thickening wood. I slip and stumble, losing one of these terrible shoes. Cara is there to lift me back up. With no time to find the lost shoe, I throw the other away. My feet quickly go numb from the pain of running barefoot through the rough undergrowth. Still we run. Glowing eyes materialise in the darkness, close behind us. Howls pierce the air. Close.
“Keep going!” Erik yells from somewhere up ahead.
I can see the first entities close behind us now. Too close. Then the first of the soldiers, they’re catching up. The hellhounds race up until they’re flanking us, perhaps 20 metres on both sides, and start closing in.
There! A break in the trees.
It Wasn’t Supposed To End like This
The Viridis River flowing in front of me kills any further hope of escape. While the river appears shallow enough to cross, the water is waist high and there’s no clear path across. Thousands of floating pine needles fill the flowing river, washed there by the freezing rain that soaks through me. We huddle together, shivering, on the bank of the river, waiting for our pursuers to appear.
Slowly, the first Templar stalks out of the trees, his glowing red eyes and shadowy haze showing that he’s no longer entirely human. Dark shapes, hell-hounds and other sinister entities slink out of the woods. They pace along the shore, watching us, waiting. Behind me, Erik and Allison draw their swords and stand ready. Another Templar arrives, then another. Soon there is a flood of them, all holding their wicked knives out at the ready. They slowly edge forward. There’s no urgency in their movement; the hunt is over.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this
. To get so far, to find my sister, to do the impossible and get her out of there, only to end up in this dead-end situation. Together, we edge backwards, into the freezing river, hopelessly putting off the inevitable.
Enough of this! Fury builds within me, at myself, for causing this. Haven’t I caused enough pain to everyone already? Why the fuck should these people suffer because of who I am? Why did Aine have to die because of who I am? I promised Claire that today would be ok. Nothing is going to cause any more pain to these people. Not today. I have no idea what I’m going to do. But what does it matter? In this moment I’m willing to give everything just to save the people behind me.
I scream; raw unbridled fury, “If you want me, come and take me!”
I start wading back to river bank. Towards the swarm. There is a purity to my fury; this newfound hyperawareness of my potential with any pretence of hesitation gone. Time slows for me, each movement, each breath of all the frenzied soldiers played out in slow motion before me. I lash out with all the force I can generate at the Templar nearest me. Black splits the air between us. He falls forward, dead, but I’ve already moved on to the next. Again and again I lash out. It becomes so automatic I take the time to reach down and collect a fallen langseax; total emotional detachment. Lightning flashes. Around me, I see their every moment before they make it. Many futures layered across the world around me. Still they swarm in. I bury the knife deep one soldier’s head while more black tendrils pierce the bodies around me. I swing the knife freely, hacking away. It’s a poor tool for the job, but at least it bites again and again. It hardly matters as long as crimson flows. I swing again and again and again. Crimson waves lap against the shore.
Something grabs me by the shoulder. I swing the knife, ready to fight back. Allison grabs my wrist moments before I embed it in her head.
“Stop! They’re all dead. Look, they others, aren’t coming closer. Come on, we need to get across this river before they change their minds.”
