by Alex Leopold
“Get your butt out the god-damn mud, Lee!” Acadia snapped at her as he slipped his bindings and leapt from his mount.
“Can’t you see there’s a gunfight going on.” He pulled her to her feet and shoved her aside when a pack of guards came at them.
Riley fell against a stairway that lead up to one of the workhouses and she hugged the steps when bullets popped against the stonework above her head.
When she looked back up, she saw the street had descended into sheer chaos filled with the sounds of swords clashing, the spark snapping and constant rifle fire. With every shot, the air grew thicker with black gunpowder smoke until Riley could barely see a dozen yards in front of her.
Searching through the haze, she found her father in the middle of it all. He fired his shotgun at a line of four guards then switched behind them to chop the last two down with his sword. When a fifth guard appeared at his back, he released the spark straight into the man’s face. The force was so powerful, it lifted the guard off his feet and threw him through the window of a nearby building.
Across the street, Redtail was fighting a scaley with his sword while Cooper pulled Nakano free from beneath her dead horse. It looked like Nakano had been shot, a red stain was blossoming around her abdomen.
They hadn’t noticed a ratty-blend Irenic approach down a walkway at their backs. He was drawing his pistol as he got closer.
Riley formed the electric-blue flame in her palm and whipped it over her sister’s shoulder at the Irenic.
The lightning bolt was thin and dull. It hit the ratty Irenic in the chest, but only gave him a mild shock which he quickly recovered from. Focusing, Riley formed another sphere of light bright enough to burn her fingertips.
“Spark!” She screamed.
This one had its intended effect. The ratty-blend took the electric-flame in the chest and toppled to the ground.
“Thanks.” Cooper told her after Riley ducked her head and raced across the street to be by her side.
“Can she walk?” Riley gestured to Nakano.
“I can bloody well walk out of here.” She said locked jaw.
“Then follow me!” A confident Redtail shouted from over his shoulder as he raced up the same pathway the ratty-blend had just come down. Supporting Nakano, the twins followed, their father and Acadia behind them.
“Don’t follow me! Don’t follow me!” Redtail had suddenly turned on his heels and was coming back, his hands crossing and uncrossing in front of him as his legs pumped so hard they were in danger of leaving the rest of his body behind.
“What the hell is that?” Riley stuttered as she caught sight of what had caused Redtail to double back.
A pack of massive beasts were coming down the path after him.
“Looks like the Directory have some colossals.” A noticeably grim Acadia said.
Ridden by Directory guards, there were three of the beasts. What Acadia didn’t need to add was they were the largest kind of colossal, the dinosaur kind.
Massive lizard-like creatures, they looked to be over twenty-feet long with thick bone-like armor running along the length of their bodies and large spikes jutting out of their spines and skulls.
The ursinian notched an arrow and fired it at one of the beasts. His face did nothing to hide his surprise when the arrow simply bounced off the dinosaur’s armored body.
“We’re better off back in the street.” Their father said taking Nakano from his daughters.
They only just made it back before the three colossals crashed into the street behind them. Their riders had little control over the gigantic beasts and they attacked anything that moved. They ran headlong into the dense crowd of guards, and smashing through them effortlessly. Those that weren't crushed under the colossals large clawed-feet were cut down when one of them whipped its clubbed tail around rapidly.
“Spark!” Riley shouted and hurled the electric-bolt with all her strength straight between the eyes of the nearest one.
It shook off the blow the way a cow might a fly from its nose. Then snapping its head around, it roared angrily at Riley and charged her down.
“Don’t use the spark on them!” Acadia grunted after pulling her out of the beast’s path. “It only makes them mad.”
“Now you tell me.” She replied.
Then she had to grab Acadia by the wrist and switch them both away as the colossal used its clubbed tail to punch a hole the size of a human skull into the ground where they’d been standing.
Exiting the switch Riley felt something tear at her shoulder and was spun off her feet. Lying on the ground she glanced at the wound and saw the shoulder of her coat had been torn open and blood was beginning to flow.
The ground beneath her began to shake and suddenly the light from the sky was covered by a rising shadow.
A colossal stood above her. As she watched, it lifted itself onto its hind legs and prepared to trample her body.
55
“Rush!” Cooper screamed.
The surge of energy erupting from her body was so powerful it tossed the beast into the air as if it was as light as a feather and smashed it against a single-story red brick building.
For a second the fighting stopped as everyone watched the building collapse in a cloud of smoke.
“Thank you.” Riley mouthed to her sister.
Cooper gave her a dizzying smile then her vision began to swim and she toppled to the ground.
She hadn’t meant to create such a powerful rush. In fact, she wasn’t even sure it had been her decision at all. Her body had simply reacted.
Problem was it had robbed her body of its strength and Cooper found she couldn’t move except to squeeze her eyes shut so the world stopped spinning around her.
“Help me.” She begged no one.
Then someone was grabbing her under her arms and dragging her out of the street.
