Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (28 page)

West mused, “Do
you understand what we’re capable of now? What you’re capable
of?”

“Oh sure.
You’re monsters.” David pushed off from the wall, forgetting about
the metal brace behind his neck, which Stanwick rushed to catch.
Jumping out of the way, David touched the wall to steady himself,
and for an instant, shivers ran through his body, flashes of
Charlene’s emotional state gripping him.

He felt
awkward, like a child realizing that they finished an exam before
everyone else, wondering if they’d maybe missed something. He
looked guiltily at the jumble of cloth and metal in Stanwick’s
hands, worrying that perhaps the experience was wasted on him. He
tried again to interpret what he’d seen, “I don’t really know how
else to say it. I’d love to say that it looked like you all were
battling against those monstrosities, but in all honesty, there
were freaks everywhere.”

Stanwick
started laughing as she wrapped the cloth about the metal, placing
it carefully on the floor, “That’s what you got from all of
that?”

David shrugged,
“I mean, my overwhelming impression? My take home was kind of that,
yeah.”

Stanwick looked
at West, then at David. She touched David’s arm, felt his turmoil,
heard his internal monologue rambling on in embarrassment. She
smiled sympathetically, “You’re not wrong David. I mean, not
completely wrong anyway. There’s a lot of mythology that has sprung
from our existence, racial memories of our presence, sightings of
Leechborn in different states of unraveling hunger.”

West lay back
down on the floor, staring at the ceiling, “Our abilities know few
bounds. What you’ve seen David, you haven’t witnessed the worst of
us, or the best, but I’m sure you can start to appreciate what
might be possible.”

Stanwick took
hold of David’s hands, playfully swinging them from side to side.
She could feel it in him, David’s mind flashing briefly to the
lurching half humans, “You saw the beasts of the Mythologue David,
and I know the dark corner your imagination is shuffling towards,
but there’s so much more.”

David shook his
hands free of Stanwick’s grip, “You know, perhaps you should lead
with the ‘best of.’ A couple of minutes ago, I was standing knee
deep in bodies, watching men and women literally trying to eat each
other alive, and I’ve gotta say, that doesn’t really instill me
with feelings of warmth, or hope. I feel lost. I mean, I feel a
little desperate right now. It might just be that this has been a
really long day. It’s a lot to take in.”

Stanwick put a
hand on his shoulder, and pulling him closer she kissed his cheek,
lips soft, breath warm, “Go get some sleep. You can try it again in
the morning.” David blinked slowly, his mouth open, then he walked
unsteadily towards the bedroom where Stephanie lay sleeping. He
scooped Stephanie up in his arm, and let himself out of the
apartment without looking back.

Charlene crawled along
the ceiling reliefs of the corridor, dropping to the floor beside
Stanwick and Ahken, pushing savagely through groups of Dannustine
guards, bones snapping, blood spraying as faces were mashed into
masonry, elbows, or knees. She looked behind and realized that most
of these men were up on their feet within moments, but the
passageway had become so full of Leechborn that every surface
seemed to undulate and sway with the motion of the Leechborn
fighters, and she couldn’t imagine that any of the guards would
survive.

Ahead in the
darkness, everything had come suddenly to a standstill, Stanwick
and Ahken rooted to the stone floor facing the hulking forms of
fifty or more guards, their backs bent, arms hanging down low, legs
ready to spring forwards in attack. Overhead, a flood of civilian
fighters clambered across the ceiling and walls, each of them
clawing at the carvings, launching forward in perfectly executed
bounds. Hundreds, then thousands followed, with muscles pulsing,
limbs thrashing in machine like determination, now keeping pace
with West, Stanwick and Ahken who had begun their advance. Stanwick
and West broke into a run, heads tucked towards their chests, the
shuffling, grasping noises of the army building overhead to a
thunderous roar. With West almost within pouncing distance of them,
the guards calmly stood, turned about face, and retreated into the
darkness, then all of a sudden they dropped from view.

