Outcasts of the Worlds

by Lucas Paynter

  *

  Somewhere along the way, even the lights that made merry in the forest had receded. A dark patch loomed ahead, and Flynn didn’t like what it portended. He didn’t say a word, but knew one or two of the others must have seen what he had seen.

  “This is still the way to Heaven, right?” Mack asked. “Because it’s lookin’ like a bad horror movie … or maybe a really good one.”

  There was blood everywhere. It soaked into the roots. It splashed well beyond the road, but was most visible against the guiding white.

  “How foul,” Chari said with revulsion.

  Kneeling, Flynn examined the blood in the road. So much had seeped into the roots, pooling in the tightest spaces between them. Yet—

  “This isn’t all fresh,” he stated, rising back up. “This place has seen slaughter before. Many times.”

  “So what kind of sick fuck makes this much of a mess?” Jean asked.

  As if in answer, a voice cackled from the shadows, sneering— and, to Flynn, disquietingly familiar. Flynn saw the man standing between the shade of trees first, before a stray wisp of light showed him to the others. He was hunched slightly, breathing hard. Dressed like a soldier of an unknown nation, his white uniform was shredded and bloodied.

  “Heaven’s guardian will not be seeing any of you.” He sounded satisfied in this, like a child sequestering away a toy so no other could play with it.

  “Aaron?” Flynn asked, unable to believe his eyes.

  Aaron’s pleasure withered as he emerged. Bitter and gaunt, he was no more than a few years older than any of them. His nose flared and his lip curled and he looked down on the five of them, as though they were beneath him. Three small horns triangulated across the edges of his forehead. Flynn was now certain who stood before him.

  “Flynn.” Aaron spoke as though he had bitten something rotten.

  “You know this yutz?” Jean asked.

  “He’s from Earth.” Privately, Flynn now intensely doubted even that, asking, “How are you here?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing,” Aaron snapped. “I barely recognized you under that ridiculous guise.”

  “Yo!” Jean retorted. “I helped rustle up half the shit he’s wearing!”

  “Your future in fashion is both pertinent and assured,” he sniped dismissively. Turning back to Flynn, he admonished, “And do not dare address me so casually again! You are no longer any comrade of mine!”

  Reaching up to a bleeding wound on his face, Aaron stroked his trembling digits across it, smearing the blood across his cheek, his lips. He licked it from his hand and Zaja grimaced at the sight.

  “How is it any of you are here?” Aaron demanded, as though some revelation suddenly dawned on him. “Any of you? None of you belong here! You are not dead!”

  “Who is this man?” Chari hissed. “Foe? Or can he be friend?”

  “Definitely not a friend,” Flynn replied.

  “If you are here and not dead,” Aaron growled, “then your arrival is entirely too convenient!” Tightening one hand, he gritted his teeth as fingers merged and skin split, flesh and bone becoming three cloven digits of terrible ferocity.

  “Ooh, so yer one of us?” Jean said eagerly. “Can’t wait to beat the crap out of you.”

  Undaunted, Aaron advanced and pushed through the others, zeroing in on Flynn. “Who are you working for? All of you! What misguided Mystik has dared to send you to collect the Guardian?” The breach between the mystery child and the Poe they sought was diminishing rapidly.

  “Give me the name of your master!” Aaron continued, pointing wild accusations at the group, who had given him a wary berth. Despite his apparent authority, he had allowed himself to be surrounded and was badly outnumbered. “Give me his name and Lord Renivar may yet spare your feeble souls!”

  A smattering of “Wait, did he just say—?” and “My Goddess …” filled the air. Zaja, having only heard the name a few times, was merely intrigued. But for Flynn, it plugged the gaps of strangeness that was Aaron’s presence here.

  “You serve Taryl Renivar?” he confirmed.

  At this, Aaron laughed again with condescending zeal. “Whoever your employer is, it seems he has left you gravely ignorant!”

  You let him move in, you fool. He’s going to strike.

  “Pity you’ll die that way.”

  Flynn caught Aaron’s wrist with his hand, the cloven tips pressing only a little against his flesh. Three small pools of blood stained his shirt around the belly. Had he been any slower, or Aaron any faster, Flynn’s insides would have painted the floor. Had he not known Aaron before and been able to anticipate the move, his death would have been certain.

