by Jake Stone
“What are you looking at?” Atia demands.
“Over here,” I say. “Let’s go!”
“Hold up, Sexy!” Zorel calls out as she hurries to keep up. “Don’t forget about us!”
My steps are strengthened by hope as I see the outline of the crook before me. Waving the women forward, I cut through the hellish storm that suddenly picks up, batting us from all directions. It’s as if the wind has realized my plan and is assailing us with one last ditch effort to keep us here. But we keep on, refusing to give in.
The mountain appears through the blurring snow like a giant shadow, its broadsides reaching out to us like welcoming arms. I push forward, anxious to arrive, grateful that it’s there. When we finally reach it, I feel a sense of relief as the roar of the wind and pressure against my armor quickly dies down to a hollow whistle. I can already begin to hear the sound of my breath again inside my helmet.
“Thank the corfew,” Petronelous says, shivering.
“No,” Zorel corrects her. “Thank Xander.”
Chun Hei seconds the declaration by patting me on the back, while Atia remains noticeably quiet. She doesn’t like it when I steal the show. She never has. But I do my best to play it down, pointing out how it was her idea to download the map into our network in the first place, but apparently, it doesn’t work.
“What now?” Atia demands, ignoring the compliment. “Our advancement has ceased, and all you’ve done by leading us here is prolong the inevitable.”
“We can use this crook as a shelter,” I say, turning to face her. “Maybe even wait out the storm? Zorel, you’ve studied this place before. How long do storms usually last here?”
“The shortest one I read about lasted only a couple of hours.”
“You see,” I say, wearing a proud grin behind my helmet.
“But the majority of storms on Korath usually last weeks,” she amends. “If not months.”
“Oh,” I say in defeat.
“We’ve got to get back out there,” Atia declares, unable to hide the shivering in her voice. “And fulfill our orders. Hiding here will get us nowhere.”
I sigh, unable to argue. We’re just wasting time here and, as she said, prolonging the inevitable. But my lips are trembling even worse now, and I begin to panic, worrying that my skin is growing numb. What have I done? Why did I bring them here?
After a while, I begin to realize the direness of our situation. Zorel clutches her shoulders as she and Chun Hei and Atia group around in a circle, their heads bowed, their knees collapsed inward, as they begin to shiver beneath their armor which is now completely covered in snow.
Petronelous, on the other hand, is angry. She’s fueled by her strength, and unwilling to give up. “This is how we are to die?” she asks, turning to face us. “By freezing next to a mountain before the mission is even started? What honor can be found in something so trivial, so meaningless?”
Our silence answers her question, and it angers her even further. Turning away, she screams out in frustration, slamming a gauntleted fist into the side of the mountain where it inexplicably breaks through.
What the…
Stunned, I look closer, quickly realizing that it isn’t the mountain that she’s broken through, but a wall of boulders that have been erected to conceal some type of entrance.
Exchanging a glance with Atia, I reach into the hole, my brow furrowed in curiosity as I feel an open space where my hand is free to move around. There’s nothing in there, I realize. Only open space.
“What are you doing?” Atia asks.
“It’s hollow,” I say, staring back at her.
“Damn, Petro,” Zorel says, angling her head at the redhead’s fist. “You really are strong, huh?”
“It was nothing,” Petronelous says, turning away, embarrassed. “I was just…angry.”
“Well, good job,” I say. “Because I think you just saved our asses.”
“What’s on the other side?” Chun Hei signs.
“Only one way to find out.” I stand back and nod at Zorel, motioning for her to do her stuff.
Taking a step forward, the elemental raises her arms, eyes sparking with light as she blasts the hole with a bolt of electricity. The rock splinters under the explosive shock, and a gust of shattered stone rises through a cloud of dust, adding to the windswept snow.
Inside, I see a vast portal of darkness stretching out before us. Like the tunnel of a spider that lures unsuspecting insects toward its entry, it brings a shiver of fear to my skin, and for a moment, one quiet heartbeat of a moment, I worry if we should instead take our chances outside with the snow storm.