There was
nowhere left to run. The floor of the corridor dropped off only a
few feet in front of Stanwick, opening into an expansive bowl
shaped room. Seeing the peril they headed towards, West lurched
forwards trying to catch the backs of Stanwick and Ahken’s clothes,
but they were moving too quickly and all three slid down the sharp
incline of the curved inner wall, where an army of thousands
awaited their arrival. At first Charlene felt a terror of
claustrophobia, the guards rearing up inches from her face, but
rather than attacking, this front line of guards fell backwards,
pushing against their comrades desperately.

The army of
civilian fighters who had been following at a cautious distance now
started to pour into the massive room, many of them leaping down
into the fray, quickly tackling the guards to the floor. Overhead
an army of hundreds clambered hand over hand, still clinging to
ornate carvings which covered the entire expanse of the room’s
ceiling. When they reached the apex of the room, these combatants
started to drop from the ceiling, each of them falling with
frightening speed directly onto members of the opposing force.

Charlene soared above
the crowds and all about her people fought to the death, tearing at
each other’s limbs, blood drenched bodies falling to the ground.
Detached from West’s perspective, she watched as he and Stanwick
cut a swath in front of Ahken, neither one of them deterred by
their enemy’s efforts. At the far end of the room, about 100 feet
away, she could see a small archway which a group of guards
appeared to be huddling about, adopting a protective formation.
Before they managed to organize themselves properly, West had
marshaled a group of fighters on their position, and had joined
them in the act of decimating the guard’s ranks.

Charlene
struggled against her instinct, which was to labor over ever detail
of the fight; examine every cut and gash in slow motion, watch the
rippling skin spill red as the delvers labored to mend their
machines of war. She watched West, Stanwick and Ahken lead the
charge deeper into the halls of the palace, but the big picture
became less and less interesting to her. She was aware. They ran
through narrower tunnels, the army followed, and Charlene explored
a riotous sky of billowing fabrics, or else her eyes looped slowly
about the hills and valleys of pulsing, thrumming muscles.
Gradually corralled, the passageways became too close for them to
run even two abreast, and Charlene reveled in the proximity, the
chaos and calamity of confined limbs.

She had
realized that for some time the tunnels had pushed ever deeper into
the building, burrowing underground, and when the floor finally
leveled off and the ornamentation of the walls gave way to flat
seamless slabs, Charlene recognized the smooth surface of glardium
that now surrounded them. The moment West’s arms pressed against
the cool glittering rills, a surge of babbling and incoherent
voices overwhelmed Charlene’s mind. She could hear the fear, taste
it on the air, the panic of a thousand souls laid bare, every body
tense, sharply aware that their king was close, that he could glean
each dark and treacherous thought.

Stanwick took
hold of West’s hand, pulling him faster, towards the narrow space
ahead, falling through a small doorway. The opening swept into a
sprawling space, lit here and there by bright shafts of light cast
from deep recesses in the distant roof. Ahead and to either side,
there was no discernible end to the space, the floor simply
disappearing into a distance engulfed in foreboding blackness. As
crowds poured in from the passageway behind, Charlene moved deeper
into the space and she became quickly lost in a bewildering
clutter.

At first, it
looked to Charlene as if the cavern might function as some sort of
living quarters. Everywhere she looked, the place was littered with
an accumulation of hectic and disorganized objects, as if someone
with a profound hording complex had been set free with an unlimited
budget and a remit to fill an apparently endless space. Gradually,
Charlene started to see a sort of order within the chaos; there was
a large bed surrounded by soft furnishings that looked almost
inviting and this arrangement was enclosed by several rows of
bookshelves which were stacked with an assortment of paraphernalia.
In the area to the right stood an army of manikins, each of them
clothed in varying styles of Armour and everyday dress, some of
them clad in smooth plated metal, others with soft flowing fabrics
or animal hides.

To her left,
Charlene watched as Ahken walked by the side of a large pool of
water, Stanwick always staying fairly close by him. The further
Charlene followed them into the space, the more it confounded
expectations. There were sculptures and paintings huddled together,
strewn amongst disregarded piles of parchments and books on the
hard floor. Seating areas bore the signs of heavy wear but had lay
abandoned for long enough to have attracted and then been abandoned
by enough spiders to be left completely blanketed in cobwebs.
Clothes, which Charlene thought must have been ceremonial in
function, heavily embroidered and decorative lay folded on tables
or simply scattered on the floor amongst the rest of the detritus
and decay.

