Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  Matoh. The thought came to him like a hammer.

  Soldiers exploded in a spray of blood as the horrendous weapon firing from atop Keef’s tavern ripped a gap in the line of shields.

  “GODS DAMN IT! I SAID SOMEONE GET UP ONTO THAT ROOF!” Stonebridge yelled above the cries and angry yells of the battle.

  It was then Wayran thought he saw someone running across the rooftops like some predatory cat towards the horrible weapon. Adel, her name came to him, and a dozen possibilities sprang to life in front of him as he watched her float from rooftop to rooftop like a ghost, but before he could see what she should do, pain lanced through his head, and he had to close his eyes.

  It shouldn’t be like this, he thought. These are our people. Even the Xinnish soldiers were, only yesterday, their allies. It was such a mess; they were killing the very people they were meant to protect.

  If he could only concentrate long enough, there had to be a way out of this. A possibility he wasn’t seeing that he just had to find and all of this would go away. Wayran tried to siphon the strange energy he used with his future sight, willed his body to reach for it.

  His legs buckled under him and he went down in a heap onto the cobblestone street. His head pounded, and he felt something warm trickle down from his ear.

  “Woah, Wayran, stay with me, mate,” Kevin grunted as he pulled Wayran up. “Lean on me, come on. Here we go. Keep your feet moving.”

  “I can’t see it. It’s all too much. There isn’t a way out of this,” Wayran tried to explain.

  “Now don’t get cryptic,” Kevin said as his head twitched to the side like a bird’s. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Wayran asked, but then he heard a door slam open in the building beside them.

  Kevin did as well and pushed Wayran against the wall so he could notch an arrow. Kevin took a step away from the building and fired into the window. “Damn it. They’re trying to flank us! They’re coming through the houses!” Kevin yelled to whoever the closest officer was. “Probably punched holes in the walls before we got here. This was all a gods-damned trap, right from the start.”

  Kevin looked at him and then back at the building where they both saw movement through the windows. “Buddy, I need you to get back to the Academy, get to that wagon. I don’t want to leave you, but I gotta handle this, or we’re all gonna die.”

  “Go,” Wayran said. “I’ll be fine. Do what you need to.”

  Wayran hopped over to a discarded shop floor broom leaning against the wall and put it under his arm like a crutch.

  “Be safe.” Kevin clasped his hand and then was off as two heavies from the back line and half a dozen scouts scurried up to Kevin’s position. “With me! We’re going hunting! Make sure you have your short blades! It’s gonna be bitching tight in there!”

  With that, Kevin kicked open the door to where the enemy troops were heading. A bolt shot through the open space but, Kevin had anticipated and pivoted out of the way, just in time. A thin blade flew from his hand as he rolled back across the doorway, and a gurgling cry came from inside the door.

  “Heavies, shields up! Crush anyone in that room! Covering fire behind them! Push them bastards back into their holes!”

  And then Wayran was alone. Standing with the broom taking the weight from his throbbing leg, which the tourniquet was beginning to make go numb.

  Ghostlike images played in front of him across the entire square. Possibilities leading to possibilities, like the waves of the ocean, churning and swelling. Yet each wave could only go so far, he couldn’t follow them. Each wave splintered into a hundred others, and then each of those into a hundred more. It was too much.

  There were patterns in it, he could feel them, but they were so large it was almost incomprehensible.

  A ghost image of an arrow hissed at his head. He stepped to the side, watching the real arrow glide through the path a heartbeat later.

  “You will kill yourself if you push much further,” a voice, clear as a church bell on a still summer’s day, rang through Wayran’s mind.

  Wayran turned and saw red-swirling eyes staring back into his.

  The metal-faced man sat hunched on its heels, watching him from the mouth of an alleyway.

  “Halom take me,” Wayran croaked.

  “Not yet, this one thinks,” the voice said, and Wayran knew the metal-faced man was talking to him directly.

  “Is this a dream?” Wayran asked. Had he been knocked unconscious?

