The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  “Arith Kys nael…” The creature’s words were whispered nonsense.

  “Silence your filthy tongue.” Captain Argent stepped forward.

  The ghůl’s speed easily made up for the fact that he had no weapon. He leered, thick mucus drooling from his mouth. With ragged, broken nails, he gouged at the captain so fast that his entire arm blurred with speed.

  Their scent overwhelmed everything else, a blend of decaying rot and animal urine, strong enough that I could taste it. It blended with the nagging, insistent feel of them pushing against my mind like being covered with slithering snakes.

  If the sensation continued, I realized, it would slowly devour my sanity.

  “Ysabel!” The captain tossed his empty gun my way. It landed behind him on the ground. “My ammunition pouch is on the side of my belt! Reload!” He swung his blade, catching the creature in the left cheekbone.

  It didn’t even slow.

  Barnabas fired again, catching another in the shoulder, but it came on, along with its partner. They moved with uncanny grace—any part of them that had once been sane and whole was long gone.

  “Ysabel?”

  The creature lunged for the captain again, dark blood seeping into its tattered shirt, and he stepped backward.

  “Got it!” I grabbed the pistol, surprised at its weight. As the captain swung his blade, holding the creature at bay, I fumbled in his belt pouch, freeing five of the small shells. I almost dropped one and then tried to open the gun’s chambers.

  “Hot!” I cursed as I burned the tip of my fingers on the outer casing.

  Captain Argent lunged forward and drove the edge of his blade into the creature’s neck.

  I heard the meaty sound as it entered flesh.

  The creature gurgled, still trying to draw itself toward him. Shaedr-ghůl knew neither sanity, nor pain, nor the sweetness of sleep. Completely broken by the Shroud, they were monstrosities that seemed to have only one desire:

  Carnage.

  To my left, Barnabas’ gun roared again. Catching the female creature in the side of the head, she stumbled and then fell.

  Somehow, I opened Captain Argent’s gun and slid the bullets inside.

  He must have heard the click when I closed his weapon, as his hand shot out, waiting for it. After I slapped it into his palm, he cocked it as he drew it around.

  The ghůl impaled on the captain’s sword dragged itself along the blade, reaching toward him. It gurgled thickly as the blade inched deeper. Its eyes cascaded with echoes of vast emptiness.

  “Die, you twice-born whorespawn.” Captain Argent aimed the pistol at the creature’s face, firing twice, and then again. Its head exploded in a miasma of curdled blood and rot.

  “Arith.” It was the last word the creature spoke, gurgling wetly from what was left of its mouth.

  Then it fell to the ground.

  I felt the shadowed blossom of its mind fade, as the remnants of who it had been faded into nothingness.

  More shots rang out as I searched for the key.

  “Reload!” Captain Argent slung his pistol to my feet again, turning to stand side by side with Barnabas.

  The large man had been holding the two creatures at bay, but the female, which he had dropped with a single shot, still crawled toward him with half of her head completely blown away. The thick, red-gray soup of her cerebra leaked from her skull in thick drops. Her mouth hung wide, and her eyes flashed dark with blood. Every twitch was wrought with avarice and hunger.

  “Ysabel!” The captain stepped forward, swinging his scimit at her as Barnabas struck the other, an emaciated granther.

  I realized I had been stunned, staring at them like some sheep.

  “Sorry.” My voice sounded dejected, more breath than sound.

  I scrambled toward him, fiddling the shots from his belt, again cursing at the searing heat of the revolver. In moments, I had it loaded.

  More of them headed in our direction. They moved like a pack of crazed wolves, loping from far across the bidding field. I saw five at first, but then two more slipped from the dark shadows between buildings. A few people milled about as well, folke caught in the streets when the world went mad.

  The ghůl were on them in seconds, a wet symphony of screams and agony.

  In the distance, another of the great horns sounded, someone winding yet another clarion as another of the outer walls was breached.

  We couldn’t take them all. Impossible. We had to flee.

