SUNRIDER
By Rafael Hohmann
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT © 2017 RAFAEL HOHMANN
ISBN: 978-0-692-92817-2
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For Jess and Dave: Jess, without many months of support and encouragement, this story never would have come this far. Dave, our long hours of debate and discussion have made Lenova wider, scarier, and more exciting.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE NECROMANTIC LANGUAGE
PROLOGUE:
From the Sky
—I have seen men become Gods, and I have seen Gods become dust—
The Priests and Priestesses walked in parallel lines, shoulder to shoulder, chanting songs of suffering. Thousands of black robes flapped like dying crows, hanging to shoulders, beaks swallowing heads. Moans and whispered chants swam in the wind, swallowed by the ashen land. The cracked earth was a dead beast, and the long line of hooded forms was the last of the maggots patrolling on bones. They were a collective, a sacred tribe, the last living history of what once was a great people, eons ago. They were… a cult. Glints came from beneath their robes—quick flashes of yellow. In devotion to the ways of sacrifice many had replaced organic limbs for ones made of gold. They hobbled and limped across the Kingdom of Rot, flesh matched by metal.
Mal'Bal strolled at the front of the parade, his hairless head pulsing with purple veins. He was the only one who didn’t wear a robe. He chose to expose his glorious body for all to see. In his devotion to pain and the hate he felt for life, Mal’Bal had ritualized and swapped each limb and organ with gold all the way to his neck. One could no longer call him human; he was something else entirely. The Golden Agony. The Necromancer of Rot. Mal'Bal the Lich-Lord.
In his yellow hand he held a charted map marked with crisscrossing lines representing the common trails where the enchanted dead roamed. He tossed the parchment without thought or aim toward a nearby follower. The man scrambled to catch the paper before it blew away, knowing punishment would be severe if it slipped off, twirling in the gray air. Mal’Bal was confident that they would return home before their smell drew in a corpse-swarm too large to handle.
The voices of the cult meshed and separated, becoming one, then splitting into a cacophony of noise. Harsh prayers of pain and death brought euphoria, brought ecstasy. They were lovers of self-immolation. There was predictability to their energy. When excitement built-up to crescendos of shuddering limbs and rolling eyes, there was always one or two who would stop and flay themselves. This was tradition: a part of their yearly mecca around the land. They would leave their home, the young adults with eager pale-pink skin—a glinting baby purity—following the elders who tread the steps of their ancestors. When they returned, the smooth bodies of the young would be split and broken, marked by metal. It was an elevation of status, an opportune enlightenment into a state of higher being. There was nothing more glorious. The cries grew louder and as if on cue, a form shouted and broke formation, hood falling back and revealing a shadow-haired woman. She unsheathed a scythe, the common weapon of the cult. “Oh Great One, from weakness to mastery of the flesh, behold my sacrifice!”
The woman slammed the blade behind her right kneecap, with eyes like daggers focused on Mal'Bal's expression. She shrieked, and blood splattered the dim rocks. Mal'Bal raised an eyebrow, cruel pleasure flickering across his features. The woman, face scrunched in suffering, bared her teeth. Sitting on her rear, she plunged the scythe behind the other kneecap. She moaned and shuddered as Mal'Bal closed his eyes, savoring the woman’s pain like a sponge soaking up water. He let the moment linger.
“Bless her.” he hissed, his voice a smooth poison escaping a fissure.
Three robed men came forward, eager to please, putting golden ingots into chalices shaped like knee joints. As they did so, Mal’Bal chanted in rhythm, low in pitch. He spoke faster, voice growing harsher and angrier, demanding submission over the elements. The golden ingots shook in place, ready for a final command. Mal'Bal waved a metal hand.
“Gasta.”
The ingots melted, forming liquid yellow puddles. Green Apex gems—stones holding dark energy—were placed within the gold as more words were spoken to solidify the material. Hooded forms brought the hemorrhaging woman her new knees, laying her back and cleaning her wounds. They worked quickly. The smell of blood would attract the dead from hundreds of miles. When the cult members had done their part, they gazed to Mal’Bal in waiting, most with blank worshipful faces. Yet hidden in the crowds some cowered, others scowled with defiance—but never openly. Not all wanted the man as their leader.
The Lich-Lord whispered the final words to the ritual. Blood flow was sealed, gold melded to flesh, and the woman slumped back, her pain subsiding. The magical energy that left Mal’Bal was insubstantial, yet he took a break, staring into the night sky. The sky was cold and silent, unresponsive to Mal’Bal’s conscience. The smattering of stars almost seemed as if nature had botched its attempt at covering the emptiness beyond their world. The lights were an ineffective veil, unsuccessfully masking that they were alone in existence. Many in the cult were content—complacent even—with the lack of more. But for some reason Mal’Bal couldn’t accept the silence. His lot was temporal, and it made him angry. If he couldn’t have more, no one could. He wanted to yell at his people, to command that they look up into the void, and understand. If only the dim glow from those small dots would grant them a sign, perhaps acknowledge him as correct… As if hearing his thoughts, an answer came. It was in the form of falling white lines trailing red tails. His followers paused, observing Mal’Bal’s stiffened back.
