by S T Branton
It was almost out of the warehouse, but its slow pace meant I could still catch it. Once I caught it… Well, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
Taking Solon’s switchblade from my pocket, I aimed it toward the truck and threw it. As if he could sense that shit was about to go down, Splinter scurried out of my pocket and across the floor. I wasn’t worried about him. He’d find a crevice where he could hide and pretend the fight wasn’t happening, then join up with me again when it was over. It was better that way. Him not being in my pocket meant I didn’t have to worry about crushing him while fighting.
The sound of the blade popping the tire and the subsequent flattening was enough to slow the truck’s progress. A second later, the driver put it into reverse so it came back into the warehouse before screeching to a halt. I barely had long enough to rush forward and reclaim the blade. The back doors swung open as I backed away. I knew I couldn’t hope it would be bungees and electrical cords coming out of there. Farsiders spilled out of the truck.
A lot of Farsiders.
I fought the urge to run as the mob of creatures circled me, each one more gnarly than the last. I had expected a fight, maybe even a bad one. But Burne’s fever dream of a rant didn’t come close to describing what I’d be up against. This was no trumped-up goblin gang. Hobbes’ Harbinger cult outnumbered me at least ten to one.
Solon had always taught me to be careful, to keep my wits about me. Rushing in like this was beyond stupid. But I had no choice. My head whipped from one side and I met eyes with several of them, trying to size up what I’d be fighting. A nasty warthog-looking guy snorted at me, sending spews of slimy green snot all over his face. Another of the creatures, covered in what looked like matted feathers from head to toe and a stench so strong I could smell it over all the others, cackled in a high pitch.
I would lose. I knew it then without a doubt. Every step I took tonight had been a risk, a long shot at best. But here I was at the final stage, and I knew in my bones I couldn’t stop them.
That wouldn’t stop me from trying.
“So,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as casual as possible. “This is like one of those Kung Fu movie fight scenes and you guys are going to come after me one at a time, right?”
A moment of silence greeted my hopeful joke, and I realized their silence was an attempt to scare me. I responded by standing up, no longer in a ready fighting position, and looked down at my nails.
“Well, whoever’s first better get on with it. I don’t have all day.”
A sound like an anvil being struck in a canyon answered my taunt, and I spun to see a golem step forward. He was hairless, and his skin looked like it was made of cut stone. One whack with his rocky hand and I might not be functional for a few weeks. My hand slid back behind my waist and grasped the blade.
“I’ll go,” the thing said, pulling his hood off his face to reveal large, round white eyes with a single, lonely black dot in the middle. “I’ll make your death quick…and painful.”
Pleasant.
He charged at me and I rolled to the right, narrowly avoiding his hands, and sliced at his stomach. The blade barely penetrated his thick skin, and when the golem stopped his momentum, he looked down at where I had swiped him and laughed. The switchblade was a fabulous weapon. Solon made it perfectly balanced so it was easy to throw and was sharp enough to cut through almost anything without dulling. But it was still a switchblade. The edge wouldn’t do much damage to this creature’s stone-like skin. He charged again, and this time, even with the locket’s magic helping me, I wasn’t fast enough. His hand grasped my waist and pulled me close to him. I frantically swung my blade at his hands and arms, but they barely made any indentions. A small bit of pus-like red blood bubbled to the surface of one cut, but otherwise it looked like I had marked him with a Sharpie.
He tossed me aside and I flew through the air, rolling until I hit the front wheel of the truck. A thought ran through my mind, and I stumbled to my feet. The golem was preparing to charge me again as I wiped the slow trickle of blood from my nose on my sleeve. I touched the blood on my upper lip with my fingers and then looked down at it, then at him. Then I showed him one particular finger.
The golem ducked low to charge me and I jumped straight up and over his head as he barreled at me. He crashed into the truck and sent the whole rig tumbling sideways before it exploded in a shower of fire and steel. He’d feel that.
The golem was hurt, and I prepared myself to hurt him more when I felt a massive blow to the back of my head. I crumpled to the dirty ground, fighting to maintain consciousness. I turned to look up at my attacker.
A light behind him created a shadow so dark I couldn’t make out his features too well, and my vision was blurry from the hit, but there was no mistaking the scar across his face. It wasn’t the cool, Bond villain kind of scar. His whole left side from chin to temple was a ragged mess of burned flesh.
I knew immediately who he was.
Spinoza the Eighth. A Philosopher and one mean son of a bitch. Not that I’d had the opportunity to sit down for tea with him or anything. I’d only heard Solon’s stories and the mad ramblings of some of my fellow inmates who had found themselves on his bad side.
Turned out, I was right. One of the group behind him called his name and Spinoza held up a hand to silence him. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and reached behind him to pull out a long sword. I realized that he must be in charge of the group as they all kept back, letting him advance on me.
I tried to stand, but the locket around my neck was spent and my body along with it.
Spinoza was a few steps away when suddenly there were sirens everywhere. He looked up, and with another authoritative jerk of his arm, he motioned to the Harbingers who all ran to another waiting truck.
