Arcana Universalis: Danse Macabre

by Chris J. Randolph

  Vinton stopped at Caleb’s shoulder where blackened fabric parted around a sizeable hole, and he prodded the hollow gash within. Then he let out a long, low-toned, “Hmmm.”

  Caleb waited.

  “Ball-lightning, eh? I don’t often see the invictus provoked into such… shall we say aggressive reprisal.”

  Caleb remained silent with his head held high, and then Vinton’s demeanor shifted violently. He gripped Caleb’s hooded face in hand, and an excruciating cold emanated from his fingers.

  Caleb recognized the feeling. It was the ravenous, all-consuming touch of oblivion, and he shrank from it in existential horror, dropping uncontrollably to his knees before the apprentice necrontier.

  Vinton’s face came close and in a rasping voice he said, “Carry this knowledge with you always, corpse. You’re not special. You are nothing at all, just another tool to be used and tossed aside at your master’s whim.”

  The cold came more fiercely and buried Caleb in its roaring avalanche. It surrounded him, suffused him, and snapped hungrily at his shiftless heart.

  “Aldebaran is your god now, and I his herald. With a touch, I can return you to the darkness for good. Never for an instant forget this power I wield which makes you quiver like a beaten child, dead man. Do you understand me?”

  Caleb whimpered in reply.

  “Excellent,” Vinton said. He released his grip and the cold vanished with it, then he silently turned, motioned for Caleb to follow, and walked toward the hallway’s far end.

  Caleb returned to his senses with a gasp, and suddenly understood Aldebaran’s apprentice more acutely. Talented, ambitious, stifled, threatened. Likely a middle child. The slight wisp of a man had hardly seemed worth paying attention to before, but he was in fact a snare waiting for a careless foot.

  Sensibility suggested Caleb step lightly.

  He stood and followed close on Vinton’s heels like a scolded student, the world around seeming so much more bitter and uncaring in the aftermath of that filthy touch. There was something else, though; another subtle, haunting feeling that didn’t fit. He had the inescapable sensation of being watched, but a glance over his shoulder revealed nothing but solitude. There was only an empty hallway lit by a dozen crackling torches and the glowing blue-green jewel of the Ashkalon’s Synod.

  He shrugged and journeyed on.

  The march back to the Ashkalon’s sinister arm passed quickly and quietly. Vinton never once looked back or otherwise acknowledged Caleb’s presence, so confident was he in his ability to intimidate the dead.

  Together they passed through the gate—a black sculpture depicting writhing bodies each clawing futilely toward the top—then they crossed the darkened mausoleum beyond and stopped at the door to Aldebaran’s lab. Vinton rapped twice on the door with his knuckle then simply walked away.

  Caleb was left again to wait. Minutes became hours, and his thoughts (as usual) turned to self-flagellation. He still couldn’t quite understand why he’d pursued this fool goal of becoming a green hood, nor why he’d attacked it with such single-minded stupidity. It was drawing unnecessary attention, and attention often equaled danger. The hamstrung apprentice had provided evidence enough of that.

  The sensible decision would be to keep his head down and be forgotten. There were shadows to lurk in. There was safety in anonymity.

  But what had being sensible ever gotten him, he wondered. Shamed, abused, taunted day and night, and finally left dead and eviscerated in a nameless field some hundred trillion miles from home.

  He looked down and found Bibbs’ hand at the end of his arm, a beacon of strength and nobility stitched to him like a grotesque patchwork doll. It was a thorn that could never be plucked out, an inescapable reminder that he’d died a coward’s death. No matter how many times he scraped away the sigil on the palm, it always returned, a testament to its stubborn owner’s refusal to even consider doing the sensible thing in the face of insurmountable odds.

  And therein lay his answer. He’d chosen to become a green hood precisely because it wasn’t sensible. It was the noble thing, the right thing, a stark rejection of the cowardly Caleb who had been, and a vain attempt to silence that guilty hand. It was more or less what Bibbs would’ve done, he imagined.

