Without waiting to be ambushed from behind, I slipped the greathammer from its carrying loop on my back and took a ready stance. My people had never come down this far. I was the first to set foot on the naked stone of the Great Mother, the dead god Ravanur. But even dead gods could dream, and she wasn't the only one of those down here in the dark. I heard scrabbling claws on the stone a few paces behind, and at that moment, I felt a strange relief. For the last several days I had been working to fight an evil that I couldn't see. I was struggling against a corruption I couldn't understand and one that I couldn't harm directly. I wasn't an expert on the ethereal side of the world. I listened to the priests, I made my prayers and sacrifices, and I went about my life as a ranger. My life was one of the claw, the bow, the hammer, and I hated being out of my depth. So as the thing crouching in the darkness leaped for my back, I stepped neatly aside and smashed it to the stone with a smile on my face. I couldn't see my assailant, but I heard its chattering scream as it died, and felt the crunch of pulverized bone travel up through the haft of my greathammer. This was the kind of fight I was made for, and the scuffling, chittering racket that arose from out in the blackness told me that it wasn’t over yet. Good.
I set my feet in a solid stance and swung my hammer up onto my shoulder, into the ready position. Then I closed my eyes- they wouldn’t help me here- and focused on what I could hear and smell. I was Erinye, of the Erin-Vulur, and we were the predators here. I could sense them all, each twitching, bulbous rodent body quivering with anticipation, each of them preparing to pounce. They reeked of mildew and animal musk, and I could hear their claws skittering on the stone as they twitched and danced. They never seemed to be still, and beneath their foul moldy stink, I could sense something fouler- an acrid chemical edge underneath it all, like one of the Deepseeker's blessings. It made the most sense for me to wait for them here, to let them come to me, let them lunge into the arc of my hammer and die. But something didn't seem right about this. The creatures I sensed were drooling with desire to attack and devour me, and yet they still waited as if held on a leash, close enough that I could smell them- and they were impossible to ignore.
I understood what was happening almost too late. I dodged to the side, a loud mechanical clicking clattering in my ear, and a blade scraped along my back, the thrusting tip foiled by my crystalline armor. Falling back on instinct, I turned my dodge into the footwork for a heavy sideways strike, and I caught my attacker before it could fully withdraw. The hammer's head hit home with an echoing clang, and my attacker reeled away from me. It was too difficult to follow its movements. I couldn't smell it at all, especially not beneath the pervading stench of the rodents still waiting all around me. It made very little noise, and only a strange, rapid clicking noise given off when it struck, allowed me to avoid being spitted for the second time. I knew my armor could deflect massive force, and turn the point of a blade or arrow, but a properly placed blow could kill me just the same. The way this thing was moving, I was sure that it could see in the dark. I couldn't let this fight go on this way; otherwise I was going to lose. I needed a plan, and I needed it very, very soon.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Joanna
The Skin of a God
Once again, I opened my eyes in another world, unfettered by pain, injury, or the bulk of my powered armor. The sky was white as blank paper, featureless and empty. Beneath my feet, sky poured down into the ground without any discernible boundary to separate the two. "If I'm dead," I said to no one in particular, "then the afterlife is really boring." Then it hit me, for real this time. My friend, Barbas, had killed me- or at least he had managed a fair approximation of killing me. Maybe these were my last moments, and my imagination, grown fat on the overstimulation of artificially constructed dreams, was trying to create a place for me to escape to in death. If that was the case, I thought, my imagination could really do a lot better.
The bland white of the world around me shifted subtly, and for the first time since I had opened my eyes in that place, I could see the horizon, a place where the sky seemed just a little bluer, the ground just a little greener. It was hard to tell since a soft white light seemed to suffuse the whole world, but I thought I could see something bright out there on the horizon, too bright to look at directly. From the center of that light, I could just barely make out the distant shape of a person walking briskly towards me. I fixed my gaze on that distant approaching figure, afraid that if I blinked, she would be gone, and I would be alone here again. I frowned. Why did I think the silhouette out there was female? She was too far for me even to make out the general details of her figure, but I knew she was, and I couldn't have told why.
