by Wayne Hill
Continuing his relentless slaughter, thoughts only of his beloved Daria, Talon finds a wild source of strength from deep inside — an ancient fury that he had once used to paint this land red with the blood of inmates. Talon’s eyes change. The whites of his eyes flush crimson, and shine like hellfire in the dark of the tunnels. He repeatedly bellows Daria’s name and plunges into the masses of Barrenites barricading the entrance to the main Barrenite chamber. Ploughing through the hoard of monsters, heads and limbs flying, Talon wades through gore. Barrenites are quickly despatched, but there is always more to replace those that die. His movements are slowed by the press of the hideous bodies around him. His slices and blows come less frequently and those of his opponents land more often. Taking heavy damage, ever more slowly pushing his way towards the centre of the Barrenite’s main chamber, Talon fights bravely on. But there are too many. He cannot make it. His fellow Dehas watch as the blood-drenched Secret-Never-to-be-Told courageously battles enormous numbers. Vicious blows hail down on Talon from all around: tentacles lash, claws rip, fists and feet fly, teeth bite.
“Daria,” Talon gasps, slowly being hauled to the floor by the sheer number of the Barrenites—
“ENOUGH!” The cavern trembles with the voice of Caelum.
Talon lies on the floor, weakly rolling in blood and bodily fluids. Cuts and gashes compete with his runes for space on his skin, his left elbow-spike has been ripped off, his index finger-blade is missing, and his right eye socket is just a pool of oozing blood. He drops a large malformed leg that he has torn off.
“Leave us,” commands Tristitia to the Barrenites circling Talon, growling, clicking and hissing. They obey immediately, carrying away the injured that might live, leaving their dead and the none-too-quietly dying.
“You all look well,” pants Talon to his four remaining siblings.
“You may ask of us what you will, then we shall consider your fate. You know that it has long been our desire for you to return to us,” says Caelum.
“Do you need our help, brother?” asks Tristitia.
“Maybe he comes to kill us, as he did Gaudium,” says Puer.
This elicits laughter of little humour from the other three.
“Others come. They are a danger to the whole island. I’ve come to warn you of them,” Talon says, his remaining eye fading from hellfire red back to jet black, as the fire of battle wanes.
“Why should we trust one who has waged war on his own?” says Funeralia.
“These creatures you have spawned are not family — they are abominations. Monsters from the bellies of nightmares made flesh.”
“You are unwise with your words,” says Caelum.
“I am unwise with nothing.”
“His forked tongue has always been of such pleasure,” Funeralia says gracefully leaning over Talon. Her dark cloak shrouds most of her face, but long pointed fangs shimmer in the low lamplight. One of her hands reaches up to stroke his face. It is covered in dark red scales but still perfectly formed.
“Don’t do that, Funeralia,” Talon protests grabbing her slender wrist. Funeralia’s other arm similarly reaches out and Talon also grabs this arm. Both of his arms so engaged he is powerless to stop her when two further shapely arms emerge from her cloak and gently caress the sides of his bleeding face.
“You are badly injured, Secretas,” Funeralia says.
“I don’t care about that!”
“Caelum, he’s badly hurt,” Funeralia whispers into Caelum’s ear as she circles around behind him. She had seen inside Talon, when she touched his head, and now she is silently weeping, trying to hide her tears from the others.
“I'm here to warn you all,” says Talon, “Death has come from the deep darkness to destroy us.”
“We will check what you say,” says Caelum. “Tristitia?”
Tristitia is quiet for a moment and then says, “He speaks the truth. It has already begun. A giant in the ocean births men to take our land. I can feel their hearts. I can see their dark dreams. They crave pain, suffering. They will destroy ... everything.”
“So, what is it that you want from us, Secretas?” asks Caelum, a small smile touching his handsome lips. “Or do you prefer to be called Talon?”
Talon slips and slides on viscous blood, unsteadily rising to his knees and then his feet.
“I ask only safe passage to the northern coastal clans.”
