Ward

by C Bilici

  Raging fire behind him, he exited into the yard to ensure he got them all, and that was where he found Charlie. Beaten into a terrible state, but alive, she lay on the overgrown grass.

  She was barely conscious when he returned with her to the Enclave for Fiona to look over. When she became coherent, the tale she told prompted Fenton to fetch Despina immediately.

  “What’s the emergency exactly, Fenton?” The Cardinal looked over the girl with a scowl.

  “Tell her,” Fenton said.

  “When we got to the house, they were waiting for us. There was this odd structure made of Umbra in the home that assembled after we entered. Some kind of webbing.”

  “A trap?” Despina said, one eyebrow raising.

  Charlie nodded, drank some water before continuing. “We tried to escape but we couldn’t. Any attempt to use the Nexus and we were bounced back. That’s the only way I can describe it.” Despina’s eyes widened. “I assume whatever they made acts like some sort of shield. We were blocked and had only one exit. When we went out, we were surrounded. The shield was outside as well, and when we tried to use our powers, there was nothing. Then I was jumped and beaten and they took Stacey.”

  “This is beyond alarming,” Despina said. “First they learn new tricks, now they have a means to cancel our powers?” Despina looked into Fenton’s eyes with deadly sincerity. “It’s time to put our contingency plan into effect.”

  “But the timing—”

  “Is moot now, Fenton. They can block us. We rely on the Nexus, it is our lifeline! To our avatars, our power, our protection. Everything hinges around it. Without that, we’re just prey.”

  He tried to find an argument but knew she was right. The Umbra had them over the proverbial barrel and this was their only trump card. He hated that it hinged on him.

  “Fine. Let’s get it over with then.”

  “I’ll gather the Cardinals and meet you at the temple.”

  “I don’t get it,” Charlie said when Despina left. “What’s this plan?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. Just rest.”

  She jumped off the examination table and followed after him. “No way. Whatever it is, I’m coming too.”

  He didn’t stop or slow to answer her. “You can’t.”

  She was still arguing with him when they entered the temple, but the four Cardinal’s were already in waiting and Despina called him forward.

  They stepped into the Nexus, Charlie on their tails, and wasted no time. He stood between the Cardinals as they spread out.

  “They’re summoning a transference circle?” Charlie’s eyes narrowed as she watched him. “Where are they sending you?”

  Fenton gave her a weak smile. “Somewhere I hoped to never have to return to.”

  He crouched and readied himself for the agony that would follow. He hadn’t been able to do so last time, obeying orders to never reveal that he had made any such voyage. On the journey to Mhyrr, the others had only felt some discomfort and pain, but his was a unique situation.

  He felt the initial pressure of the working and just as immediately felt the lines over his body light up, electrifying his flesh. He clawed his fingers into the surface of the Nexus, his hands, much like his entire body, quivering from the effort to keep the searing pain in check, but it was a losing battle.

  Thinking he’d heard Despina’s voice, he looked up to see her give him a knowing nod. He made to return the gesture but the needles exploding in his flesh as the transference increased prevented him. A million burning shards tore through his nervous system.

  On the transit to Mhyrr, he had reigned in his reaction as much as possible. Now, when it didn’t matter any longer who knew, he unleashed his howls without shame.

  Then he was gone.

  And shortly after, appeared in the Void.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SOMETHING HAD BROUGHT her out of her daze, but Stacey couldn’t have said what. The darkness was so total that wasn’t even sure her eyes were open until she blinked in panic. Fear gripped her and stopped her hands from creeping to her face to feel if she still had eyes. When she conquered the fear enough to move, she found she couldn’t, her arms bound above her.

  Heart punching her in the ribs, her head flicked around and some of the terror ebbed away. Her own body was visible. She could see, and soon enough patterns in what had before been a black wall emerged. Chaotic patterns she had seen before.

  The Void.

  Something emerged out of that roiling darkness.

