Saints of the Void: Atypical
Read Saints of the Void: Atypical Online
Authors: Michael Valdez
Tags: #adventure, #adventure action, #sciencefiction
Saints of the Void: Atypical, Part 1
By Michael Valdez
Copyright 2013 Michael Valdez
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Dedicated to a great many people, as obviously I
wouldn’t be the person I am without all the connections the
universe as a whole has granted me. Specifically, there are two
people I’d like to show some appreciation for in this, my initial
“published” work.
The first is a young woman of great talent who
embarrassed me to the point where I forced myself to get better.
Her easy layering of ideas made me feel like a total dupe
sometimes, but it was worth it. Without such accidental humiliation
I might not have accepted the challenge of finally putting the
“Saints of the Void” universe in the form it will be for these
stories. Thank you, Talls. I wish you and your family health,
safety, comfort, and an abundance of Sabbaths.
The second is another young woman of great talent.
This person’s writing is punchy, clever, personal, and feisty. It,
and she, prompted me to get better at doing a lot with fewer words
in my work, making everything I do from here on out at least a
little bit hers. A lot of side-project experimenting I did that
helped me improve was also directly related to her inspiration.
Thank you, Little One. Keep yourself well, be smart, be real, be
careful, and stay gluten-free.
(Also, the hacky sack is working wonderfully as a
paperweight for my notes)
Prologue
“You cannot help everyone. You choose. And even then,
that choice may not bear fruit if the ones you choose to help
refuse it, or if you make too many mistakes in execution. Loyalty,
surprisingly, may be just as treacherous, just as confusing.
“Would you lie for fear of the reaction to the truth?
If you saw a perfidious act in play, would you allow it to hurt
yourself or your charge if it meant keeping a high status? Would
you make yourself a monster to keep another from appearing worse?
That can all be counted as loyalty. I ruined myself to keep faith
of those who were not keeping faith in me. I did
all
of
this, and what came of it?
“Nothing. The system stands as if I did not exist. It
has pushed me aside, but only after having ground me to dust. With
that said, I propose to finally take this action we have thought of
for so long. We will break a system that we agree is broken, allow
our patrons to abandon us in order to become, once again, true to
our initial morality. There will be fire set to a diseased forest,
allowing for new growth.
“The anomaly we devise will grow to disrupt this
great mistake we have made. And from those we save from slavery, I
only ask – pray even – to be understood.”
-Honorary Saint Junal Bin-Haak, circa 185 PCE
Dastou’s back was to the waters. Despite the wonder
of the view behind him, the beauty he knew he was missing out on,
he only worried about the hundred-meter drop that would kill him if
he went straight down. He also wondered when those wolves that
chased him here would show up.
“Where is it,” he muttered to himself. “Where is it?”
Having already repeated the three-word question a hundred times, he
kept saying it because he didn’t know what else
to
say.
This cliff was one of a series of drops, all part of
a coastal mountain range. A calamitous seismic event thousands of
years ago created these sheer drops, along with a ridiculously
dangerous coastline. Commonly referred to as the Silverline Sharp,
Dastou had not been to this area in years. The last time he was
here it turned from a place of splendor, rest, and pleasant
memories into a hellscape that he needed to ignore. He attempted
suicide once since then – something he thought of as a victory,
mostly because he failed, partially because it was
only
one
attempt.
After so much time away, he was, to his surprise,
able to focus on all the time spent here that made him love this
place so much. Picnics, hikes, long talks. Oh, and the sex. The
chafing from picnic blankets was worth it every time. The Saint
smiled at that last thought, and scratched an imaginary itch at his
lower back.
Returning to darker contemplations, Dastou remembered
that, during the nightmare visit to the cliff, he was not the one
with his back to the sea. When the wind gusted lightly in the
present, it dredged up a memory of hair moving along with it in the
past, and that movement scaring him. It wasn’t
his
hair, of
course; he had gotten into the habit of shaving his head years ago.
Premature baldness didn’t suit him, and purposed baldness was at
least more handsome.
His train of thought made another turn, and he went
back to wondering why he came here. Dastou was sitting in his
office two days ago when his administrator relayed a message from
Stone-State’s newly minted ruling body. They wanted to meet with
“the honored Saint Cosamian Dastou.” That message nearly gave him a
fit of seizures, and he was abruptly compelled to come back to this
cliff when he stopped shaking and drooling. He packed nothing, told
no one - just left. The Academy would have to do without it’s
headmaster until this excursion was over.
Choo-choo!
The Saint heard a wolf bay, and
that snapped his attention from his unknown purpose here to the
forest ahead. This part of the mountain range was equatorial, so it
stayed green all year, and he could barely see past the tree line
thirty meters in front of him. He scanned to his left slowly,
appreciating how thick and lush it all was, and how it curved away
from him, creating a semi-circle on which he stood near the
midpoint, the bay a dangerous distance below.
Another howl came from just behind the tree line,
probably in answer to the first. Dastou kept looking further left,
following the curve of the coast and other, less hospitable, less
picnic-friendly cliffs. Then he finally saw what he waited on: the
wind rustling trees a few kilometers away, making their crowns sway
heavily. Being a Saint, he was able to very quickly calculate
distance, speed, and direction, and was happy that it all worked
out close to what his initial guesses were. If the wind decided not
to act according to plan today, agitating those wild animals on the
hike up would have turned out to be a very bad idea. Actually, it
was
a bad idea no matter what, but he’d live.
