by Pavel Kornev
"You're stepping on my feet!"
Jimmy and Billy nervously swore under their breath in response, but they stopped nipping at his heels. Then the passage widened, and we came upon a set of stone steps that seemed to grow out of the earth itself. We started up them, slowly and carefully.
"Cover me!" I whispered to Ramon when a dark shape appeared before me and the beam of my torch hit on the high cupola ceiling.
The constable passed my warning back. I took a few deep breaths, then walked into the spacious room. It was dark, but empty. At the far wall, there stood the towering base of a broken altar. A heap of stones was blocking the way to the monastic cells.
There were no undead inside.
I led my torch, made sure there was no danger and stepped aside, making way for Ramon. With his lupara at the ready, he walked away from the door, and we were joined by the constables and Robert White.
The beams of their service torches ran over the walls; the inspector stood in the center of the room and declared in disappointment:
"This is all? Where's your monster?!"
The echoes of his voice rang loudly under the ceiling. Little streams of earth rained down from above.
"Be careful, inspector!" Ramon got on guard.
Robert White burned the constable with a haughty gaze, but didn't excoriate the man, instead ordering:
"Search the place, top to bottom!"
I moved around the pedestal in the middle of the room, then my beam hit upon a short, dark opening in a pile of stone. A fallen ceiling tile was slanting up against a stone, holding the soil on top of it out. Next to that, there were stone fragments cast all around as if someone had purposefully moved them aside to clear the entry.
"Inspector!" I quietly called out to my boss. "There's a passage here!"
Robert White rubbed his hands together with a satisfied look and issued a command:
"Keep moving!"
I got down on my haunches, shined the light into the dark hole and took a sniff. Fresh air hit my face, as if there was a way up to the surface somewhere nearby. It didn't smell of rotting flesh, either.
"Hurry up, Leo! Faster!" Robert White barked out, rushing me along. "We're losing time!"
My hesitation overcome, I laid down on the dirty floor and, torch in one hand and pistol in the other, crawled on my elbows under the tile. The passage was a little wider than a meter. Past the collapse, the roof was supported by stones jutting into it.
I crawled further. When I was completely past the tile, a little stream of soil started pouring into my collar. I whispered angrily to Ramon, who was already climbing in behind me:
"Be careful!"
And just then, the underground shook from a powerful explosion. The heap overhead shuddered. Broken stone fell onto my head and, with a sharp burst, I threw myself out from under the now sagging stones. I jumped out and turned around just in time to see the shaken-up soil start moving. Stone shards collapsed down with a screech.
"Devil!" I sighed. "Devil! Devil! Devil!"
If that quarry explosion had happened a bit earlier, I'd have simply been flattened!
From this side of the stone mass, I heard a muted knocking: I walked over to the heap and knocked in reply with the grip of my pistol. They heard me, but that was all.
I wasn't nourishing the hope to be let out any time soon. I raised my torch. Its iron body had already grown noticeably warm. I wiped the sweat off my face with the cuff of my cloak and headed off to find another way out.
I went up fifteen stairs and saw a long corridor stretching out with empty doors of either monastic cells or underground storage. Sniffing around anxiously, I walked down it, looking in each chamber one after the next. The fingers of my right hand grew numb on my pistol grip. My heart skipped yet another beat in fear, but the cells were all empty.
Dirt, dust, barren stone walls. There was no one there.
But also, the smell of fresh air was getting stronger and stronger.
I got to the end of the hall, then found a carved spiral staircase, and another hallway. This one didn't have any side chambers carved in it but, at the end, there was a hefty door sitting off its hinges. There was a breeze coming through the doorway, but I held back and forced myself not to go any faster.
Easy. Easy. Easy.
The beam of my torch jumped up the walls. I was following carefully after it with the barrel of my pistol, but the undead man was nowhere to be found. Then, before me, I saw a spot of daylight beckoning, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest in joy.
An exit! There really is an exit!
I turned off the scorching torch, waited for a second to adjust to the dim light, and walked over to the arch at the end of the hallway. But the closer I got to it, the stronger I felt a certain undercurrent of anxiety.
The illustrious, unlike normal people, are capable of sensing the presence of the otherworldly. So, it wasn’t long before all my doubts were dispelled, and I was sure that some kind of supernatural being was hiding up there.
The undead from before? I couldn’t be sure...
