Cloak Games: Truth Chain

by Jonathan Moeller

  Not me, though. Oh, no. Not me.

  On Day 25, I thought up a new plan.

  I had been exploring the area around the grain silos, looking for something, anything, that might help me escape.

  While doing that, I had found the semi. The red-painted cab was battered and had seen a lot of service, but it looked like it was in good repair. If you spend a lot of time driving in rural areas, sooner or later you’re going to see a semi like this. They pull a trailer with a rounded top, and within the trailer is a whole lot of grain or corn or soybeans or some sort of other heavy crop. I had spent a lot of time annoyed at those trucks and passing them in haste in the left lane.

  But when I found that truck parked behind the grain silos, I felt a surge of hope.

  All my other plans had failed. Ramming a vehicle through the doors had sort of worked, but even a pickup truck had only gotten me through the narthex and into the cathedral’s nave, and even then, the anthrophages had torn me apart before I had gotten get very far.

  But what would happen if I drove into the cathedral at sixty miles an hour while pulling twenty tons of grain behind me?

  I climbed up the back of the trailer and smiled for the first time in weeks.

  The trailer was indeed full of grain.

  It was easy to get the truck started. I didn’t know how to drive a semi, but that didn’t matter. It used a manual transmission, and I knew how to operate one of those, and I was planning on driving the thing into a building. Accuracy didn’t matter all that much. I pulled around the back of the silo, maneuvering the big vehicle past the gas station and onto the street. I considered running over Arvalaeon’s stupid bronze clock but decided against it. The thing was probably invincible, and if I tried to run it over I would wreck the semi.

  I turned left onto the county highway, the engine rumbling, and then right onto the street leading up to the cathedral doors. I did sort of wipe out of the corner of a small garage with the trailer as I turned, but the engine was undamaged, and the trailer didn’t come loose, which were the important parts.

  I stared up the street towards the cathedral. I didn’t see any sign of anthrophages or wraithwolves or cytospawn or those beetle things. I glimpsed a human silhouette watching me from the window of the place that sold farm equipment, and a mad smile spread over my face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Stop this, assholes.”

  I put the truck into gear and stomped on the gas, pushing the pedal to the floor.

  The diesel engine howled, and the truck rolled forward. It takes a long time for a semi to get up to full speed, but by the time I got to the square before the cathedral, I was doing just under sixty miles an hour. The cathedral hurtled towards me, and I suddenly wondered if this had been such a good idea after all.

  The cab bounded up the steps and smashed into the cathedral doors.

  They didn’t slow me down, not with twenty tons of trailer behind me. The cab blasted through the doors in a spray of splintered wood, shattered masonry, and dust, and I just had time to see dozens of anthrophages look at me in astonishment before the cab and the trailer turned them to pulp. The cab screamed into the nave, punching through the doors and shattering the windows. I had been afraid that the truck would get caught up on the narthex wall, but evidently, it wasn’t thick enough to stop that much weight. The trailer ripped through the wall in a shower of shattered stone and started to twist to the side, tires screeching against the flagstones. Because of the multiple shocks, I lost control of the steering, and the cab skidded to the side and slammed into one of the pillars. The hood crumpled up, and the windshield and both side windows shattered, but my seat belt kept me from flying out the windshield and into the pillar, though I jerked hard enough against it that I wrenched something in my back.

  The crash had also wiped out dozens of anthrophages, reducing them to piles of black slime against the floor. Some of them had survived, but the impact had thrown them back.

  Which meant that if I acted right now, I had a clear shot at the rose window.

  I unbuckled my seat belt, kicked open the passenger door, and dropped to the floor. Some of the anthrophages headed towards me, but I had too much of a head start. I sprinted towards the back wall of the cathedral, gathering magical power as I did, and as I scrambled up the dais steps, I cast the levitation spell.

  I floated a hundred feet to the rose window and braced myself at the base of its round stone frame.

  I noticed two things right about then.

