The Watcher of Dead Time

by Edward Cox

  ‘That those golems aren’t running out of bullets any time soon.’ Samuel slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle, watching the infected surrounding them. ‘How did we walk into this?’ he muttered angrily. ‘Stupid!’

  ‘Marney,’ Gideon grunted.

  The Resident had been hit by three bullets: one in the stomach, two in the chest. His eyes lacked focus, lids fluttering. Rainwater flushed blood from his dark green shirt.

  ‘Done for …’ Gideon spoke through gritted, bloodstained teeth, struggling for breath.

  ‘Heal yourself,’ Marney snapped. ‘We need you.’

  ‘Too late. Bastard bit me.’ And the empath noticed the bite wound on the Resident’s neck, red and ugly.

  No cure for the Genii’s virus, not even for a blood-magicker. Marney felt the terminal nature of Gideon’s wounds, infection already tainting his emotions, the life slipping from him.

  ‘Give me … your hand,’ Gideon said.

  A snap filled the air. Bullets assaulted the barrier. The virus victims continued to pound the magic, frenzied, relentless, hateful, shrieking all the while. The cracks grew and grew.

  Samuel aimed his rifle, waiting for the moment the barrier collapsed.

  ‘Marney!’ Gideon coughed blood. ‘Quickly,’ he urged.

  She gave him her hand. The fire of blood-magic had died from the symbols on his skin except for a single flame, barely an ember on the tip of one finger. Holding Marney’s hand palm up, Gideon began to inscribe a glyph, searing it into her skin. She winced at its sting.

  ‘Will show … last … destination … of carriage.’ Blood flowed from Gideon’s mouth and down the side of his face. Black veins snaked from the bite wound. He fought for breath. ‘Will … take you … to Moor.’

  Marney yelped as he finished searing the glyph onto her palm and she felt a build-up of emotions in Gideon, as though he was gathering all the hate and madness that he had carried with him for his entire life.

  Marney backed away.

  With a cry of pain and rage, Gideon barked words of dark magic, blood spraying from his mouth. Red droplets burst into flame in the air as Gideon took control of Van Bam’s spell. The green energy of the barrier hardened. It rose, the dome becoming a sphere, scooping up Marney, Samuel and Van Bam and lifting them into the air.

  Gideon remained lying on the floor. ‘Get the bastard!’ he roared and hurled his magic and his agents down the street before the infected pounced on him, eager for a taste of his flesh.

  The brief jaunt was dizzying. The green sphere arced and spun through the air, shattering like glass as it landed not far from the entrance to the checkpoint, sending the three magickers sprawling across the rain-drenched cobbles. Marney was the first to her feet, looking back to where they had started.

  Golems continued to fire down from the houses onto Gideon, riddling him and the infected with bullet after bullet. And then, just as Van Bam grabbed Marney’s arm, trying to pull her to the checkpoint, Gideon’s blood-magic exploded.

  The Resident’s body erupted with wave after wave of violet fire that engulfed his enemies. Marney shielded her eyes. The magical fire kept on coming, blistering paintwork on the houses, setting fire to wooden doors as it spewed down the street towards the group. To Marney, its colour and pattern looked as beautiful as it was terrible.

  She stood transfixed until Samuel grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and shoved her through the opening into the checkpoint. Van Bam was close behind them. They pressed their backs to the wall an instant before Gideon’s fire reached the courtyard. It raged through the entrance like a great belch from a furnace before receding; before dying.

  Smoke filled the air, along with the crackle of burning buildings.

  Samuel stared up into the rain and Marney felt his despair.

  Gideon had joined Denton, Gene, Angel, Macy and Bryant in death, and the Relic Guild had just lost its most powerful magicker.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Van Bam asked Marney.

  She nodded, feeling nothing.

  Samuel drew Hamir’s double-barrelled pistol and gave Marney a meaningful look. ‘We’re not stopping now.’

  Marney walked towards the stone archway of a deactivated portal standing in the courtyard. Before it, a slim pedestal rose from the ground, topped by a stone box filled to the brim with a clear, gelatinous substance. Marney looked at her hand.