I walked up to the arch, looked past warily and sighed out a noiseless curse. The hallway led me to a huge stone well with steep walls fifteen meters high. Above, at an unimaginable height, there were wisps of smoke crawling across the sky from the factory smokestacks, but there was no way for me to actually get out without mountaineering equipment.
In the very center of the well, there grew an angular tree with lots of dry branches and faded leaves, but it didn't reach the top, and looked very brittle and breakable. Trying to climb it up would be sure to end in a painful fall.
On the side opposite the entrance, there was a small natural stream; water poured in through the wall and disappeared with a dripping sound down a hole dug in the floor. And that was what caught my interest.
I turned the torch back on and shone it on the dark nook. I didn't notice anything suspicious, and started going down the small stone staircase to the dry-leaf covered floor.
And just then, from somewhere down below, there stuck out a dead pale arm, grasping at my ankle!
Knocked off my feet, I fell head over heels down the stairs. It hurt when I landed on the stones, but I immediately turned onto my back and raised my Roth-Steyr. My finger pulled back on the trigger as soon as I caught the head of the dead man jumping out from under the stairs. But just then, with a prickly chill, I became aware of the otherworldly presence. The firing pin loudly slammed down on the blasting cap, but no shot came out.
Devil!
I stuck my right arm in my pocket for my Cerberus, but before I could pull the pistol out, the corpse fell down on me and, with a wave of his hand, cut into my head with some kind of stick.
Stars. Pain. Darkness.
4
I WOKE UP from a crack to the nose. I peeled back my eyelids and got another smack from a big ash-darkened droplet, but this time on my cheek.
A light rain was rustling the leaves on the ground, which had painfully beautiful veins. Through them, I could see a dark and smoky sky. I was lying on my back under a tree and...
I was lying?! I stretched out, and tried to sit up, but couldn't move. While I was out, my legs and arms had been trussed up with tree roots, just like the ones that went through the undead man who knocked me out.
The corpse himself was standing near the stairs trying to reattach the curved blade of his druid's sickle, which had flown off when hitting me with the handle. His fingers, bloated from decay, were entirely unsuited to the task and, in the end, the dead man threw the stick away and came back to me with the blade squeezed in his bare hand.
Almost instantly, I was left without the slightest doubt on where the strange wounds on the guard's body had come from. Somehow, he had managed to run away, but that trick wasn't gonna work for me. If only...
My fingers, hidden in the pocket of my cloak, were still gripping the handle of my Cerberus, and that gave me a tiny chance of escape. When the corpse was leaning over m
e, about to cut through the thick fabric of my cloak with his sickle, I gathered my determination and started twitching all over like I was having a seizure. The sharp blade went through the roots holding me down. The tree shuddered and loosened its grip for a second.
With one quick motion, I got my hand free and stuck the pistol under the jaw of the dead man saddling me, plunging down on the trigger. A spark flickered out. The magical atmosphere of the well was no match for electricity, so the gun immediately gave a loud blast. And after that came another.
The bullets did away with the corpse’s skull entirely. He dropped his sickle and lifelessly collapsed on top of me. But before I could get out from under him, the roots stabbing through him suddenly came to life and crawled away like pallid worms.
A minute later, I was again entirely lashed down by the arms and legs. I cowered, tried to escape, but didn't manage. I just heard something starting to creak under my back.
I turned my head and saw that the dry leaves were hiding lots of small bones from birds and rats. Meanwhile, a bit further, there was a half-decayed human corpse totally enmeshed in roots.
My breathing seized up, and I immediately heard a charming voice in my head:
"Relax! Relax and don't worry. Everything will be fine!"
"Go to hell!" I sighed, feeling the roots crisscrossing me start to move, trying to get through the rubberized fabric to hook into my veins so the creature could nourish itself with my blood. My right arm, where the sickle had cut through my cloak, had already lost all sensation.
The tree gave a shiver, and I heard a light crackling. Then, the angular tree trunk melted into the form of a female figure. The crude bark was replaced with silk-soft skin. Her green eyes burned with an inviting flame. Her thin lips curved in promise of a wonderful kiss. Below the belt, the dryad remained part of a tree, not able to break free or finish turning into a human but, nevertheless, I moved my gaze away, not feeling strong enough to bear the supernatural beauty of the being bending toward me.
"Do you not find me beautiful?" asked the dryad.
"Be gone with you, infernal whelp!"
The foliage over my head started grumbling in rage.