  First, the fiery light that filled the sky was brighter, seeming to pulse and flicker behind the window. Despite the color of the light, it was cold up here, far colder than the rest of the town, which wasn’t all that warm to begin with.

  That led to the second thing I noticed.

  Specifically, that the rose window was made of translucent ice.

  It was made of a lot of ice, hundreds of individual panes held in place by the stone framework. The ice was also thick. I think it was at least six or seven feet thick, and probably the entire thing was thicker than the wall of the cathedral. Given that I couldn’t see the other side of the window from outside the cathedral, I suppose the ice extended into the rest of the Shadowlands or whatever rift Arvalaeon had constructed back to Earth.

  This was my way home. I just had to figure out how to get through six feet of solid ice. If you’ve ever had to chisel an inch of ice off your driveway, you know how hard that is. Now imagine seventy-two inches of it at once.

  I looked down and saw the surviving anthrophages climbing towards me. Turns out the damned things could climb up a wall like spiders. I looked back at the icy window, gathered magical power, and cast the fire sphere spell. The blast of fire slammed into the ice…and melted maybe half an inch of it.

  I blinked in dismay. It would take me hours to burn through the window. The anthrophages would kill me long before I could break through.

  I was so close!

  In sheer frustration, I punched the window with my left hand.

  That turned out to be stupid.

  For one, I hadn’t realized how cold the ice really was, and the skin of my hand flash froze to the window. Agony shot up my arm, and hoarfrost covered my skin, crawling up my arm and the sleeve of my motorcycle jacket. With a shriek of pain and surprise, I tried to pull my arm back.

  My arm snapped off at the elbow. Like an icicle breaking. I suppose the hand and the forearm had already been killed by the ice, but the rest of me hadn’t, and having my arm snapped off really hurt.

  I lost my balance and fell screaming to the cathedral floor.

  The impact didn’t kill me. It broke most of my bones and probably pulped most of my internal organs, but it didn’t kill me.

  The anthrophages did.

  ###

  I got more and more panicked as Day 30 approached.

  I tried three more times to shatter the rose window in the cathedral, and every attempt failed and got me killed in varying degrees of agony. Every time I failed, I woke up screaming under that damned bronze clock, its tumblers turning over to advance another day.

  If I didn’t figure out something soon, Russell and a lot of other people were going to die.

  I tried different things, and each one of the plans was a longer shot than the last. Every single time I failed and got killed in the process.

  When I woke up beneath the clock on Day 29 and got over my screaming jag, a new thought popped into my increasingly deranged thoughts. This entire thing had to be a test. Arvalaeon was testing me, trying to see if I was strong enough to defeat Castomyr and save the world. But maybe he wasn’t testing my magical strength. Perhaps it was a test of character or inner strength or something stupid like that. Maybe he wanted to see if I was brave enough to sacrifice myself.

  Which meant I had to kill myself.

  Perfectly logical. At least it was perfectly logical if you had already died in agony a couple dozen times and weren’t thinking all that clearly.

  I went to the gr
ain silo to do it. I climbed up the side and onto the metal gantry running between the storage cylinders. I braced myself on the railing, took a deep breath, and jumped from the gantry.

  Unfortunately, I did not count on the wind. It was about a hundred and eighty feet from the top of the gantry to the parking lot, but the wind blew me off course. Instead of sailing in a smooth arc to a quick death against the asphalt, the wind bounced me off the silo a couple of times before I hit the ground. That was enough to let me survive the fall, sort of. I broke both my legs and my right arm, and I think I had a couple of ribs jutting from my side.

  I tried to cast the regeneration spell, but I was in too much pain to work magic. Before I could bleed out or die from internal injuries, I think the smell of my blood drew the wraithwolves, and they finished me off.

  I woke up on Day 30, and panic set in.

  This was it. I was out of time. Castomyr was casting his spell to summon a Great Dark One. Unless I found a way out of here now, right now, there would be no one to stop him. Russell would die, the Marneys would die, Riordan would die, and everyone I ever knew would probably die as well.