Falling stars were a new sight to Mal'Bal, one who’d seen events most mortals couldn’t ima
gine. One headed toward him: a blinking white light shining brighter and brighter. It whistled as it tore through the stiff air. His cult yelled in exclamation, finally, finally looking up. At the last minute, Mal'Bal stepped away.
The star—no, the small object no larger than a boot—smashed in front of him, throwing the crowd back. Upon touching the ground, it let out a pearly ring, like the loudest of church bells. Then—there was silence but for the crackling of melted rock.
Mal’Bal, his golden body too heavy to be toppled, stood alone while cult members struggled to their feet. His wild eyes found the object smoldering by the light of red-hot earth. Many other stars fell from the sky, crisscrossing the distant horizon, no other landing anywhere near his lands. Approaching the crater caused by the event, Mal'Bal studied the piece of armor that lay at its center: a bracer. It glowed white in the night, metal popping as it cooled. It emanated the promise of dark power and confirmed all he had believed in. Mal’Bal’s face split into a horrifying grin.
CHAPTER ONE:
Cave-Diver
—For thus the King of the Gods, Abealon was blind to his younger brother’s scheming. The rebellious dark God Miza-Tirith worked in secret from the shadows of unformed space, where his workshop was born in the heart of a dead star. And so, experimenting with forbidden forms of creation, Miza-Tirith’s boredom grew into a belief that the Avengelions should not abide by rules or limitations. And when his older brother Abealon slept, Miza-Tirith would whisper into his ear, working his mind over to the idea that they should loosen the laws of creation.—
-Domolov, the Three-Fingered Cleric’s Historic Book of Speculative Deity Theology, page 12,803
Two male bodies struggled in the ghastly heat of the desert, churning up a curtain of terra-cotta tinted dust and sacrificing the little water they had in their bodies. A film of salt coated their foreheads, sweat evaporating as quickly as it was formed. They slid down a knoll—apart from the crags to their backs, it was one of the only slopes as far as the eye could see. The ground was an unforgiving enemy to both forms, uncaring to the subject of the fight or the lifeforms involved in it. It clawed at their bodies and drank of their energy, soaking up whatever it could take—and it could take it all. In this land, dreams and aspirations were as brittle and as quick to die as the plants that grew upon the bleak surface.
A stone smashed into Finn SunRider's cheek, drawing blood. The flat-faced teenager who’d hit him gave a quick laugh. The older boy's pockmarked features and brutish cement-block head filled Finn with infuriation. It wasn’t Finn's fault that the boy looked like the back-end of a Vat-Pig, but having the guts to call him ugly—especially since the miner was twice Finn’s build—had been the least smart choice Finn had made all day. He lay on the ground with hot sand and rocks beneath his fingers: part of a familiar consistency. It was a texture he’d known all his life—forlorn and boring. Grit clung to his nails and wind siphoned moisture from his pores, leaving a stale taste on his lips.
“You’re stuck here like the rest of us, talc-licker.” the bigger boy spewed. Talc was weakest of minerals, softer than dirt. Finn hated the name.
Finn forced a large bloody grin, even though deep down he wanted to bare his teeth in rage. He wished he could muster the spit to hawk at the miner, but instead he chuckled. “What? Does the outside world scare you?”
Finn jumped up and swung his right fist, using a chunk of diorite as a weapon. It smacked across his enemy’s ear, ripping cartilage, and the older teen staggered backwards, fighting to keep his balance. The fresh wound—already drying—only enraged the older boy. Before new wounds could be inflicted, two elder miners stepped between them. The burly men grabbed both teenagers by the nape of their necks, holding them apart. Finn blew a kiss to the other boy and the large boy howled, trying to break free from his captor.
“Let me cave 'is face in, let me!”
Finn was dragged away from the middle of the gravel trail running between a sad toolshed half-buried in discarded stone and an abandoned ventilation shaft still open to the hollow depths directly below their feet. The man holding him let go, pulling at his sticky shirt collar hugging his wide chest. “By the Vat-Worm's dung, what's going on?” he barked. “Finn? Gunther? Either of you want to explain yourselves?”
The older boy, Gunther, snarled. “Talc-licker wants to see the big wide world.” The boy shook himself free and pointed at Finn with a grubby calloused finger. “He's an ungrateful cave-diver. Make him work our shift Maggs. Let him break rocks for a while.”
Maggs, the sun-wrinkled man that’d pulled Finn back, reprimanded the spry teen with a stern gaze. Finn turned away, chewing on the corner of his dirty cheek. It tasted like dirt. Everything tasted like dirt.
“Again Finn? Talking of leaving? You know you can't, you don't have the funds.”