  They glyph Gideon had seared onto her palm was formed from red welts, depicting surprisingly detailed swirls within a square. Marney laid the glyph upon the pedestal’s box.

  She clenched her teeth against the pain as the gelatinous substance glowed and sucked the symbol from her skin, leaving no trace of it ever having been there.

  The portal activated, its surface churning dark as night within the archway. A grey, smooth disc appeared on the cobbles between the pedestal and the portal: a shadow carriage.

  ‘Well, then,’ Samuel growled. He thumbed the pistol’s power stone. It whined and glowed with red light. ‘Like the man said, let’s get the bastard.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Life Among the Dead

  So this was the Retrospective.

  Predictably, the portal closed and vanished after it had delivered the group to a huge subterranean passage, a cave tunnel through red rock that stretched into the gloom beyond the glow of the Toymaker’s thaumaturgic light. The air was surprisingly cool, though it carried a vague bitter aftertaste, and the only sound was a gentle wind moaning through the passage from somewhere unseen.

  Samuel’s magic didn’t stir. The cave tunnel disappeared into darkness ahead of and behind the group, and there was nothing in the illuminated vicinity that might have served as a magical prison incarcerating nearly a thousand Nephilim. Thankfully, there were no signs of demons, either; no poison and fire, no chaos of dead time waiting to crush and corrupt the Relic Guild. That might have been due to the effects of Gulduur Bellow’s protective spells but Samuel suspected otherwise. This place felt very different from what the Retrospective was supposed to be. Perhaps the Orphan was right; perhaps this was somewhere hidden from Spiral’s corrosive influence.

  The small demonic child was still perched on Bellow’s shoulder, scowling, obviously fearful of the calm.

  Glogelder grumbled something about missing his spell sphere launcher while checking for the umpteenth time that his pistol was loaded and its power stone charged. ‘Anyone like a wager?’ he added with forced bravado. ‘What odds do you think we’d get?’

  ‘On what?’ Marney asked.

  Glogelder grinned. ‘Winning, of course.’

  Samuel knew that they all understood there were no more secrets, no more games to play. Success or failure, Amilee had said. Either way, the end was coming. And clearly they had not arrived in as precise a location as they would have liked.

  Clara had changed into the wolf. With the Toymaker close to her, loyal and silent, she stood beside Gulduur Bellow: the new Resident eager to lead the way. For all the wolf’s size and power, her head only reached to the Nephilim’s waist and next to him she looked no bigger than a pet dog.

  Bellow listened to the Orphan’s clicks and hisses. It jumped down from the Nephilim’s shoulder and stalked to the edge of the Toymaker’s light, evidently trying to communicate something. Marney moved up alongside Bellow to decipher what.

  Samuel checked his ice-rifle, his magic sensing no immediate danger. He looked from the pistol that Glogelder held to those in each of Hillem’s hands, and finally to Namji’s crossbow loaded with bolts of vacuum magic.

  ‘You know,’ Samuel said, ‘bullets and lower magic can’t kill wild demons. Not really.’

  A frozen moment followed during which Glogelder’s face fell. ‘You’re bloody joking.’

  ‘I wish I were.’

  ‘And you couldn’t have told us this earlier?’

  S
amuel shrugged. ‘If they come for you, just … shoot and run before they come for you again.’

  ‘Not very comforting,’ said Hillem.

  Hamir cleared his throat. ‘If Amilee is right – and let us hope that she is – Spiral will be unaware of our actions. At least for a time.’ Hamir studied the subterranean environment with an unimpressed expression. ‘And he does not know that one Nephilim escaped him. Gulduur’s blood-magic will open his herd’s prison, and will also be very effective against any wild demons we happen upon.’

  ‘Any what if they come en masse?’ Namji said. ‘The demons of the Retrospective are innumerable, or so everyone keeps telling me. Can one Nephilim stand against them all?’

  A slight smile curved one corner of Hamir’s mouth. ‘Stealth and haste are undoubtedly our best weapons here. Before Spiral claims the First and Greatest Spell, of course.’