A voice echoed
from out of the darkness ahead; cold, harsh and definitely that of
a man. It spoke in a mocking tone of a lack of empathy for the
scope of human existence and Charlene saw that everyone about her
turned their heads frantically, looking for the source of the
voice. This was what they had come for; this was the confrontation
that they had sought. She felt West’s hatred boiling in her mind,
the voice calling out, mocking them. As Stanwick pressed
tentatively closer to Ahken, there was a soft clanging noise, and a
faint glimmer of light broke the darkness of the cavernous void
ahead of them. The glimmer quickly became a shining streak of light
which came shrieking directly towards Charlene, a large disk,
screaming metal scraping and crashing through the detritus around
her, the spinning blade passing directly through the space she
occupied. She turned in time to see a decapitated body drop to the
floor behind her.

The voice spoke
again but Charlene was caught off guard, confused, realizing with a
profound fear that the confusion she felt was West’s. The voice
spoke directly to her, in a tongue that West had clearly not
understood at the time, “Child of the void garden, time will not
bring you succor or security. My reign is infinite and my contempt
will know no temperance. I am the light at the beginning of your
universe, and the darkness that consumes as the worlds drift into
my farthest reaches.”

Charlene felt
her skin crawl as she heard the words, sure that they were meant
for her, but now, the voice ran on again in the foreign tongue,
mocking the gathered army for their frailty. There was a mechanical
clicking, and a second blade sliced through the air ahead, cutting
swiftly through another two bodies in the distance behind Charlene
before slamming into a table. As the voice rambled on in guttural
growls, Ahken threw Stanwick to the ground as he tucked his body
into a neat roll, spreading himself flat to the floor while another
blade whistled through the air which only a moment ago had been
occupied by his head. Stanwick was on her feet then, jumping high
into the air towards the darkness and curving her body into a
beautiful somersault as yet another blade soared through the air
beneath her.

The blade hung
there, Stanwick’s hair brushing against the metal surface. Charlene
moved closer to Stanwick, the distant details of the room
obliterated by blackness as she left West’s viewpoint. The girl
looked so serene, suspended upside down, smiling at her own
reflection in the surface of the disk. Ahken’s face told a
different story altogether; one rife with panic, his eyes fixed on
Stanwick’s free floating body. As allowed the scene to unfold
slowly, Ahken stumbled to his feet chasing after Stanwick but he
was clearly off balance. He tripped, and Charlene watched his mouth
contorted in horror as a blade scythed through the air ahead of
him, a spray of blood describing a perfect arc, spinning out from
the gleaming metal which sliced through the flesh of his shoulder.
Wincing, Ahken ducked his head down and sprinted forwards.

Charlene’s
attention was pulled to the right of the room, where West watched
one of the men who had stood in the gathering in the courtyard of
the palace. The man jumped high into the air, spinning a heavy
metal bar in front of him, hand over hand. His path was deliberate,
quickly covering ground as he bounded towards Ahken and Stanwick to
join them in their charge into the darkness.

Stanwick pushed
forward, ducking when it was necessary to avoid one of the spinning
blades, or instead, flipping her body high into the air as they
passed beneath her; it was as if she made game of the situation.
Charlene marveled at her fluid movements, her awareness of her
surroundings. Leaping from a table edge, Stanwick jumped towards
one of the metal disks, spreading her body out straight mid-air so
that her feet landed hard on the flat edge of the blade, slamming
it to the ground.

West looked
behind him, and Charlene could see now that hundreds of people had
started to push forwards, all of them mimicking the actions of
Stanwick and Ahken, ducking or jumping to safety when necessary,
then dashing from cover to cover. Everyone moved in short and
erratic bursts of activity, each of them making sure that they
didn’t present a static target for more than a couple of seconds at
a time.