  Barnabas and the captain didn’t seem to know that, however. In one graceful lunge, Captain Argent took two steps forward, feeding the mad, emaciated granther the sharpness of his scimit. After firing twice more at the head of the young woman crawling along the ground, Barnabas sheathed his blade to reload his three-peater.

  She still twitched, her movements wild and animalistic.

  “Ysabel!” Captain Argent roared my name, and I stepped closer, handing him the revolver. Without looking at me, he ended the granther’s suffering with a single shot.

  “More of them.” I murmured.

  Involuntarily, I took a step back. I glanced to the captain, who remained focused on the fallen creatures. The others were still almost fifty strides away, but they were uncommonly fast. They had almost finished savaging the people they had caught.

  “I see them,” he muttered.

  From their belts, the captain and Barnabas had each taken small containers shaped like waterskins but made of a silvery metal. I watched as they shook the containers over the corpses, splashing the lost with fine droplets.

  “We don’t have time to give absolutions!” My sharp tongue was in no way swayed by the scrambling pack of oncoming savagery. “They—!”

  My eyes grew wide as I realized what I saw.

  The liquid, obviously impeded by something in the bottle, might have come out in spattered drops. However, those drops smoked as soon as they hit the air. After only a moment on the corpses’ flesh, they began to burn with a furious, white light.

  The captain and Barnabas stepped from the bodies, and Captain Argent turned my head away. I felt the flash and realized I would have been blinded.

  When I turned back, the corpses were smoldering.

  “Lucia fuegiin.”

  My eyes grew wide. I had never expected to see any of the alchemical marvels, not in this life.

  “Keeps them down.” He nodded to the corpses as he spoke.

  Such precautions made sense. Stories said that the shaedr-ghůl would return from the dead, even after destroyed. Some even claimed that their awful miasma could raise the corpses of men, but I found that unlikely.

  “Barnabas.” The captain unfastened his ammo pouch and handed it to me. He peered into the distance where the small pack of creatures had noticed us.

  They were coming.

  “I see them, Captain.” The large man’s voice turned grim. He leveled his three-peater toward the oncoming monstrosities, taking careful aim.

  “Shouldn’t we… maybe move along?” I hated how plaintive my tone sounded. Moments ago, hadn’t I insisted I should be out here fighting alongside the menfolk?

  If they heard me, neither made any sign. Instead, Barnabas fired once, twice, and then emptied his final chamber. He had aimed at the same creature each time, and I watched as it jerked with each hit. Left shoulder, liver, right temple.

  “Lucky shots.” Captain Argent muttered.

  Barnabas said nothing but smiled.

  Still, the creature didn’t fall. It jerked when it had been struck, but it didn’t cry out. However, it slowed a bit, though the others came ever forward.

  “Ysabel, would you kindly?” Barnabas handed me his empty weapon, as he drew his blade again.

  Captain Argent took aim and shot at another creature, a jawless young man who still wore the garb of a tinkerman.

  I’ll never be of use if I stand here gaping. Trembling, I opened the captain’s ammo pouch and fumbled Barnabas’ chamber open as well. It wasn’t as hot as the ca
ptain’s, I noted with some relief.

  “Here.” I handed the weapon to Barnabas, who then held the pistol in one hand and his blade in the other. The Kab flashed me a dazzlingly white smile and nodded.

  “They’re too fast. Running just gets their ire up.” The captain answered my earlier question as he handed me his pistol, now empty. “Never run from them.”

  I nodded, loading his weapon as Barnabas fired his rounds. I decided that perhaps I could work faster if I quit watching and focused on the task at hand.

  What choice do I have? I snapped the captain’s weapon closed and handed it to him. It seemed as if this were a day for feeling powerless.

  Just then, thunder rumbled from the bloodstorm in the distance. I glanced up as scarlet lightning illuminated the distant, dark sky, only to be followed by another peal of thunder.

  In that strange, crimson light I saw a gleam in the grass, not twelve strides from us.

  “The key!” I bolted straight up, clearly seeing it in the half-light. “Right there!”

  “Come on!” The captain waved for us to advance.

