Arcana Universalis: Danse Macabre

by Chris J. Randolph

  Arcana Universalis:

  Danse Macabre

  by Chris J. Randolph

  Book II:

  First Fragment

  From somewhere beyond the languid dark came a voice. In tone both low and strong, in words ancient and alien, it sang a song of remembrance that echoed out and through the boundless black.

  That song wandered for just a moment, aimless and needy as a lost child, then its will became as steel and it plunged into the abyss. It flashed through the emptiness like a spear, dug deep into spectral flesh, then drew back just as supple and strong as braided cable. It pulled and dragged its sleeping prey up toward the surface. Toward light. Toward being.

  Caleb’s eyes flared open and with a convulsive gasp, he was awake.

  A bright light hung above him coloured faintly blue-green. It flickered, and with its pulsing came a strobe of memories more vibrant, electric, and immediate than reality. He saw chaotic splashes of red, yellow, blue; the living sword with a single unblinking eye; heard the rasp of words in an alien tongue; felt the orgiastic agony of a jagged blade cleaving flesh and bone.

  “Yes,” the low voice said. “Awaken, child. Steady now… the visions will pass. Just let them go. Allow them to seep away like so much poison, leaving you purified and new.”

  More memories flashed before him—the empty sky taunting him while he lay pinned to the ground, the figure of Bibbs silhouetted in the light of his own blazing arm—and Caleb’s whole body spasmed in response. Muscles seized and his stomach tied itself in knots, struggling to eject its contents, but there was nothing at all inside.

  The memories continued to flash by, but he concentrated against their current and forced himself to stillness. Breathe, he commanded himself. Just breathe. When finally he could focus enough to push the memories aside and see past, there was nothing in sight but that damned lifeless light.

  His mouth was numb. He worked his jaw and realized there was some feeling, but so weak he could easily miss it. After another moment, he found his tongue and used it to tentatively probe around, finding the chamber of his mouth bone dry, his lips so chapped they flaked apart at the touch.

  The strange manner of his breathing was a more pressing matter. Something had gone fundamentally wrong and instead of a steady rhythm, breaths came and went clumsily and without purpose. He was terrified of suffocating.

  He concentrated, and after a few reasonably steady gasps, lifted his head and had a look about. Light played in a queer way, gleaming unevenly as if seen through cracked crystal, revealing his surroundings in sharp, gritty contrast. He had a powerful urge to rub his eyes, but his arms refused to budge; a futile tug revealed they were both firmly strapped down.

  The room was large and stark, a long rectangle with dark stone walls devoid of decoration except for a single band of unfamiliar carvings at waist height. The floor was empty but for several elevated slabs, each with a shiftless figure laid out on top.

  It occurred to Caleb that he was bound to just such a slab, and with that realization, suspicion about his whereabouts nibbled at the back of his brain.

  Clothed in black robes only a few shades darker than his skin, Aldebaran walked around the table and into view, his soft foot falls echoing throughout the mausoleum. He was a dark and ugly man, slender and hard as a sculptor’s mannequin locked forever in a bent, predatory pose. His entire head was perfectly hairless except for a pair of bushy eyebrows, situated above beady eyes that never rested and a nose just a touch too sharp and overlong. The thick lips beneath had been tattooed dark blue, with an additional half-circle of ink pointed down toward his deeply cleft chin. Everywhere, his skin was paper-thin and translucent, revealing entirely too much of the bone structure it clothed.

  His motions—a sideways glance, a scratch at his ear, a smile that lasted a fraction of a second—came and went like the choreographed affectations of a stage actor. Every nervous twitch had the air of intricate planning, a careful imitation of another man’s mannerisms, which together were oddly beguiling.

  The mannequin leaned forward and his hinges creaked. His strong, skeletal hand gripped Caleb beneath the jaw, though not unkindly, and turned his head to one side and then the other, while sharp eyes examined him with the erratic attention of a wild raptor. The hand tilted Caleb’s head back for a moment then withdrew, and the face revealed deep satisfaction.

