by Tyler Vance
There was somebody in the room he’d landed in, a servant with wide, fearful eyes. The man opened his mouth to yell, so he leapt over and slammed the man in his stomach, knocking out a gasp of air. He hurriedly pushed the servant up against a wall, pressing the barrel of his pistol into the man’s throat to cut off any potential screams. A little bit rough for him, true, but he wasn't about to let this servant dude sound any alarms.
“Hands where I can see them, mate,” Sheikoh whispered sharply.
The terrified servant raised two, shaking palms.
“If you want to live, tell me where the Celestial is,” Sheikoh ordered sharply. “Now!”
Sheikoh saw that gleam in the man’s eyes. He knew he was about to get the truth. This guy was sure that the Celestial could handle him. Sheikoh took a step back and trained his pistol, letting the servant fall onto the floor gasping.
“Well?” Sheikoh prompted his icy eyes fixed on the man on the floor. He motioned with his ML5.
“Next floor up. Third door to the right. Just a warning though… whatever they promised to pay you… it wasn’t enough,” the man half sputtered.
Sheikoh looked at the man for a moment, contemplating taking the servant hostage or using him as a distraction, before remembering that Dream had told him to kill anyone he encountered. His face hardened.
The servant backed up against the wall, wearing an expression of terror. Sheikoh felt a squeeze in his chest. It didn’t matter. He pushed it aside and did what he had to. He spun, unleashing a devastating back kick in the man’s face.
His foot crunched against the dude’s nose, and a splash of blood trailed behind the man’s limp body. The servant sailed a few feet back bouncing onto the ground. A trail of blood from the dude’s shattered nose vaguely marked his aerial path. It pointed an accusing finger back at Sheikoh. He stood there for a motionless moment and considered the implications of what he’d just done. Then he walked up to the servant and put a hand on the man’s chest.
There was a heartbeat.
“You have an awesome constitution, mate,” Sheikoh giggled quietly.
He flipped his electroblade into his boot and stood back up.
It was a stupid defiance, but Sheikoh wasn’t caving to the Celestial’s orders. he’d been hired to kill one guy, not a house full of his cleaners. Dream wasn’t human. The Celestial were a completely different race of being, unbound by the morality that governed humanity. Sheikoh knew the second he wasn’t useful to Dream anymore, the man would toss him to the side without a second thought. Ghost as well. And Indigo. Sheikoh had seen their kind. And If this Sanatous was anything like Dream, a hostage would just add one more body to the count. He turned from the prostate servant and looked up the stairs.
‘This is it,’ he told himself. Sheikoh stepped into the winding staircase, climbing the stairs slowly and deliberately. Each of steps fell with distinct precision exactly where he meant it to fall. A leaden feeling weighed down his shallow breathing. Each step brought him closer to murder. Faced with the reality of what he was doing, Sheikoh suddenly felt dirty and subhuman. The air around him felt like icy mist.
Sheikoh stepped up into the pale hall that led to the Celestial’s room. Even if the servant hadn’t told him, he would have guessed that one of these rooms was Sanatous’s. In the absence of the usual paintings and marble statues decorating everywhere else, foreboding runes spider-webbed across cream walls.
He walked down the thickly carpeted hall, counting the doors on his right hand side. The burned-black runes, splayed under dead candles, seemed to flicker with menacing life. Every time he passed one, his mind rewrote it into a condemning stare. He flicked one of the wall-mounted candles off of its holder. It fell onto the white carpet noiselessly. Leaving it there, Sheikoh strode along the long hallway until at the Celestial’s room. It was cracked open. He peeked in.
The Celestial was facing away from him. His shoulders were bent over a desk that overflowed with books and papers. He was scribbling something, pausing every few moments to look over and read from a book with age-yellowed pages. He wore a red robe, edged and striped down the middle with white, then styled seemingly random black pattern spider-webbing artfully over his left side. He wore his silver hair was in dreadlocks flipped over to the left side.
