by C S Vass
“Fiona, what’s going on?” Donyo asked. “What’s Shifter talking about?”
Fiona felt the gazes of everyone in the room burning into her head. She knew she had to say something quickly, or else the situation would get out of hand.
“Who I deal with is nobody’s concern but my own. You needn’t worry about me. Just like I’m no puppet for Haygarden, I’m also not one to be made into a puppet by any other organization. You can count on that.” She looked around the room, scowling into the faces of those who she wasn’t sure if she could call friends. “Anybody have anything to say about that?”
Nobody met her gaze. They all seemed determined to study their feet.
“We still have much common ground to work towards,” Shifter said. “We don’t need to be fighting amongst ourselves. Especially you, Fiona. What we want is the same. I simply advise you, beyond your dealings with these various factions, I’m aware of your biggest struggle. I’m aware of that thing you carry inside of you. It won’t end well. You should abandon that attempt before it consumes you.”
Shifter’s words left her speechless. She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She didn’t think she could bear to speak to anybody about the Beast. But how did the godling know?
“We can leave such a discussion for another time,” Shifter said before anybody had a chance to ask further questions. “The biggest threat to the peace and security of this city right now is not the Empire, or the Forgotten. It’s Rodrick.”
A hush fell over the room, and Fiona felt her face redden though she could not have said why. She wasn’t responsible for her brother’s crimes. What more did she have to do to prove that?
“Sandra Redfire is barely hanging onto power, and even now she essentially rules in name only. Rodrick knows that weakness is there, and he’ll be looking to exploit it. That’s why he came back to the city.”
“WHAT?” Fiona’s heart hammered in her chest. “He’s here? How long have you known? Why wouldn’t you say that immediately?”
“Calm yourself,” Shifter said. There was a melody in his voice that took half of Fiona’s energy right out of her body. Eyelids drooping, she obeyed, despite her anger that Shifter would use sound magic against her.
“Perhaps it’s best now Fiona, if you tell us what you have learned about your brother,” Shifter said.
Fiona nodded sleepily. That made sense to her. “He’s after something. The Forgotten know about it, they’re the ones who told me. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something he needs. A weapon, perhaps.”
“Then we best hope he doesn’t get it,” Donyo said.
“You,” Fiona turned to Donyo. The lucid state that Shifter had placed her in made her forget about any stealth or subtly. “You’re working on something too. Something big. What is it? Is Rodrick trying to steal it?”
Donyo lost himself in a fit of coughing. The room had grown very quiet. “What could I be working on?” he asked angrily. “I don’t even have a home to work in!”
“You’re hiding something,” Fiona said. She walked uneasily towards Donyo. She felt lightheaded, outside of her body even.
“You’re mad,” Donyo barked. She kept moving towards him, slowly and steadily.
“Fiona, sit down,” Sasha said. Her voice was nervous and urgent. Something was happening in Fiona’s body. Her sense of balance was thrown off, the room felt like it was spinning. She was going to throw up.
“Get away from me, girl. You’re scaring me!” Donyo shouted.
He must have been scared. His face was completely drained of color. All of their faces were drained of color. The whole room was drained of color. Fiona’s head was spinning. She was going to fall. Outside a dog was barking. She needed to get out. She needed air. Quickly Fiona stumbled to the door. When she went outside the sky was red as blood.
Chapter Eleven
“Gods, not now!” Fiona’s head was swimming as she fearfully anticipated what was to come next. The moon shone above her, full and colorless, a massive dead orb in the sky.
“You’ve done very well so far, Fiona,” the Beast said. She turned and observed his terrible red eyes and wolf-like nose. “The last time just getting you here nearly killed you. You seem to be adjusting to my world quite nicely.”
“I’m in the middle of something!” Fiona said. “Can’t this wait?”
“I don’t wait for humans,” the Beast said with a terrible smile. “Not now, not ever. But you needn’t worry. To them this is just the blink of an eye.” There was a curved sword in his hand, almost comically large. It was clearly meant to be a two-handed greatsword, a huge one at that meant for a giant of a man, but the Beast held it confidently in his right hand alone.
“This is the phase where most people simply give out. Their minds and bodies can’t take it and they either go insane or die. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with you. I’m surprised. Pleasantly, of course. But we still have a long way to go. You haven’t faced your fears yet.”
“What is it that you want from me?” she demanded. A blast of icy wind rushed through her bones, but it was like no wind that she had ever experienced. There was a moaning noise to it, almost like a chorus of whispers.
“Always demanding answers. You only have to look to yourself. You’re the one who summoned me. I don’t know what we’re going to have to do with you if I have to remind you of that every time we meet. Now try to calm down, okay. There’s important work to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like survive.”
He lunged at her sweeping the curved blade in a massive arc that would have cleaved her in two at the waist if Fiona hadn’t dropped to the ground. “Good!” the Beast roared, his red eyes shining like rubies.
“You’re insane!”