  “Yes,” Aldebaran said absent-mindedly, and his eyes twitched at some heavy mental arithmetic. “Yes, that should do. Fine work.”

  Caleb strained against the wrought-iron muscles of his jaw, and his mouth quaked open. His tongue lolled about feebly, and a garbled noise bubbled out of him. What escaped was half-way between a retch and a groan.

  Aldebaran’s dark lips twisted up at the edges, and the smile just managed to touch the corners of his eyes. “How driven you are,” he said with pride. “But don’t try to speak. Not yet, child. It will come with time.”

  Screw time. Caleb’s face tightened in frustration and he worked his lungs mechanically like a bellows. He stretched the lump that was his tongue and searched everywhere for moisture, but his mouth was a desert. No matter. He peeled his lips back away from his teeth and tried again. This time, the words came.

  “How… did… I survive?”

  Aldebaran’s eyes filled with astonishment, and the expression was so foreign to him that his old skin cracked and ever so slightly bled. “How wonderfully driven you are,” he said in suppressed awe. “But I have dour news, child… I am afraid you didn’t survive.”

  That possibility had terrified Caleb, and now the truth of it exploded inside him, a writhing horror that engulfed his mind and tortured flesh like a cold and unstoppable flame. He didn’t want to believe but it was the only answer that made any sense. He’d died on the surface of Zayin and now lay in Aldebaran the necrontier’s mausoleum, a resurrected abomination… an undead slave… a revenant.

  A howl exploded from the ruins of Caleb’s mouth, echoed off the stone walls and filled the hollow chamber, sounding strangely empty and inhuman. His body seized again, and all became pain, sadness, and terror.

  “Hush child,” Aldebaran whispered with a finger raised in front of his blue-black lips.

  The words soothed Caleb like salve. The scream died in his throat and a sudden weariness overtook him.

  “All will be well with time. Be still and sleep.” The words were so strong and low, they took root in Caleb’s chest and spread tendrils that curled and crept to every edge of him. Sleep swept up and over him quickly, dragging him back down into peaceful darkness. “Sleep,” Aldebaran said once more.

  And as Caleb drifted into that welcoming void, only one thought persisted in his wounded mind. Gone already was the terror at his new condition. Gone was the sadness over a life cut short. Gone even was the pain of ragged flesh sparked back into unliving motion. All that remained was a bottomless self-loathing born of the fact that he died a coward.

  With any luck, he’d have all eternity to suffer for it.

  Book II:

  Second Fragment

  When Caleb next awoke, he was seated in a not altogether uncomfortable chair in the middle of a small and rigorously organized laboratory. Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with rows of specimen jars containing various bits of flaking flotsam and jetsam, while countertops everywhere displayed yet more unrecognizable organs in various states of dissection or reconstruction.

  This place must have been Aldebaran’s most private space, a sanctum hidden away in the Ashkalon’s shield-arm where he could work shaded from any prying eyes. Caleb doubted the ship’s other six magi had ever seen it, and from the look of things, even Aldebaran’s own apprentices r
arely set foot inside this particular room. Its decor—every jar’s label perfectly parallel with the shelf, each set of tools spaced evenly apart and meticulously arranged—was simply too precise, too free of disturbance for anyone else to have meddled with it.

  Caleb was peeking inside a master practitioner’s head, and he decided to make the best of the rare opportunity. He glanced about, registered images and filed them away for later analysis, just as Kreutz had taught him to do as a child. Capture the image now and pick apart the details when there’s time.

  Aldebaran appeared after a few seconds, dusting himself off as he exited a store room on the far side of the lab. He walked directly to Caleb and inspected him the way a master painter might look over his latest masterpiece.

  The necrontier muttered to himself, occasionally pausing to make a note on one or another parchment laid out to the side. “Yes,” he said several times after strings of unintelligible words, and sometimes chased it with a self-satisfied, “Mm-hmm.”

