by Frank Morin
“You b—”
Mai Luan punched Sarah in the chest, driving the air from her lungs in an explosive blast and sending her tumbling. The rifle flew from her hands when she crashed into one of the heavy steel torture beds.
“Watch the language,” Mai Luan said with mock gravity.
Sarah groaned and rose, leaning on the table for support. The pain bled away quickly, but she still felt rattled by the sheer power Mai Luan possessed.
Asoka tumbled through the broken doorway from the well room, but rolled back to his feet. A deep gash down the side of his face disappeared. He’d lost his saber somewhere, but a pistol appeared in his hands.
He opened fire on Gregorios, who was charging through the door toward him. The bullets tore into him and he stumbled, sliding across the slick floor.
Asoka dropped the spent pistol and an axe appeared in his hand. “I own this dream,” he snarled. “I’m a god here, and you’re dead.”
He swung the axe for Gregorios’ neck, but a thick wooden shield appeared in Gregorios’ hands. The axe sunk into the wood, and when Asoka raised it, Gregorios released it, leaving the shield stuck on the blade.
Gregorios held a shotgun in his hands, and blasted Asoka off his feet.
“I could get used to this,” Gregorios said, rising. The gunshot wounds were already gone.
He tackled Asoka and the two fought with savage fury. With each strike, they summoned new weapons. Guns blasted into each other while knives slashed and stabbed. Both men took terrible wounds and their blood soon covered the floor. The air around them shimmered after each blow and their bodies became whole again.
Sarah watched with growing fear. They controlled the memoryscape, and thus could summon whatever they wanted and will their bodies whole again.
That didn’t mean they should.
Alter and Gregorios had both warned her of the dangers of tampering with the dream world too much. Bad things responded immediately.
Shadows along the edges of the room drew deeper, and tearing sounds echoed out from the darkness. It sounded like claws ripping through the steel walls to get in. Growls and moans filled the room, and Sarah cringed. The two powerful facetakers might be fighting the duel of all time, but they were going to kill everyone if they kept it up much longer.
“You look scared, Sarah.”
Mai Luan approached with an easy smile and a casual step. “You should be.”
She looked healthy, her uniform spotless, a new bluetooth earpiece in place.
“I’m not scared,” Sarah lied. “And I’m done with you.”
She spun toward a nearby cart filled with torture implements and began snatching them up. Wicked looking blades and hooks and probes. She threw them at Mai Luan as fast as she could. She no longer cared about the stains marring many of them.
Mai Luan closed the distance between them faster than seemed possible even for her. She caught one thrown scalpel and slashed at Sarah’s throat.
Sarah dodged and tried to punch Mai Luan. With her new rune, she was so much faster, so much stronger.
She never had a chance.
Mai Luan swatted her fists aside and punched her again and again with sledgehammer blows that drove her across the room, farther from Gregorios with every step. The pain slowed her, disrupted her thoughts, but she fought on. Giving up meant death.
She might not have a choice.
The beating paused for a moment as Mai Luan spun to catch a catlike creature out of the air and rip its head off with her hands. Sarah caught sight of Gregorios and Asoka. They had stopped beating on each other long enough to shoot, stab, and beat to death a swarm of nightmare monsters.
Some looked like goblins, others like the undead ghouls that had attacked the soldiers above ground. Some moved with blurring speed, like a pair of demonic cats similar to the one Mai Luan had just killed. Gregorios chopped the beasts out of the air with a huge battle-axe. Others were slower, heavier, like something that looked like a rock with arms that Asoka beat on with a heavy hammer.
Mai Luan slapped Sarah across the face and sent her tumbling onto a blood-soaked torture table. “Thanks for fighting with courage, Sarah. It’s not much, but it helps a little.”
Sarah noticed for the first time that the walls were beginning to look opaque. The entire dream was taking on a surreal feeling, as if it was beginning to fade. Either Gregorios and Asoka were destroying the memory from within, or Eirene was almost out of strength.
Would Alter really kill her?
Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even. My rune just formalizes the process.
~Muhammid Ali
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Eirene groaned under the strain of a sharp increase in the load. She sank to her knees beside Gregorios’ chair and rested her sweat-soaked face against the cool metal of his helmet. For a moment she closed her eyes and focused on just breathing, just holding on a little longer. Her nevron was nearly spent, her soul drained to the point of utter exhaustion.
The drain eased a moment later. Not much, but even that little bit was a welcome relief. She opened her eyes and only then noticed that Alter had removed his helmet and risen from the couch where he had been slumped beside Sarah.
He approached, knife drawn, expression angry.
“You’ve lied to me from the beginning,” he snarled.
“I had hoped to spare you,” she said between panting breaths. Speaking was difficult, but she couldn’t bear to see the betrayal reflected in his eyes.
“You’re the demon who destroyed Grandfather Ronen’s life!”
In a flash, Eirene understood what had happened in the memory, what Mai Luan had done to him.
He raised the knife but didn’t immediately strike. Despite his anger, he was clearly torn. He was a good boy at heart, so much like his beloved ancestor. She hated that Mai Luan had twisted him so badly.