  Of course, if the rest of Bibbs had been there, he would’ve swatted Caleb’s head and told him what a complete drag he was being. “Buck up, chum,” he would’ve said. “With that sour look on your face, it’s no wonder you’re never invited to parties.”

  “Never mind the fact I’m dead,” Caleb grumbled aloud. “You don’t find a lot of corpses at off-campus socials.”

  Aldebaran’s door creaked open and Caleb nearly jumped out of his skin. He’d been so wrapped up in his own insecurities that he’d altogether forgotten where he was.

  “Come,” Aldebaran said.

  Caleb composed himself and walked inside. The old necrontier was exactly where Caleb had left him, seated at his desk looking over yet another indecipherable piece of parchment. This time was different, though; as Caleb approached, Aldebaran stood and ushered his creation forth. “Take that ridiculous thing off,” he said. “Come, come. Let me have a look at you, child”

  As instructed, Caleb removed the ceremonial robes and folded them neatly on the floor until he stood naked as the day he was born. He remembered the entry examinations at Academy when he’d been forced to strip before one of the old proctors, and how vulnerable he felt then. How violated. There was none of that now.

  “Excellent,” Aldebaran said. “There is hardly a mark on you. Oh, you should see the shape Malcolm usually returns my children in. Mangled, blown apart, with their heads twisted about the wrong way. I have often wondered if he thinks it a competition; I craft something beautiful and pragmatic, and he does his best to pummel it into something ugly and abstract.”

  Caleb fought back a smirk.

  “No matter,” Aldebaran went on. “As you no doubt suspect, you have passed the trial and are deemed suitable for combat operations. How quickly you excel, child. How very, very quick indeed.”

  The necrontier retrieved something from his desk with a skeletal hand, and the flickering candlelight revealed it to be a bronze mask. A death mask, they called it. Caleb had seen its like before, obscuring the faces of combat revenants, but natural revulsion prevented him ever taking a closer look.

  The overall shape was rather plain, a pointed oval like a shield with a crease down the center that separated perfectly symmetrical halves. The surface detail, however, was extraordinary. Large spirals extended out from each eyehole and curved in toward the cheek, while numerous smaller curls branched out along their length. These gave an impression of a living root, a pattern dividing into finer and more delicate details, and each of those dividing into finer details still. The pattern was a theloglyph of course, and Caleb’s quick reading said it belonged to the seers’ school; the mask was likely some kind of tonality artifact.

  Aldebaran gripped it with practiced ease and his other hand traced lines across Caleb’s cheeks. Where those fingers made contact, Caleb felt a slight burning sensation that was oddly pleasurable in its own way, like the pain accompanying a good stretch.

  “This will take but a moment,” the necrontier said.

  He spoke potent words in his exotic language and the metal mask in his hand began to glow. Caleb arrested his fear and waited. This was just another step, just another thing to be endured on his path to somewhere else. He held firm.

  Steam rose up from the mask, but Aldebaran’s black hand somehow remained unaffected.

  “Be still, child,” he said.

  Caleb said, “I will.”

  Aldebaran shook his head and said, “You will try.”

  The hand loomed close and Caleb could feel heat radiate from the artifact. Muscles along his back involuntarily flexed in an effort to draw him away to safety, but he resisted.

  It approached. His eyes felt as if they might boil. He quaked but remained in place, then it
touched his flesh and all was white heat.

  A hissing sound filled his ears while molten metal moulded to his cheekbones. The flesh there crackled and popped, and he felt bones emerge from their moribund sheath. Naked, they met the mask and joined as one, and he cried out.

  Aldebaran pushed on.

  Every muscle in Caleb’s body rebelled; they seized and flexed as agony streaked through him. Try as he might, the pain was simply too intense for him to retreat from, too powerful to resist. It was omnipresent and he washed away inside of it.

  And then it was done.

  “Now, was that so bad?” the necrontier asked.

  Caleb wasn’t sure. The pain faded quickly, but he was on all fours now and had no recollection of having fallen down. Overall, this very unusual day was beginning to wear on him. He’d been tested first by fire, then threatened with darkness, and finally tormented by the light. Now, he simply wanted to curl into a ball and sleep.

