Soulrazor (25 page)
Authors: Steven Montano
The contact shoots needles of pain through his mind. He swallows hunger and darkness. A void waits behind those eyes, desolate, empty and unending. He falls through the broken shards of disjointed worlds, into seas so black they blind him.
They plummet through the gate.
He wakes on a stony ledge that overlooks a world of shadows.
Mists churn and roil beneath him. There is no ground that he can see, just an ocean of fog filled with pockets of pale lightning and drifts of darkness shaped like beasts, aerial sharks that move through the mists as if they were grey waters.
He stands on a crumbling curtain wall littered with cracked parapets and leaning towers. The sky is grey, a cloud-filled slate of corrosive fumes and looming storms.
The air is dry and cold. He tastes the tang of death.
The curtain wall is wide, and it bears siege weapons from some lost age, primitive things like catapults and trebuchets adorned with spikes and blades.
Stone barbs and shattered gargoyles line the tops of the walls. Broken tools and weapons lie scattered everywhere. Cold fires burn in shallow pits, and the charnel remains of scorched bodies have been stacked high.
The air is eerily still. Every step he takes sends echoes through the void.
He moves to the edge of the curtain wall, which is easily wide enough to support a team of horses, and peers through a narrow slit that has been cut between the tall crenellations of barbed stone and metal.
There is nothing beyond the keep. The stone runs for maybe fifty feet before it vanishes into the fog.
Everything shifts. It feels like the curtain wall isn’t attached to anything, like the entire structure floats through the sky. He looks ahead and behind and sees that there is no end to the wall or its battlements.
Something rattles in the distance. Waves of sound creep through the air and shake the stone, and the vibration casts loose bits of dark rock and charcoal debris. Voices drift on the smoke wind.
He tries to send his spirit out, but she isn’t there. Panic wells in his chest, but it only lasts for a moment.
Shaken but confident she will be with him again when he escapes this realm of shadows, he draws Avenger, readies his sidearm, and creeps forward, keeping low against the curtain wall.
He sees the spark of lights ahead. There are torch flames in the smoke, and they glow from within a prison of fog.
Darkness surrounds him. Something looms in the sky, some dismal flier native to this shadow-plagued realm. He stays low and still, and soon it is gone.
Snow falls and lands on his shoulders, and it smells of grease and animal musk.
The silhouettes of humanoids move near one of the crumbling towers, a round and once-proud citadel that rises a hundred feet above the floor of the curtain wall.
A round hole sits in the side of the tower roughly twenty paces over the group’s heads. There are no other apparent entrances, even there at the ground floor. They cast grappling hooks attached to nylon cords up and catch on a stone jutting out of the tower’s face.
Korva is there. Her blonde hair catches in the stygian breeze. Two men attend her, both well-armed with blades and automatic weapons. There are also three avatars – dead girls, automatons with bladed wings folded over their backs like armored cloaks. Their eyes are blank and clouded. He wonders why the group needs the rope when they have the avatars.
Korva is the first to ascend, and she climbs the knotted length of cord until she reaches the aperture. The mercenaries follow with their weapons slung over their shoulders. They wear goggles and face masks with breathing filters, even though Korva does not.
She’s one of them
, he realizes.
She’s an avatar…only she’s different from the rest. She’s in control of herself, not a slave, like they are.
, he realizes.
She’s an avatar…only she’s different from the rest. She’s in control of herself, not a slave, like they are.
He creeps forward. He isn’t used to moving with stealth without the aid of his spirit.
He checks his HK, not sure how or if it will work in this alien environ. He wonders where they are, what sliver of history or other world they’ve stumbled into. The siege weapons and shards of lost armor bespeak a primitive place. The substance in the air seethes and twists with subtle but malicious intent. He smells rot, and his skin chills at the cold touch of the dead wind that blows thick and steady like an icy breath.
The avatars sense his approach, and move to block him from the tower. He knows he has no chance against them without his magic. He only has the sword.
The sword: Avenger. The avatars take one look at it and back away.
They are cowed by its presence, by a sudden luminescent aura that shimmers and dances along the face of the blade like fiery moonlight. The weapon cuts a path through the smoke and haze.
The avatars don’t move against him. He sees his haggard face reflected in the silver mirrors of their glassy eyes. He is barely more than a mass of smoke and dripping shade, just like everything else in that dismal place.
The avatar’s razor wings tense and their hands clench. Their skin is pale and dead and blue, and the subtle runes on their skin pulse and shine to the beating of his phantom heart. He turns as he moves between them, but they stand away.
Even though they’ve been engineered, their cores are still attached to the White Mother, somehow. They bear some connection with this blade.
He grabs the rope and hauls himself up. The climb is quick. His body doesn’t tire here. He feels the cold and breathes in the raw and greasy air, but he doesn’t fatigue. He is a machine of ghostly essence, an avatar of his own soul.