  Killing myself hadn’t worked. I needed to find another way out.

  No, wait. That wasn’t quite right, was it? I had tried to kill myself, but it hadn’t worked. I had just severely wounded myself, and the wraithwolves had come and finished me off. Maybe that was the key. I needed to actually kill myself.

  This time, I had to do it right.

  I went to the diner on the main street and let myself into the kitchen. It had a big range with twelve different burners, and I turned each of them on but didn’t light them. Gas pumped into the kitchen, and before long the air over the burners rippled, and the kitchen stank of rotten eggs.

  I waited until I started to get woozy and then cast the fire sphere spell.

  This time, at least, my death was quick.

  I felt a brief flash of agonizing pain all over my body, an impact as I was thrown against the wall, and then everything went black.

  And when I woke up, I was lying on the rough asphalt beneath the bronze clock, and the clock read Day 31.

  “No, no,” I said, pushing off the ground. “No, no, no.”

  Thirty days. Arvalaeon had said I thirty days to get out of the Shadowlands and stop Castomyr. Had Castomyr finished his spell already? If he had, if he had tried to summon the Great Dark One, he would have already destroyed Wisconsin and Minnesota and killed everyone else for hundreds of miles.

  “Arvalaeon!” I shouted at the sky. “Arvalaeon, damn it! I know you can hear me! Arvalaeon!”

  My voice echoed off the parking lot, but no one answered.

  “Arvalaeon!” I said. “Damn it, let me out! Are you going to just let Castomyr wipe out North America?”

  Still no one answered me.

  In pure fury, I threw a sphere of fire at the burning sky.

  Nothing happened. It was a waste of magical force. I watched until the sphere of fire faded from sight. I looked around, the dread choking me. It might not be too late. Maybe Castomyr’s spell took a few hours to cast. Maybe I could still get out of this place in time.

  The walls of mist, perhaps? I looked at the walls of mist that encircled the town. Arvalaeon had told me that if I walked into the mist it would just deposit me elsewhere within the town. Could he have been lying? Could the way out have been that simple?

  I got to the county highway and ran for the valley that led out of town. As I passed the hills, the road continued, and the wall of mist dipped to cover the road and the valley. It yawned up before me, towering and gray and rippling, and I sprinted into it.

  The mist swallowed me, and the entire world disappeared into the gray gloom. There was still ground underneath me, the county highway rasping beneath my shoes. I kept running, hoping that I could break free from the mist and get back to Earth.

  Another step and I burst from the mist.

  Except the asphalt had vanished, and I stumbled before I caught my balance. The asphalt had been replaced with uneven dirt threaded with thick tree roots. I was in a forest. Specifically, I was in a forest on top of one of the hills overlooking the town. I could see the entire town laid out before me, though I was almost eye level with the top spires of the cathedral.

  All right. The road out of town didn’t actually lead out of town. I started circling along the circumference of the misty wall, and every few yards I walked into the mist. I tried to be systematic about my search, but it was impossible because when I walked into the mist, it deposited me somewhere else along its boundary. Once it even deposited me back on the county road, right where I had originally started.

  On the twenty-sixth attempt, I stepped out of the mist and into a pack of about thirty of those giant beetles. I turned to run, but all the beetles spat that slime at me, and I think about ten of them hit my back and legs at once. Pain erupted through me, and I stumbled when the acidic ooze ate through the muscles in my leg.

  The beetles swarmed over me, pincers snapping.

  Fortunately, I think the acid got into my blood and stopped my heart before the beetles finished ripping me apart.

  ###

  I grew increasingly frantic and desperate, trying tactic after tactic to escape.