  “I suppose not,” he said, but the voice that came out wasn’t his own. His mouth never moved. The sound came instead from the mask, whose vibrations produced an unearthly voice devoid of life or inflection, like the ring of a bell somehow bent into words.

  Aldebaran examined him again and said, “Synchronization is within reason. You show no signs of rejection. Good, good.”

  “I don’t understand,” Caleb said, still disturbed by the metallic voice. He got to his feet and turned his head about, testing the mask’s feel. “What is this thing exactly?”

  “A means of communication. While you wear it, our connection is strengthened. I can see through your eyes more clearly, hear everything you hear, and both at far greater distance than I could manage without. It will also allow you to communicate with the others in your host even in the emptiness of space where more natural methods are rendered impossible.

  “Malcolm may grant you the green hood,” he added, “but the mask is my gift. Both are the symbols of your new station.”

  Caleb fingered the artifact, felt its pitted surface still warm to the touch but cooling. It was bonded directly to his cheekbones by a pair of half-inch posts, and the connection was seamless. The mask might as well have been one of his own bones, gruesomely extended out beyond his flesh.

  “Remove it if you like,” Aldebaran said.

  He shrugged, gripped it in his palm and prepared to wrench it free, but it came off easily with a mechanical click. He weighed the artifact in his hand, turned it over and marveled at its construction. The inscription was even more complex than he originally suspected and he struggled to divine its many hidden purposes. Communication was surely among them but there was more he couldn’t quite puzzle out.

  In a strange way that defied any attempt at examination, he still felt the mask’s presence even after he’d detached it.

  “You will wear it when duty takes you off ship, or any time you venture out among the living. There is a ready room near my gate where you may store it when not in use.”

  Caleb nodded.

  “As for your assignment, you will join Beta Host under Sabian. Driscoll will see that you are properly outfitted.”

  He winced but said nothing. Sabian, damn it. He’d hoped for a position on Stover’s Alpha Host, but that was never likely to happen. Beta had lost hands on Zayin, and Caleb’s assignment there was simple math. Simple, unavoidable, annoying math.

  “If there is nothing else,” Aldebaran said.

  Caleb cut him off. “I have questions.”

  “Of course you do. Ask and I will answer as I can.”

  Caleb collected himself. He didn’t know how long this session would last, so he prioritized as best he could. “You said earlier that you’d need your ranks at full strength for what lies ahead. What exactly is that?”

  “The mission, of course.”

  “What mission?” He tried to keep the frustration from his voice. He mostly failed.

  “What other mission could there be?” Aldebaran asked with wry amusement. “The Ashkalon is a dragonslayer, child. Wherever we encounter the Kremak, so too is there a dragon to be found and brought to peace.”

  Of course. Caleb felt a right idiot. Magi Sheck and Delmarus, the ship’s seer and astrometer, were no doubt tracking the dread wyrm that very second using their combined skills. They would sniff out its lair like bloodhounds, then the Ashkalon would move in for the kill.

  All manner of things made their homes in the destruction dragons left behind, and there was no telling what the ship would encounter along the way. Bringing combat forces back to full strength was simply reasonable preparation.

  “Dragon,” Caleb muttered absently.

  Aldebaran squinted. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No,” he said, and it was mostly true. The word stirred memories that were jumbled and blurry, a toddler’s vivid but indistinct recollections. Light, heat, and destruction; a howl that penetrated air and stone; then the tattered ends of those memories ran out.

  “Well, you will get your chance,” Aldebaran said. “Such marvelous creatures. Majestic. So very different than one might expect.”

  Caleb was taken aback at the necrontier’s bald-faced admiration. Dragons were the ancient enemy of the Imperium, and even hints of levity in one’s voice might be taken for heresy in certain circles. He took such brazenness as a testament to just how little Aldebaran feared the possibility of betrayal.

  “My time grows short, child. What else?”