Slowly, he raised the sword and pointed it. “Next time.” He turned on his heel and ran to the truck. The sound of squealing rubber accompanied them as they jettisoned away.
I should have been grateful to be alive, but all I could think was that they were escaping. After all that, the Harbingers would get away.
That was a serious bummer.
My head rolled to the side, and I caught sight of the redhead wizard staring at me from the shadows. He watched me for only a second, then ran deeper into the warehouse. I felt someone tugging on me, and I wrenched my arm away before realizing it was Ally. She grabbed me again and started pulling me to my feet.
“We need to be gone before the cops get here,” I said.
“Sara,” she demanded, “who the hell are you?”
Chapter Fourteen
“I’d really love to catch up, but this is not the place,” I told Ally. “I kind of kicked a hornet's nest. This place could be swarming with danger.” As I spoke the sirens changed in sound, and I hoped that meant they were speeding toward the Harbinger truck and away from me.
“You can’t expect me to accept that,” Ally said incredulously.
“Yeah, I kinda do.”
“It’s been ten years, Sara,” she insisted. “I thought you were… I didn’t know what happened to you. Now you wander into a bar and beat the living snot out of a couple of guys, and I’m supposed to just roll with it? Like—hey, no big deal, but I’m a fucking superhero now?”
“I’m definitely not a superhero,” I told her.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” she said sarcastically.
“Look, I’ll tell you everything if you’ll come with me out of this place. You don’t need to be here,” I bargained. Ally gave a weak nod. “Good enough. Come on, Splinter.”
“Splinter?” Ally asked, but before I could say anything, she screamed and jumped back. “Sara, watch out! There’s a mutant rodent coming after you!”
I leaned down to scoop up Splinter. He settled onto my palm, and I held him out toward her. She cringed and pulled away from him.
“This is Splinter,” I told her.
“You have a name for it?” she asked.
“He’s a rat.” She looked a little closer. “I think. Whatever he is, he’s super gross.”
I pulled Splinter close to my chest, pressing my other hand to the side of his head.
“Don’t say things like that about him. He’s very sensitive.”
“I’m sorry.” She pressed her hand over her eyes. “I’m apologizing to a creepy-looking rat thing. What is happening right now?” Her hand fell away from her eyes, and she looked at me. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”
We rushed out of the warehouse and dipped back through the fence. I was starting down the sidewalk when I noticed Ally head the other direction.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t feel like walking.”
“You brought your car?”
“Yeah,” she said as if she couldn’t fathom anything else. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice me behind you. I had to drive slow as hell to keep you in sight.”
“I guess I was too focused on the task ahead of me.”
We walked up to a sleek green sports car.
“It’s unlocked. Keep the rat off the leather.”
“Hey, you don’t have the station wagon anymore,” I pointed out.
“Not for a long time.”
It was a sad moment, but I pushed right on past it, opening the door and climbing into the cool grey interior.
“Go ahead,” I said when the wheels were rolling and we were getting away from the warehouse at a good clip. “Ask me whatever you want to know.”
Ally glanced over at me, then back at the road.
“Where have you been for the last ten years?”
I was a little touched, to be honest. She could have asked about the golem, or that weird bird creature, or Splinter. That’s what I would have asked about—the normal-reality-shattering nightmare creatures she witnessed firsthand. But instead, she asked about me.
Ally was a pretty good friend.
“In The Deep,” I told her.
“The Deep what? The Deep Shit? The Deep Blue Sea? The Deep Intellectual Thought?” she pushed.
“Well, I mean, kind of The Deep Shit, but it’s just The Deep. It’s a prison.”
“A prison?” she asked in disbelief. “What did you do to get shipped off to the hoosegow? And how did nobody know about it?”
“It’s not a normal prison. It’s a Far prison.”
“Like, in Russia?” she asks.
“Like in a different dimension,” I told her. She looked at me sideways and I nodded. “I know what I must sound like, but you need to hear me out on this one. Reality is not quite what you think it is. It’s a tad complicated and even after ten years, there are parts of it I’m still a little rusty on, so I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest Abridged version.”
“The TLDR version,” she said. Now it was my turn to look at her blankly and her eyes widened slightly. “Too Long, Didn’t Read? No? You didn’t get a lot of internet time in there, did you?”
“None,” I told her. “But listen up. Here we go.”
We drove through Charleston as I gave Ally the rundown of The Near, The Heights, and The Deep, and what had happened to me in the decade since I sent her drunk ass home to her brother and didn’t see her again. She stayed quiet the whole time I spoke and for several seconds after. By that time, we’d been parked behind an apartment building for almost twenty minutes.
“Uh-huh,” she finally said.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Just processing,” she said. “Letting it all percolate.”
“Take your time.” I leaned my head back against the headrest.