“You’re weak! You don’t have the strength of body to control the manjeko, or the strength of mind to understand it. But the manjeko does not operate on the convenience of your human limitations. You ask the blessing of an ancient magic, a magic that in some instances surpasses the abilities of the gods themselves. Such powers are not handed out like candy to children. You must fight for them, honor them, even die for them if necessary. But of course you don’t understand. Perhaps I can only show you.”
He launched himself at her again, only this time she had her blade out to meet him. Their swords clashed together in midair, his horizontal in a slash, hers vertical to defend. The force of the blow sent her sliding on the snowy ground in a half circle, but despite the power behind the attack Fiona maintained her footing.
She needed to find some sort of weakness. Normally an opponent with such a huge weapon would be slow and heavily encumbered by it, but the speed with which he maneuvered the blade was incredible. Wondering if the Beast could defend with it as quickly as he could attack, she decided to make him put his guard up.
Without warning she launched at him like a serpent striking at prey. She sent her blade spinning at her opponent over and over, slashing down, striking up, wheeling around, trying to find a weakness in the Beast’s defenses.
To her surprise he chose not to deflect with his own blade but rather to simply dodge the blows. He was incredibly fast and agile, once even planting his blade into the ground and using it to vault over her head, kicking her hard in the back as he landed.
“You disappoint me, Fiona. For all your bravado in the human world you’re really quite ordinary. I had expected more from you once you got your bearings here.”
“Tell me that when you’re able to strike me down,” she said with contempt.
The Beast blinked. “Perhaps you’re right.” There was an odd note in his voice that Fiona did not like in the least.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, Fiona. I had hoped to avoid it, and usually this is only necessary in the most extreme circumstances. You’re not meant to experience this, and it will probably kill you. But the manjeko must be honored.”
Fiona
didn’t have the slightest clue what the Beast was thinking, but something about his expression truly scared her. He actually looked forlorn.
“This is going to be very unpleasant, but if you emerge from it, perhaps you’ll be able to continue on the path.”
“Are you going to talk in riddles all day?” she asked. “Or are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“The manjeko!” the Beast said. “You have it! But you’re not using it. I see it behind your eyes. The power is there, but you’re not tapping into it. It should have been provoked by now. But you’ve not done as I have asked you. You haven’t settled the storm that rages within you, and the manjeko is too clouded by the confusion in your soul to be able to make itself known. You have nobody to blame for this but yourself.”
“I am using it!” she shouted back, angrily. “I’m using it right now. I have the same eyes as you, don’t I? I’m here in the bizarre place, whatever you call it. What more do you want from me?”
“Everything.”
Another gust of wind howled. This time Fiona was sure that she heard moaning whispers floating through it in the air. “Let’s just get on with this fight,” Fiona said. “I have to get back to the meeting you saw fit to interrupt.”
The Beast wasn’t listening. He was whispering something—no, chanting it, quickly and quietly to himself. He ran two fingers down the length of his blade and the sword began to glow ghostly blue. He gave her a look that was pure pain. “Fiona, I’m sorry.”
He vanished, or rather he moved so quickly that he appeared to vanish. In an instant he was directly in front of her, inside of her defenses swinging his massive greatsword down in an arc. She couldn’t react fast enough. He was too quick. The blade was coming straight of her skull.
She screamed as the sword crashed through her head.
* * *
Fiona was floating. How or why she couldn’t have said. Everything around her was black. She was underwater. How strange. Suddenly she remembered her limbs, her body. She had forgotten that she had them. Slowly she moved her arms. They were met with the natural resistance of water.
It was water all around her but she could breathe. No, she couldn’t breathe. But she didn’t need to. Air simply was not necessary. Slowly she touched her neck, as if to see if she had gills, but her human form seemed to be intact. She simply didn’t need to breathe.
Slowly she opened her eyes, but it hardly made a difference. She could see a little. There were forms around her. Perhaps some underwater rock formations. But everything was in shadows. Her sense of patience began to fade as she started to remember. She was in a fight. A fight with an opponent she could never hope to defeat.
Memories returned. The sword, shining deadly blue like a ghost. How could it have shone blue? The only color allowed in that world was red. Nothing made sense. Then he had attacked. The sword, it came at her.
She jolted in the water, remembering the sickening feeling of her own skull caving in on itself as the Beast struck her. It was a fatal blow. There was no way she could have survived. That would have been impossible. So what happened?
She died.
She must have died. People didn’t just survive swords that smashed through their heads. So where was she now? Was this death? Some new strange wasteland she would be forced to contend with? A sense of irritation crept up her spine. This was a bit boring for death. Total nothingness would have been expected, but this almost nothingness hardly seemed worth the trouble.
Suddenly Fiona remembered that she could swim. Well, she was in water, wasn’t she? Testing out her limbs she tried to paddle a little in the water. Her body moved forward. So maybe there was more to this. She would just have to explore.
Going up made the most sense, but it was difficult to tell which direction up was. Everything looked the same and her sense of balance was deeply disturbed. Her perception seemed to have crashed in upon itself when her head caved in. How was she to know which way to go?