  Tammy, in her Goth Japanese sailor school uniform, drifted along with a cohort of her depravities. Stacey had balked when she’d first set eye on them. Whatever the things were, they were nothing compared to the monster that created them. Tammy had gloated outside the house, telling Stacey that it had been her own warped psyche that had birthed them, set them loose on Tom and his grandparents.

  Almost upon her, Stacey’s heart ran faster. A figure blossomed at the head of Tammy and her bizarre troupe, unfolding as they came. The Shadow Man, clothed in a dark suit and equally dark smile. A curtain of darkness pulled aside behind the group.

  “Paul!”

  His head jerked at hearing her voice, his cyclopean eye pointing at her but not registering her presence, or refusing to. How many times might they have shown him this very scene, and what acts had they performed on her likeness?

  “Welcome to our humble abode,” the Shadow Man said, voice dripping charm and madness. “We’re in the process of redecorating, so please, don’t mind the mess.”

  “What do you want with us, you sick fuck?”

  “You should ask him,” Tammy said, absentmindedly toying with a thick phallic creature that hardened to her touch, and began to rub energetically against her palm like a small dog on heat, “what he can give you, instead.”

  “Why would I want anything from him?”

  Stacey watched in fascinated disgust as Tammy knelt down to rub her cheek in circles on the grey-blue glans of the thing, as if it were a loving a pet. Her eyes half lidded, one arm looped affectionately around the body of thing as thick and almost as long as her leg.

  “Because,” the Shadow Man answered for the distracted girl at his feet, “I can give you undreamt of life and power. None of this middling Ward stuff. You see, we’re on the cusp of evolution here, Stacey. And we want what you have.”

  “What’s that exactly?”

  “Free will and life. Before, we were as amoeba, swimming aimlessly, just being, not living. For that, it takes self-awareness, sapience, which we have now attained and, as my pet’s little creatures can attest, is spreading. But, too slowly. Too…” He waved his hand in the air, searching for a word. “Inelegantly. As amusing as Tammy’s creations are, they are simple. What we most need, and lack, is imagination.” He turned to look at Tammy playing with her giant walking cock and tilted his head to one side, as a proud parent might when looking at their child. “And you humans have such a propensity for it, greater than all the other races of the realms.”

  “Yeah? Well, if you’re using Tammy as a template for your new race, you’re going to be fucking disappointed.”

  Tammy smiled, and continued to excite the creature in her arms, licking it up and down with an incredibly elongated and forked tongue the colour of rancid meat.

  “I have no intention of using just one person.” The Shadow Man beamed perfect white teeth at her. “My goals are much loftier than that. No, I’m going to use everyone. Every single last one of you.”

  “You’re fucking insane.”

  “True. But I aspire to that. To the fact that I now have a sanity to lose. You truly have no idea how thrilling it is! You waste your lives away, and that is why I am going to take it all away from you.”

  “You’re fucking nuts if you think you’re going to take over all the realms.”

  “Don’t be daft,” the Shadow Man scoffed. “I’m only taking Earth. The other races are far more mature than humankind and will come around ev
entually, come to accept us.”

  Stacey blinked at the thing. There was no reasoning with it. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable, drawing out her own suffering. She looked to Paul, who hung limp of body and mind.

  “And what about Paul? Did you use him? Suck him dry?”

  “I know I did,” Tammy said, smiling lasciviously, standing slowly to straddle her pet while her serpentine tongue licked her lips and lashed the air.

  Stacey watched in open mouthed silence as Tammy slid all the way down to the stubby legs of the creature and up again, continuing her rhythmic peep show. “Well, someone clearly doesn’t need internal organs anymore.”

  Tammy giggled.

  “Your man here,” the Shadow Man said, smiling at the remark, Tammy, or both, “was merely a lure. He lacks what we need. He will still make a contribution to the physical requirements of building our new world, though.”

  Pulling in anger on the bonds holding her, Stacey strained forward to spit at the Shadow Man. “I’m going to make sure you fucking die, do you hear me? All of you!”