"Do you think me evil?" asked the tender voice, growing in strength. "Does it make me evil to want to obtain freedom and leave this place? It was humans that disturbed my slumber in the first place! It was you that poisoned the air and water! It was your caustic soda that dried my roots, your acid rain that burned my foliage! If I stay here, I'll die! Are you prepared to doom me to certain death? Tell me, do you have no pity for me?"
The dryad could have moved a tax collector to tears, or made a heartless usurer take pity, but there was somewhat more riding on this horse than mere money, so I continued struggling, stopping the roots from entangling me in their deadly cocoon once and for all.
"I only need a bit of power to get free, and I can feel it inside you! Come with me! Look on my body! Am I not perfection itself? Are humans really not capable of considering something bigger than their own pitiful lives?"
Oh, yes! The dryad was beautiful! So beautiful that my heart was starting to moan in unbearable agony. My desire to possess such a perfect beauty could have broken my heart to pieces, but I already loved another and was not prepared to betray her. I simply could not do it. Not even to save my own life...
The roots wrapped me stronger and stronger, capturing my body and depriving me of the ability to move. The first shoots had already reached my neck and climbed past the collar of my cloak.
"With me, you'll be happy," the dryad whispered. "I can give you immortality! Immortality, total love, and happiness!"
Every breath I took was harder than the last. There was a ringing in my ears, and my head was splitting, but the far-off peal of thunder still reached me. A gust of wind flew in. The leaves rustled in aggravation, and that ripple of anxiety, that latent fear didn't go unnoticed by my talent.
"I do take pity on you," I said with utter sincerity, feeling tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. "I feel a great deal of pity for you..."
"And why is that?" murmured the unbearably beautiful voice of the dryad.
"Day after day, year after year, being stuck in the same place, listening to the rolling thunder, seeing the flashes of lightning... And you can’t take shelter, either. You just spend your time staring at the sky and hoping the next bolt of lightning won’t strike you…" I said in one breath out and croaked, starting to wheeze: "It must be terrifying!"
A shudder ran across the tree. The dryad hesitated, not able to find an answer. And in fact, there was no longer any need for an answer. I reached out for her fear and nourished it with my illustrious talent.
The sky overhead grew dark. The wind was blowing, and the rain was pouring. Just then, my talent embellished reality with a blinding flash of lightning. With a deafening thunder, the electrical discharge cut into the tree and clove it in two. The otherworldly presence disappeared, burned out by the heavenly flame. At the same time, the room started smelling of ozone mixed with smoldering wet leaves.
My ears were ringing unbearably, but my head spinning didn't stop me from ripping off the roots wrapping around me. I scrambled onto my side and crawled away from the charred remains of the dryad's abode. The sky grew clear. A dim disk of sun started peeking through the char of the factory smokestacks.
My right arm couldn't move at all. The cut made by the sickle was burning. I raised my hand to my face. Blood was dripping from my fingers. I had to tie off my shoulder with my belt.
My weakness left me; I sat down on the lower step of the stairs, stretched out on the cold stone, made a few deep breaths and fought back unconsciousness. Through the ringing in my ears, I seemed to hear voices and people shouting, but I couldn't have cared less. I pulled the rumpled newspaper from my pocket and opened it to the second page. The only thing that had saved me from the temptation of an inhuman will was my love for this girl. Unfortunately, her picture was now soaked in blood.
At the time, it didn't seem like a bad omen.
At the time, I didn't know it, but everything was just beginning...
The End
Thank you for reading Sublime Electricity: The Prequel!
Check out the series' page on Amazon Kindle to continue reading:
The Illustrious (The Sublime Electricity Book #1)
The Heartless (The Sublime Electricity Book #2)
About the Author
Pavel Kornev is a popular Russian author whose writing crosses the boundaries of the sci fi thriller, fantasy adventure and steampunk. Genre mashing has long become his signature style.
“His books are a page-turning mix of non-stop action and hard-boiled detective stories in the edgy atmosphere of steampunk noir. Far from being a knight on a white charger, Kornev’s typical protagonist is an everyday man with his fair share of flaws who puts his talents to good use. His heroes struggle to survive and win their places in the sun; but most importantly, they manage to preserve their humanity even in the direst of circumstances.”
Pavel is a professional economist who spent years working for a large bank – until his first novel, The Ice, became an overnight bestseller, allowing him to quit his day job. In his spare time Pavel jogs, swims and is an avid beer brewer.
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