by Tim Marquitz
The group edged forward, milky white eyes staring us down from emerald faces. While far from modern, the group wielded a selection of weapons to make any primitive savage envious. Most carried short spears, sharpened pieces of crystal strapped to the tips, but they also had swords and knives hanging from their loincloths, the blades carved from some kind of bone. The ivory edges looked jagged and unfriendly, much like you’d expect a prison shank to look. A couple had fierce looking maces, pointy rocks attached to short, thick handles.
“Who are you?” one of the women asked, stepping out in front of the others.
It was like watching a bad Kung Fu movie. Her lips moved entirely out of sync with the words that spilled out, which were, strangely enough, in perfect English. I cast a furtive glance to the others to see if they noticed. The looks on their faces told me they had. They showed incredible restraint by not busting out laughing.
Karra inched forward, turning to make sure they could see her sword dangling at her hip. “Who are you?”
The green woman snorted. “You’re bold for fresh meat, I’ll give you that.” The others chuckled and started to slowly spread out. “My name is Mia, for what little value that is to you.”
I heard Karra’s knuckles pop as she tightened her grip on her hilt. “Stand your ground.”
“What is it you want?” Katon asked as he angled off to keep the aliens in front of us. Rahim followed his lead on the other side, Veronica and Rala hovering close at my back.
Mia looked us over for a few seconds, each of us in turn, before answering, her eyes locked on Karra. “My lord would insist we take that blade first, and then his.” She motioned to Katon after.
“You’ll have to pry if from my fingers, bitch.”
The woman smiled. “We can certainly do that,” she said, the strange delay between her expression and her words was disconcerting, but it was hard to take seriously.
“So be it.” Mia raised a hand and waved her people forward. I expected some comical shouts and staggered advance, but there was none of that. The group charged without preamble or hesitation. They came at us, brandishing their weapons in a way that told me they’d done this exact maneuver enough times for it to become ingrained. That didn’t bode well.
If anyone else was impressed by their organization, it didn’t show. Karra met the first of the advancers with her usual grace. A spear jabbed her direction and was turned aside with a casual twist of her sword. The green alien screamed as his wrist was cut to the bone, and then went silent. His head, nearly severed, toppled backward until it caught the remnants of his spine, yanking the rest of his body down in a gush of piss-yellow blood. Karra snatched the spear from his flopping hand and tossed it to me.
“You can join us anytime today, Frankie.”
“The pointy end faces the bad guys, right?”
Karra laughed and gutted another of the aliens, throwing the body behind her so Veronica and Rala could raid it for weapons.
I adjusted the spear and leapt forward, surprised at how responsive my host was since it had been healed. It didn’t feel half bad. One of the women met my charge. She was fast, her bone blade whistling through the air, but she wasn’t as strong as I expected. I met her slash against the haft of my spear, and it stopped her blow cold. Her white eyes were expressionless, but I could have sworn I saw them widen. Regardless, I didn’t give her the opportunity to try again, going on the offensive.
I punched her in the tit.
What’s more offensive than that?
She stumbled back as if I’d shot her, mouth agape and boob jiggling, flashes of red amidst the green wiggle. That was when I hit her across the cheek with the shaft of the spear. She went down like a One Direction fan, and I tried not to giggle.
Katon had secured an extra weapon and had cut his way through the ranks with brutal fury. He wasn’t holding back. The strange yellowish blood sparkled in the air as he hacked and slashed at anything within reach. The composed assault broke under his and Karra’s counterattack, bits and body parts oozing out across the dark soil. Rahim held his own, bashing the aliens aside with an appropriated mace while Veronica protected his flank. Rala looked out of place behind them, clutching to the book and zombie head for dear life. Chatterbox didn’t seem to care. He still stared at the menagerie of boobs scattered across the field, clearly not giving a damn if they were upright and bouncy or prone and limp.
Is it necrophilia if two zombies get it on? Ooh, what if one is a vampire?
I didn’t really expect my brain to have an answer. I was just philosophizing the inherent immorality of undead romance. My brain wanders to weird places when I’m killing stuff, but I really needed to learn to pay attention. I nearly had my eye shishka bobbed while I was contemplating the mating rituals of corpses and the market for fleshy replacements for blow up sex dolls.
Mia snarled as I darted back, her blade just grazing my eyebrow. “Stand still, meat.”
“Fuck that noise.” I spun and jabbed at her with my spear, but she was good. She knocked it aside with her dagger and cut a shallow line down my biceps while I dodged away again.
She closed, not giving me a chance to get settled. A one-two thrust with her blades caught me slipping. The dagger point sunk into my chest about an inch while the longer blade bit into my hip, clanking against the bone.
I grunted and yanked it free. Black blood squirmed from the holes, and my hip stung something fierce, but neither were killing blows. The quick glance I’d take to confirm that, though, was just enough opportunity for her to try again. She came in low, trying to be slick, but she might well have been holding up a sign advertising what she intended. I held my ground and feinted with my spear, driving my fist into her face.
There was the loud clunk of knuckles on flesh, and she stumbled back, her hand instinctively going to her cheek. Chivalry be damned, I drove my foot into her crotch and pulled back my spear to stab her in the guts. Karra and Veronica got to her first.