I could do little but wait for her to approach. So I waited, staring out to the horizon and watching the little figure get closer and closer, one step at a time. Details slowly came into resolution. Her hair was white like Barbas' had been, though hers was long enough for her silky platinum braid to sweep past her hips every time she moved. Her features were broad and strange, and she looked as if someone had taken a cat's skull and roughly shaped it to resemble a human's. She looked like she might have been Volistad's more feral cousin, though she didn't wear the collection of furs and shawls that seemed to be the standard fashion for the Erin-Vulur. Instead, her clothing was styled more like something I might have seen back on Earth, in the Pan-American Dominion. She wore a close-fitting jumpsuit which emphasized her willowy, slender frame, and over it, she wore something that might have been a half-cape, or a shoulder cloak. All of her clothing was as white as her hair and was made of material I couldn't identify. It seemed as soft and delicate as satin, yet it was thick as leather and despite being white, it drew in the strange directionless light around it. The result was beautiful and frightening, intriguing and terrible. She walked like a crystalline angel of death, surrounded by her penumbra as the light was devoured around her. Before I knew it, she stood before me, close enough that I could see the subtle flecks of cobalt ringed deep within her abyssal eyes. "Who are you," I asked, and I realized that I wasn't afraid. I had died, and whatever happened to me here, it couldn't possibly be worse than the agony in which I had met my end.
The pale angel didn't answer, her bird's eyes just flicked about and took inscrutable observations of my face, my body, and probably things that even I didn't know. It was then that I realized I was naked, and in much the same state I had been when I had died. My skin was hard and strangely shiny. As I held up a hand to stare at it, I could see that my fingertips had turned blue. I looked down, and to my horror, I was smeared with blood, in much the same state as I must have been when Barbas had killed me. I couldn't feel any of the pain that being ripped out of my suit must have caused me, but I could see the ruin that had been visited on my skin, and it turned my stomach upside down. I felt a cold breeze against my bald scalp, and at that moment, I realized that I would never feel the weight of my hair on my head ever again. I had been bald since I joined the Former program, made surgically hairless to make the hermetic sealing process uncomplicated. Only Barbas' dream state had brought back those familiar curly black tresses, and he was gone. He had been taken from me.
The pale-haired woman seemed to be listening to the thoughts cross my mind, because it wasn't until my eyes rose back up to meet hers that she spoke. Her voice was a low, silken purr, carrying unspecified promises of passion. Or perhaps that tone was the threat of violence. Or it was both. "I am Ravanur." She rolled the ‘r' in Ravanur so that the name began with a contented purr. "You have come to my world, little monkey-girl, and your coming has very nearly destroyed everything I died to protect."
"I didn't destroy anything! I was barely even here before this shitty little moon of yours started trying to kill me!" I took a step forward and got right up in the dead god's face. "I came here to make this place a home for over a hundred-thousand people. Now that I'm gone, they are going to get here, and they are going to die, and your people did this.”
Ravanur didn�
�t even blink at my anger. Instead, she reached up one slender ice-white hand and ran her fingertips down my face. I flinched away, and she didn’t move her hand to follow me. “Monkey-child, you’re not dead. And this is about something bigger than you, your hundred-thousand doomed souls, or my people. This is not a moon. It is not a home.”
"Then what in the hell is it?”
“This is a prison, monkey-child.” Ravanur smiled, and her fangs gleamed in the false light of the dream. Much like it had been for Volistad, the expression was not one of mirth. Rather, it conveyed a distinct and unmistakable threat. “And I am its warden.”
“And… the thing that took Barbas. Was that one of your prisoners?”
Ravanur curled her lip. “The thing that took your whispering spirit away from you was the littlest of my inmates. The littlest and the least. And yet it is still enough to bring this whole place to ruin.” Her expression turned grim. “The blight it unleashes will sweep over all life in this arm of the galaxy. And because your spirit was taken, they will first find their way to your home.”