  After an eternity of such observation, he looked Caleb in the eyes, raised one of his bony fingers and moved it slowly to one side then the other, all the while monitoring Caleb’s reaction. The next moment, he rattled off a string of sounds in some unfamiliar tongue, and his own purplish variant of lux sprang into existence with a hushed ring of chimes. Aided by the glowing construct, he stared into and through Caleb, searching deep for something unguessable.

  Whatever it was, he apparently found it. His sprite collapsed in a scattering of amethyst embers, while the most subtle smile curled the necrontier’s blue lips. “Welcome back,” he said in his peculiar accent. “How are you feeling, child?”

  The words sounded warm and friendly, but Caleb recognized the membrane-thin façade. “I feel… not bloody much. Is that normal?”

  He was relieved that speaking once again came easily.

  Aldebaran took a seat. “By design,” he said while making another note. “I have improved some of your senses, deadened others. Taste and smell would be of little use, so there persists only a minute trace of either, and though you still enjoy some tactile sensation, it bears little of the fine detail you once possessed. You will find, however, that your hearing is quite crisp, and I have reconstructed the very fundaments of your visual organs, from lens to brain and everywhere in between. You will experience little impression of colour, but in trade, you have greatly enhanced acuity at distance and in low light.”

  Aldebaran’s pride bubbled over in a symphony of twitches and half-voiced laughs.

  Caleb tested out the claims and found each to be true. His vision was deadly sharp, able with some effort to pick out the most insignificant details at the far end of the lab, even in the shadowed recesses between shelves. He could also clearly hear Aldebaran’s toe twitching inside his shoe.

  There was something missing, though. Something important.

  Caleb reflexively tried to dilate his second sight but nothing changed. He tried again, investing more effort and focus, but the world remained perfectly mundane.

  “My second sight…” he said.

  “Gone,” Aldebaran replied. “An unfortunate by-product of the resurrective process, I fear. The panoptic gland putrifies quickly after death, and anything that remains of it is destroyed during revitalization.”

  “Can… can I awaken it again?” Caleb already knew the answer.

  “Quite impossible.”

  “Gone,” Caleb said, the word touching his lips like the name of a bitter enemy. He’d endured months of agonizing isolation as a child, and now the fruits of his torment had vanished, once again hiding the natural world’s subtle secrets behind an imperceptible veil. “What of my other senses,” he asked. “Why remove so much?”

  The necrontier made another note on his page. “It is a matter of domestication. You see, wild creatures live in constant sensory overload, driven ever onward by passion and fury, while their domesticated counterparts are refined. They are given only those senses which further their purpose. This leaves them docile, thoughtful… easier to control.”

  Easier to control. The words rang out in Caleb’s head. “And what of pain?”

  “Far too valuable to adulterate,” the necrontier replied. A second later, there came a momentary glimmer in his eye followed by a feeling that Caleb didn’t quite understand. It was an emptiness, a hollow vacuum that presaged a coming tidal wave.

  An instant later, pain struck the base of his skull and crashed over him. It consumed him until nothing but the pain remained, and the waking world was only its twisted shadow.

  Then the pain was gone, its withdrawal so sudden that Caleb was left disoriented in its wake. It was like waking from a terrible nightmare; he was dizzy and lost, and he noticed that he’d stopped breathing completely.

  Much to his amazement, his heart wasn’t raging in his chest… in fact, it didn’t so much as stir.

  Aldebaran revealed another of his smiles, this one more curved and wicked than the others. “I trust we understand one another.”

  Realization dripped over Caleb like boiling oil. This was his fate: to toil on in death, a powerless slave subserviant to his necrontier’s will.

  “I understand,” Caleb replied. After a pause he added, “Master.”

  “Good, good.” Aldebaran scribbled yet more notes on his page, and it began to infuriate Caleb. He didn’t enjoy being someone’s research project, their experiment to poke and prod.

  “Is there anything else you would like to know?”

  Caleb was afraid to waste any time. “What happened on Zayin?” he asked.

