Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  Kai noticed Jachem had been tapping the objects in his pocket the whole time. His pair of drumsticks, but not just any drumsticks, the ones which were made for Meskaiwa’s Demon Drum.

  Jachem nodded towards the far side of the room beside Yuna’s body. “There in the corner.”

  The giant toothy grin of the Demon Drum greeted Kai’s gaze from the corner of the room from underneath Yuna’s giant golden sword, Hunsa, which lay propped up against it. Sacks filled with what looked like coins and other loot sat around them as well. “Stored with all the other pilfered goods, are we?” Kai said.

  “No time for self-pity,” Jachem snapped. “Play the drum and get us out of here, Kai. Make things dance.”

  “What?” Kai asked. “How in the Nine Hells do you figure that?”

  They heard voices coming closer outside the door. Wan was laughing.

  “Damn, that was quick,” Kai said. He felt panic grab hold of him. He was about to be dragged out of the room to die.

  HISS-BOOM!

  Dust sifted down from above once more, but just after the explosion from above, Kai could have sworn he heard something else.

  A melody, an undercurrent of music, calling him from a distance. It was growing stronger, getting closer and building to something almost recognisable.

  “The sword!” Jachem practically spat, bringing Kai back to the moment. “Don’t you see? In the Tenets, Meskaiwa could play the drum ‘as if by magic’. He didn’t actually have to hit the drum to make it work!”

  “What are you talking about?” Kai asked and pulled against the cords binding his wrists as hard as he could, but the thin rope just dug deeper into his wrists. “I can’t move my hands!”

  “I read it! Maestro Percival let me read The Singers History of Meskaiwa.” Jachem was talking as fast as he could. “You don’t need to play the drum to use it! Just start tapping out a rhythm! Make the sword dance! Use it as a weapon!” Jachem was almost yelling at him now.

  “Hey!” Wan yelled from outside in the hall. “Shut up in there!”

  A shudder ran up Kai’s spine as they heard chains being dragged across the stone outside. Kai couldn’t pull his hands-free from behind his back, the ropes around his wrists seemed to be tethered to a metal ring anchored into the floor.

  “Watch it with those hooks, will you?” Wan’s voice snapped from outside the door.

  Hooks and chains. Halom save me. Kai’s heart pounded now. They were going to drag them out on meat hooks.

  The melody grew louder, and this time, they heard thunder boom outside. A storm rising in time with the music. Kai felt it now, and the sensation pulled him back to when he had watched the two brothers fight below him at the initiation ceremony.

  “Use the drum!” Jachem yelled. “Just do it!”

  Yuna’s strangled noise grew in intensity as she met Kai’s eyes. Yuna was trapped. It was up to him.

  Kai dropped to the ground and pushed his hips off the floor. The ropes gave just enough slack to let the drumsticks fall out of his pocket and onto the floor. His hands found them, and he felt the etched runes running down the sticks. “Lady take you if you’re wrong about this,” Kai said, not caring about hiding his desperation.

  “Kai, hurry. I don’t want to die,” Jachem whimpered.

  Kai looked up at Jachem and once again saw the scared and strange little boy whom Kai had grown up with. The same little boy who had always stuck by Kai, who had been with him through all the bad times, through all the lonely times. His odd friend who saw the world differently, but who had never once lost his faith in Kai, who had never once been intentionally mean to him. Jachem, the little boy who had been bullied so often yet never stopped dreaming.

  Until now.

  In his friend’s eyes, Kai saw how the pure soul inside had been ripped from the beautiful and harmless fantasy world in his mind into the harshest of realities. These men had broken part of the innocence within his strange friend.

  “I don’t want to die either,” Kai growled and closed his eyes. He began to tap his leg with the drumstick. He focused everything he had into a rhythm, forced it into being and searched outward with every fibre of his body towards the drum, towards the magic he had felt before.

  The footsteps came closer. Wan’s head poked through the door.

