The Wounded World

by Michael Vu

  *******

  Not long after, they stood in front of that Door again, and Quin felt, for the second time, a flash of déjà vu, and a flash of fear. Something was happening, he didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t have control of anything. In addition, he and John were about to enter into a potential warzone.

  “Me first,” Quin volunteered quietly.

  John stepped back, and taking a deep breath, Quin strode confidently forward into the unknown.

  9. THE GRAVEYARD OF CADRELLE

  Blues of every shade burned into Quin’s eyes as he stepped through the Door; glaucous and cerulean, sapphire and indigo all streaked across the frozen icy landscape that cascaded from their feet forward into the deep, vivid landscape. As he breathed in and out, a bubble of clean air formed around his face for a moment. Quin gazed at grey, snow-saturated sky for a moment and then closed his eyes and listened.

  This place had a dark and powerful history; it was as though he could hear it whispering to him from a distance – an echo of the past – the sound of guns and screams and of horses’ screams; and there were children running, and blood and fear—

  “Quin, are you okay?” John interrupted.

  “Can you hear that?” Quin asked. “Close your eyes.”

  They both closed their eyes.

  There it was again, the fear, and this time he heard something deeper, something louder – it was almost a thunder, but it came from beneath his feet – a roaring deluge of sound rumbling and rippling closer and closer—

  “Nope. I got nothing.” Taking a deep breath, John scanned the world around them. “It’s surprisingly not that cold,” he commented.

  A frown settled over Quin’s eyebrows as his other senses rose to the surface – not cold at all, in fact.

  “There’s a lot of ice for it being above freezing,” John noted. “And snow?”

  Stepping a few feet away from the Door, Quin bent down and touched the ground. His eyes widened as a realization hit him. “John,” he said, looking behind him. “This isn’t ice. And that isn’t snow.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Do you smell that?”

  It was an old smell, like the sounds that drifted in from the past, a scent of death and ancient memories and smoke.

  “Barbeque?” John said, sniffing and craning his head in all directions, as if a revelation would just pop out and introduce itself.

  “That is ash falling from the sky,” Quin replied solemnly, ignoring John’s inappropriate levity. “And this ice is actually glass.”

  John’s eyes widened immensely, and he immediately fell to his knees and brushed away some of the ash. It was indeed glass – beautiful glass of shades of blue, streaking in lines that seemed to narrow, all pointing in the same direction.

  The two men continued to take hesitant steps forward, ignoring the ash that lighted gently on their shoulders. The ash in the sky had a rippled effect, like low clouds calmly drifting, but instead of a blue sky behind it, there was simply more grey ash. Every ten feet or so, Quin noted a strange lump in the ice. Each lump was about two feet tall, and shaped oddly – like a mushroom cloud with a smooth sphere in place of the cloud.

  “What do you think those are?” John asked, pointing at one.

  Quin shook his head silently. There was something about this place that made him want to leave. It wasn’t the odd fear that he felt on Path. It wasn’t the dread he experienced before 4 AM fitness drills. It wasn’t the desolate emptiness or the peculiar nature of the ash and glass. It was a sense that simply by stepping into this strange, eerie, and silent world, they were desecrating a sacred place. He bent down and brushed some more of the ice away; they seemed to be walking perpendicular to the lines in the glass.

  “We should follow the lines,” Quin said.

  “Why?”

  “I just have a feeling.”

  “A feeling? Since when do you go by feelings?” John raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Since I stepped foot on this planet.” Quin swallowed.

  John frowned. He was staring at Quin with his head tilted sideways, curious and concerned. “What is bothering you about this place? It’s a little creepy, yes, but it’s just glass and ash. They probably had a volcano and a thunderstorm or something.”

  “A volcano and a thunderstorm,” Quin repeated dryly.

  “Or some other meteorological event! Tell me – what’s wrong?”

  “I can hear someone whispering,” Quin replied quietly. “It sounds like the past, like it’s trapped.”

  “That would be disturbing,” John mused. His eyebrows knit together. “Why do you think you can hear it and I can’t?”

  Quin shrugged.

  “Ah, of course. Superior senses. That’s why I’m the brain guy and you’re the beat-em-up guy. What are they saying?”

  “Screaming.”

  John took a sharp breath but didn’t reply. They walked in silence as John pondered this, the concerned expression evicting his usually cheerful grin. They left footprints in the layer of ash as they walked; each step kicked up a little cloud of white. Then John made an abrupt left turn.

  “We follow the lines,” he said.

  Without reply, Quin turned and followed him, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. He tried to focus on himself – feeling the way the nearly imperceptible particles of ash brushed softly against the skin of his head, face, and hands. He tried to focus on the wrinkles in his shirt, the clinking of the zippers from the backpack, the feeling of the sweat that dripped down his back. But the screaming was too loud – it was only one constant sound, but his ears could pick apart the many voices that sang in pain together. There were men and horses, women and children, voices he had never heard and never would, insects, bears, cats, and wolves…

  “Wolf,” he whispered, clutching at his temples.

  “What?” John asked, reaching out to touch Quin’s shoulder.

  “Wolf,” Quin repeated. The screaming was getting louder. Each step they took towards wherever the glass would lead them. The voices… he could hear nothing else, only them, screaming to the beat of his own heart.

  “What about Wolf?”

  “He doesn’t have one.”

  “Doesn’t have one what?”

  “A wolf.”

  And then Quin fell to his knees, clutching at his head, which pulsated with agony with each breath that he took. His elbows smashed into the glass with the force of a million voices, and tears began to stream from his eyes. In the distance, he could hear John calling his name, begging him to listen, but all he could hear was the screaming.

