‘Open up for Danu’s sake!’
Time was up. He turned back, ignoring the tingling in his shoulders from the poison. The figure was just feet away, their movements agile, almost cat-like. This was no sheol. The figure’s right hand moved sharply. He ducked on instinct, pain flaring on his cheek as something sliced his skin and slammed into the door by his head.
Cade raced to meet his opponent. Damned if he was going to fail now when sanctuary was so close. The shadow leapt up, drawing a short sword from their back as they did so. He rolled forwards, under the attack, the shadow striking the ground where he’d stood with a dull clang.
Cade was up and on the attack in an instant. His blades danced before him, attacking high and low, probing for gaps in his opponent’s defences. The warrior matched him for speed, but their strength was less than his. With every attack he pushed on, forcing the shadow back. Their blades clashed and clanged in the night, sparks flying as they danced around the open square.
A noise from the exit made him pause. Not another attacker? He glanced, just for a second, just enough to see the door opening and the welcome sight of his Brothers spilling out, just enough time for the shadow to catch him unawares.
His sense flared before his own physical senses made him aware. The sword lunged. He pushed one dagger up, pushing the tip of the sword away from his chest and into his shoulder. Pain exploded up his side. The shadow followed through but he twisted, ignoring the fire in his shoulder and chopping down with an iron-lined sleeve onto their wrist. Bone gave way and the shadow let out a yelp as it stumbled backwards.
‘Cade! Eyes!’
He knew what was coming. Without thinking Cade threw himself to the floor, covering the unconscious Seb with his own body, readying himself for the feel of cold steel in his back.
The strike never came. From somewhere behind him came the familiar sound of a grenade launcher being armed. The shadow cursed just as the grenade launched with a loud whoompf!
The world exploded into a searing white light. Cade scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for the effect to pass. Seconds that felt a lifetime drifted by, the smell of the wet earth mixing with that of burning phosphorous.
‘Clear!’ Came a shout from the door.
Without a second thought, for he knew and trusted the source, Cade forced himself upright and staggered to the open door. He cast a last look at the square, noting with no small respect that no remains lay where the shadow had been seconds earlier. Strong hands grabbed him as he stumbled in, dragging him into safety. Others rushed out and collected the boy. The door shut behind him, the air crackling with energy as ancient seals activated.
Chapter 7
‘...have brought him here...’ The voice came from far away.
Seb’s eyes flickered. He felt himself rising from a timeless void.
‘...your father will...’
Images formed in his mind. Wicked, black eyed creatures. Daggers cutting flesh. His flesh.
‘Will he live?’ The voice was familiar. A face came to mind, pale, almost grey. Yellow eyes.
‘Live?’ An unfamiliar voice, older, gruffer. ‘I’m surprised he’s still alive as it is.’
‘Me too, he’s a tough one.’
‘Tough, or just foolish.’
An image flashed across his mind. A terrifying visage, a contorted face of fangs, dripping with drool, the mouth wide open, exposing a bottomless pit of darkness. The dark swelled, encompassing everything.
He heard himself scream. Then silence.
***
Seb opened his eyes, the effort painful, as if the lids were muscles atrophied from under use. He sat upright, noticing straight away the absence of pain from his side. He glanced down, tentatively feeling the bare skin, the flesh now completely unblemished aside from a pale white line, barely an inch across.
‘Stone me,’ he said, pressing the scar, not quite believing what he saw.
He took a moment to scan the room. It was a simple place, more a dormitory really. Aside from the bed he was in there were several more arranged at regular intervals throughout the room. Next to his bed stood a chest of drawers with a jug of water and a half full glass on it.
He swung the sheets back and lowered his legs to a cold wooden floor. He stood, relishing the feeling of movement without pain, before striding to the small window.