  Kai dug the drumsticks into the side of his leg, again and again, holding the beat of that distant music, making it come closer, making it grow. His mind screamed at the Demon Drum.

  But nothing happened. Nothing moved.

  “What are you doing?” Wan laughed as the door opened, the grotesque meat hook dangling from the chain in the assassin’s hand. “One last tune, drummer boy?”

  Kai had no answer. He was going to die.

  Another of the assassins held an identical hook and moved towards Jachem.

  “No,” Jachem whimpered. “Stay away from me. Don’t touch me. Please.” Tears ran down his cheeks as Wan bent down and grabbed Jachem’s leg.

  “Don’t.” Jachem shook, his voice was barely a whisper.

  The assassin said nothing and plunged the hook into Jachem’s leg.

  “NO!” Kai bellowed as Jachem screamed.

  And then, Kai felt something explode forth from inside him.

  The Demon Drum’s toothy grin felt as if it widened, and the leather skin on its surface depressed.

  A thunderously deep bass note erupted into the room. Wan and the other assassin flew back and smashed against the wall.

  Kai roared, pulling the beat of the music around them into himself and forcing it through the drum. Yuna’s great golden sword spun into the air, end over end as if kicked by an invisible foot as it danced to the beat Kai felt in his soul.

  The blade shot through the air and skewered Wan straight through the chest, pinning him to the wall.

  Blood sprayed out from his mouth and covered the quivering golden blade.

  “My gods,” Kai gasped in shock. I just killed him.

  The second assassin recovered and rolled out of the room. He slammed the door closed behind him. Kai heard the man yell, “They killed Wan! The drummer was some sort of Hafaza! Get down here!”

  Kai held onto the beat and closed his eyes as he tried to find the sword with the bouncing rhythm in his mind.

  There. Slowly, but constantly he played the rhythm in his mind, and as he opened his eye, he saw Hunsa wiggle back and forth slightly. The effort to hold his concentration took everything he had. It was getting harder and harder to hold onto whatever it was he had found.

  He heard feet slapping the sandy floor outside.

  It has to be now! He yelled at himself, only one shot at this.

  The Demon Drum compressed once more, and he gasped as the sword sprang free of the dead man and sailed across the room.

  Now! Kai thought. His brow was dripping with sweat with the effort to hold onto the manic beat, trying to escape his mental grasp.

  But, the sword flopped to the ground. He had lost his grip on the beat, his mind slipped away, and his hands suddenly felt slow and numb, the drumsticks tapping nonsense instead of magic.

  “No,” Kai groaned.

  He watched in horror as he lost control of Hunsa and the great blade fell onto its pointed tip and hovered upright for a moment as the last of Kai’s rhythm left it. It seemed to stand for a moment and then fell towards Yuna’s helpless form like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  “In here!” The assassin shouted from outside, frozen in his tracks as he eyed the toppling sword warily.

  “I’m sorry,” Kai said weakly as he struggled against his own bindings.

  It was too late, they were at the door.

  Kai tried to reach for the beat again, but it felt like trying to push through a wall. He breathed in hard as tears began to streak down his cheeks. All hope began to leave him as the door swung open, and three angry killers stepped into the room. “Time to die, boy.”

  38 - On the Rooftops

  Raidho’s research has surpa
ssed anything I could have anticipated. It has had complete integration with three nanite clusters and organic tissues. The third specimen was an adult mouse to which Raidho was neurally linked via his nanite cluster, and it insists yet further integration is possible.

  This changes everything.

  Yet it knows I am paying too close attention to its research.

  And they are always watching now, with those damned eyes of theirs.

  Did I ask them to? Possibly, I did not write it down in these pages.

  My mind is beginning to fragment, and my health is dwindling, which is no surprise as I’m 108 years old this year!

  -Journal of Robert Mannford, Day 009 Year 69

  Adel

  New Toeron, Bauffin

  The explosions had rung across the night air. Adel was back on the rooftops. She had spent too long at street level trying to find Naira, too long helping the random people she had met on the streets who were scared or hurt. Now, the pain of the energy raging inside her needed distraction, and the more people she focused on trying to help, the easier it was to forget that she was burning from the inside out.