Sheikoh’s body felt ice cold. His mind was racing and his hands were shaking. He’d never felt like this in his life. His shoulders started shivering. He suddenly didn’t know if he could go through with this. Nothing had ever prepared him to feel this coldness, this overwhelming darkness choking him. Nothing had foretold this shiver, caressing his heart with clammy, slimy, dead fingers. He’d killed Chain in cold blood. He’d killed people that he’d never even met.
What was so different now? But the question was pointless; Sheikoh already knew the answer. He knew exactly what was different this time.
And it was weighing on him.
Every time he’d ever killed, it’d been murdering someone who had been trying to kill him. That was the point. He’d had to kill them. Their deaths had been a necessity, and he was almost certainly saving others down the line.
This time however, there was some choice in the matter. Sheikoh shook his head, perversely trapped and conflicted. His shoulder bumped into the door. Its rusty hinges creaked open. He froze mid-breath.
The Celestial swung himself around, on his feet in an instant. Sanatous stood taunt and wary, like a cornered animal. His rolling chair glided over the floor, stopping at the wall. His expression went from fear to surprise, before finally settling a relieved smile.
The Celestial straightened up confidently and smoothed out his robe. Sheikoh’s enhanced eye could see tiny sweat stains where the Celestial’s hands had rubbed. Sheikoh straightened up, taking a deep breath.
“Do come in. What can I do for you?” Randel Sanatous greeted him in a voice slashed with threat.
The Celestial wore a cold smile and gestured around his room expansively. He pushed open the door and walked inside, forcing his body to adopt a cool, unconcerned rhythm. He looked around, gazing at anything other than the Celestial he meant to kill.
A bookcase stood up against the far wall. It stretched all the way to the ceiling and was packed with musty looking books. Beside it was the cluttered desk that Sanatous had been sitting at. On the right wall stood a curtained bed and a matching bedside table with a lamp, a clock and a pile of difficult-looking books. The furniture was wood rather than steel.
“Hey, Sanatous, right? Nice place you got here. Very… Celestial,” Sheikoh murmured, muffled by the Legacy bandana. “Mind if I take this off?”
He pulled the bandana off without waiting for an answer.
“Ah. So much better,” Sheikoh sighed, casting around for something to talk about. Besides why he was here.
The Celestial wasn’t taking that course though.
“So who sent you? The council? I doubt it; they know that sending a mere gangster against a Celestial would be a waste. The Centaurai, then? Has he decided that I know too much?” Sanatous asked Sheikoh, his eyes sparkling with relief. He flipped his silver-white dreadlocks out of his face with a cocky swish. “Or maybe… Camillio Tyche?”
“Some Celestial dude, greying brown ponytail, older fellow- Wait, I guess he’s younger than you. Sound anything like your Camillio Tyche?” Sheikoh asked the Celestial lightly.
“It does,” Sanatous face broke into a cruel smile.
“Then, that’s the one, mate,” Sheikoh murmured softly.
“Tyche stole a valuable item from me, and I intend on getting it back. You will have the honor of bearing my message,” Sanatous threatened, his tone dripping with arrogance.
“The honor is all yours, Magicman,” Sheikoh imitated mockingly.
Sanatous’s eyes flickered with yellow light. The Celestial began to speak in an echoing, double-voice that roared with elemental power. Sheikoh pulled out his pistol and rained red plasmafire on the chanting Celestial. Without a pause, Sanatous r
aised a hand. Sheikoh’s shots deflected against a yellow-tinted bubble. Shrieking red plasma left blackened craters in the walls and ceiling.
The next moment, Randel Sanatous stretched his other palm towards him and double-screamed the final words of his incantation. His dreadlocks blew backwards, perpendicular to the rush of power, as the space around his hands erupted with a twitching, snarling lightning. Two writhing bolts of power connected midair. Tendrils of excess static burned furrows into the floor.
Sanatous held the energy between his shaking palms for a tense moment, and then, hurling his whole body, he flung it at Sheikoh. Howling lighting raced towards him, zigzagging at the speed of death. Its golden light glared in his eyes. He stood there, staring at it. His body unconsciously tensed, and his nails dug into his palms.