Outside, dimmed in the fading light of a setting sun, lay a large lawn, expertly maintained, that extended far into the distance. Immediately before him, next to the building, was a gravelled drive which trailed off into a small copse to the far right. Beyond the lawn the grounds of the building became more unruly, with large bushes and shrubs competing with the lawn for dominance. Nature dominated by the farthest reaches, with a massive wall of conifers obscuring the hills that he could just about make out in the distance.
‘A bit different to Brightford, I presume?’
Seb spun round, his stomach knotting. Cade stood a foot inside the door that he now let shut behind him. Bruises covered his face and his right arm hung in a sling.
‘Ever so slightly,’ Seb said. He nodded towards Cade’s arm, ‘What happened?’
‘It’ll heal. It always takes longer when it’s sheol poison.’
‘Sheol?’
‘I’ll come to that.’ Cade said. ‘How about you, you feeling okay?’
Seb absently felt his side, nodding slowly. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘That black sludge?’
Cade smiled. ‘The algae?’
‘It’s gone?’
Cade nodded. ‘When there’s no wound to heal it just dries up and drops off.’
‘I thought it didn’t heal? That it was just a temporary thing?’
Cade nodded. ‘Correct. Once we got you here we had help from more powerful sources.’
Seb sat down on the bed, his legs suddenly feeling weak. ‘You should market that stuff you know, it’d make a fortune.’
‘I think we’d have a bit of a problem explaining where we source it from.’
Silence fell. Seb stared at the floor and shook his head, so many questions coming to mind.
‘What happened to me, Cade?’
He was suddenly aware of tears filling his eyes, his voice sounding meek, almost child-like. He coughed, shaking his head again as he tried to swallow down the lump in his throat. He let out a long, drawn out breath.
‘You okay?’ Cade said.
‘Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s been a bit...stressful.’
‘You’re not kidding.’ Cade nodded back to the door, ‘You up for a walk? I’ll see what I can fill you in on before you meet the Magister.’
‘The who?’
Cade smiled. ‘Come on.’
Seb followed in silence as they left the dormitory. They emerged into a wide corridor. A worn carpet filled the centre, leading towards a closed wooden door in the distance. Faded paintings hung on the walls, the kind sold for a tenner at a junk sale. The air smelled of damp.
‘Where are we?’
‘It’s not really a simple answer.’
‘Try me.’
‘Geographically, we’re just at the northern boundaries of the Lake District, not far from Carlisle.’
‘Anywhere I’ve heard of?’
‘Not really. You won’t find this place on any map.’
‘Why am I not surprised to hear that?’
The door at the far end opened as they arrived at it. A young man, probably about his own age, came the opposite way. The man’s face was caked in mud and something redder. Looking at him, their eyes meeting, Seb saw the dried blood caked around the man’s eye, the socket puffed up. The man saw Cade and his head dropped instantly. He silently edged past them without saying a word.
‘What happened to him?’ Seb said as they made their way down a wooden staircase that creaked with every step.
‘Combat practice,’ Cade said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. ‘I didn’t think they still taught that to be honest.’
‘Who don�
�t?’
‘Let’s get outside first. We can talk there. This place makes me claustrophobic.’
They reached the bottom of the stairs. A heavy-looking set of large, wooden doors stood before them. Cade pushed them open as if they weighed nothing. They stepped out onto the gravel outside, Seb slowed, savouring the freshness that washed over him, breathing it in.
‘Come on, you can get a good view from up here.’
Seb followed as they trudged up a set of slate steps that ascended a grass slope towards a stone gazebo at the top, the structure showing its age, cracked and worn by the elements.
The air was cooler up here, the chill nipped at him, but it was a good sensation that made him feel alert. Refreshed, he turned back. His mouth dropped.
‘What the hell?’
They’d left a building of some kind, he was sure of that. A big one too, at least three floors. But then why, when he looked back down the path where they’d come, where the stone steps had seemingly morphed into rough, uneven rocks, did he now look at a crumbled ruin of stone and foliage?