  Her last stop had been at a man’s shop, which had been set ablaze. He was an old Kenzian, and he had been targeted by angry Xinnish rioters. He had been trapped on the second story of his shop as the fire climbed up towards him.

  She had to save him.

  “Thank you, my lady,” the man had said as he struggled for breath. He was coughing out smoke, and Adel hoped the old shop-owner would be all right. She had pulled him out of his shop, which had been set alight.

  “I’m not a noble,” Adel said as she patted the old-timer on the back. They both looked back at the fire now engulfing the man’s shop. It rose higher and higher, and Adel saw the tears in the man’s eyes as he watched his home and livelihood disappear beneath the flames.

  “You lived alone, right?” Adel’s stomach sank in panic at the thought.

  “Yes,” the man said between coughs. “Just me. My Annie died years back, my sons have places of their own, and my daughter has her own shop back down the road.” He pointed to a building near the end of the street, still intact and looking abandoned. “Mary is staying with her brother in Orlane until all this blows over. People still got proper Singer values in Orlane at least, not like the animals what did this.” He gestured at his shop but soon lost track of his own words and watched the blaze consume his home.

  Adel saw movement from down the street, and she tensed, the sword in her hand ready, but she saw the strange wide leather hats and red armbands on the men and women rushing towards them. Fire crew. Though too late to save this man’s home, they might stop the blaze spreading.

  “We can take it from here!” the woman in charge of the fire crew said to Adel. “You’re a warrior, yes? They need you about five blocks that way!” She pointed in the direction Adel had been heading before she had stopped to help.

  HISS-BOOM!

  That was when the first explosion had stunned them all. The concussive force of it still thudding in their chests nearly five blocks away.

  “What in the nine hells was that!” someone yelled.

  Adel hadn’t waited to find out. Naira was at the front. She had to reach her friend, her sister in all but name.

  She reached the crest of the roof, and that was when she saw the carnage and devastation being wrought in the street below, and there on a high balcony at the other end of the square she saw the horrible smoking bronze weapon. She saw the angle of the bronze tube and the path of devastation it pointed at.

  A crew of a three were hurrying to reposition the weapon again.

  “The High King is dead!” someone yelled below.

  The lines of people smashed together below her in the square.

  Then she saw a man dressed in black pull none other than Princess Echinni back through the door at the back of the balcony. How in the Halom’s name had the princess gotten to Keef’s before her? How many hours must Adel have spent wandering around New Toeron trying to get to Naira? The princess must have gone straight to Keefs after releasing Adel from the Red Tower.

  Yet it didn’t matter.

  There, below in the square, Adel caught a glimpse of Naira, and somehow Naira saw her too. She was about four rows back from the front line, waiting with a group of panicked looking light infantry. Naira was mouthing something up at Adel and pointing towards the tavern.

  Get the princess?

  “No! I’ll come to you!” Adel pointed down at Naira.

  Naira’s hand cut across her chest in anger, and Adel saw Naira point back to where the princess had been.

  HISS-BOOM!

  Another explosion rocked through the square.

  Heavy infantry and Syklans in the front line were thrown from their feet or killed on the spot as the fiendish bronze tube atop Keef’s balcony fired again.

  “SOMEONE GET UP THERE!” Senior Prefect Stonebridge’s voice screamed above the echoing din left in the weapons aftermath.

  Adel’s legs pumped, she ran across the roof like the wind itself, slipping her scabbarded sword down the back of her shirt and retying her sword belt over a shoulder and around her chest to secure it in place. She needed to run without the weapon slapping her legs. She was moving fast, but she still had to go around the square to get close enough to jump to Keef’s roof.

  Thunder cracked across the sky above them. The storm and uneasiness she had felt before were growing.