“You may freely go, brother,” Caelum says, waving his hand dismissively. “Be with these creatures, your adopted family. But we will deal with these intruders ourselves. Feel free to help your real family this night, Secretas. Remember that these weak fools you waste your long life with will all die off. You will come home to us. Eventually, you will re-join your family.”
“It is a truth that will awaken him,” Tristitia adds. “He comes closer to us each day. I sense his change is near. Secratas will become what he is destined to become. Even if, in order to be convinced of his destiny, he has to die first.”
“Maybe we will all witness the Secret-Never-to-be-Told, after all” says Funeralia, yellow tears still flowing from her scarlet eyes.
“You heard Caelum, Secratas,” says Puer, caressing Talon’s face as Funeralia did, before joining her sisters next to Caelum. “You have our blessing, brother. Be with your playthings. The next time we meet, it must be when you are returning to us for good. To take your rightful seat at our table. Go. Now.”
Talon gently embraces his siblings, one at a time, before they run down separate tunnels. The Dehas are readying for war. Real war. Talon, left alone in the empty chamber, takes deep breaths of the close, putrid air before running as fast as his pain-wracked body will allow him down the main tunnel towards the cliffs. To his clan. To his friends. To his daughter.
TALON BURSTS FROM THE eastern end of the main tunnel.
On the orders of his dark family, Barrenites stand to one side for the last part of his journey. Some even bow their twisted heads — as if acknowledging the return, albeit briefly, of one of their mighty leaders.
Talon gulps at the freshness of the air, expelling the remnants of the musty tunnel air from his lungs. He falls to his knees and coughs up a lump of black, semi-clotted blood.
A concerning sight.
On he runs.
THE SCENE THAT GREETS Talon when he arrives at his beloved fishing community is one of total devastation. His clan’s people lie strewn on rocks and floating in the sea. All dead or dying. Talon sees a surviving mother rocking a dead infant in her arms, staring with glazed eyes at the carnage that used to be her home. Boats are burning in the bay; corpses are repeatedly thrown against the cliff-face with the steady pulse of the waves.
Talon clambers down to his cave, yelling for Daria.
Swinging into the cave he finds it has been ransacked and torched. He goes from cave to cave, searching from one scene of destruction to another. He leaps from the cliff face and into the sea, sinking and screaming as his wounds meet the salty brine. Scrambling ashore, Talon searches the tideline.
He finds Thankwell a mile down the coast. The giant is sitting cross-legged with Daria cradled in his huge arms.
Talon races over.
The giant half-Barrenite was badly burned and has a deep cut on his face. He has been weeping. “They burn her,” Thankwell says so quietly Talon can barely hear.
Daria is so severely burned that, at first, Talon dares not touch her. His sharp hands merely trace the outline of her, and he sinks down cross-legged across from Thankwell, who is silently staring out at the vast sea vessel that had caused all this agony.
“I tried to get her to water. They burn her and she ...was on fire...and I...and...I —”
Talon delicately extricates her from Thankwell’s grasp and brings her close to his wounded chest. Talon just holds her for a precious amount of time. The sounds of explosions and distant screams ring out as the visitors from space continued their purge further down the coast.
“I tried to warn the others
, Papa,” whispers Daria, her voice low and rasping. The charred bundle is identifiable only by sound as she quivers in his arms.
“There, there, Angel,” Talon soothes through tears and gritted teeth as he paces up and down the pebbled shore his head hung over her. “Papa is here. You are safe now.”
“I tried to stop them. It ...hurts, Papa.”
“Shh, shh. It’s okay, Angel. Try not to move.”
“Please make them go away, Papa. They are bad ...Papa?”
“Shh, try not to speak now, Angel. Just you relax. Papa’s here. Papa will fix you, Angel.”
“But.... I’m the one...Papa. I’m the one...who... fixes...you —”
IN THE MOMENT BEFORE she dies, Daria sees her mother for the first time. She is beautiful. A smiling Aurum has her arms outstretched, mouthing Daria’s name. Some part of Daria runs into her mother’s arms. Aurum kisses the top of Daria’s head and promises never to leave her again.