The screaming blast passed right through Sheikoh. He let out a sigh of relief and watched, detached, as the chaotic bolt flickered right through his chest like a lightshow. Squealing, crackling crashes sounded over even the roar of lightning as the wall behind Sheikoh exploded outwards with a burst of burned rubble.
A piece of wood bounced off of his right shoulder. It probably didn’t even scratch the synthskin, but Sheikoh felt his chest close with dread. The amulet had a blind spot. He couldn’t give Sanatous any chances at taking advantage. Across from him, Sanatous’s face was arranged in bemusement, like he thought that he’d missed. The Celestial’s flaming, yellow eyes sparkled with confusion. Palms back out, Sanatous’s chilling double-voice screamed something that sounded like;
“Techria Ghoto!”
A barrage of streaming light passed straight through Sheikoh. He didn’t have much problem keeping his feet over the room’s sudden discourse of violent shaking. He aimed his ML5 and fired a few more rapid bursts at Sanatous. The Celestial held out a hand and the bursts of energy blew back, flicking off that yellow bubble.
Sheikoh noticed black markings dancing over the skin of the Celestial’s palm. His eyes narrowed. He knew that this was how Sanatous got around saying that bubble incantation aloud. He shoved his ML5 into his waistband; it didn’t look like the pistol was going to be of much use to him. Then he rushed Sanatous, pulling his electroblade out of his boot mid stride.
The room blurred into streaks of speed as he flung towards the confused face of the Celestial. There was a loud crash outside, but he ignored hit. His entire being was focused on Sanatous. At the last second, he leapt, flipping over the Celestial’s shield. He could taste the adrenaline on his tongue, like the burning of cold metal. His airborne revolution slowed to a crawl.
Sheikoh hung upside-down checking out burned-through entryway to Sanatous’s room. Three other sets of Celestial eyes glowed from the hallway; two different shades of green, poison and emerald, and a dangerous, fiery red. His body didn’t register even a trace of surprise as he took the newcomers in. The arc of his flip brought Sanatous back into view. The Celestial stared up at him, wearing an expression of frozen horror. Sheikoh tightened his grip on his electroblade and then plunged it downwards.
Time sped itself back up in a flurry of noise and motion. Sheikoh’s electroblade buried itself into the Celestial’s neck. Sanatous’s face was pale and contorted in shock. The Celestial gazed at the crest of his throat as though he hadn’t noticed the dagger sticking into the side of his throat. Sheikoh followed the Celestial’s gaze to the amulet. The one that Dream had given him. It spun one way and back the other under their eyes. Sheikoh stood over the kneeling Celestial for a long moment and watched it.
“Camillio… Tyche… gave the Transcendental Amulet… to you?” Sanatous coughed with shock. He turned to the outside Celestial; “Bring the roof-
They were his last words. Three screaming jets of burning light and fiery beams blasted the white-haired man, jerking him free of Sheikoh’s electroblade. Sanatous was tossed limply through a hole ripped in his wall, body scorched jet black. It receded into the night like a shooting star. Sheikoh started after the dead Celestial uncomprehendingly.
Why had the other Celestial had attacked Sanatous..? He was already dead..? Then the light switch clicked. It was obvious. They three other Celestial had been aiming at him. The amulet had sent their spells straight through him. Sanatous was just on the other side.
“Bring the roof down!” screamed a high double-voice of the red-eyed Celestial women.
The order echoed over the resounding murmur of ominous incantation. Sheikoh turned around in a blindingly fast movement. But it wasn’t fast enough. Eyes wide, he raced forward, streaking towards the three Celestial women. He leapt, but he was too late.
The spellwork that colored their hands was unleashed in a tumultuous instant. Multicolored energy swirled around the inside of Sanatous’s room, blasting against one another with discordant shrieks. The chaos quickly formed a hurricane of whirling destruction. Instead of rain and hail, rocks and rubble slammed around him.
Sheikoh dodged backwards, evading a massive hunk of masonry. He danced around splintered beams and jagged boards. Left and right through the endless obstacles, always making for the door. The ground bulged and shook, and the ceiling quaked above him. He wasn’t going to make it.
He was too slow.