“Earth is not my home. Not anymore, and not for a long time.”
Ravanur shrugged. "Even so. It is the place of your birth and the heart of your people. And it will be destroyed, and all within consumed in the same doom that has already made barren so much of the universe." She gave me an Erin-Vulur smile with her eyes. "Of course, of more immediate concern might be your own fate in all this."
I scoffed. “I’m dead, or hadn’t you noticed all this?” I gestured to my frozen, tattered body, and the blood smeared across my skin. “It’s already over. I’m not sure why you even bothered to see me.”
Ravanur laughed out loud, producing the same sort of coughing jaguar's roar that I had heard so many days before from Volistad. "Monkey child, I told you that you are not dead."
I raised one hairless brow. “I seem pretty dead from where I’m standing.” I frowned. “And aren’t you?”
Ravanur nodded simply. “I am quite dead. It was necessary for the sealing of this prison. The dead are eternal. Ageless. Beyond mortality and the corruption it implies.” She pointed at me. “But you are not dead. Not yet. You still have a chance to change all of this, if you are willing to sacrifice. You will live. Your home world will be safe. And you may even be able to shepherd the hundred-thousand you speak of, perhaps show them how to make a life in this place. The people of this world are thin on the ground now. You could save the Erin-Vulur from the slow death that creeps towards them.”
“Considering how hard they tried to kill me, I feel somewhat less than motivated by that,” I said sardonically. I frowned. “Though you are one of their gods. And you said I have almost destroyed all of this.” It hit me, all at once. Though I had thought that that time was past, fear flooded my veins like cold fire. I looked up at Ravanur’s face with my heart in my throat. “It was you, wasn’t it? You told them to kill me.” I took a step back, terror rising in me. The Erin-Vulur revered her as a god, though she seemed to be something else, something more than a simple tribal deity. I didn’t know what she was capable of, but if the rest of my time on Chalice had taught me anything, it was that I should always assume the worst. “Why haven’t you killed me now? I know you can do it, dead or not dead.”
Ravanur showed all of her teeth in a snarl, a rumble rising in her throat. It was a sound that no human could make, and though I had seen both Volistad and the enraged Stormcaller growl like that, it still surprised me every time. She lunged forward, fast as an eye blink, and seized me by the throat, lifting me up off the ground with as much effort as I might use to snatch up a rag doll. Though this was a dream, and I had thought myself dead, the pressure on my throat was incredible. I struggled against her impossible grip, but I might as well have tried to bend iron bars with my hands. "I did not try to kill you, monkey-child. It has been some time since my people heard my voice as they once did, and I can no longer compel them to do my bidding." Her fingers tightened, cutting off my air, and I fumbled uselessly at her wrist. "The Erinye do, however, know my words of ages past, and they did what they had long been taught. Most who come to this world are agents of the enemy, here to free those trapped within. If they had succeeded in slaying you, the danger would have been past." I struggled to get out a word, but all I could manage were weak gagging sounds. "But you survived, and now your spirit and his machine are under the control of the enemy! I should crush you for what you have brought to this place." Her fingers squeezed even harder, and my vision began to gray out around the edges. If I died here, in the dream, I could suffer massive hemorrhage in my brain. Even if Barbas hadn't quite managed to kill me, dying here would certainly finish what he had started. My struggles became feeble, and everything began to fade away.