  “Waste the fucker!” Predictably, Jean moved in to strike at Aaron, who had already turned, raising his other arm to guard. The cloven hand rapidly returned to normal, then became a bone-plated forearm. When his arm met Jean’s mace, bits of bone broke and flew, but her strike had little more effect.

  “Shrew!” Aaron snapped, kicking Jean in the stomach, knocking her into Mack in the process, and sending both tumbling down the hillside.

  The distraction was enough that Flynn pulled free and stepped out of Aaron’s kill range. Unsheathing his claws, he prepared to take a human life. Taking Flynn’s turn as a cue, Chari raised her rifle, firing a spray of bullets and grazing Aaron’s bicep. Letting out a disgusted grunt from the injury, he whipped his attention to her. But rather than take her on, he retreated behind a large tree, turning his back to his attackers. Flynn pursued, preparing for a strike—only to be caught by Aaron, who deflected him and threw him aside. Sharp pain wracked Flynn’s shoulder as he tumbled to the ground, and he knew Aaron had twisted and sprained it. Chari, never caught in such a fight before, began firing at Aaron’s cover, likely believing one bullet might punch through.

  It was then that the faintest tremor resounded in the hillside. Jean had recovered, and was trying to smoke Aaron out, only to find that the densely packed roots of the World Between did not conduct the force of her power the way earth or stone did. Frustrated, she rose and dashed toward the tree to break it head on. Flynn readied to pursue, knowing innately that Aaron would ambush Jean and crush her throat. Before he could act, Zaja had positioned herself behind Aaron and caught her whip around his neck, tugging hard.

  Unprepared for such an implacable foe, Zaja struggled as Aaron hardened his skin and laid his hands upon the barbs of her whip, then began pulling her closer in a bloody game of tug-of-war. Unwilling to let her weapon go, Zaja struggled harder, but Aaron would not let the lack of air deter him. Tugging suddenly against her, he caught her by the face with one hand, untangled the noose she had made with the other, and prepared to crush her skull. She screamed as the pressure mounted.

  “Zaja!” Flynn ran to save her, as Chari had since withdrawn her gunfire, no longer able to line up a safe shot.

  Zaja’s attack had bought Jean the time she needed to lay hands on Aaron’s cover, and she was now sending pulses through that caused the tree to splinter, snap, and creak. Knowing that his barrier was about to be compromised, Aaron tossed Zaja aside and leapt onto the tree as it fell with the slope of the land, scrambling to keep up as its center of gravity turned. He leapt at Chari—who had wasted the last of her bullets in a blind shot at the sky—disarming the former priestess and throwing her aside. Checking her weapon and finding it empty, he grunted in disgust and discarded it as well.

  Flynn vaulted over the fallen tree to the other side, attempting to bring his talons down upon Aaron in a quick and sanguine end. Seeing his opponent, Aaron stepped back and the strike fell short. Yet he stumbled into Mack, who had snuck around and was waiting for this opportune moment. As Aaron turned to see what he had crashed into, Mack promptly poked him in the eyes.

  “Irritant!” Aaron spat, swinging blindly at this new foe, who had the sense to shuffle back out of range. Flynn advanced, overcoming the pain in his sprained arm to catch Aaron’s as he raised it up, and plunging
the claws of his other hand into his opponent’s lower back. Reacting just quickly enough to stop the worst damage, Aaron reached back and caught Flynn’s wrist and—with some struggle—pulled his opponent’s blades free, kicking him back and vaulting over him atop the felled tree.

  Wounded worse than before, Aaron looked upon the scattered five. “I knew you smelled different,” he told Flynn. “Something didn’t reek about you like before. The old you would have sold these miscreants out long before ever getting this far. Or you would be trying to cut a deal with me, here and now.”

  Ignoring Aaron, Flynn got to his feet. The wind had been knocked out of him and his lungs struggled just to breathe. He didn’t know the consequences of Aaron’s escape, but if he was in league with Taryl Renivar—

  “Still … perhaps I have gone about this wrong,” Aaron considered, paying no mind as Jean struggled to climb onto the tree and come after him again. “I think I shall let you have your way. You are, after all, ever my ally … Flynn.”