  The Shadow Man beamed at her again. “I do so hope you plan to, in your mind. I simply can’t wait to see what delicious contributions you will make to our race. I’m betting you have an abundance of imagination. For now though…” He signalled to Tammy who slipped off her mount with a wet sucking, leaving it dribbling from the mouth atop its bulbous head. “We’ll leave you in peace a while to say your goodbyes to your beau, such as he is.”

  The group of Umbra turned and walked away, though they more glided, travelling faster than their feet would allow on solid ground. Stacey doubted they needed to move their limbs at all.

  She turned to look at Paul. He stared into the nothingness, mouth slack. “Paul,” she called softly, to no effect. “Paul!”

  His head twitched, turned and lifted to face her, an expression of delirium on his confused face.

  “You’re not here. You were here, but you weren’t. But they… they did… all that stuff… to you.” His eye was wide and wet, the other wrinkled closed. Lips peeling, he gave an animal snarl that turned to anguish. “I couldn’t make them stop!” he bellowed in rage, before descending into gibbering, listing all the things that had befallen her doppelgänger.

  As much as she tried to ignore the descriptions, Stacey’s heart raced and stomach lurched. The portent of things to come continued, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She stared at his face looking for some sign.

  The hollows under his eyes were dark and deep. His long hair, usually slicked back and tied neatly, was dry and wild, like dead vines, stuck like Velcro to thorns of stubble. The pinpoint of his one eye darted about as he foamed words of depravity.

  He was gone. There was no hope there. No hope anywhere.

  Her sigils were blocked, as was the Nexus, though she had no idea if she could even access it from the Void. No matter how hard she concentrated or pushed, there was nothing. How had they managed to take away their powers?

  Then she remembered the active ingredient in the Wards ink.

  Umbra.

  They had somehow figured out a way to use the dead Umbra in their ink to jam, that was the only possibility.

  Paul would die just when she had found him. The revelation of his adultery with Tammy stung, true or not, but he was still Paul. Though he wasn’t, not really, not anymore. Stacey would die with the doubt of Tammy on her mind, hating him in part. They had always said they could be with or in a relationship with anyone else as long there was full disclosure, even before Jasper came along. If true, who knew what else he’d hidden.

  Now all she had to look forward to was torture, and whatever else the Shadow Man had in store for her conversion, whatever that meant. There was nothing she could do. And she couldn’t stand it.

  They returned to find her thrashing, yelling and cursing, which had begun as Paul had babbled about the things Tammy had done to him before his time in the void. She had started her tantrum in anger, then to drown out the words. Now that her doubt had been lifted, she wished it hadn’t.

  “What now?” Stacey spat at the Shadow Man. “Take your best fucking shot!”

  The man creature spread his lips in a smile. “Now, my dear, we need you to unleash all those wonderful thoughts. I’ll leave that to my lieutenant here. I’ve other matters to attend to.”

  He then disappeared from view, folding into himself.

  Tammy looked Stacey up and down with a lecherous grin. “What to do first?”

  “You could make my day and go fuck yourself. Knowing you, though, you’ll just take that literally, and enjoy it.”

  Tammy’s grin broadened, her eyes twinkling. “That’s the beauty of being this way, Stacey.” Tammy held up her hand, which melted and expanded into a large, pimpled mushroom head. “I can be what I want.” She looked at the phallus with delight. “I can do what I want.” She lifted her eyes back to Stacey with a frown. “But I wouldn’t want you to miss out, so you get first go. You are our guest of honour, after all.”

  “No, I’m good. Really. I had giant leprous cock for breakfast.”

  “I absolutely insist.”

  The degenerate creatures bounced and chattered with excitement as Tammy walked through them toward Stacey. She held her forearm up, gazed at it as if it were the most beautiful thing she’d just come across, and ran her unchanged hand up and down its length. It began to issue a thick, black slickness from its tip that dribbled down the bulbous dome the size of a grapefruit. The droplet pausing as it hit the flared ridge at its base before cascading over.