Ravanur held me there for a moment longer, and darkness started to creep in from the corners of my vision. “I’m not going to kill you, monkey-girl. I’m going to do much, much worse.” She smiled again, with both her wide array of needle teeth and her canted abyssal eyes. “I’m going to make you like me. I’m going to turn you into a god.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Volistad
The Skin of a God
I couldn't see my opponent. I couldn't smell it. I could barely hear it. But that didn't mean I couldn't kill it. Every one of its movements was preceded by a mechanical clicking, and I had been able to use that indicator to stay a step ahead of the deadly blade's unseen attacks. I wielded my hammer in two hands, mostly to parry, but occasionally I would swing and connect, and whatever metal armor my opponent wore would clang like an alarm bell. But for all the times I hit it, and for all the strength I put into my strikes, my assailant didn't waver. Not once. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't getting tired, and even with a magicked heart beating its perfect rhythm in my chest, there was only so long I could keep doing this. And my opponent knew it. The attacks were swift, precise, varied, and constant. I could already feel the burn in my arms as I sensed an opening, but I took the bait and struck anyway, with the full power of my arms, legs, and hips. If I had hit an Erinye with that strike, I would have turned his ribcage to a pulp. If I had hit a burug with that strike, I might have slowed it down, or even made it hesitate. But the only answer I received, for all of my newfound strength and stamina, was a loud clang and a lizard-quick stab toward my face with a chattering blade.
I didn't bother deflecting the strike. Instead, I twitched backward out of the reach of that hissing point and let myself fall. I took the fall the way I had been taught, and rolled back over my shoulder to regain my feet. That was when the rodent things decided to resume their mad assault. I lunged up off the stone, intending an arcing strike to where I guessed my metal-clad opponent's head to be, but I was met halfway by a twitching, bulbous, screeching body. It was not strong enough for the hit to be very painful, but mid-leap it still took me out of my planned momentum and sent me sprawling. Other rodent-things took the opportunity, and in a heartbeat, I was buried beneath shuddering, plagued furry bodies, each of them possessing a uniquely vile stench. I gagged and tried to thrash my way free, but there were too many of them, and within seconds I heard the scratching sounds of mutant rat teeth against the crystal of my armor. I was not wearing my helm- it was stowed in my bag so as not to restrict my vision. I knew that if I didn't get out of this immediately, I would feel those teeth on my face and neck within moments. Or at least I would if my metal clad assailant didn’t skewer me first.
The telltale clicking came out of the darkness, and I knew the strike was coming. I let go of my greathammer and rolled, as hard as I could, to one side, and was rewarded with the piercing squeal of one of the rodents as the hissing, clattering blade pinned it to the stone. I continued my roll and slammed my arms down on the ground hard, stunning some of the little monsters clinging to them, and with some effort, I managed to scramble and get my feet under me. I immediately had to dive to the ground again as the seething blade came whistling overhead. Some of the rodents I had shaken loose,
heaved themselves back onto me and held fast, slowing me down again. I roared in frustration, a loud, full-throated roar which echoed off of the cavern walls, and I heard the whispery movements of my opponent in the dark as he readied himself for the killing blow. There was a rapid, frenetic clicking sound, and I tried to twist away, but at that moment, one of the rodents managed to sink its fangs into the unarmored place behind my knee and that leg buckled. I lurched forward at an angle, helpless to change my momentum, and I knew then that I was dead.
Burning pain lanced across the right side of my face, from my mouth back toward my ear, and immediately hot blood drenched my jaw. The edge of the blade glanced off my skull, however, and I fell forward to my hands and knees, bloody but still alive. If I didn't do something soon, though, that would change very quickly. I scrabbled my feet frantically at the stone and exploded up from the ground, throwing my whole weight into the armored metal chest of my assailant. I hit it hard, but I didn't trust the blow itself to do much more than annoy it. So I wrapped my arms around it and kept moving, pumping my legs and shoving it back until it lost its footing on the uneven stone. We crashed to the ground in a screech of tortured metal, showering panicked rodents in all directions, and I didn't wait for further openings. I snatched one of my climbing axes from my belt and rained blows down on what I took to be my opponent's head. The darkness was nearly complete, but I could still make out the dim shape of an Erinye-sized head beneath my blows. I kept the hits coming, slamming my ax down over and over against the head, splitting the metal shell I found there after a dozen or so blows. My attacker fought back, hard, but it didn't seem to have as easy a time dealing with me when it wasn't on its feet. My vicious attack appeared to have stunned it. My arms burned, and I felt myself getting more and more tired. I couldn't give up, though. I had to be sure this thing was down. I would probably not get an opening like that again.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 21