  Jean screamed a battle cry, but Aaron turned tail and ran. He was fast, faster than any one of them was prepared to handle. As they regrouped on the other side of the tree—Flynn’s breath returning, Zaja massaging the stress on her skull, and others tending less immediate wounds—Mack tried to see where Aaron was, but found their opponent already out of sight. “Looks like he got away.”

  “It’s fine,” Chari responded morosely.

  “It is?”

  “It is. I’ve run out of bullets.”

  *

  The rain dripped from the leaves, pattering below and washing the red road. Jean wasn’t sure when the clouds had moved in, but what little sunlight broke through had vanished along the way. Chari had mended any damage to Zaja’s skull and was now working her magick on Flynn’s shoulder. Zaja massaged her face uneasily.

  “Still wanna stick with us?” Jean smirked.

  “That village on the lake isn’t looking so bad,” Zaja admitted, but she didn’t budge an inch from where she sat.

  Chari grunted and fell back as she finished, cradling her own shoulder in shared pain. Zaja moved toward her, worried. “Are you—?”

  “I will recover,” Chari gestured for her to stop, then lay back. “Time is merely needed, that the pain may pass.”

  The formalities thus handled, Jean moved in, kicking Flynn in the leg. Not hard—just enough to make him notice, and maybe leave a bruise. “So what the fuck was that about? You knew that asshole back there?”

  Flynn avoided eye contact. “Back on Earth, I made a point of staying under the radar. To do what I did to people, I had to. Less reputation made convincing prospective employers harder than it needed to be, but ensured my victims never knew who I really was. Not until it was too late.”

  A simple no or fuckin’ yes would’ve sufficed, Jean thought. She kept it to herself, letting Flynn continue.

  “Aaron was referred to me. He didn’t say by whom and I didn’t care to ask. He needed me to find someone and bring her in. Infiltration wasn’t his strong point, he told me.”

  “Who’d he need you to bring in?” Mack asked.

  “A girl,” Flynn replied. “Called herself Zella. I approached her, got friendly with her.”

  “How friendly?” Jean asked skeptically.

  “Friendly enough that when the raid I arranged on the haven she was hiding in started, she came to find me first,” Flynn replied. “She stuck close when I led her out of the gunfire and chaos, right up to the safe house when I handed her over to Aaron Limbs, who was waiting for us inside.”

  “Aaron Limbs?” Zaja smirked.

  “It’s probably an alias,” Flynn said dismissively. “She realized only too late who I was working for. Even knowing what I’d done, she reached out. Begging, crying for me to save her. I don’t think she expected me to. Just that she had no one else to count on.”

  Jean had known Flynn long enough to no longer be troubled by stories such as these. Somehow, it still itched at her, the underlying animosity she felt for the kind of person he once had been. It hadn’t escaped her that Aaron had felt the same thing: pissed at Flynn for a job that went without a hitch.

  “That wasn’t the last time you saw him, was it?”

  “It was, actually,” Flynn replied. “But it wasn’t—strictly speaking—our last dealing. After handing Zella over and taking my pay, I found the first strike team in the area and sent them Aaron’s way. If they made a capture, I could easily double my earnings.”

  A dick even to the bad guys, Jean thought.

  “Looks like they didn’t catch him,” Zaja observed.

  “He hates me now, that’s for certain,” Flynn replied, more amused than sorry.

  “I don’t get you,” Jean shook her head. “How you did half the shit you did and kept getting away with it. What was your fucking secret?”

  It was a serious question. Flynn’s confessed laundry list seemed too improbable for such an obvious freak. She was looking for the real answer that made it all fit. But Flynn just avoided eye contact. The mood darkened and neither Mack nor Zaja had the nerve to break the silence. Chari, if she wasn’t sleeping, didn’t either. Jean snorted in disgust.

  “Thought we had some fucking trust goin’ on by now.”

  Deny it or delay it. She knew Flynn only had two options, and that whatever he was hiding, he wasn’t going to spill it now. She wished he would, but he didn’t.