  Stacey watched in growing dread, pulled wildly on her restraints, despite knowing she had nowhere to go and no way to get there. Tammy watched her as she struggled, her growing excitement showing as it caused her stump to issue a spurt of dark precum, which was already running from her elbow. One of Tammy’s minions hobbled around her ankles, doing its utmost to catch the stuff on its elongated tongue, licking its fat lips before it was kicked away.

  Stacey tried to wish herself to death, but she may as well wish for a ham sandwich. Neither would be forthcoming in this hell.

  Then, barely having the time to chide her own mind for thinking of something as mundane as a ham sandwich, Tammy held her arm out, and there was a rush of blackness.

  The Umbra around Tammy scattered into the air. A giant snake of a whip the thickness of Stacey’s thigh lashed about, a clawed tip at its end slicing and slashing the things to shreds. As the serpentine weapon writhed, its length kicked back, tossing Tammy aside with force.

  Her head whipped around in vain as Stacey tried to see where the thing had come from, but couldn’t find its source. But she didn’t have long to wait before it was revealed.

  A figure rose from below her, the massive tendril appendage exiting its wrist. It was huge, and demonic, yet she felt it was somehow familiar.

  The flesh on its face writhed as if comprised of worms. Its tattered clothing hung from heaving muscles, also in shreds. Its face was a contorted mass of anger, nose a flat convoluted lump, black lips stretched back over curved, yellowed scimitars of teeth. A shock of long, black waving hair framed curled horns marked with battle scars. What most drew her attention, and recognition, were its dark eyes. Or, more correctly, the flames lighting their cores.

  “Godfrey?”

  The avatar bellowed as it reached for both Paul and Stacey, clawing the air as it’s fingers curled about their bodies, as if scooping the very space around them. Godfrey pulled, and whatever it had done, the stuff holding them gave like wet tissue paper. She was crushed to its darkened chest, and felt a sensation of moving at great speed.

  “Fenton? Paul?” Stacey yelled their names several times, though no answer came, not that she expected anything sensible from Paul.

  She couldn’t tell if they were being pursued, but it seemed a safe bet. Despite the avatars presence and rescue, Fenton was nowhere to be seen. Had he attempted to battle the Umbra and succumbed when his powers hadn’t
worked? Had they now gone out of the frying pan and into a furnace?

  An all too familiar tingling sensation washed over her skin, like a nest of angry fire ants being poured over her.

  They were about to go through transference.

  Even braced, the pain was immense, and completely unlike her previous experiences to and from Mhyrr. On that occasion, there had been a gradual build-up. Now, all she felt was instant pain, and pressure, and what felt like an explosion through her very being while her bones were shattered and each shard extracted from her flesh at once.

  After feeling herself being lain down and rolled over, she had a brief sensation that someone was rocking her back and forth, and she wanted so very badly to tell them to stop, where to go, and what extremities they could insert in various orifices. After a time that felt like hours, she could feel her body again, and figured out that the person rocking her was herself.

  She opened her eyes, and immediately shut them again from the instant migraine the light produced. When time did not subside the white pain, she made her second realisation. She was in the Nexus.

  Her entire body felt like it had a severe case of pins and needles, inside and out. She wasn’t sure where the worst of the sensation came from, her eyeballs, fingernails, or brain. She could feel her heart both burning and numb all at once, and wasn’t sure it was even beating. Mouth dry, she ran her tongue around, but that set her teeth off, each feeling like it was being pushed into her skull and jaw while being drilled without anaesthesia. It was a no win situation, apart from the fact that she hadn’t been violated and killed.

  As the feelings abated enough that she could control her limbs again, Stacey sat up enough to look around. Paul lay beside her, unconscious. Fenton stood some distance away with Godfrey, looking completely unaffected. He saw she was up and came over, said something. Stacey’s ears rang with each word.

  “What… the… fuck?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fucked if I know, but I’m alive, I think. Am I?”