“Ellis?” She asked not quite believing her eyes.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” He said with a wink as he pulled her up some steps and into a nearby building.
Before they left the street, Cooper noticed some of the city’s citizens were joining the fight. Armed with only rudimentary work tools and rocks, they were starting to attack the Directory soldiers.
“Are you hurt?” Ellis asked once they were inside.
He’d sat her down at one of the endless workbenches crammed into the factory floor’s large open space.
“Just winded.” She panted as she tried to regain her breath, feeling a little more breathless from seeing him again.
Could he tell how just the feeling of his hand on her arm caused her pulse to race? In fact, her head was suddenly so crowded with new emotions she didn’t notice something she should’ve immediately.
“Ellis, you're in a Directory uniform.”
“Well of course I am!” He replied unbuttoning his grey tunic to reveal his normal clothes underneath it. “I’m in disguise.”
“Oh.”
“What the hell are you doing in Harvardtown?” He asked.
“Running from the Directory.”
“That makes no sense.”
She could see that.
“We…”
An explosion from the outside rattled the windows.
“My family.” Cooper said.
“Stay here.” He told her and ran out the factory door.
After he’d left Cooper saw she was quite alone in the large open space, kept company only by the sounds of the battle raging outside.
She wanted to stand but realized she didn’t have the strength. Then she heard another explosion, this one so close it caused a window to shatter. Outside, voices were crying out in pain. Was one of them Ellis? Maybe her father, or Riley? She began to panic and saw that her hand was shaking.
Voices echoed off the steps outside as footsteps marched her way. Someone was coming.
She freed her pistol from her hip to steady her nerves and pulled her sword from her back.
The hand
gun held five bullets, once it was empty the fight would come down to the two and a half foot blade of steel that she was too tired to hold in her fist.
Then Riley and Nakano were rushing through the entrance followed by her father and Redtail, their clothes and faces now torn and stained with dirt and blood. Yet, they all brightened when they saw Cooper.
“You’re unhurt.” Riley said with obvious relief. “We thought …”
“I’m good.” She said not wanting Riley to finish that thought. Looking down at her hands she saw they weren't trembling anymore.
“This is fun, right Sirs?” The houndsman said trying to make light of their situation. Yet, his eyes were wide with fright, an indication even he didn’t believe what he was saying.
“You have a strange idea of fun.” Riley replied as she and Nakano half collapsed on the workbench next to Cooper.
Cooper was about to ask where Ellis and Acadia were when she heard a familiar voice from outside.
“I already told you”, he protested as the grizzly frog-marched him inside. “I’m in a Directory uniform because it was the only way for me to move through the city undetected.”
“All I know is you have a nasty habit of appearing when I'm getting shot at.” Acadia threw him to the ground.
“Watch him.” He told Redtail.
“It’s coincidence.” Ellis argued.
“Maybe, but the itch in my teeth tells me you sounded the alarm.” Acadia barricade the factory doors with a long workbench. “So I suggest you tell me why I'm wrong before I get my long-eared friend here to put his blade through you.”
“It wasn’t me, a Myrmidon raven arrived with a message to sound the alarm.”
“Are they here?” Cooper’s father asked.
“I don't think so.” Ellis shook his head. “All I heard from the other guards was that a raven arrived with a message. Nothing else.”
He chuckled. “Guess you guys are still in a whole lot of trouble, right?”
As if on cue something heavy was rammed against the outside of the factory doors, splintering the wooden panels.
“What makes you think that?” A sarcastic Redtail replied.
The doors were struck again.
“That’s our signal to leave.” Acadia grunted. The bench held the doors shut, but it wouldn't remain that way forever.
“We need to fix these wounds first.” Cooper's father turned his attention to Riley’s bloodied shoulder.
“Bullet must’ve grazed me.” She tried to sound brave. “How are you going to stop the bleeding?”
“Its an old crink trick your mother showed me.”
Before she could react, he had the spark in the palm of his hand and was pressing it against the torn flesh on her shoulder. It was such a shock, Riley didn’t even scream.
“Stings a little, doesn’t it?” Acadia said with a smile as Riley recoiled from the smell of burnt flesh.
“You’re the Great Inventor, aren't you?” Ellis asked as Cooper’s father created the spark and closed Nakano’s wound. “I saw an old WANTED poster of you in the guardroom.”
“What if I am?” The pounding on the door was growing louder.
Ellis answered. “Way I see it, our paths crossed once and now they’ve crossed again. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think some force wants to bind our fates together.”
“He saved my life, father, twice.” Cooper reminded him.
“What do you think?” Her father asked Acadia.
A colossal’s horn poked through the door and split it open.
“Boy wants to find the resistance, let’s take him to them.” Acadia responded picking up Nakano and following the others deeper into the building.
“You know where the resistance is?” An excited Ellis asked Cooper as he ran alongside her.
“We have the name of a contact down in Hellanta.”