  ‘Then we’d best get a move on,’ said Glogelder. He looked into the cave tunnel’s darkness in both directions, adding, ‘If we can figure out which way to go.’

  Samuel approached Clara, Marney and Bellow. ‘Do we have a direction yet?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Marney. At the edge of the light, the Orphan continued to speak with eerie clicks and hisses. ‘We’re definitely in the place that the wild demons fear, but – if I’m reading this right – the Nephilim’s prison is further in.’ She pointed into the gloom beyond the demon. ‘That way.’

  The Orphan’s voice became agitated, angry.

  ‘It’s too scared to take us any closer.’ Marney gave Samuel a sour look. ‘And it says it’ll kill us all if we don’t release it from its bonds.’

  Clara growled at the Orphan but Bellow gave a throaty chuckle.

  ‘Oh no, my fierce little friend,’ the giant told the demon. ‘You’re with us until the end. Now, lead the way.’

  As the Orphan bared its glass-like teeth at Bellow, Marney said, ‘Looks like we’ve got a bit of a hike.’

  ‘And it would be a shame if anyone got lost along the way,’ Bellow added. ‘Don’t you agree, Progenitor?’

  Hamir winced, pressing a hand to the area on his stomach where Bellow had painted his protective spell. With a look of shock, he walked forward as though his legs were compelled into action by something other than his own volition, until he was alongside the Nephilim.

  Hamir pressed a hand to his stomach again, glaring up at Bellow. ‘Did … did you add binding magic to your spells?’

  ‘Only for you,’ Bellow replied. ‘There’s no one else here I don’t trust.’

  ‘What did you expect me to do?’ Hamir was appalled, his indignation evident. ‘Run away?’

  Samuel almost felt sorry for the necromancer as he noted the stony looks aimed at him by his colleagues – looks which indicated unanimous distrust. Certainly no one questioned Bellow’s actions.

  ‘You and I are already bound together, Progenitor,’ said the giant. He gestured towards the Orphan. ‘And what’s good enough for one monster …’

  Glogelder stepped forward. ‘So he has to do everything you say?’

  The big Aelf was clearly pleased when Hamir raised an eyebrow and rather sourly said, ‘Indeed.’

  Samuel looked into Clara’s yellow eyes. The wolf bobbed her head at him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ the old bounty hunter said.

  With a hiss for the group and misery on its childlike face, the Orphan set off through the cave, clearly much against its will.

  The way was uneven, the ground pitted with craters and strewn with boulders of varying sizes. The walls were cracked and jagged, and pointed formations hung from the high ceiling like stalactites of red rock. Or teeth. Hamir walked beside Bellow, but he appeared to be moving of his own volition. The Toymaker remained close to Clara. The rest brought up the rear as they made their way through a haze of deep gloom.

  ‘We could do with more light,’ Hillem said nervously.

  ‘I might have something,’ Namji replied. But before she could reach into the cloth satchel hanging from her shoulder, Clara made a low growl at the Toymaker.

  Understanding its charge’s command, the Toymaker broke apart, dissolving from the head down into a hundred scuttling automatons which spread out around the group, the tips of their tails glowing with the violet light of their thaumaturgic stings. The shadows were lifted considerably, though the extra light revealed nothing other than more red rock and the gloom ahead.

  The Orphan made a series of impatient clicks and beckoned them onwards.

  Samuel’s magic detected no danger but he was suspicious nonetheless. He was in the heart of the Retrospective, the most savage and unforgiving House ever created. He should at least be experiencing a bad feeling in his gut, warning him that he was walking a dangerous path, but his prescient awareness remained inert. He wondered if his magic would count for much in the end, anyway; for whatever reason, Samuel’s prescient awareness would not react to the Genii.

  ‘You know what I’m going to do when this over?’ Glogelder said, his thick voice echoing.

  ‘Get drunk, by any chance?’ Hillem replied.

  ‘Like I’ve never been before.’

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ Marney said.

  ‘The more the merrier,’ Glogelder announced. ‘I’ll even buy the first round.’

  ‘That’ll be a first,’ Namji teased.