Eirene shook her head sadly. “You are playing into Mai Luan’s hands. She will win the master rune.”
“I can’t fight her if I can’t trust you,” he said. “Tell me the truth.”
She understood his point, but he was acting like an idiot. Eirene gave him an impatient look. “You already know you can’t trust anything Mai Luan told you.”
“She didn’t tell me. She showed me a memory.”
“An entire memory, or part of one?”
He frowned, and that was all the answer she needed. “Alter, we could have discussed this later. You’ve left the others in terrible danger.”
“You deny you killed my great grandmother?”
Eirene sighed. “The woman who died that day was not Elizabeth. It was the kashaph assassin who came to kill Ronen.
Alter shook his head. “Stop lying! I saw enough. Grandfather Ronen recognized Elizabeth at his feet and I saw your reflection in the window.”
She nodded weakly. The drain was growing steadily again and black spots began flickering behind her eyes. She had never drained her soul so dangerously low in all her years. She needed to break the connection or she would either pass out or die.
She was not sure she could extract them against their will.
What would happen to them if she lost connection before they got out?
“No, my boy,” she whispered from where she sagged against Gregorios’ inert form. “Mai Luan twisted the memory. Your great grandfather saw what he needed to see. He recognized a dead body on the floor.”
Alter gasped as the truth finally penetrated that thick skull.
“Now you understand. I saved Ronen’s life and the life of his son that day. I killed an assassin and I left in her body.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, thunderstruck. A storm of emotions flickered across his face. “You’re Elizabeth?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you,” she said. It was becoming increasingly hard to think, but
she savored the warmth that flowed through her to know that he finally understood the truth.
“Why?” His knife fell to his side and he knelt beside her.
“I gave a life to him when I was supposed to remove him,” she said. “He never knew, and I was never supposed to love him.”
There are those who say what I do is abomination, but it is god who granted me these gifts. Like the saints of old, I can draw upon deeper powers of the earth. Why celebrate them as men of god, and denounce me as a heretic?
~Joan of Arc, Rune Warrior
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Sarah tried to roll off the table, but Mai Luan pounded her so hard that ribs cracked. Sarah screamed and writhed against the uncaring steel, but Mai Luan held her down with one hand.
With the other she hefted a long, wickedly curved knife.
Across the room Gregorios and Asoka were still fighting each other while dispatching an ever-rising tide of nightmarish monsters.
“I don’t have much time,” Mai Luan said as she raised the knife. “But a little torture’s called for. How about I start with the ears?”
A pistol appeared in Sarah’s hands and she shot Mai Luan in the face as fast as she could pull the trigger. The Cui Dashi reeled back under the barrage of heavy bullets and Sarah twisted up off the table, still firing.
“How about you die finally!”
That strange numb sensation rippled out from her rune again, and her pain and bruises faded away.
The gun ran empty.
“Seriously? At seventeen?” That made no kind of sense.
Mai Luan spat out a bullet, her wounds already closing.
Sarah ran.
A hole opened up in the floor directly in front of her and a short, squat monster covered in green scales, with a mouth almost bigger than its fat head crawled through. It caught her ankles with long, too-thin arms as she tried to vault it, and she crashed to the floor.
The monster leaped at her, but Mai Luan swatted it aside so hard it exploded into green mist.
Mai Luan stood over Sarah with an executioner’s axe in her hands and a grin on her flawless face.
“Good improvisation, Sarah!” She said. “Let’s see how you do with no arms.”
“So you were supposed to kill him?” Alter asked.
He struggled to decide on the truth. The memory had felt so real, but part of it had blurred. Could it be the way Eirene suggested?
Who did he want to believe?
“My orders were to gather intel and ensure his attacks on facetaker interests ceased. The assumption was that I would kill him, but I didn’t want to. He was a good man.”
She leaned toward him as if to embrace, but her hands were stuck in the machine and she couldn’t quite reach. Alter resisted an urge to wrap an arm around her shoulders. When he first met Eirene he had mistaken her for a much younger woman and felt instantly drawn to her.
At first, he had assumed he was just attracted to her, but that wasn’t it. Sarah attracted him more than any woman he had ever met. He wanted to be near Eirene, but in a different way. Although he should hate her, she had slipped into his life, despite his reservations. He had instinctively trusted her, despite all reason. He still couldn’t quite define why.
“When the assassin came I found another way, a way to complete the mission and still spare his life.” Her voice was soft, weak. The drain was killing her as surely as his knife would have.
“I should kill you,” Alter said as much to himself as to Eirene, but his anger had evaporated.
“Know that I shared something special with him, and he will always be dear to me.”
A memory came unbidden to Alter’s mind. Long ago, shortly before Granfather Ronen had died, they had spent a quiet afternoon together. They visited the park, ate a picnic, and grandfather had talked. His mind had drifted back to early days and he had spoken long about his beloved Elizabeth.
Alter had been old enough to feel moved by the depth of the old man’s emotion, but too young to feel embarrassed by the showing of such emotion. The memory of that day had stayed with him and become a cherished source of strength and the source of one of his most powerful personalized healing runes.