  Damn it. The crew of the strange weapon were already repositioning it for another blast.

  Below her, in the square, the Syklans and heavy infantry had re-engaged. An advancing line of a santsi-charged shield wall smashed into the mob forcing them back.

  Adel leapt, leaving one roof behind as she sailed three stories up across a street granting access to the square below. She was closer now. She had to reach the end of this row of houses, and then the next row would get her close enough to jump onto the wall of Keef’s Tavern.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Adel saw dozens of wisps of smoke rise up from the mob’s side of the square and soldiers on the other side fell.

  She had to hurry!

  Step, step, jump! Adel had to jump down onto the next row of houses. She rolled, skidding along some of the ceramic tiles before she got her feet under her.

  Her breath heaved in her lungs, but she didn’t have time to be tired. She rocketed towards the wall of Keef’s Tavern, desperately looking for something to aim at. A handhold, a ledge, anything.

  The edge of the roof came, no more time.

  Adel leapt, reaching through the air hands first.

  Her fingers found the decorative iron bar jutting from the corner of the building. She swung beneath it, feeling it give more than she wanted, praying it was bolted in and not just nailed.

  It held, springing her back up. Adel tucked into a ball and spun up to the balcony.

  She uncoiled, and the fingers of her left hand found an edge.

  Her body hit the wall hard, and she nearly bounced off, but her grip held, despite her hand screaming in protest.

  She pulled with everything she had and found purchase with her other hand.

  “What was that?” someone yelled on the balcony.

  HISS-BOOM!

  The third shot was so close it was agony to her ears. She bit down against the pain throbbing through her ears and got a leg up onto the balcony. She rolled over the railing just as a sword slammed into the wood where her neck had been a fraction of a heartbeat earlier.

  Adel spun on her back, her legs kicking out like two edges of a whirlwind. She caught the back of her attacker’s foot and swept it out from under him.

  Adel was up and had undone the sword belt from around her chest before she clocked how close she had come to being decapitated.

  Her attacker was already rolling back to his feet, and before Adel thought about it, the black blade came free of its sheath, and she buried the dark metal into man’s chest before he gathe
red enough to take another swing.

  It had all happened in less than a heartbeat, her body reacting on instinct. The hours and hours of training had taken control, and before she had time to think about it, her sword penetrated the man’s heart. Adel had killed someone.

  Her mind didn’t process it, not fully. The only bit which ticked over was that she recognised her target was no longer a threat. She pivoted and saw the two other men pull blades free as they left their post beside the giant bronze weapon.

  They spread out to try and get on both sides of her.

  It was then that the pain of the energy coursing through her decided to flare. The bracelet on her arm flashed orange, and Adel felt her entire body vibrate with the heat beneath her skin.

  She pushed it into the sword and swung her blade at the attacker to her left.

  The man’s blade shattered into a dozen pieces as he blocked. Shards of metal exploded into his face, and he fell back.

  The horror of the man’s death registered somewhere deep inside, but Adel was still fighting. Only when she stopped would the deaths hit home, but at that moment all she felt was the cool relief as the burning inside her subsided for the moment.

  She turned to the third man, who looked at her in dread, but the horrible death of his fellow soldier didn’t stop him from lunging forward with an outstretched blade.

  Adel ducked under it, spun and smashed her foot up into the man’s chest as the blade passed above her.

  It was only as she watched the man sail back over the railing, screaming as he hit the street below with a sickening crunch, did she realise she had siphoned energy and discharged it through her foot rather than the blade.

  Her foot felt scorched and numb, but Adel bit down on the pain and turned to the bronze weapon still on the roof.

  Energy surged back into her without warning, her dark stone bracelet flashed orange once more. She had plenty of heat. Adel looked at the black blade in her hand and cocked her head. “Let’s see how much you can take.”

  Adel put the cutting edge gently onto the bronze weapon and focused on the energy burning its way through her. She siphoned with everything she had and pushed it all through her hands and into the black blade.