  “Ahh, yes… the mysterious planet. The world was revealed to be Kremak hallowed ground, home to one of their blasphemous temples. Marvelous structure that, once we found it… well hidden and full of elder priests. The band of warriors you encountered were the temple guard.”

  “Why that planet?”

  “Argentium. They collect it, refine it, and make offerings to dragons. It’s their holy work.”

  “So the whole thing… the tonality surge, the attack… it was all a trap?”

  “Oh, yes. Methodical and executed with terrible precision. It seems the Eurisko stumbled across their secret while sniffing out argentium deposits, and the Kremak blasted her right out of the sky. But they knew others would come looking, so they lay in wait. They bided their time, and when you stepped into their snare, they pulled it tight. They did not count on a dragonslayer though, nor my lovely revenants.”

  “You retaliated?”

  Aldebaran smiled wickedly. “Your death was more than adequately avenged.”

  “And what of Bibbs? Is he here?”

  “Alexander Bibbs? Oh, dear no. Put up quite a fight, doubly so considering the Kremak’s natural affinity for fire. Do they teach you fool children nothing in Academy? Still, he somehow managed to kill two of their braves, and in return, the others made sure there would not be enough left to resurrect. Not that it would have mattered, mind you; he was not on my requisition list.”

  “But I was?”

  “Oh yes, child. A superior candidate for the process, you were. Keen mind but little physical aptitude. Narcissism coupled with low self-esteem, an assortment of self-destructive tendencies, and pervasive feelings of abandonment. In addition to… well, other mitigating factors. Yes, my eye has been on you for some time.”

  “Since I came aboard?”

  “Since you entered Academy.”

  Caleb flinched as if struck in the face. He never could figure out how he’d managed placement aboard such a high-profile ship; he assumed it was just luck of the draw, but now he understood there’d been no coincidence.

  Exactly how much had been monitored, though? His entire school career surely, but what of his counseling sessions? His private conversations with friends? Maybe even the notes and mindless scribblings in the margins of his textbooks? The entire system had been watching, waiting, and guiding him along. Guiding him here. For this.

  And all that time, this decrepit
old man had been eagerly waiting for Caleb to die.

  “I don’t… I don’t think I understand. Bibbs would have made an exceptional fighter.”

  “Perhaps, but such things hardly factor into a revenant’s potential. Anyone can become an outstanding weapon with the tools I provide, but your friend was arrogant and dull-witted. Worse, he was a natural talent with a bright future. Were he turned, he would spend his days agonizing over the life lost.”

  The implication was already clear, but Aldebaran went on. “Not you. You will grieve, but you will come to recognize the opportunity you have received. The opportunity I have given you. And then you will become something quite extraordinary, of that I have no doubt.”

  There was a momentary excitement in Aldebaran’s voice entirely too childlike to be coming from such an aged mouth. The discongruity set Caleb’s teeth on edge.

  He went on. “If it is any consolation, you have a keepsake, something by which to remember your friend. You see, your right hand was crushed beyond repair…”

  No.

  “And Mr. Bibbs’ hand so infuriated the Kremak that they removed it first.”

  No.

  “Such a clean cut, so precise. It was in excellent condition when I acquired it.”

  No!

  “And now it is yours.”

  Caleb looked down at the hand and he instantly saw the truth of it. The fingers were lean and strong, the tendons visible beneath the pallid flesh, and when he turned it over, he saw the final proof. Bibbs’ favored combat glyph was there—an ancient sign of flame and the fire god Agnoth—seared permanently into the meat of his palm during one last desperate attack.

  Caleb didn’t scream.

  “I see it disturbs you. This too shall pass, child. Soon you will come to understand, just as I do, that these are only parts. Tools. The body is an artifact, a mere mechanism of most elaborate construction, and the flesh is but a component. Only the spirit matters. Only the spirit is eternal.”

  It wasn’t a component. It was Bibbs’ Grim-damned hand attached to his bloody arm. It was another man’s flesh sewn onto him like a patch on a tattered quilt. It was a gruesome abomination, and a permanent reminder of just how Caleb had failed.