  He peeled his eyes open and looked at the ground, and there he saw, at that spot exactly, that all of the streaks came to one, angry point – a point that was piercing his thoughts, hijacking his senses, and burning up all the energy that he kept stored in his body and mind.

  Then everything went silent and dark.

  A fog, a haze. Slowly lifting. Sand and grey clouds; he could feel the grit of the sand grinding against his feet. It was everywhere. In his shoes, in his shirt, in his hair. Wind whipped wildly around him; he could smell sweat and iron and fear; horses whinnied and screamed. People ran by, fleeing in every direction, a veritable chaos of pain and terror: this was what they called war.

  And he was the only one – the only one, they said – who could stop it.

  In the center of the field was his objective: a large metal machine which he didn’t understand, and which didn’t know him from Adam. But between him and that machine were the mechanical soldiers of the Torialles, marching to an unpredictable rhythm, shooting at everything that moved, and proving nearly impossible to destroy. There was only one way to get past them, and it broke his heart.

  He pulled the cloak over his head, and drew the bag of crystals from his pocket. The sand, the storm, and the crystals – they were all that he needed. A tear rolled down his cheek. It would not only be the enemy that lost, but also his own people, and everyone that fo
ught needlessly on this great battlefield. He wondered if anyone would remain to write about him. He wondered if anyone would remain even to write about this horrific battle which had destroyed so many souls.

  Waiting, he looked at the skies as the mechanical soldiers drew nearer and nearer, each metallic step adding to the symphony that sang to his own death. He had only to wait for one thing – the man that was rescuing the children. He had a machine, he said, that would save them from this nightmare, if only he had a little more time. So the parents and grandparents, the aunts and uncles and friends had dived into the battle wielding frying pans and pitchforks, spoons and hearts of steel.

  He could see the last of the children hurrying, running, disappearing over the rise, but then he couldn’t wait any longer. The cloak wrapped itself tightly around him as he willed his own body to survive the oncoming storm, and he spoke in words deep enough to command the thunder, rich enough to envelope the rain, and powerful enough to wield the fire in the sky.

  “I give you my life,” he said. “I sacrifice my soul.”

  One crystal, she had said, one crystal is enough to stop them.

  So he withdrew a handful and without another pause or thought, flung them to the ground.

  The earth began to rumble, a deep and terrifying sound, a distant sound but one that rapidly drew closer. So he ran. He sprinted past the mechanical soldiers that stumbled on the unsteady ground. He flinched as lightning began to strike all around him – a shower of sparks and flame. The soldiers began to collapse, one by one, and all he could think was, I hope the children are safe. Then came the thunder and the rain, but still he ran, as fast as he could, ignoring the ripping pain of his lungs clamoring for air; ignoring the gnawing sense of fear and desperation that clawed its way up his belly; ignoring the shoots of pain that tightened their grip around his legs and his arms and his chest.

  Millions of lives already lost. Billions of souls taken, stolen, destroyed. And his would be just one more. But they would feel his revenge. They would pay. And he would have justice.

  The metal machine rose in front of him, rusty and old, but protecting the one thing which he knew could stop this battle for good. He leaped onto the top, feeling the power of his words course through his body. With unnatural strength he ripped the metal panels from its surface – one layer and another and another.

  And there it was.

  For a moment, the world around him seemed to fade away. It was him versus this old, powerful beast which was nothing other than a small, cylindrical cell filled with some sort of chemical – a chemical of insanity, perhaps. A chemical of hate. He lifted it, turning it over and over in his hands. It wasn’t heavy, didn’t look like much, didn’t feel like anything. But this was it.

  Destroy it, they said, and you will have saved the world.

  He set it down at his feet, and then carefully climbed down from the giant, metal beast. And as he called to the powers of the sky, a thought crossed his mind. He thought, why did it have to be me? Why me? Then fire rained down, burning, melting, destroying the machine and its now-naked power cell.

  Sobbing, crying, he fell to his knees. The world seemed more distant, more cold than ever. The rumbling and roaring was right underneath him and as he watched, the sand and the lightning melded as the power of the earth rolled underneath – and all was turned to glass.

  Blood made the glass slippery – was it his? – and he slipped until he was face down, crying tears into the ocean of glass. He gripped the ground with the last of his strength, and spoke the last words of the battle and of his life.

  “Honor them.”

  And the ground and the sand and the lightning replied by streaking forward from all directions, peaking at the point of his death, and overwhelming him in a moment and preserving him forever in glass.

  Then Quin took control of the dream. Backwards, he urged. Go backwards. The glass receded and then there was the machine… the sprinting… the glass receding away from him, uncovering all it had enveloped. The cloak and the crystals, the mechanical soldiers marching, pounding their feet into the sand… the clouds and the lightning… there were people all around him, running, fleeing. A child carried over his mother’s shoulder; an eagle diving in to attack the head of a metal soldier; swords and guns flashing and booming… and then his vision narrowed in on one man, crouched over a figure that lay on the ground and weeping.

  Quin watched as the mechanical soldiers drew near, desperate to run, desperate to scream, but he was trapped in another man’s memory.

  And as the soldiers drew near, the hirsute figure rose up with all of the power and might of a legion, and slayed each soldier that drew within twenty feet of the bloody corpse which lay on the ground. Mechanical arms, legs, heads lay strewn across the ground as Wolf laid them to waste. And when he was no longer surrounded, he bent down, heaved the cold body of his beloved companion across his back, and disappeared through the Door.