  “When you woke me,” Caleb said, “you mentioned ‘other mitigating factors’ in my selection. What did you mean? What was it about me that attracted your attention?”

  Aldebaran smiled another wicked smile. “An excellent question, but one I am not at liberty to answer just yet.”

  Disappointment bubbled up in Caleb’s throat like bile.

  “Perhaps I can put you on the right trail, though. Tell me… what do you know about the night your parents died?”

  Twist the dagger.

  “More than enough,” Caleb replied. “Count Baston killed them.”

  “More or less, but what of the details?”

  His lips tightened. “I never cared to know.”

  “How peculiar, that. You are so thoroughly inquisitive by nature, yet you never once wondered about the pivotal event in your life.”

  Caleb couldn’t fathom why he’d want to know any more than he already did. His parents were simple peasants snatched up from the street, imprisoned, and slowly tortured to death by a twisted animal. They were the count’s playthings. And somehow, all three ended up dead.

  Somehow.

  Caleb shook his head and banished the thought. “I moved on,” he said.

  “More is the pity. A very intriguing subject, I assure you… if only for the Count Baston himself.”

  “A monster,” Caleb growled.

  “A free man,” Aldebaran replied, “unbound by the fear, guilt, and shame that yoke normal men to the social apparatus. Not a rare specimen by any measure, but his kind are most difficult to study. Perhaps one in a hundred is born with this anomaly, and yet they walk hidden among us, wearing masks of normality that conceal the aliens within; they are strangers who watch us, mimic us, and toy with us as their souls desire.”

  “Do you admire these things?”

  “In a manner. They are of great interest to my studies, and I have long sought the origin of such… eccentricity.”

  Aldebaran lost himself momentarily in thought, then went on. “Just as you have been domesticated, these men are perfect predators, stripped of any weakness that might stand between them and their own will to greatness. They strike society as a rough stone does a pond, producing ripples which radiate outward and reshape the entire universe. They transform the lives of men, for better or worse… as you surely understand.”

  Caleb winced.

  “And I suspect,” the necrontier went on dreamily, whispering as if to himself, “that many have attained positions of power. Positions of great power.”

  The w
ords had the reek of heresy, even if Caleb couldn’t quite determine which part of Doctrine was being transgressed. He gritted his teeth and choked back an oath.

  Aldebaran roused himself. “Well, if that’s all…”

  “One other thing,” Caleb interjected, following an impulse.

  “Yes.”

  He wasn’t sure where he was headed. He let go and allowed the impulse to lead him. “I wish to become your apprentice.”

  “Ridiculous,” was the necrontier’s simple reply.

  “Hear me out, master.”

  “Why? I have more apprentices than I know what to do with. Fine students with promising futures.”

  Caleb felt Bibbs’ spirit rising up within him. “None like me,” he said. “I’m a fastidious worker and skilled researcher. I have an eidetic memory and can labour day and night without ever growing weary. I will learn faster and more completely than any student you’ve ever endured.”

  Aldebaran tightened his eyes. “Go on.”

  The image of Vinton flashed in Caleb’s head. Ambitious but stifled. He leaned toward the necrontier. “You’re hundreds of years old now,” he ventured, “yet where is your successor? You have no interest in sharing your art, and only your obedience to Doctrine keeps these feckless insects buzzing about your laboratory.”

  Aldebaran remained silent.

  “But you know my loyalty is complete. You have hold of my leash, and even were that not the case, I couldn’t possibly entertain ambitions of replacing you. I’m mundane.”

  “Yet knowledgeable in thelosophy. Intriguing. But if you have no ambition, why pursue such work?”

  To rub Vinton’s face in it, he thought briefly. “You said it yourself: I’m inquisitive by nature, and what is there in the roost to challenge my intellect? I need more. I crave study, and I can be of value to you at the same time. Exceptional value.”

  Aldebaran placed a finger on his blue-black lip and disappeared into thought.

  “You make a compelling case,” the necrontier finally said. He turned back to his desk and meanwhile waved a dismissive hand toward the door. “Return to the others and I shall meditate on the matter.”