“Let’s go,” Atia says, brushing past me, into the tunnel of the mountain.
I watch as each of the women follows her in, Chun Hei finally drawing to a halt as she stares at me. “What’s wrong?” she signs to me.
“Nothing,” I sign back. “After you.”
Once inside, our visors switch to infrared, and the world around us warps into a palette of green haze. I see rocky walls and the entrance to a round tunnel, not to mention the frightening faces of my friends’ helmets.
Behind us, the roar of the storm continues at the mouth of the tunnel. But now it’s more of a blare, a hollow whistle muted by the mountain’s protective walls. We’re safe now. At least, for a while.
The tunnel is short but winding. It leads us a couple of yards farther into the mountain where the walls begin to pull apart, making our infrared obsolete. I feel as if I’m standing at the edge of a void, about to fall into a deep chasm with no floor. So I stop and wait, halting the women behind me.
“Enough with this green lighting,” Atia says stubbornly. “Zorel, light the way.”
We stand aside as the elemental takes her position at the front and watch as she conjures a magnificent blue light in the palms of her gauntlets. The engineers of the monastery had them specially designed as conductors, allowing any type of elemental to use their power without the drawback of frying the circuitry of their armor. It’s quite impressive, actually.
Zorel stretches out her arms, increasing the distance between her hands where the ball of light begins to grow. There, it levitates, casting its glow against the walls until it reaches the center of what appears to be a small cavern.
“Wow,” I say, taking a step forward, my armored boots crunching against the cavern’s rocky floor. “It’s a cave!”
I cast my gaze around the cavern, fascinated by the stalactites that hang from the rocky ceiling. It reminds me of when I was a young boy, when my mother had taken Rachel and me to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico one summer, when my father was too busy with work, as he usually was. The memory of it warms my heart, and I feel a smile on my lips, despite the trembling that strangely still lingers from the cold.
This can’t be right, I think to myself, studying my shaky hand. Unless…
“Look!” Chun Hei signs, her gaze focused behind me. “Over there!”
I spin around, activating the zoom of my visor, as I search through the darkness. Up ahead, I spot the shimmer of a shadow hiding behind one of the rocks. Drawing my rectifier, I edge closer, startled to find what looks to be the face of a bald man peaking out from one of the stalagmites.
“There’s somebody here!” I call out, lowering my rifle.
The women draw their weapons and form up behind me.
“Who are you?” I call out to the man, careful to keep my tone guarded. “We won’t hurt you. We’re friends.”
The face is ridiculously thin, as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks, and like a frightened wolf, he peels back his lips into a threatening snarl, eyes filled with distrust.
“We have food,” I say, digging into my sack and holding out a protein bar in my hand.
“Food?” The voice is a scratchy hiss. “You are the food.”
I stiffen as the face steps out from behind the stalagmite, horrified to find the giant body of a scorpion with a human head where its stinger should be. The image of it i
s jarring, and it takes me a second to react. “My God …”
I fire at the monster, tearing it to shreds with a bevy of plasma bolts. Scales tear. Appendages are severed. What’s left of the scorpion’s body spasms on the ground before me, twitching like a dismembered lizard.
“There’s more!” Atia calls out.
I step back, glancing around at the cavern and notice the movement of more shadows, more shifting.
They appear from everywhere. From behind stalagmites. Out of holes burrowed in the ceiling and walls. Up from the spaces in the ground that have been concealed with massive rocks. The disgusting forms crawl out at us from all directions, scampering like the monstrous forms that they are.
But it’s the human faces that frighten me the most. The madness of them. The sheer terror. They scream at us in delirium, their eyes rolled back in their heads, their tongues hanging out with purple saliva dripping from their mouths. They’re nothing but devices, it seems, voice boxes that the scorpions use to speak out of. But there’s emotion in them, personalities.