Feeling uncertain and annoyed she swam. There had to be a light coming from somewhere. It was all around her, but so far away. She could only make out the faintest edges of shadow. But when she swam towards the shadows those too seemed to dissipate and move around. It was as if nothing about the world she was in was stable. Everything was jumbled up.
Despite the oddness of her situation, she felt at ease with herself. Not peaceful. She knew there was so much that was still not right. But rather she felt drugged, like when Shifter used his godling magic to ease her into a sense of comfort. Somehow, the thought worried her. She didn’t want to be drugged. She wanted to know what was next.
Things seemed to be going quickly in the opposite direction. Rather than getting closer to any source of light, or any solid objects, Fiona seemed to be getting farther and farther away from them. The already extreme darkness was growing ever more black. A sense of desperation was growing inside of her and before long she couldn’t even see the outline of her own arms anymore.
The terror fell upon her like an avalanche.
There was a massive grey body, a leviathan floating through the void. Something from within the beast illuminated its body, made it stand out in the surrounding darkness. It seemed to have skin rather than scales, grey rolling slabs that churned in roiling waves of fat. It was enormous. Bigger than Fiona by a hundred times. A thousand. Infinitely.
The creature floated by her, some primordial ancient destroyer that she was never supposed to see, never supposed to know. Power radiated from it. Its very presence electrified the water, penetrated her skin, and made her think of things she was never supposed to ponder.
Floating naked in the water she was helpless. This was a realm of monsters and she had no place here. The creature seemed not to notice. It moved slowly, and even precisely despite its massive form. It was so near she could reach out and touch it, but she couldn’t move away. She was frozen stiff with terror. Her blood had turned to ice and her skin was petrified. She was surprised she didn’t sink, for she thought she had been turned to stone.
The leviathan continued to move, but its size was so great that now she couldn’t see the end of it in either direction. A humming filled her ears though she could not have said where it was coming from. It was soft at first, but grew louder. As the sound increased, she felt a strange sense of safety, and a tingling warmth running through her body.
To Fiona’s astonishment she realized that she could see her hands again, and that they were glowing. Her whole body was glowing with an ethereal red light. She knew this was odd, but she couldn’t tell why. She couldn’t remember who she was, or why she was there. She could move again, and for that she was grateful, though uncertain what to do. Still, the massive creature moved endlessly on.
Grab the monster.
She didn’t hear the words so much as feel them. How bizarre. She realized what she had to do. The prospect terrified her more than she could have imagined, but she knew it was the only way. It was as if there was some small voice deep inside her, whispering to her so low she couldn’t hear the words but subconsciously she could receive the message. All she wanted to do was swim away, but there was something mesmerizing about this massive being and she could no less swim away than she could leap upwards and land on the moon.
Touch it.
The voice was so small, more of an echo than a voice. A shadow of an echo even. But the thought was decisively there. Perhaps because they were the only words that were in her head. She seemed to have lost any ability to form language in her mind. She existed solely on feelings, a creature of emotion, not logic.
She moved her hands cautiously towards the monster. Its knotted grey flesh was covered in splotches. She felt as if whole worlds existed inside that body. Whole universes. There was nothing else to be done. Steadily, she reached out and placed her hands on the creature.
* * *
When Fiona woke up she remembered nothing. It drifted back to her slowly, the meeting, the Beast. All of it until he crushed her with
his sword. Somewhere towards the end of the battle it became fuzzy again and simply faded away as if she had fallen asleep in the middle of the fight.
As she opened her eyes she was surrounded by anxious stares and open mouths. She realized that she was on the cold floor of her house. She sat up. Her tongue felt thick and fuzzy.
“Are you alright?” Martin asked. He spoke slowly as if he were worried that if talked too quickly at her he might knock her out again.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, feeling embarrassed. How was she going to explain what just happened?
“You were convulsing,” Sasha said. “You were thrashing around on the ground, and your eyes were rolling.”
“I…just got a bit lightheaded,” she said lamely. “Really, I’m fine. I promise.”
The room was quiet, and nobody seemed quite sure where to put their eyes.
Donyo chuckled, but it came out flat and awkward. “Would have thought if someone were to pass out it would have been me.” His voice was weak and his face was full of concern.
“Let’s just drop it,” Fiona said. She stood up and tried to put on a strong face.
“If one thing is clear,” Shifter said, as if to save them from the moment, “It’s that we all have a common interest two things. Removing the outside forces that are trying to meddle with our city, and finding Rodrick. I hope it’s clear that we should be helping each other. Any differences or arguments that have happened between us are irrelevant.
“There’s little else we can hope to accomplish tonight. Rodrick is after something, and whatever it is you can bet it won’t bode well for any of us if he gets it. You should all get some rest, and then we can try to sort our way through this mess.”
They all nodded in agreement. When the meeting started the room had been so tense and angry, but now everyone just seemed weary. Fiona had the feeling that they weren’t telling her something, and she didn’t appreciate being left out.