  Most of my attempts were variations on things I had tried earlier. I attempted to ram the truck into the cathedral. Or I went through the tunnels, or went to the roof of the cathedral, or set fire to various houses in the town to lure away the anthrophages. I went into the tunnels from different entrances (I got killed in the school twice before I found the entrance to the tunnels in the boiler room), hoping to get past the anthrophages, but that failed every single time.

  Throughout these attempts, I desperately tried to hold on to hope. Maybe Castomyr had screwed up the spell. Maybe I could still escape and rescue Russell. Maybe I could still put this right.

  It was increasingly hard to hold onto hope, partly because I knew I was lying to myself, and partly because the deaths were so painful.

  Every time I woke up beneath the clock, all my physical wounds were healed. Whatever the process was, it did nothing for my memory. I could remember the deaths in piercing, excruciating memory, remember fangs and claws ripping my flesh apart, remember acid burning through my skin, remember fire consuming me. I couldn’t walk anywhere in the town without dread choking me, without acid churning in the pit of my stomach and my hands starting to shake with the remembered agony.

  I was starting to lose it.

  On Day 75, I finally snapped.

  I couldn’t lie to myself any longer. I knew I had failed. Russell had probably been dead for weeks, along with the Marneys and Riordan. Every effort I had made to escape this place had failed. I broke down sobbing and wandered up the main street crying to myself as the despair overwhelmed me. Eventually, I went into the town’s little post office, slumped behind the counter, and gave up.

  I had spent my life trying to save my brother, and I had failed.

  I discovered something else about the town on Day 75.

  If I waited long enough, the anthrophages started hunting me.

  I think it took about six hours. I was sitting behind the counter in a stupor when the anthrophages surged through the door. That shocked me back to focus, and I surged to my feet and started casting spells. I killed three or four of the anthrophages and then the rest overwhelmed me and ate me.

  On Day 76, I did exactly the same thing. I just wanted to lie down and die, but the town wouldn’t let me.

  The pattern continued for about four months, but on Day 199, something changed.

  Not the town. Nothing ever changed here. Something changed inside my head.

  My despair had turned to hatred hotter than anything I had ever known.

  Arvalaeon had done this to me. Arvalaeon had gotten Russell and the Marneys and Riordan killed. The great and mighty Lord Inquisitor hadn’t thought of a better plan for dealing with Baron Castomyr than this, and because of his stupidit
y, he had gotten millions of people killed.

  I hadn’t been able to save Russell.

  There was one thing left for me to do.

  No matter how long it took, no matter how much it cost me, I was going to get out of here.

  And when I got out of here, I was going to kill the Lord Inquisitor Arvalaeon.

  No. I was going to kill Arvalaeon, but only after I had made him suffer. I would only kill him after I had inflicted such pain on him that the Elves would whisper about it for another thousand generations.

  On Day 200, I pushed off the ground and stalked into the town to continue my search for a way out.

  No matter how long it took.

  Chapter 7: Hell Is Repetition

  On Day 12,984, I woke up in a fiery kind of mood.

  Yes, you read that right.

  Day 12,984. If you do the math, that’s about thirty-five and a half years.

  Thirty-five and a half years of dying again and again and again.

  As you can probably guess, after twelve thousand nine hundred eighty-four days of this, I was nowhere within shouting distance of anything that even remotely resembled sanity.

  I had died so many times. I had been ripped apart again and again. Every part of my body that could be torn from another part had been ripped off at one time for another. I knew exactly what most of my internal organs looked like because I had seen them so many times. I even knew what my own heart looked like since a couple of times the anthrophages had managed to rip it from my chest before I died from blood loss.

  Every day, I woke up whole and healthy again under the clock, though I still had that headache that Captain Alan had given me all those years ago.

  Whole and healthy…but if you wake up with the memory of tens of thousands of deaths in your head, it tends to alter your perspective just a bit.

  The bronze clock clanged above me as it rolled over to Day 12,984, and I pushed off the ground and stood, humming to myself, a wide grin on my face. It was another identical day in the Shadowlands, identical to all the other ones where I had died in this miserable little town.