“I want the tall one!” the face of a middle-aged woman demands as it scampers toward me.
“No!” another whispers—a young girl whose voice is like a hiss. “I want to lay my babies in his gut so they’ll grow big and strong and eat everything on this world. They must have meat. They must have meat!”
I aim my rectifier at the wretched monsters and pull the trigger, blasting their thoraxes into gushes of rotting intestines. The surrounding women do the same, each relying on their assault rifles to thin the enemy as they attack us from all sides.
The orbiting attachments of our rectifiers spin endlessly as our helmets identify the targets and we quickly tear into their hellish ranks. We’re a well-oiled machine, and we break through our fears like the trained warriors we are, relying on the steadfast discipline that has been ingrained in us by the monks.
“May the corfew cast you out!” Atia says, relinquishing her rifle and brandishing her spear. The blade sings with the activation of sparking energy, and she begins to spin around the scurrying monsters with frightening grace, slicing off their heads and impaling their bodies as if they were nothing but sport.
The other women are just as deadly. Chun Hei, a marksman like no other, aims her pulsers at the dashing monsters, able to time their movements perfectly. Zorel and Petronelous do away with their rifles, deciding to rely on their weapons of choice. Zorel lights up a trio of monsters with the wave of a hand, while Petronelous butchers the rest with her swords.
I’m not as great as they are. But my aim is pretty good, and my heart is beating with determination. I fire and fire, ripping the enemy apart, killing as many as I can. But still, more come.
Amidst the carnage, one of the scorpions, a wretched scaly thing the size of a large dog, realizes our strength as it watches cowardly from the shadows.
This is a smart one, I realize in fear, noticing how it scuttles behind the protection of its brethren, sneakily halting behind rocks to take cover, only to scamper out again, when the coast is clear.
I wait, watching it from the corner of my eyes, timing its advance with nervous anticipation.
When it finally comes, it launches at me from afar, clearing the distance like a powerful jumping spider. I’ve never seen such a thing. And the appearance of it cuts through my shell of focus, shocking my heart into overdrive and filling me with paralyzing fear.
It’s then, as I aim my weapon and fire that I hear the terrifying click of an empty power cartridge and I realize that I’m out of ammo.
“Oh shit!”
Chapter Seven
The scorpion pounces on me like a hammer, and I’m slammed to the ground in an instant, struggling to keep it from snapping my head off with its razor-like claws.
If I’d been a regular soldier with no power armor, my spine would’ve been crushed. But I’m a Battle Saint, and I’ve faced monsters like this before. The scorpion’s attack merely knocks the wind out of my lungs and leaves me bruised along my back.
“Please,” the human face begins to beg, a middle-aged man with a balding scalp and broken teeth. “Kill me. I can’t take this anymore.”
I watch, horrified by the pleading face, struck by the amount of suffering it has had to endure with a such a parasite as its master.
“Shut up,” the face suddenly snarls, it’s pitiful demand for mercy replaced by a menacing frown. “I will feast upon this human as I feasted upon your children, and you will remain with me until the end.”
“No!” the human voice cries out. “Please!”
Disgusted by the sight, I grab the scorpion’s pincers and hold them to the side, locking them in place so it can’t get loose. There’s a momentary pause to the scorpion’s movements as it realizes how strong I am. In retaliation, it tries to wriggle itself out of my grasp, slamming its human face into my helmet over and over again like a hammer, desperate to free itself. But it doesn’t work. Instead, the man screams out in pain as its face is bloodied.
“Ahh!”
Fuck this.
Using all my strength, I bend the scorpion’s arms behind its back, snapping them in half, and tearing them away from its body. A purple snot-like fluid gushes from the wounds, spilling onto my armor and the surrounding ground, where it begins to steam.
Broken, the scorpion begins to panic, scampering away toward the shadows of the cavern where it tries to escape.
But it’s not going anywhere.
I draw my blade and race after the filthy creature, determined to kill it before it can run away.