  The jibe induced a few chuckles, all forced and unnatural. The sound of the almost desperate banter, searching for a way to laugh in the face of fear, grated on Samuel’s nerves. He focused on the small demon leading them ever deeper into the darkness ahead.

  They reached a narrow point in the cave where boulders and sharp protrusions from the walls hindered the way forward, and they had to pick their way through carefully. The cave widened again to reveal a fork, and the Orphan headed down the left path.

  It wasn’t long before the darkness beyond the Toymaker’s light became suffused with an amber glow. The colour was similar to that of a low-burning fire, but the light was still, not flickering. Whatever its source, it spooked the Orphan and the demon hid behind Bellow’s legs. The giant picked it up and sat it on his shoulder again.

  The wolf looked at Samuel.

  ‘I’m not detecting anything,’ he told her.

  ‘I am,’ Marney said.

  ‘So am I,’ Bellow added, and he set off towards it.

  A chittering accompanied the light, and soon the group stood before a great, glowing column. It stretched from floor to ceiling, thicker than any tree in any forest that Samuel had ever seen. The column was formed from a glassy substance, not quite transparent, and the light came from within it: a constant syrupy illumination like sunlight shining through sap. And scurrying all over the column’s surface were insects, mites, hundreds of them, similar in size to the Toymaker’s component parts, their bodies glowing with the same amber light.

  ‘What an extraordinary surprise,’ Bellow whispered, awed.

  Glogelder swore, aiming his pistol. ‘Are they demons?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Samuel said.

  The mites appeared to be secreting more of the glassy substance onto the column, making it thicker, perhaps helping it to sink further into the rock above and below. They were entirely focused on their work, and Samuel’s magic sensed nothing dangerous about them.

  ‘They’re not interested in us,’ he said. ‘Marney?’

  ‘There aren’t any emotions, as such,’ the empath replied. ‘They have a drone-like mentality. Maybe a hive mind.’

  ‘What about the column?’ Namji asked.

  ‘Now that definitely has something emotional about it.’ Marney rocked her head from side to side, searching for articulation. ‘It’s almost sentient, like it’s trying to be … to be—’

  ‘Alive,’ Hamir finished. He moved closer to the column and its scurrying mites. ‘Considering
everything we know about the Retrospective, this formation shouldn’t be here.’ He peered closer. ‘There are nutrients and minerals – this … this is life – natural life – evolving where dead time should prohibit such a thing.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Hillem asked.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Hamir admitted. Clara growled and he deciphered the wolf’s prompt. ‘But if I were to guess, I’d say that this life has been seeded by something.’

  ‘Spiral?’ said Marney.

  Hamir’s eyes moved to Bellow.

  ‘Doubtful.’ The giant’s gaze was steady. ‘But then again, you would know better than I how life might be bred from dead time, Progenitor.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Hamir replied coolly, ‘this formation is not what we’re here to find.’

  ‘I agree.’ Bellow was watching the Orphan on his shoulder, which was cowering from the column. ‘I suspect this is only a taste of what the wild demons fear in the Retrospective.’ His eyes narrowed, as though his thoughts were racing. ‘There must be more to find.’

  He brushed the Orphan from his shoulder and it scurried ahead, leading the way. The group followed, skirting the column and its mites, heading once again into the unknown darkness of the cave.

  Samuel felt an alien yet familiar itch inside his head right before Marney’s voice spoke in his mind.

  Samuel, I just sensed something from Gulduur. His emotions are hard to read – he covers them well – but … but I think he’s hiding something.

  I’m not detecting any danger, Samuel replied.

  No, it’s nothing like that. Marney’s pause was contemplative. It’s like he’s figured something out, had a revelation. Whatever that column is, it seems to have confirmed a suspicion and it’s filled him with … It’s hard to explain. Gulduur’s almost overwhelmed by a feeling of home.

  Home? thought Samuel. His home? The Sorrow of Future Reason?

  I don’t know. Marney’s voice became full of warning. But we need to tread carefully around him, Samuel. Whatever Gulduur’s on to, it’s blinded him to the importance of everyone else’s well-being – except Hamir’s.