THANKWELL STANDS UP and moves over to Talon who is clutching Daria in his arms, repeating, “There, there, Angel. Shh, shh. There, there. Papa is here. Papa will fix everything.”
“Talon,” Thankwell says, placing his large hand gently on Talon’s back. “Daria with Aurum now. She with others now.” He points to three Nirmanan transport pods quickly skimming across the sea towards them. “They sent her there. Too early. Daria, gone now, Talon.”
Thankwell painfully lowers himself down on one knee next to Talon. He lets out a sigh and puts a massive arm around Talon’s shoulder. Talon just stares blankly at the rolling waves. Stooping closer to Talon, Thankwell hears his friend saying an ancient prayer into his dead daughter’s blackened ear.
Talon and Thankwell both kiss her blistered head. Wrapping her up tightly in a blanket of rags, they wept. Talon places Daria’s body on the cold, pebbled shore.
“Thankwell?” Talon asks.
“Yes?”
“Will you help me one last time?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get me out to that ship?”
“Yes.”
Talon looks at his friend’s legs. They are as badly burned as his poor Daria. Talon grits his teeth and reaches up to pat Thankwell’s large blood-spattered cheek. No words are needed between the two as they silently share the misery in one another’s souls.
“I’m going to do my job, now. I tried to dream of a better future — one where I wasn’t so cruel, one where others see how much good I have inside of me.”
“You are good,” says Thankwell.
“I’m not and neither are you.”
“Never said I was.”
“Good. Because, aside from my siblings, you are the closest thing I have seen to a true creature of darkness, my friend. An ancient evil.”
“I think of killing a lot.”
“Good.”
Not far away, Nirmanan transport pods are beaching and Nirmana are pouring out on to the beach.
“I want to kill these!” Thankwell roars.
“I’ll — we’ll — make them pay, my love,” Talon says to the swaddled Daria, kissing his lethal hand and placing it on his daughter, over her heart.
The first Nirmanan soldier to reach them is disembowelled by Talon’s remaining elbow blade. Talon then rips the spine of another Nirmanan soldier out through the man’s chest. Two other soldiers look surprised as he slashes out their windpipes.
The six remaining soldiers, now unarmed, stare at each other and ponder their predicament. Three put their arms in the air to surrender. The behemoth Thankwell strides over to them.
Thankwell pounds the first Nirmanan soldier on his head with a huge fist, lodging the man’s head into his ribcage. In the background, Talon is a blur, and decapitates three more soldiers — their neck stumps gush blood high into the air.
The other two in Thankwell’s group, unwisely decide to run into the sea: Thankwell’s cold kingdom. Once in the water, they engage the air propelling function of their boots, to shoot them back to their mothership. Ten meters from shore, Thankwell strikes one soldier from beneath in a shark-style attack, flying out of the water with the slowest Nirmana soldier’s severed leg in his huge mouth. Thankwell repeats this process with the other, slightly faster, Nirmanan soldier — but this time he bites the man in half.
When Thankwell returns to the beach, he finds Talon cuddling Daria’s body.
“Papa wasn’t gone long, Angel,” says a bloody Talon. He and Thankwell sit cross-legged again, with the ragged bundle laid between them, both exhausted and heartbroken. Five- or ten-minutes pass before Thankwell breaks the silence.
“Hurt bad,” the giant man says. He peels away his leather tunic to reveal a mortal laser wound. The gaping hole was deep, and splintered ribs were protruding. Talon wipes under his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a long trail of blood there.
“Me too, Thankwell,” Talon says, knowing that during his tunnel run he had run through people, and their bones had pierced his body as badly as his friend Thankwell’s laser wound. “I’m going to need one last thing of you, old friend,” Talon says.
“I know,” says Thankwell. He slams his fist into the ground and screams as he hefts his bulk upwards. He helps Talon to his feet and the two warriors limp to the sea. Thankwell wades into the water with Talon on his back.
“I do this, then go with Daria,” says Thankwell as he plunges under the water. Talon holds his breath.