The roof shook dangerously, roaring like a thunder clap. And then it happened. Exactly like Sheikoh had known it would, a second before it did. A sheet of broken house came down overhead, and he pushed his body into overdrive.
To the Celestial, it was like he disappeared.
Sheikoh streaked forward, dodging through the wall of debris. He bounded on a falling lamp. Then he twisted, ducking through the insurmountable field of rubble and brickwork bearing down on him. A giant piece of white masonry forced Sheikoh to flip and then he pushed off of the ground with a desperate robot arm and danced through the collapse. He was lightning’s child. The wind’s blood and heir.
He blurred through a tsunami of broken mansion. Stepped on a silversteel pillar. Bounded off of a desktop. Slid through a drawer’s hole. Lunged beneath a falling chandelier.
He was almost at the door. So close.
The final instant of the roof’s complete collapse seemed to go on without limit. Sheikoh dodged falling boards and boulders faster than blinking, faster than thought. But the last two feet were already impassible. They were a wall of broken house.
Sheikoh was trapped.
He hesitated for a microsecond, and a rock slammed into his shoulder. He was knocked into a half-stumble. Rubble pummeled his back and his head until he couldn’t see straight. There was no hope. But he wasn’t going to give up and wait for death. He was going to try the impossible.
For Dorothi.
His last thought. He liked it.
Bounding from airborne wooden pillar to the cracked chest of a statue, Sheikoh covered his face and eyes with his forearms and launched at the door. He was mercilessly pounded with a barrage of falling items. But somehow, he kept moving forward through them. Somehow, bricks shattered against his body and the wind’s scream was more deafening than even the avalanche’s insurmountable roar.
Somehow, Sheikoh made it.
Riding a rippling shockwave of dust, he splintered through what was left of Sanatous’s door. His battered body blasted towards a green-eyed Celestial. Sheikoh compressed his velocity into a fist and swung for all he was worth.
His right hand blew a hole straight through her body, splashing the wall behind her crimson. Her expression was arranged in mild surprise as her eyes slowly flickered out. His right hand trapped, Sheikoh flicked out his ML5 and snapped two quick plasma bursts.
Another Celestial went down, a hole burned between her eyes. The third deflected Sheikoh’s plasma bolt with a crimson barrier, like Sanatous had, sending it straight back at him. Sheikoh threw himself to the floor, pulling the dead Celestial down with him. His arm, the right one, shivered inside the dead Celestial’s body, vibrating in backlash of his massive overdrive.
He looked up at the last Celestial, the one with red eyes. She wa
s backing away lowering the hand she’d raised to created that red barrier than blocked his shots. Sheikoh caught a glimpse of the archaic, black rune that was tattooed onto her palm. If he had to guess, it looked like Celestial could skip an incantation with a blood rune. He filed the information away just in case he ever met another. He had to survive this one first.
Sheikoh’s overdrive was taking its toll. His limbs shook dangerously beneath him, he could feel them vibrate his bones. His right arm was still trapped inside of the dead Celestial’s body, and he was stuck on the ground until he managed to get it out. He laid on the ground, trying to tug his heavy, uncooperating arm out of the dead women.
Backing away, the red-eyed Celestial blasted jets of light at Sheikoh. They shot right through him and burned black marks into the cream-colored carpet. One red jet went right through his cheek. Light sparked against one of the dark, spidery runes on the wall. There was a glittering explosion, and the light streaked back. It left a smoldering black crater in the ceiling.
Sheikoh finally ripped his overdriven arm out of the first Celestial. Warm blood poured onto the carpet, staining it with a growing circle of red. The synthskin around his arm was tattered and gaping with holes, shaking in ominous warning. Spindly, insectoid limb, surrounded with the wormy muscle showed through. Sheikoh forced his vibrating body to stand, letting the dead Celestial’s ruined body splash into a puddle of her own blood. He barely noticed. His attention was focused on his gruesome, right arm.
The last Celestial ran to the body of the other Celestial, one of the dead ones. The one that Sheikoh had shot. She ripped a jeweled dagger out of the dead woman’s belt; magic wasn’t any use against someone wearing the Transcendent Amulet. She pointed its shaking tip at Sheikoh and began to advance.