“So, we have The Near. That’s our world. Earth. Humans. Rolling fields. Purple mountains majesty. CPAs. The whole thing,” she said after a long silence.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“And then we have what used to be The Far. That’s the other world where all the magical creatures and folk live. At least, it was until something, but nobody really knows what, happened and the two realms smashed into each other and dumped everybody from The Far into The Near,” she continued.
“Right,” I said. “Pan’Rhea. The great collide which forced all of us together. The dimension that was The Far split into two broken realms, The Deep and The Heights.”
“The Heights is a super-pure dimension only special magical people are allowed into, but no little Earthlings like me,” she said.
“The more popular term is Nearlings,” I told her. “Since we all kind of have to share Earth now, that’s the accepted differentiation.”
“Seriously, I was just getting the hang of political correctness with the species I actually knew existed. Now you’re throwing all this at me?” she complained. “All right, so the other part is The Deep, and that’s the really, really bad place where they send all the magical folk who misbehave, and that’s where you’ve been for ten years.”
“Yes.”
“Because you confessed to crimes you didn’t commit to save your father,” she continued.
“Yes.”
She pointed at my lap.
“And that’s your rat,” she said.
“Splinter,” I confirmed.
“Splinter. And you escaped the inescapable jail because you need to stop a cult that wants to end the balance between The Near and The Far, and abolish the laws regulating the cooperation between the two realms.” She dragged in a breath after spitting all that out in one go.
“The Pax Philosophia. You’re catching on really well,” I told her.
I had condensed down months of Solon’s lessons to me into that one spiel and Ally’s absorption of it was impressive.
“It would seem that way, but there are still a lot of questions happening in this area.” She swirled her hand around the top of her head. “Let’s go inside.”
I looked through the windshield.
“Where are we?”
“My house,” she told me.
We climbed out of the car.
“You moved? I thought your parents loved that house,” I said.
She looked at me strangely.
“They do. That’s why they still live there. This is my house.”
“Oh. Right. You’re an adult now.”
She nodded.
“So are you. Strange, isn’t it?”
I mirrored her nod.
“In a lot of ways.”
“Come on,” she told me. “Let’s go inside.”
I hesitated. Running into my old chum hadn’t exactly been the plan. I knew the Guild was looking for me, and I had firsthand experience with the methods they were willing to use to catch me. Ten years had gone by and I had never forgotten the sight of that sword hanging over my dad’s head.
“Can we stay out here? I’m enjoying the fresh air. It’s been a while. Do you have any other questions?” I asked, trying to gloss by the strangeness of wanting to stay outside in the middle of the night.
“What are the Philosophers again?” she asked. “Not old dudes sitting around thinking about thinking?”
I laughed as we started to walk around the block.
“Not exactly. They’re wizards. Each of them takes on the name of a great Philosopher from history,” I told her. “A group of them, the Guild, kind of hold all the strings. They send their agents to police the Farsiders and oversee the Pax Philosophia.”
“Did you learn any magic from them?” she asked.
“It doesn’t work that way,” I told her. “The Philosophers are their own race, their own species. They look human in most ways, but they aren’t. They’re Farsiders through and through. Although there are a bunch of different disciplines and most of them really only use one or two, the magic they use is specific to their species. It can’t be taught to another species.”
“Then how did you strengthen yourself for the fight?” Ally asked.
“Dyadology,” I explained. “Runecraft, is how most Farsiders refer to it. Makin
g them requires strong magic and specific items from The Far and The Near, but once they’re made, anyone they’re given to can use them. My teacher, Solon, was a skilled Runescraftsman. He made several of them for me.”
“And he was in the prison, too?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“So, these runes. Can they do…anything?”
I smiled. It felt good to talk, felt good to say all this out loud. Sharing it with Ally, with another human, made everything I had gone through feel less crazy.
“Anything is a bit of a stretch but they can do a lot. It’s not a discipline that’s greatly respected among the Philosophers. Runes require Near items, which means they aren’t allowed anywhere near The Heights. Possessing them and using them isn’t illegal, per se, but according to Solon, there are some shady dyad dealers here on Earth,” I said.
“And one of them made you strong?” she asked.
I pulled out my locket and showed it to her. A faint light had reappeared, letting me know that its charge was returning.
“Solon designed it to give me greater strength and some protection. As a human, I’ve always been at a disadvantage in The Deep. He wanted to make sure I stayed safe,” I explained. “That, and he taught me how to throw a mean right hook.”
“I saw that right hook. That and some wild ninja moves. You said that guy in the bar you fought was a troll?” Ally sounded like she was piecing it all together but was still wary of the details.
“Yeah,” I affirmed. “I didn’t go in there looking for him, but once I realized he was there, he had to go. Trolls are not the type you want hanging around, especially when there are vulnerable women involved.”
“I guess magic is as good an explanation for what you did as anything else. My working theories were aliens, government conspiracy, or someone had put something in my drink,” she told me.
“All good theories. Speaking of which, what were you doing in that shady bar?”
“Well, we need to go backward a little for me to answer that,” she said.
“I’m ready for it.”