Thankwell manages to get Talon to the underneath of the large craft. Talon pulls Thankwell up the huge ram-scoop under the Nirmanan craft. Where they both pause, recovering what little strength they have left.
“The final journey, old friend,” whispers Talon, patting Thankwell’s huge shoulder.
A breathless Thankwell stares around, bewildered, and says, “This...is not...my kingdom.” His deep voice echoes down the tunnel that runs the entire length of the Nirmanan craft.
Thankwell closes his eyes and falls backwards, dead, into his beloved sea with an enormous splash.
“Thank you, old friend,” Talon mutters after his friend. He limps to a door, in the side of the Nirmanan spaceship and coughs up another blood clot. “I’m gonna have to make this quick, my Angel,” Talon mutters, taking a knee and coughing up more lumps of glutinous dark blood from his corrupted lungs.
THE NIRMANAN LEADER is enjoying the show, in the control room, when the intruder bursts in. Laser blasts shoot off in all directions. The nightmare-looking intruder, who appears to be missing an arm and an eye, moves too quick for the gunners to get off a clean shot. He — if the thing is, indeed, a he — is all angles and sharp edges. The last thing the Nirmanan leader witnesses is a vision from a horror story. He sees a serrated bone-smile, a lot of blood, and a baleful red eye burning with hate.
“From Daria,” Talon whispers into his ear.
Talon’s index finger-blade slowly punctures the leader’s nasal cavity before it is ripped downwards, unzipping his flesh from nose to groin. The unnaturally sharp blade melts through bone and muscle. The Nirmana Captain’s intestines plop out of him onto the floor at Talon’s feet.
“Is this all that you dreamed it would be?” Talon asks the dying man.
A laser blast hits Talon’s back, but he makes no move to defend himself. It is too late for that. His time is running out — at least, in this reality. He tears the Captain’s head off with his bare hands and — coated with the still-warm, pulsing blood of his enemy — Talon dies.
His vengeance is timed to perfection. A skill he learned from his friend — Tommy Astilla Splinter Salem — whom he thinks of now, as his body shuts down and his brain flickers from this reality to the next.
He glimpses Astilla, Daria and Thankwell, and a beautiful red-haired girl, in an emerald dress, singing a melancholy threnody.
Then he sees Aurum. She is just as magnificent as he remembers. She kisses his bloodied cheek and whispers to him, “I’ve been waiting so long, my lost secret.”
Talon smiles and sighs: “Aurum.”
&
nbsp; He closes his eyes and joins his family — from every time and every universe — in the intricate mandala of quantum resurrection: the dimension of life, death, and rebirth.
BY NIGHTFALL, THE NIRMANAN fleet are faced with the unquenchable rage of the Barrenites. The leaderless Nirmana finally meet a greater evil than themselves.
Caelum tears through vast swaths of these armoured ant-like men and women, howling fiercely — a battle cry that rallies his kind in bloodlust and revenge. The Barrenites witness Caelum’s unbounded rage for his fallen brother, Secretas, as, in the heat of battle, he takes on the shape of a fourteen-foot-tall Talon and shreds every defence the Nirmana can muster. Caelum becomes a giant war machine, a speedy assassin, destroying everything in sight and smiling with a dreadful plate-bone grin.
In their last moments, the Nirmana witness no comforting, soothing or reassuring visions. It is a horrific and painful finality. For the Nirmana, there is only the abyss that is said to exist in the gaps between the spider-like web of energy that connects all living things.
In the long silence, the Nirmana are forced to face the abyss — the incalculable darkness of their eternity, their own personal Nirvana.
10
Adorned by the Sun’s distant rays, the USA’s galactic hub — New Hampshire One — orbits Saturn. Colossal in capacity, the contemporary space wonder shimmers silver, incandescent, against a silent, formless night. An oasis of architectural accomplishment, New Hampshire One’s scale is only matched in grandeur by its luminescent beauty and enduring design. New Hampshire One is home to the most senior and credited of the USA.