Ah, and here they were, slowly coming out of the
forest. One here, one there, skulking out a bit, then stopping to
stare at Dastou. The pack came out as if they had rehearsed it for
effect, only a second or two separating when any one of them
stepped out of the tree line. There were nine in all, an overly
large hunting party. Wild animals, even ferocious ones, had a
tendency to stay away from Saints in small numbers – something
about their scent was frightening and unnatural – so the sum of
them was not a surprise.
These untamed canines did not fully leave the shadows
of the trees, not yet. They stood, almost dead still, as if waiting
for the Saint to make the first move, and to see if that action was
something they needed to run from. Dastou obliged them by smiling
wide. When he did so, a handful of them twitched as if they were
about to bolt, a nervous reaction, and the Saint chuckled.
“Really? You could tear me limb from limb with barely
any effort, and a bit of white teeth scares the bunch of you. I
know my skin is dark, but the contrast can’t be
that
intense.”
Dastou made sure the tone of his voice was soft,
weak. Something to bait them a little. He had also made sure to be
a couple of paces away from the edge of the cliff, and now he could
take advantage of that distance. The Saint backed up, slowly, and
increased the pace of his breathing in a pretense of fear.
The wolves finally moved forward, onto the short
grass beyond the forest, stalking, one paw moving at a time. None
were in a hurry to chase down this particular cornered prey. All
nine came at the same pace, a wall of claws and teeth closing in,
leaving no place to run.
As they kept coming, Dastou replanted his foot, and
then started to move the other in order to reach the extreme edge
of the potential fall behind him. He now realized that he wasn’t
pretending fright – he was honestly scared. If these nine hunters
were men and women, he’d be so relaxed it would be insulting. With
people came the opportunity to play on perception, to taunt and
cajole, to surprise.
But wolves? They’d trap him, leave him no path to
escape to, and wouldn’t celebrate until they were tearing into him.
Dastou was just meat and bones to them, a potential culinary
delight.
The one in the center of the line of nine looked to
be the leader, their alpha male. He stopped moving, hunkered down,
and stared at Dastou, the others all doing the same a moment later.
After a few seconds, the alpha took off at full sprint, his
pack-mates almost instantaneously going with him. Holy void, they
were fast!
The wall closed in on the Saint. The nine wolves
kicked dust, dirt, and grass into the air with every
instinct-forged step, the booming sound of the running almost able
to completely drown out their growls and barks. Many of them were
salivating, thick goo dripping out the side of their maws as they
ran. When they got within a dozen meters, Dastou made his final
move, taking one step backward and putting himself half-off the
cliff.
A memory flashed in his mind of a similar step taken
by someone else, distracting him just long enough so that one of
the younger-looking wolves got fully brave and fully stupid, and
jumped for him.
Dastou pushed off completely, and watched the
remaining animals halt their advance in a panic, some rolling on
the ground violently after they tried to stop. The foolish one that
jumped at him didn’t deserve death, not this way. The Saint jerked
his knee up, hitting the wolf in its muzzle and stopping most of
its forward momentum in a very painful manner. The reckless wolf
twisted in the air and went down, hitting the edge of the cliff
with its ribs. The wolf’s front paws were holding on, its hind legs
scraping in a panic at the rock wall, and it yelped as it clawed
its way back to safety.
So, just as the first part of his plan was figured,
Dastou plummeted. He faced the sky and watched the cliff edge, and
scrambling wolf, get further and further away. He didn’t tumble or
turn in fear. He simply looked at the mostly blue sky as he fell
away from it, his ruffling clothes and the whistling in his ears
creating a loud, calming white noise.
The Saint was only gifted a few seconds of that peace
when, halfway down to the sea, the wind he took note of earlier
struck him hard from the left side. It changed his trajectory,
threw him away from the deadly rocks below, and spun him vertically
a few times. When he stopped spinning, Dastou could see water was
at the top of his vision, slightly tilted. He was now aimed towards
a deeper, safer area of the bay, a spot where he could survive.
Sadly, Dastou couldn’t exactly flip himself
right-side-up so that his feet were pointed downward, so he’d have
to go into the water head first… at an angle… in about two seconds.
The Saint took as deep a breath as he could, straightened himself
into a bullet, and prepared to have the worst headache of his
life.
*****
With a skeleton crew of
only three people, all four of the medical rooms were available.
None of those spaces had real doors, instead featuring
thick curtains. The curtain here was
pulled completely to the side, revealing the hallway. Dastou looked
over at it, wanting to be on his way.
He sat on a
paper-covered exam bed pressing an ice pack to his temple while
Saan-Hu, his assistant administrator and a trained medical field
agent, unclipped his x-rays from the magnetic backlit rack on the
far wall. She was already naturally pale, with long light-blonde
hair, and the light from the rack made her as white as her lab
coat.
Saan
looked at the three x-rays carefully for a
moment, and then threw them in the trash with unconcealed annoyance
before thumbing off magnetic rack's light, returning herself to a
normal skin tone. She grunted as she turned to face her boss and
friend, folding her arms across her chest.
"Yes, I know," said
Dastou, honestly remorseful and making sure to keep
eye-contact.
"Do
you
?” asked Saan, clearly
upset. “Because it seems like you nearly killed yourself and won't
explain why."