  Captain Argent had made up his mind the moment he saw me point. He ran toward the key with Barnabas and me following immediately after.

  The inhuman ghůl scrambled toward us, yet we sprinted toward them, closing the distance all too quickly.

  “Grab it, Ysabel!” Captain Argent stopped about three paces from the key, held his weapon forth, and fired. He struck the same one Barnabas had hit, and it went down. His next shot found a new target.

  While they continued to fire, I didn’t even stop to think. Dodging around Barnabas’ huge bulk, I leapt for the key, all but falling into the dirt as I landed.

  “Got it!” I closed my hand victoriously around the key, spun on my heel, and stepped back toward the men.

  The ghůl’s filth seized my mind like a searing brand, halting my movement with its horrors. Even our most learned didn’t understand what made their minds seep mad, rambling darkness. Yet, in that moment, I realized the darkened dreams that haunted them were too terrible for a mortal mind, therefore they writhed through the cracks in the shaedr-ghůl’s being, leaking through like a miasma of slithering darkness, an overwhelming, almost suicidal gloom.

  The sensation washed over me, and I cried out in despair. What did it matter? If they were that close—

  “Ysabel!” Barnabas’ deep bass rang out like a slap in my face. He aimed his pistol behind me and fired twice.

  “Get over—!” Captain Argent decided, mid-cry, that it wouldn’t be enough.

  He sprinted toward me, scimit drawn.

  Taking even a nonce to peek behind me might be my undoing. As the captain ran toward me, I sprinted toward him, keeping low, out of the way of his curved blade. He took a quick step to one side, and then whirled to his right, his blade singing over my head.

  I heard it sink into flesh.

  “Captain!” Barnabas was at his side in a moment, aiming his weapon. He fired one shot so close that my head rang from the blast.

  Behind them both, I turned.

  What had been seven of the creatures was down to five, though the two bodies still twitched on the ground.

  Captain Argent raged like a summer storm, whirling between the monstrosities with a grace I never would have expected from a man of his stature. Like a force of nature, he always sliced where the creatures least expected, then slipped out of harm’s way.

  Yet I didn’t know how long he could keep it up. What the creatures lacked in skill they made up for in sheer tenacity, tearing into anything they could find, ripping it apart with their bare hands.

  “Reload!” Barnabas thrust out his empty pistol, turning away to join his captain in the fray.

  Of course. I grasped the barrel, singing my hand before flipping it over. Exactly what I wanted.

  Regardless of my internal snark, my hands trembled. I opened the captain’s pouch and loaded the weapon. Then, I dropped the key inside. Clicking the three-peater closed, I faced the battle.

  “This will not end well.” I stepped forward.

  Of course I had never fired a weapon like this in my life, but I assumed it was less than difficult. Carefully I watched for my nonce, hoping against hope that I wasn’t about to give Captain Argent a new hole.

  I needn’t have worried. As I sought a target, one of the lost, shambling creatures turned toward me, eyes blackened with dark, weepy cataracts. Her hair was wild and she had peeled away some of the left side of her face leaving it a red ruin.

  “Arcturiin. No Dhag.” She crouched as she regarded me, her posture like one of the fabled Kabian blood-simians. Even the whites of her eyes showed only that rotten decay.

  “I don’t speak...” I muttered at her even though I had no idea what to call that broken tongue. In all honestly, it didn’t matter what I said—my tongue was simply restless, more so when I was nervous.

  “No Dhag.” Her leer grew wider then, so wide that I thought she might unhinge her own jaw.

  Loping on all fours, she charged me.

  I had seen how fast they were, of course, but it was another thing entirely when one of them scuttled at me, eyes shining with bent madness. I froze in place for a nonce, which was an eternity too long when dealing with one of the broken creatures. By the time I brought the pistol around, it was far too late.

  She leapt from three strides away and bore me to the ground.

  “Feckless—!” I didn’t get to finish my cry as she knocked the wind from me. I gasped, almost overwhelmed by the scent of urine and rot wafting off her.