Finn kicked at the ground, scattering gravel. How could he convey his longing for freedom? His desperation for a life beyond drudgery and monotony, a meaninglessness filled only by work that would never benefit him? He couldn’t speak the words out-loud. What he felt couldn’t be expressed in sentences, but only wishes fragmented by his lack of knowledge of the world. He didn’t know what smells skipped off the surface of a lake, but he would like to. Or if he’d enjoy holding snow in his hands, but he wanted to give it a try. What he would give to experience the liberty to go where he pleased and do what he wanted to do. “Of course I don't have the funds.” he hissed to Maggs. “We'll never be given the funds. The supervisors are nothing but slave-drivers.”
Maggs rolled his eyes. “Get back to your shift. Be grateful you don't get kicked out into the Slaglands.” The elder miner picked up his dropped pickax and called over his shoulder as he turned. “And afterwards go to the practitioner for salve. Your face is cut.” The men dispersed, taking Gunther with them. They walked with hunched, bent backs, feet following the same path they had for years. They were forms defeated by the heat. It had stolen both their moisture and hope. Shuffling downhill, they entered a drab granite barracks, hunger driving them forward. Shift-change.
Finn threw his diorite chunk against the half-buried tool shed. Dust billowed from the impact. He was surrounded by an ocean of dirt and rock—a desert landscape of jagged stone cliffs, forming an inescapable border to one side, and plains of desolation everywhere else. The smell of iron lingered in Finn’s nostrils. The colors yellow and orange saturated the landscape, the sky, and the people, sinking through skin and swirling within their dreams at night. It drove a man mad for a change in hue.
The desolate Crust, with three mining outposts distanced along its crags, was a name given by the miners to describe the torrid environment they endured in. Its official name was unknown, and perhaps only House Crumm knew the answer. With their pointedly proud emblems of a ball and chain attached to a broken sword—a mocking sigil to those enslaved by the house—House Crumm took on the role as the overseers of the desert. With their lack of care to the old laws of Lenova, it was they that condoned slave trade and forced man-labor within miserable camps. It was they that were willing to beat a young boy to death for refusing to work. Yet for all its hot misery and although overshadowed by the corrupt House, the Crust was livable—unlike the Slaglands. Poising at the edge of their camp like a black sleeping lizard covered in cracked scales lined with lava, the Slag swallowed most the desert. There was life in the Crust—tough life—but it was there. The Slag…it was a blot of sterile heat. Legend told that the Slaglands was once an ocean of lava, created by titanic forces long ago. It had pushed and stretched, shaping the Crust into a crescent-moon dotted with cliffs and crags that resembled stone toes and tables pointing to the sky. The natural terrain formed an opportunistic area for those who wished to mine jewels from the depths. It was a death sentence for many, but an opportunity for businessmen.
Finn had seen wealth; diamonds, rubies, and even the elusive sapphire. He'd touched the wealth. But none of it belonged to him. No, he collected precious ores and gems for far-away nobl
es. Crumm would trade with any that were willing to sully their bags with blood treasure. It was always a temptation for the miners to pocket what they found, but to steal a stone was to be outcast into the black Slag. This had been Finn’s life for as long as he could remember. He was orphaned at birth like so many unfortunate children of Lenova, with no recollection of his parents. Perhaps they were dead. Perhaps they were uncaring and had tossed him to the slavers as a baby. He didn’t know, and he never would. As a child, he always cared for an answer to his past, but time and the desert had beat the desire for conclusion right out of him. To Finn, the past was long gone and to be forgotten. The orange heat of the Crust was his oldest memory, and that was all it would ever be. He'd picked up his first pickax at the age of 2.
Finn trudged up the knoll, passed the half-buried closet, and overlooked the outpost. Forms bustled below him: men and boys with rough-hewn shirts made gray by work. Their clothes stuck to their bodies and sweat glistened like jewels on their skin. A hundred meters away Finn could see a black line marking the edge of the Slag. Massive heatwaves danced over the horizon. The temperature emanating from the Western landscape was immense.
He kicked over a tiny knot of sage brush. It exploded into dust. Behind it was a Mole-Hole—a cave-diver entrance into the mines beneath his feet. The passage was drilled straight into the ground, like a thin entrance into the hollow space within a vase. He crouched at its edge and balanced in place. To fall through the Mole-Hole would be certain death—a hundred-meter plummet down the central mineshaft to a hard bottom. The wide mineshaft itself was all underground, with sole entrance coming from the collection of holes cut across its ceiling. He adjusted his mining shoes. Made of Sponge-Marble, they protected him from jagged stone and prevented his feet from burning in the desert heat. Reaching through the hole along its edges, he found what he was looking for: a thick dusty rope held by a clamp. He unlatched the end of the rope and pulled it up, hearing a pulley system creak in place. For the millionth time, Finn imagined the ground giving in, sending him into the dark abyss. He was sure Gunther would throw a party for the whole outpost if Finn died, yet it sounded a better fate than to wake up another day in the Crust.
SunRider: Book 1 (The SunRider Saga) Page 1