Like two sledgehammers popping a zit, the dynamic duo punched Mia at the same time, from opposite sides. The alien’s lips puffed out in a serious duck-faced camera pout, and she slumped to the ground without a sound. Her head bounced a couple times before it settled, white eyes starting at the canopy without seeing a thing.
“I could have handled her,” I told the pair, who shared a conspiratorial glance and pretty much ignored me.
Katon and Rahim came over and joined us, the last of the attackers still on their feet and darting off into the forest, leaving us alone with their fallen brethren and a stash of hardly used weapons and crotch covers.
“What now?” I asked as I rolled one of the unconscious alien women over and disentangled the leather straps that held her loincloth on.
“What the hell, Frank?” Katon asked, pointing at Chatterbox. “You’re as bad as that guy.”
“For your information, I’m just getting something to cover my twig and berries.”
“Why not take one of the men’s then?”
“Ewww, that’s just nasty, man. I don’t want their barbarian funk all up on my bits.” Besides, I really wanted to do a quick biological examination of a different species. All in the name of science, of course.
Karra smacked me on the back of the head while I slipped the loincloth loose. “There will be no spelunking on my watch.” She knew me too well.
I sighed and got to work situating the loincloth so it hid my vampire junk. As I did that, Veronica and Katon lifted Mia to a seated position and were working diligently to tie her hands behind her back with the strips of cloth they’d pulled from her hair.
“All I did was try and sneak a peek, and I got thumped,” I said to Karra. “These two are practicing their bondage skills and no one says a word?”
“We’re restraining her, Frank,” Katon answered.
“I get that. What’s the safe word?”
“I think I like the other version of you better.” Rala rolled her eyes at me.
“You’re not t
he only one, kid,” Katon added, yanking a knot to ensure Mia was leashed up nicely.
I ignored them. “So, now that she’s hogtied, what are you planning on doing with her?”
“As you so eloquently stated earlier, we don’t know anything about the lay of the land or what we might run into, but I’m fairly certain she does.” He motioned to the woman, her head lolling uncomfortably on her neck. “We just have to convince her to tell us.”
“We should find somewhere else to interrogate her, though,” Karra said. “Her people underestimated us the first time, but if there are more lurking in the woods we might not be so lucky next time.”
Everyone agreed, so we started off with a minimum of fuss. Rahim tossed Mia—freshly gagged—over his broad shoulder and trudged off in the direction Katon suggested we go. The rest of us walked alongside while the enforcer masked our tracks to keep us from being followed so easily again.
It was an hour before we’d found a quiet place to discuss Mia’s future.
#
“Time to wake up, Miss Congreeniality.” A slap across Mia’s already bruised cheek brought her to with a start.
The first muffled words out of her mouth were very unkind, but I couldn’t stop from laughing. It was like watching a piss poor ventriloquism act, her teeth clamped tight against the gag for a good three seconds before all her complaints were out.
“Say Jalapeno on a stick,” I told her.
“Stop antagonizing her, Frank.” Katon pushed me aside and knelt down before our captive. “I’m going to take the gag off, but we need you to play nice.”
Mia growled low in her throat, but Karra ended that by dangling the point of her sword about an inch from the woman’s chest.
“We’re reasonable people, Mia, but there isn’t a single one among us who values your life above their own.” Katon paused to let that sink in. “Do we understand each other?”
Mia offered up a shallow nod, and Katon untied the knot at the back of her head and tugged the wad of material from her mouth. She took a moment to work her jaw and moisten her lips, but she didn’t shout. We were off to a smashing start.
“Now, tell me why you attacked us.”
“Is that really the question we need to be asking?” I interrupted, coming over to stand in front of the alien woman. “Just tell us how to get the fuck out of Disneyland here, and we’ll let your mossy little ass go, simple as that.”
Mia just laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“We were stalking you because we thought you might know how to escape Tenebrae, just as the others had.”
“The others?” Rahim and Karra asked at the same time.
A crooked smile colored Mia’s lips. “You are not the first to come to our world in recent times.”
“And yet you don’t know how they left?” Katon asked.
Once more the woman smiled, but she said nothing.
Karra raised her blade and set it against Mia’s neck. “I’m in no mood to play games with you. Tell us what you do know or I start hacking pieces off and cauterizing the wounds until you do.”
I gestured to Rahim. “He wouldn’t tell her the time.”
Rahim raised his stump and wiggled it a little. Chatterbox chuckled, and Mia snapped her head about where she could see the disembodied head. The grin disappeared from her face.
“You don’t even want to know what he did,” I told her. CB’s tongue flitted in and out of the hole in his cheek.
Mia exhaled hard and nodded. “Okay, I have no urge to die. I’ll answer whatever questions you have as best I can.”
“Good. What is…the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
“You’re not helping, Frank.” Karra pushed me out of the way just like Katon had earlier. “Tell us where the others went.”
“I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “They trekked across Tenebrae and slipped through another rift before we could see how they summoned it.”
“And you thought we would do the same?”
“Are you not with the others?”