  “No dream, though we have met within them before.” The concentric red circles within what looked like a mask swirled steadily as they studied him.

  At the back of the alley, Wayran saw a huge shape move through the street behind the houses. A scream he had heard so many months ago chilled him to the very bone. A roc, the giant bird he had seen in the Jendar complex beneath the desert sands, was here in the city. He saw people running in from the roc’s razor beak as it screamed its warning once again, and somehow Wayran knew this was the same roc which had almost killed him.

  “Yes, we met you there as well. We did not understand your part in all of this before. Ash and this one both apologise to you and your brother for our aggression in Mannford’s labs. The journal you found was not meant to be part of the process, you understand.” The metal-faced man put a closed fist on its chest and bowed its head, hiding its unsettling eyes beneath the brim of its wide conical hat.

  “Ash?” Wayran asked.

  “The roc,” came the answer in his mind. “Though she only apologises to you. She feels your brother, Matoh Spierling, and herself are square as she lost the toe which was stabbed with his lightning shard.”

  This was all too surreal and had to be a dream. It was more likely that he had passed out and was lying helpless and bleeding out on the street where he had fallen. “Wake up!” he yelled at himself.

  “You are awake, Wayran Spierling,” the red-eyed man said. “But you are correct in your assessment of urgency for yourself. You have pushed your mind too far, any further attempts to use your connection to the Tiden Raika will kill you, yet the damage you have done is already irreparable. The most likely outcome is that you will die in a few days’ time.”

  Wayran laughed, despite it all. “Of course, that about sums it up. I tried to figure out how to help, and now I’m going to die for it.”

  “This one did not say that.” The red-eyed man rose and checked the street, it picked up a stone and waited, looking towards the battle for a moment. With a casual toss of its metal covered and skeletal looking hand, it tossed the rock into the air.

  The stone interrupted the flight of an arrow and deflected it from its course to stick into the wall about an arms-length to the side of Wayran’s head instead of in his head.

  “Did you just stop that arrow from killing me?” Wayran asked, laughing once again at the impossibility of the throw. “What’s the point if I’m already doomed?”

  “You can be saved, this one knows a way, and we believe you may find the path needed to put an end to Father’s gambit.” The red-eyed man stepped towards him and held out its skeletal hand.

  “Kali?” Wayran asked, trying to remember his dreams and what he could remember from Mannford’s journal.

  “She is part of this, yes,” the metal man replied. “As you already saw, you cannot help what happens here, not during this convergence. Yet, there are others who are shaping this convergence as we speak, and what you see here is not the end you know is still to come.”

  “The strange gem-flies? The destruction of ... all civilisation?” Wayran couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in a dream, but the pain in his leg was real, the arrow in the wall was real. Yet he still felt adrift, like he stood at a crossroads and needed to choose where his feet should take him. He looked at the metal hand, then grabbed it, pulling himself up to his feet once again.

  With far more strength than the thin body alluded, the metal man gently but firmly picked Wayran off his feet and moved him quickly to t
he right.

  Another arrow bounced off the cobblestones where Wayran had been standing.

  “Quickly, in here. Ash has cleared the way on the other side.”

  “I haven’t said yes, yet.” Wayran pulled his hand free of the metal fingers, though he was quite sure the metal-man let him do so. He braced himself against the walls of the narrow alley.

  The roc, Ash, was staring at them through the gap between the houses. The great golden eye seemed to bore straight into Wayran’s soul, just like it had all those months ago in the Wastes.

  The swirling red eyes waited for him, staring at him.

  “All right, it’s not like I have much of a choice. You… you can save me from this?” Wayran touched the blood dripping from his tear ducts and nose.

  “Yes, you have sustained massive brain haemorrhaging. The link established with the Tiden Raika has forced too much growth in a short amount of time. The pressure of it is causing the bleeding and your push to open the link further has caused much trauma. There is a long-forgotten place, near here, where my brethren can treat you.”

  The strange echoey voice in Wayran’s head paused.