  “Kasar dhuun.” She tried to pin me, but I fought frantically, even as drool dripped from her gaping mouth to spatter on my face.

  She gnawed at the air, her yellow and black teeth jagged and sharp.

  It was more than just her physical strength that held me down, a wave of despair floated along with the creatures. My arms trembled as I held her back, and in the back of my mind, panic and terror quietly cackled.

  “No—!”

  I still held the pistol in one hand, but she held that wrist solidly. I continually squirmed and squiggled as she tried to bring her mouth to my neck. During one of these darkly intimate moments, her fingers slipped on my wrist just a touch. I jerked hard to the left, drawing her attention in that direction, then wrested my pistol hand free.

  “Back!” I beat her across the face with the side of Barnabas’ gun.

  Bone snapped, and the horror cried out with guttural savagery.

  I thrust the weapon toward her, eager for the clearest shot I could take, and jammed it into her stinking, drooling mouth.

  She scrabbled at the gun, frantically trying to back away.

  The roar of the blast deafened me and splattered me with gore.

  She stiffened, and so did I.

  Is that it? I watched in fascinated horror. I had seen these things take several shots from the captain, after all, and they kept right on coming.

  But no. She collapsed, and I pushed her to the side.

  “Barnabas!” Captain Argent stood against three of the creatures.

  Another slid off the end of the Kab’s wicked blade. Barnabas stepped forward, pulled his blade free, and swung at the neck of another. His strike sounded like a cleaver going through butchered meat.

  The creature roared in primal fury.

  Frantically, I pushed myself up, somewhat unsteadily. I ran to the captain, just as one of the shaedr-ghůl lunged at him.

  It was a kid, a slender boy in dungarees, not much past his apprenticeship.

  I stepped behind him and leveled Barnabas’ gun at the back of his head.

  The boy started to turn, a feral snarl on his face.

  I fired once and then again, just to make certain.

  The boy fell.

  “You should give her your pistol, Captain.” Barnabas jibed as the creature he had struck spun, lunging at him. “She brought down two in three shots.”

  “Better than myself, true.” Capt
ain Argent jumped backward as a female workhand of some kind, dressed in all-overs covered in old grease, leapt for him.

  He swung, and his blade neatly bit into the side of her head, cleaving into her skull.

  She fell, and the captain placed his foot on her face to free his blade.

  Only a shirtless, dusky-skinned Q’sarr man remained. Several of the odd, looping tattoos favored by his race stained his body. His hair hung long and stringy. The one eye he had left glared, wild and wide. The other was just a seeping hole.

  “K’tarrs.” He frantically glanced back and forth between the two men, as if choosing which one to eat.

  Barnabas and the captain flanked the creature, but the creature favored Barnabas. Snarling and frothing, it lunged toward him.

  I felt coldness, like no cold I had ever known, steal up my back. Calyptin Station is known for its winters, but this made my skin break out in gooseflesh. It held a sharpness that somehow blossomed in my mind, a cold embrace that I couldn’t source.

  The young boy’s head snapped sideways to look at me with eyes that had seen beyond the vista of death.

  Ice water rushed through my veins.

  “Captain!” I yelped as I scrambled through his ammo pouch to reload Barnabas’ pistol. As I watched, another of the dead shaedr-ghůl stirred, and then another. Like some fell stone tossed into a well, the ripples passed over the dead, and they began to move.

  “Blackened hand!” Captain Argent cursed as one of the dead creatures reached for his ankle. He jerked away, firing on the creature, which lay between him and Barnabas.

  He missed.

  Barnabas ducked aside.

  “Ysabel, behind!” Barnabas’ words were sharp.

  I spun, only to see the female ghůl I had slain jerkily rise to her feet.

  “Arrraaag…” Now, her words were no longer twisted, they had lost that living spark of unknowable darkness and fierce animosity. No intelligence remained in her eyes.

  No, all that was left of her was hunger.

  “I already killed you!” I sighed, bringing the pistol up. Unlike before, she had no comprehension of the weapon, lumbering toward me with only relentless determination.