This circle jerk wasn’t satisfying anyone. “Who the hell are these others you keep yapping about?”
“The ones who came through the sky.”
Karra put her free hand on her hip and glared at the woman on her knees. “Look, I’m losing my patience. This roundabout effort to tell us as little as possible is going to get you gutted. Now start giving us something that makes sense.”
Mia met Karra’s stare for a moment, but there was no way she could hold out against the twin furies that seared her soul. I know because it usually takes me about fifteen seconds to cave. Mia was an inspiration, though. It took her all of a minute.
She sighed. “We felt the aperture open, its energies alerting all of Tenebrae, but the guardians appeared and chased you away before we could see how you operated the passageway.”
“Are you talking about the dragons?” I asked, since it was clear we weren’t getting anywhere with the portal business.
The green woman looked at me, confusion plastered across her face.
“The big winged things with teeth?” Karra corrected, getting a nod from Mia.
“Yes. They are the guardians of Tenebrae.”
Rahim glanced about the swarm of pink trees, gesturing to the desolate surroundings with his remaining hand. “What exactly do they guard?”
“Us.”
“Uh, and why is that?” I asked.
“To keep us here.”
“In a place where no one knows how to leave?” I tried to shake the stupid off. “Am the only one who’s confused?”
“We are so not getting anywhere,” Karra groused, grabbing the woman by the scruff of her neck and pulling her to her feet. “You said the others are gone, right? Which way did they go? Tell me when we’re facing the right direction.”
Karra spun the woman around slowly until Mia called out. We all glanced off that way, pretty much realizing at the same time that she was pointing us in the exact same direction we had already been going: straight toward the mountain.
“That was helpful,” I muttered while Karra suggested pointedly that Mia lead the way after she tied a line of material to the woman’s hands, effectively putting her on a leash.
The green woman started off, and we were on our way…again…exactly like we had been before we captured our illustrious guide.
Good thing we weren’t paying her.
Seven
They say life is about the journey, and not the destination.
Well, fuck those guys! After about two long-assed hours of walking through the maze of trees, the sun mostly blocked from view by weird, purple leaves, I was getting damn sick of the journey. And screw all that believing stuff, Steve Perry. I’ll stop believing if I damn well please.
“Seriously, how in the hell do you have any idea where you’re going in this Godforsaken forest of pink doom?”
Mia grinned, pointing at the nearest tree. “All of the trunks lean in the same direction.”
I followed her finger and sure enough, they did. While it wasn’t overtly obvious, the moment Mia mentioned it I could see exactly what she was talking about. All of the trees had a slight slope to their trunks that seemed to angle the same way.
“Where do they lead?”
“Toward the Sanctuarium Custodes, of course.”
“Of course.” My Latin was pretty rusty, but so was hers, apparently, not that I had any clue as to why she would speak Latin in the first place. Had to be a trick of whatever power allowed her to speak English. “The Sanctuary of the Guardians. How…creative.”
She shrugged. “It is what our ancestors called it, so who are we to question?”
“Your ancestors?” Rahim asked, showing signs of life for the first time in a while as he drew closer. “Were you not trapped here by God?”
She spit. “We have no gods but the beasts,” Mia said, pointing toward the mountain, the conviction in her voice chilling, “and they hold
their summit unless summoned by the rifts.”
I didn’t want to disabuse her of her delusions, you know, having only just had a chat with the Man Not Quite Upstairs Anymore a few months back. “Just how long have you been here?”
“My entire life.”
The group’s paced slowed at that.
“You were born here?” Karra asked.
Mia nodded. “As were my parents, and theirs before, and my grandparents, and on down the line for as long as history tells us.”
That was some heady shit. What had been a prison for God’s fuckups had become a breeding ground for generations of…what exactly? Cast aside because they didn’t fit His plans, what the hell were these beings now, besides institutionalized?
“What could God have possibly wanted with a place like this?”
Rahim asked the question that was next on my mind. What indeed? There certainly weren’t any answers forthcoming. Maybe the next time I ran into Him, I’d ask.
Mia went silent, trudging through the woods with the rest of us at her back. She either reflected on her life or realized that’s what we were doing, and left us to it in peace. Regardless, the revelation that she had been born in this desolate prison world was a conversation killer. Even Chatterbox, who’d been humming a variety of power metal anthems for our walk, went quiet.
We walked along for another hour like that, no one speaking or doing anything that might break the hush that settled over us. It wasn’t until we pushed our way through a wall of foliage and stumbled into a small clearing that any semblance of life returned.
It came in the form of a gasp.
Mia’s steps ground to a halt. Her head swiveled toward the heavens, alabaster eyes turned to swimming pools in her face. “How long was I unconscious?”
“What is…it?” My own eyes followed her gaze, my question seeming rather idiotic as I saw exactly what had brought her to a halt.
Where the expansive and bright sky had been when we entered the Hello Kitty Woods was now replaced by an inky blackness that roiled as if it were an ocean of tar. An army of shadows devoured each other above, the cheery light fading beneath the inexorable tide. Judging by how fast the darkness moved, it wouldn’t be long before it swallowed the entire sky, and that couldn’t be good.