As that afternoon had faded to an end, the old man had patted his hand and said, “My Elizabeth. She will always be dear to me.”
Filled with a flood of emotion, Alter placed one hand over hers and spoke in a whisper.
“Grandmother.”
Mai Luan struck before Sarah could imagine any weapon, any way to stop her.
She had to escape, had to run!
The rune on her shoulder throbbed, suddenly so cold it chilled her entire back. That strange numbness radiated through her body, but this time it continued to intensify until she couldn’t feel her extremities.
The axe whistled down and sank right through her shoulder. It struck the floor and sank into the steel with a spray of sparks.
It had not made that sickening sound of steel striking flesh, and no blood spurted out of the wound. Sarah felt no pain, but only a vague pressure in her shoulder.
“By the forbidden runes, what devilry is this?” Mai Luan lifted the axe free. Sarah’s arm looked unharmed. Not even a scratch where the blade had driven through the flesh.
It also looked hazy, like thick glass. Sarah could dimly make out the floor beneath her. The sight freaked her out. What was happening to her?
“You’re fading.”
“But I’m not gone!” Sarah twisted away, and her torso slipped right around Mai Luan’s grasping fingers, like dense mist. She wanted to pat her skin, hug herself, maybe scream for a while, but the executioner’s axe in Mai Luan’s hands posed the greatest threat. She could freak out later.
Her body felt strangely light, and Mai Luan couldn’t seem to quite grab her. She could feel the grasping fingers like distant flickers across her skin as she pulled out of Mai Luan’s hold. Maybe Eirene’s connection to the memory was fading. Maybe the duel between Gregorios and Asoka was pushing the memoryscape beyond its limits.
No, it was her rune. It had to be.
Sarah rolled to her knees beside Mai Luan and willed a knife into her hands. She plunged it to the hilt into Mai Luan’s stomach and wrenched it sideways with all her strength. The slender Cui Dashi screamed and clutched her hand. Mai Luan’s movements radiated up through the blade, and the feel of holding the steel into another person’s guts disgusted her. She nearly puked right into Mai Luan’s face.
Mai Luan yanked the knife out, despite Sarah’s resistance.
“Not so happy about that one, are you?” Sarah panted. The smell of blood clung to both of them, but she noticed for the first time that Mai Luan was wearing a rose-scented perfume. She would have expected something more sinister.
“Keep fighting,” Mai Luan urged. “Every wound you inflict helps restore more of my honor.”
“Then give me the axe,” Sarah suggested.
Mai Luan back-handed her all the way across the room.
Sarah cried out in pain, wondering what had happened to becoming insubstantial. She collided with the wall right next to a bloody spot where a body had hung from chains at some point. The impact rattled her and she slid limply down the wall to the floor. If her rune really had triggered that insubstantial ability, why had the effect faded? How could she get it back?
She focused, willing the rune to respond again.
On the other side of the room, Mai Luan threw the heavy axe.
Numbness again radiated out of her rune just as the axe struck. The huge weapon sliced right through Sarah’s body and struck the wall behind. Sarah felt it pass through her chest, but felt no pain. The axe clattered to the floor, and Sarah rose shakily to her feet.
She should be dead.
She needed to know how the rune worked. She was in so far over her head, she couldn’t imagine how to reach a safe shore.
Mai Luan cursed and snatched up a nasty looking hook. “Tell me how you did that, or I’ll rip your eyes out.
”
“Come get some,” Sarah shouted, hefting the axe. If she could maintain the insubstantial effect, she might just have a chance.
Just then, the numbness began to fade.
Eirene spat blood. Her entire body shook under an intense increase in the strain. The force of her nevron was flickering, dropping below the critical threshold as the machine dragged her toward oblivion. She needed to break the connection, or she would die.
If she did, they would die, or be lost to the memoryscape.
Through her connection, she caught whispers of images, barely-formed glimpses into what was happening. The little she saw only intensified her worry. Somehow Sarah still lived, despite what had looked like an axe driving through her torso. She wouldn’t survive much longer. Gregorios and Asoka were still fighting, a battle like none the world had ever seen. The more they broke with the memory sequence, the greater the drain became.
On the reclined chair beside her, Gregorios looked battered and blood soaked his clothing and dripped to the floor. On the couch, Sarah looked bruised. Blood trickled out from under her helmet.
Alter lifted Eirene back to her knees and grabbed her by the throat. He leaned close to her, his gaze intent, but his expression strangely unreadable.
“Let her go, or you’re a dead man.”
Quentin stood in the doorway, pistol leveled at Alter’s head. His dress slacks looked impeccable as always with perfect creases, but he had shed his customary jacket and tie.
Eirene lacked the strength to feel much emotion, but she was grateful Quentin had come. She’d tried to reach Alter, felt like he understood the truth, but couldn’t fathom what he planned to do next. She just wanted to lie down and sleep for a month.
“She will die unless you do exactly what I say.”
Quentin lowered the pistol and advanced slowly. “Whatever happens to her, happens to you, boy.”
“Move over to the couch.”