  Standing, Flynn turned his back to the others and looked up the hill. “This isn’t the time or place.”

  “Never is,” Jean huffed.

  “No, listen: Something is moving in the woods, dangerous enough to spill more blood than we have between us.”

  He watched and waited. Mack and Zaja both readied themselves. Jean tried to listen too, and hear what he heard. Leaves rattled in the dark.

  Chapter Fourteen: The Hunter in the Woods

  More prey. A dozen slaughtered. One escaped. Five now, coming in the dark. Had they seen the signs? The scattered limbs in the deeper woods? The bloody mess on the ivory road? Had they smelled the death? Easier if they hadn’t. Stupider if they had.

  It had been another good day. Even on the best, no more than a few felt the Call to Heaven. They had to know what awaited them, but still they came. Swine to the slaughter. As he watched from the branches, they approached. They had fought the one who slipped away, whose men dared lay hands upon him, the one whose men threw themselves upon his blades again and again. His right hand quivered, until he laid it upon his nearer sword.

  The Archangel decreed none should be let in, and it was so. An excuse to kill, masquerading as reason. None who came today were of this world. The thirteen before were orderly, disciplined, and brave. They dressed alike and bled alike. The five below were different. They all looked apart, dressed apart. Even their flesh was colored apart, for though darkness fell on the woods, he could tell each from another. Would they die differently too?

  Resting his right hand on the blade wasn’t enough. Feeling in his blood that it was time, he drew it from its sheath, which hung across his lower back. Holding the blade underhand, he kept it distant from the other, which was sheathed diagonally behind his right shoulder until he drew it with his left hand. The timing was right. He moved with the slightest sound and dropped.

  “Scatter!” One of the five had heard him against the noises of forest and night. The Guardian watched as the beast shoved the blue one and the beaded one behind him before grabbing the other two and falling back.

  His blades tasted naught but root and dust. Scrambling back, the two girls behind attempted to retreat. He threw the sword in his left hand and it bit the beaded girl in the back of her leg—his father’s sword tasted blood before planting in the ground. She hobbled away, falling between the trees.

  Turning to the others, the girl in red clenched her fists and advanced, only to be pulled back sharply by the beast as the Guardian tried to bring his remaining sword up and split her in twain. The cut fell short, and the beast
shunted her to the golden haired boy, commanding them to run. And though she struggled, that bag of sticks holding her hand found strength enough to pull her, and she acceded.

  The Guardian stood then, toe to toe with the beast, his sword in his right hand. The beast seemed to be sizing him up, but shook its head at some unseen observation, suddenly turning and running from the path and into the woods. It would have died there, and it knew. Running only meant it would die someplace else. Someplace near. But for now, he had chosen the first of his prey. They would all die in his woods tonight.

  *

  There were pieces of people everywhere. Most malicious were the dancing lights, trying playfully to turn the dark forest to vicious, bloody day. Zaja’s fear heightened as she ran faster than she could breathe. More than the cold winds and the dank rain, she feared an eminent and painful death.

  This was what things had come to. She had left Oma to see trees and die among them, only to find that every bit of preparation was insignificant and could not have readied her for anything outside her warm bedroom.

  She left to see a woman’s blood, spattered across three nearby trees. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. The words drove as she ran as far as she could, until she reached the world’s edge and realized that all beyond was sky. It was only here at the edge of things that she was forced to turn and face the darkness she had ran so hard to escape. Minutes she waited, until her beating heart and gasping breath subsided and she could hear the world around her again. And though she waited, the nightmare of blades—a black mass cloaked in purple—never came.

  Zaja dropped to her knees and wanted to weep. She knew she had to go back. Not yet ready to step back into the shadows, she looked up. From here, she could see the radiant pillar, shining even at night. Barely resolved, Zaja hiked uphill, hoping that she was clever, that he would never look for her in the very direction he had driven her from. There were bodies all along the way, and none of them fresh. The woods were littered with corpses, struck down on the path and dragged aside to waste away—all people from Purgatory, evinced by the rotted tunics in which they were wrapped. She hiked for some time, until she heard a branch snap underfoot.