“Hellanta?” That had confused him.
“Yes, we're going to use the gateway to portal there.”
“The gateway?”
“Of course. We didn’t come here for the sight-seeing.”
They ran the length of the building and reached an exit. Breaking it open, they found themselves back in the street facing an open square. It was quiet as the fighting hadn't spilled into this section of the city yet.
Further up one street, Cooper could make out citizens in open revolt; smashing Directory buildings, overrunning roadblocks and tearing down the red banner of the Archon.
“Are we right to leave them?” She asked Riley.
“We have to, Coop. If we leave them and make it through the portal, then the prophecy is real and we can save them all.”
For a second Cooper grappled with these conflicting desires. Then she grabbed Riley’s hand and raced across a square of cracked stone toward the old library.
56
Harvardtown was now insight for the six black riders and their Sekhem companion. However, it was still just a thin line on the horizon, more than an hour’s hard ride away.
“It’s twenty miles to the city, have you levitated that far before?” The Hangman asked as the Myrmidons dismounted.
“What does it matter if I️ haven’t?” Control replied. “Today, I️ must.”
The six men surrounded him and placed a hand on his shoulders. Through the connection they let him absorb their powers, and he felt his strength surge. Yet, it might not be enough.
He’d burn through it quickly using his ability to levitate. So much in fact there was a chance he’d be spent by the time he got to Harvardtown.
Control didn’t reflect on this. His mind was fixed on one thought. He was going to ascend into the sky and when he came back down, he was going to kill everyone.
The main entrance to the lost civilization library – known at one point in its history as, Widener – was now its only means of access and was guarded by twenty men positioned behind a barricade of stacked sandbags. Four manned the cannon in the center of the colonnade. Two were in the machine gun nests on the raised plinths either side of the library’s steps. The rest kept watch with rifles, or walked patrol.
The guards could hear fighting only a few streets away but it hadn’t spilled into their part of the city yet. Then one of them spotted the movement of shadows along the west wall of the old church, four hundred feet away on the other side of the yard.
“Definitely two.” He said to his commander as he squinted down the sight. “Maybe more.”
“Can you hit them at this distance?”
“Not with this piece of junk.” The guard said raising his Directory manufactured rifle.
“Then let’s have some fun.” The commander chuckled and ordered the guards manning the cannon to light the fuse.
“Get down!” Cooper’s father cried out as he pushed her to the ground.
In the next second part of the church at her back was obliterated in a shower of smoke and stone.
When the next shell struck, her father switched them out of its way but the shockwave still knocked them over. Then the two machine guns began to fire and their world turned into a storm of lead.
“We have to turn back!” With her face and clothes caked in dust from the explosion, Cooper had to shout to be heard over the bullets that were now eating into the brickwork above her head.
The church was struck by a third shell and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to block out the madness.
“We’ll take the long way around.” Acadia agreed, and gestured toward the three buildings running the length of the courtyard’s western perimeter. “We’ll use the buildings as cover.”
He started to scoop Nakano into his arms but Cooper’s father stopped him.
“There’s no time!” He shouted. “The longer we take the more time they’ll have to shut down the gateway.
“Our only way is forward.” He added flatly.
“Forward, across the courtyard?” Ellis spat out. “Their guns will tear us apart if the cannon doesn’t first.”
Peering
around the building they watched as the stream of bullets from the two machine guns swept the yard from left to right. When they crossed at a dead tree in the yard’s center, they shredded it in seconds.
“We’ll switch it.” Her father said.
“It’s too far for one switch.”
“It’ll take a couple of teleports, but we’ll make it, I promise.” He squeezed his daughter’s shoulders reassuringly.
“I’ll be beside you in the connection every step of the way.” He tapped, then added aloud. “Trust me.”
“Do not worry”, a dreamy Nakano whispered to Cooper from where she was lying. “Your fate has already been decided, and it is not to die on this day.”
“It better bloody not be.” Cooper cursed. She was terrified but didn’t want to stay where they were either.
“What do you think, Lee?”
Her sister’s gaze was laser focused. “Let’s go!”
57
After the fifth shell was fired there was so much smoke at the far end of the yard the commander ordered his men to stop firing till it cleared. They did not expect survivors but the guards remained quiet as each man scanned the land for movement; if anyone was going to make a break for it now would be the time.
The first thing they saw clearing the grey mist was a bow, the weapon held within the fist of a massive ursinian who began firing arrows at them in blindingly quick succession. As the riflemen trained their guns on him, they heard the sound of the first two shafts punching themselves into the sandbags in front of them. Before the third found a target.
The commander let out a grunt of surprise when the arrow caught him in the chest. Then his boots scraped loudly along the stone walkway as the force of the impact hurled him back.
All but one of the riflemen turned to see if he’d survived. The best shot on the watch hadn’t taken his eyes off the ursinian. As he placed the grizzly’s chest squarely in his sights he saw a girl with brown hair run up next to him.