  “What is it? What’s the catch?” Wayran asked, hearing the hesitation.

  The red eyes swirled a bit slower, and the metal face seemed to hesitate. “The process will alter you. It will allow you to keep your link to the Tiden Raika, to use it and expand on it but, when finished, you will not be entirely human.”

  “Not entirely human?” Wayran shook his head.

  “Technically, the people who you call ‘the Jendar’ would not regard your current form as ‘human’ either. There have already been significant mutations during the gambit.”

  “Well, by all means then, if I’m already a freak, experiment away!” Wayran threw his hands up in the air. “What in the nine hells are you going to do to me?”

  “It is hard to explain, but one of my brethren, Kenaz, the one who has monitored you in the city, is confident it can integrate with you so as to stabilise your deteriorating condition. Once fully integrated Kenaz will be able to assist you on your path through the Tiden Raika. I should prepare you, however, the process is ... painful.”

  HISS-BOOM!

  The sound of the terrible weapon echoed through the small alley like a thunder-crack, and Wayran stopped to look back.

  His friends could be dying back there. Was Matoh all right? Was he even still alive?

  At the thought, he crumpled, tears taking over. He had to go back, he had to try to help, but what could he do?

  “Yes,” the metal man’s voice said softly in his head, “they may die, but you have seen how all will perish if the cycle completes again. You are the only one who has seen what is coming.”

  “My brother, you don’t understand. I can’t leave my brother.”

  The metal fingers helped Wayran to his feet once more. “Matoh Spierling still lives, can you not feel the storm building? Your brother has been dazed and when he awakens this convergence shall take its true shape. Come, we must go, you have done substantial damage to yourself and are in need of repair.”

  “Why me?” Wayran asked but let himself be guided down the street. “There are probably hundreds of other people who are close to death back in that square. If you can help me, why not them?”

  “The tides of humanity wash in and wash out every day, yet sometimes among the masses a nexus forms. It is these nexus which we watch for, as it is through them which the Tiden Raika acts.”

  “What is this Tiden Raika? What does it–” Wayran started.

  The roc screamed an angry sounding screech in Wayran’s face.

  “Har, har,” the red-eyed man laughed in Wayran’s mind, a horrible sound. “Ash is correct. No more questions, time to go.”

  Before Wayran knew what was happening, the metal man jumped the eight-foot span up onto the roc’s shoulder as easily as a metal cat might. The giant bird lowered itself and launched up into the air, beating its great wings and grabbing Wayran about the waist as it did.

  Wayran screamed in shock and watched the raging battle from above as thunder boomed through the dark clouds above them all. Wayran could feel it then. The convergence had come, and it was about to take shape.

  37 - A New Presence

  One subject in Test Site A developed a weak ability to harmonise with the molecular frequencies of other subjects. He was even able to affect resonant patterns within inanimate objects through the use of his vocal abilities.

  Could this be one of the first indications of the Tiden Raika making its presence felt within our species?

  - Further observation and analysis are required.

  -Journal of Robert Mannford, Day 235 Year 20

  Kai

  Keef’s Tavern, New Toeron, Bauffin

  Kai awoke as something tapped his leg. He opened his eyes and found the action of lifting his eyelids to be a mistake. The room swam, and his head pounded, forcing him to close his eyes and wait for the vertigo to leave him.

  As he lay pulling in shallow huffing breaths, Kai felt a cold earthen floor against his face which smelled of old dirt and mould. A cellar would be his guess.

  Kai’s next attempt to open his mouth was also a mistake. A dull powerful throbbing immediately set in along his jaw and shot up into his head. Only then did he remember someone’s fist connecting with his mouth moments before blacking out.

  Again, the tapping on his leg, and this time, it made him jump. Bracing himself against the wave of vertigo surely to follow, Kai slowly opened his eyes and turned his head to see what it was. Don’t be giant rats, he thought, don’t be giant rats. Images of rats rushing up to find his eyes nearly stole his courage, but he somehow managed to turn his head.