From its tail, I hear the man’s screams as it pleads for me to hurry and kill it so he may be free of this torture. But the monster is quick with its steps, and it’s just about to disappear beneath a crevice when I’m able to sink my blade into its back, impaling it to the ground.
Its entire body stiffens, its arms, legs, and tail curling upward in a shocking fright. The man’s face gasps as it feels the life-force beneath it suddenly dying, and for a moment, I see a glimmer of solace in its eyes.
“Thank you,” it whispers lifelessly.
With one last swing of my blade, I slice through the scorpion’s tail, dismembering the head from its enslaver. “You’re welcome.”
Glancing back over my shoulder, I watch as the women mop up the remaining scorpions, cruel in the way they dismember, maim and destroy the ugly bastards.
“Die, you diseased menace!” Petronelous declares as she rips one in half with her gauntleted hands. The sections fall to the ground with a thud where they spasm in a pool of diseased filth, their limbs twitching, their pincers snapping.
When the fighting stops, and I see the dozens of monsters on the floor, I realize with some relief that the fighting is over.
We draw back from the edges of the cavern, our backs to each other, and wait as we make sure that there’s none left.
“Roll call,” Atia says, slinging the purple blood from her blade.
One by one we call out our names, and I breathe a sigh of relief, thankful that we’re still alive. Aside from my dirty armor, I feel okay. Though, I do feel a little ache in my back from where the scorpion slammed me to the ground. But overall, I’m alright.
“Zorel, Chun Hei, secure the area,” Atia orders in a commanding voice. “Petro close the holes. Top them with bigger boulders. Use whatever you can. Xander, you’re with me. We need to run an ammo check.” She hands me a power cartridge from one of the supply bags, taking one for herself as well.
I take it, unlock the empty one from my rifle, throw it away, then snap in the new one. “Thanks,” I say with a nod.
“We’ve wasted a good amount of ammunition,” Atia says in admonishment, her red lips quirking to the side.
“It’s not that bad,” I say, motioning to the bag of pulse batteries on the ground.
“It’s not that good either,” she says, turning to face me. “We need to be more careful. This is barely the first day of our mission. We need to conserve as
much ammunition as possible.”
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s holster our rifles and switch to short-ranged weaponry.”
“We won’t be able to react in time,” she replies. “You saw those things. They’re incredibly fast, and extremely difficult to kill up close.”
“Then we stick with our rifles.”
“Again, that’ll make us vulnerable to wasting more ammo.”
“Then what do you want us to do?” I ask in irritation. “You’re not really giving us any options here.”
“I want you to shoot straight!” she says, her voice drawing the attention of the other women.
Atia and I have never gotten along. She thinks that I’m careless and shortsighted. I think she’s a goody two shoes who tries to be perfect all the time. The truth is that she resents me. How could she not? Within a year, I’ve managed to draw the trust and faith of those around her, not to mention earn the title of Light Bringer, the actual damn savior of this entire galaxy.
With every command she gives, I can sense the hesitation in her voice, that hint that she’s worried she might fall on her face and I’ll be there to steal her thunder. Sighing, I shove the thoughts from my mind. “Alright, I say. As you wish.”
“Good,” she replies.
I look away, hiding my face as I roll my eyes. She’s relentless, but she’s also in charge. Wanting to change the subject, I look around at the cavern. “Disgusting little bastards, huh?”
“They’re called scerapists,” Atia replies.
“Scera-what?” I ask.
“Sceraptists,” she repeats. “Demon spawns that use human appendages to conceal their form.”
“Yikes.” I frown, remembering the man’s pleading face, his bleeding eyes. I can only imagine the pain he was in, the torment. It was probably worse than death. “If that ever happens to me, make sure you kill me, okay?”
“Without hesitation,” she replies without meeting my gaze. Collapsing her spear into its cylindrical form, she snaps it to the magnetic holster on her back, appearing calm and relaxed.