‘That’s not possible,’ he said.
‘What do you see?’
He looked at Cade and then back again. ‘Is that meant to be some kind of joke? I see a bloody ruin, that’s what I see. But I know that can’t be true. I just came from there.’
Cade nodded. ‘Nope, it’s true, that’s what’s there. At least, that’s what the Unaware see.’
‘What?’
‘Look again,’ Cade said, nodding towards the ruin.
Seb looked, shaking his head. What kind of trip was this? Yup, there it was. A ruin. A broken, knackered, stone ruin. What was he meant to be looking at? He opened his mouth to speak, ‘I don’t -’
Then it happened.
The view became smudged at first, like looking through a windscreen during a thunderstorm. He shook his head and blinked, but the distortion only grew. An uneasy feeling sprouted from his spine as pieces of the image began to change, ruined stone being replaced by solid slate, crumbling square holes suddenly making way for gleaming windows. The transformation continued for several seconds, the mirage peeling away, revealing a gothic looking mansion underneath.
‘That’s just…’ Seb couldn’t stop shaking his head, ‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘Have a seat, Kid.’
Seb opened his mouth to protest. No way was he going to sit on that rough slab that had once passed as a seat. But the slab was gone. A burnished wooden bench stood in its place.
‘Is this whole place just one big illusion?’ he said, running his hands along the bench. It was definitely real.
‘Like I said, to the Unaware it is. I’ve not seen the ruins for about seventy years.’
Seb collapsed onto the bench. ‘Seventy years?’
Cade sat alongside him. ‘Give or take a decade or so. It’s hazy before I took the Oath.’
‘You must have a damned good surgeon.’
Cade laughed at that. At least he had a sense of humour.
‘So, are you going to let me in on what’s going on?’
Cade nodded. ‘Shortly, but first I need some information from you.’
‘I’m not sure what I can tell you, but go ahead.’
‘Why were you at the church that night?’
‘I don’t know really. I wonder about that a lot. The night. I like the night, always have.’
‘But why the church?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know. I seem to get drawn to places. Nothing specific about them. They just seem to appeal, like, you know, on a subconscious level.’
Cade frowned, his eyes looking left and right as if mulling over something.
‘Where else do you go? Can you name any other place you’ve been drawn to?’
‘Interesting line of questioning.’
‘It’s important.’ Cade said, the tone of his voice not inviting any room for sarcasm.
‘Okay, I’ll play. Another one that always seems to get me is Bleasedale Circle.’
That made Cade sit up. ‘The stones in Lancaster?’
‘Like I said, I like to wander. Why, how is this relevant to what happened?’
‘It just confirms my suspicions. You’re drawn to these places as you’re a Latent. The first test was testing if you could see Skelwith.’
‘Skelwith?’
‘The mansion. But those places are special. The church used to have an access point to a Way before it collapsed. Bleasedale’s the same, although that one has been sealed for centuries. The Consensus is still weak there though, which is what’s been drawing you in.’
Seb blinked and waved both hands up. ‘Okay, now it’s your turn. All I just heard was some crazy shit followed by a bit more crazy sprinkled on top.’
Cade laughed again. ‘Fair enough. You’re going to hear a lot more about this soon but let me give you an abridged version for now.’
‘That’ll do for now, anyway. I doubt my brain can take too much of this Matrix stuff today.’
‘That analogy isn’t too far off the mark.’ Cade said. He shifted round on the bench, his yellow eyes fixing Seb with a stare that made him uncomfortable.
‘Right, Seb. Imagine that the world you know, this world, is just one of many realms that exist in one, massive reality.’
‘A bit like the multiverse thing?’ he said, smirking inwardly at the one random fact he could add to the discussion.
‘Not quite. Take this one universe, as you call it. Imagine if that universe was shattered into several pieces. Where once civilisations existed side by side, they are now separated by vast distances of time and space.’