  The room swam, he rolled and vomited at the same time.

  “Uh, Gideon’s balls, man. Got yourself a bit of a glass chin by the looks of it,” a sinister voice said, and with that voice, some memories of what had happened came back to Kai.

  “Echinni?! Jachem?!” Kai yelled lurching towards the voice, hoping his head might connect with something solid.

  A knee shot forward and stole the air from Kai’s lungs. Hands hit him in the back and sent him back down to the floor.

  “Easy now, hero,” the voice said. “I just wanted to see if you were still alive. The show will be better that way. Things are about to kick off upstairs. Listen.”

  Kai heard nothing and then-

  HISS-BOOM!

  The whole building seemed to shake with the impact. Dust from the ceiling shifted down around them. Kai tilted his head up and saw Wan, the doorman, smiling back at him.

  “Ah, hear that, drummer-boy? That was the High King’s salute. They’ll be picking pieces of him out of the cobblestones for weeks,” Wan said, and someone cackled in response from the other side of the door on the far side of the room.

  Kai tried to scan the rest of the room. There were barrels of what looked like wine stacked against the far wall. He tracked them to the corner and then the breath caught in his throat.

  Yuna lay on her side in the corner, the darts which had felled the great warrior were gone, and Kai thought he saw her chest swell and contract with shallow breaths. Ropes bound her hands behind her back.

  Her eyes stared daggers at Wan, and a strangled hiss came from her lips, but her body remained rigid as a metal rod.

  Assassins, Echinni kidnapped, and Yuna overcome by a bunch of tiny darts, all of it now came back with startling clarity, and for some reason, that last image was the strangest of them all. Yuna was so strong, untouchable, like an ever-present mountain. She had seemed invincible.

  And Jachem, what in the Nine Hells had they done to Jachem? Kai remembered Jachem being struck and dropping to the floor from the punch as if his bones had melted.

  “Jachem?” Kai said softly, letting his tears slide down his cheeks. “Jachem, are you all right? Where is my friend?”

  “That fat lump is still breathing, not to worry. You’ll be scream
ing beside each other soon enough. Once the battle is won, you’ll be the warm-up act before the princess’s execution.

  The vertigo was ebbing, and Kai tried to collect himself. He glared at Wan with everything he could muster and asked a single question through gritted teeth, “Why?”

  HISS-BOOM!

  Another of the great blasts shook the building once more.

  Wan chuckled, “How should I know?” The imposter doorman stood and spread his hands wide. “I get paid to act. Not to ask questions of those who employ the Lady’s Hand. Probably somebody wanting to be the new king or queen is my guess. Why do you care? Will understanding the reason behind any of this comfort you while you try to hold your guts in before the captive audience outside?” Wan snickered and clapped Kai on the cheek as if he were a thick child.

  “They all alive?” another voice said from outside the door.

  “Yeah,” Wan said. He stepped over to Yuna and slapped her face with a smile. “Could you shut up? That noise you’re making in your throat is disgusting.”

  Yuna’s eyes looked as if they widened and the noise grew in intensity slightly, but the chorded veins on her neck showed the paralyzing poison was still burning through her.

  “Come on then, the boss wants more barricades and furniture barring the entrances.”

  “Don’t go anywhere.” Wan winked at Kai as he left, making a quick rip across the belly motion. “I’ll be back.” Sadistic laughter echoed for a time in the assassin’s wake.

  Something tapped his leg again, and this time, Kai was saw what it was.

  Jachem’s foot. He was tied and propped up right behind where Kai had been.

  Tears formed in Kai’s eyes. “You’re alive,” Kai said. “I thought … the way you crumpled.” Kai took a long shuddering breath. “Why didn’t you say anything just then when I asked after you?”

  “I was pretending to be unconscious,” Jachem said. “Wan had already checked my vitals, and I thought there was no use talking to that killer.” Jachem nodded towards Kai’s waistcoat and hissed, “In your pocket!”