‘Wow, this is getting heavy,’ he said, pinching the sides of his brow.
‘I won’t go any further on that for now, brighter people than me will explain it better than I can. Just for now accept the premise that Earth exists in a fragment of an old universe. That this fragment is known as a Shard, and there exist many other fragments out there, also called Shards.’
Seb nodded slowly. Part of his mind, the part that worked with facts, with logic, told him that this was obviously bullshit. How could this guy know? This guy with the ninja skills and the yellow eyes? The same guy that had saved him from possessed people with blood like oil and eyes as black as night? He processed it over and over, and slowly his logical mind began to concede that perhaps this guy was worth listening to. Hell, how else could he explain the mansion appearing trick?
‘Okay, I’ll accept that premise. I’ve heard something sort of similar before, so it’s not too Twilight Zone just yet.’
‘Give it time. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.’ Cade continued, ‘Finally, imagine that the cause of this Sharding was a great war that ripped apart the very fabric of reality. Imagine that the survivors of this war fled the chaos that remained and found a new home in the Shard that was the furthest, most distant place away from the horror that remained. Imagine these beings lived amongst the natural inhabitants of that realm, hidden in plain sight, masking their true nature.’
‘Earth, our universe,’ Seb said, his eyes wide as his brain worked at a hundred miles an hour. ‘That’s the Shard. You, Sarah, those things. You’re all part of the lot that came here?’
‘You pick things up quick. Although not many of the originals are left. I was born a human, here, on earth, as are most of the other Aware. The sheol were here already, but not in the form or the number we know now.’
‘The sheol?’
‘Fiends. Daemons. No one knows where they came from. Some say it was one of the Shards, others from the Void itself. They are a lecture on their own, which we don’t have time for right now.’
Someone appeared on the path in front of them. Seb jumped. There was no way he’d just walked up there. The guy was in grey, same as Seb’s smock. He stood out a mile against the gloom. How the hell had he not seen him?
‘Master Cade, the Three are ready for the arrival.’
Cade nodded and rose as the man turned and
began descending the path. ‘Come on, it’s time.’
‘For what?’ Seb said, that unease creeping back into his gut.
‘To speak to those people brighter than me that I told you about.’ Cade spoke in a light tone, but something else had crept into his voice.
‘But there’s still more. So much more. What about Sarah? Why did that thing kill her? And what the hell did she do to me?’
‘In good time. For now rest assured that answers will come. You’re safe here; I think you’ll find answers to questions that you’ve had a lot longer than you think.’
Seb pondered those words as he stood. Cade started down the path.
‘Thanks, by the way,’ Seb said, just before they set off back. Cade stopped and looked back.
‘What for?’
‘Saving my life. I don’t think I said it before. I’ll pay you back for it one day, I promise.’
Cade nodded. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
Chapter 8
They moved round the front of the building, every step revealing more as the illusion peeled away piece by piece. Seb’s mouth dropped the further they went, his eyes wide, drinking in the place as they moved about the perimeter.
Looking at Skelwith was like seeing the past smashed together with the present. On one side stood a massive church, the same one he’d seen ruined in the illusion. The church’s walls were a washed out grey, with lichen and spores spotting the surface. Large cracks scored the brick, filled in and repaired over the centuries.
Attached to the church, where ancient walls met modern Lakeland slate, stood a more modern looking building altogether. Whilst still impressive, this mansion, painted all in pristine white, and easily five stories tall, dulled the romance of the place, as if the modern world were intruding on the area.
They continued along a winding track, stopping at regular intervals as wandering sheep blocked their path, absently chewing grass whilst staring back with dumb eyes. As they left one particular clearing Seb caught sight of a stone marked with strange runes that was almost invisible in the undergrowth. Looking closer, the stone loomed large, easily taller than himself. As he studied the runes he was sure some of them flickered slightly, as if he should be seeing something else that his mind just couldn’t quite process.
Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1) Page 5