Somehow, his spirit is with him again. He feels her inside him, and she makes him volatile. Her anger stirs in his heart, and he is afraid.
The inside of the tower is hollow and covered in ice turned grey with age. Large reams of frost cover the walls and drip black residue on the smooth marble floor. Pillars of smoke have solidified into columns of dark matter. Everything smells of fat and blood. The taste of brine and salt hangs heavy in the air.
He looks down the interior of the tower. A black sword rests at the center of the chamber. The blade is sharp and cold and so utterly dark it damages the light. It has no dimensions, no markings. It is a sliver of night shoved into the stone. The hilt is edged and inconstant and difficult to see.
The darkness eats his eyes. He can’t clearly see the blade or those who came to steal it, but after a moment he hears their pain and feels their screams. Their bodies burst in the darkness as they bladed shadows and soul-tearing concertina rip them apart. They fall into vast pits of bone and frost.
You were foolish to come here,
Korva says.
Korva says.
She is next to him. She has a gun drawn and aimed squarely at his face. Her smirks at him, and her eyes shine unnaturally blue.
So were you
, he says.
What is this place?
, he says.
What is this place?
She smiles.
No,
she says.
You’ve done enough harm.
she says.
You’ve done enough harm.
She squeezes the trigger. He sees the bullet eject from the gun, sees the metal burst free of the barrel, but it doesn’t matter.
Back in the physical world, Avenger is without magical properties. It’s just a shard of bone, no longer connected to the deity it represents.
But here, in this place, it is powerful.
The blade spins up and deflects the bullet into the stone wall, where it tears out a fragment of black rock.
Korva pushes him away with her boot and jumps into the chamber. The fall is too far for her survive, and yet she does. She moves between the holes and races towards the dark blade.
He jumps down after her, and almost lands in one of the pits. He gazes down into twisted shafts that stretch for impossible miles to a labyrinth of murderous tunnels. Skull visages glare up at him.
She moves quickly and nearly reaches the blade before he can react. He throws Avenger into her back and sends her to the ground. Blood flies from her mouth and spatters the black sword.
Soulrazor.
He isn’t sure how he knows its name. He shouldn’t know anything about it…and yet he does.
He knows that Soulrazor is the opposite to Avenger, a shard of The Black, just as Avenger is an extension of the White Mother.
Unfortunately, he didn’t realize how much Avenger had protected him. Without it in his hand he struggles to remain stable in the black sword’s presence. It changes and shifts everything around it.
He looks at the stygian walls of the tower chamber, and understands where he is. The sword is a sliver of that vessel he saw before: the dark ship from distant times, the derelict craft built in a nightmarish alien world. But this place, this prison, the towers and the curtain wall and the iron-hard mist, are all within the blade, just as they contain it. It is the prison and the prisoner, a paradox he will die in.
His form stutters and fades. He takes a step, and part of his shadow body melts into the floor. His hand clings to the rune-crafted wall. He feels himself pull apart.
Korva rises and desperately tries to pull Avenger out of her back. The dulled tip protrudes from her chest, but she is stable, held that way by the blade.
He realizes his mistake in releasing Avenger, and he tries to take it back. Each step sends pieces of his ash body into the air. He reaches his hand out and grabs parts of his own smoking form as they drift away.
Behind him, back on the battlements, a battle rages. He smells the smoking scent of black magic, and he almost feels the slice of razor wings against shadow flesh.
The avatars were not brought to stop him, nor were they meant to retrieve the blade. Korva can do that on her own.
Their purpose is much more direct: they were brought to battle The Sleeper. They were brought to keep it away.
Korva cannot pull Avenger out of her back, but she reaches Soulrazor just the same.
He stumbles forward. He disintegrates with every step. His body flakes away.
She grabs Soulrazor, just as he grabs her.
He screams. His body draws back together, fuses into a whole as he falls through cracks in the dome of reality. He plunges, frozen, through the brittle crust of forgotten worlds.
The city is in ruins. He sees the remains left behind by the vortex bomb. A cold black moon hangs low in the sky. Drifts of ebon smoke curl up from the ground. Shards of glass and stone hang at awkward angles and jut into the air.
The sky is red, and the ground is black and charnel. Everything has burned.
It’s Thornn.
He can’t believe his eyes. His entire body shakes with rage and fear and disbelief.
I could have done something,
he thinks, and even though he doubts that is true, it doesn’t change the way he feels.
he thinks, and even though he doubts that is true, it doesn’t change the way he feels.
He wanders across a wounded and desolate scene. Krugen’s, the café he once knew, was destroyed in the explosion. The watch towers have toppled, leaving only smoking slivers of stone in their place. The streets are so filled with debris it is almost impossible to walk. He climbs over the broken remains of fallen doors and across sharp and craggy stones. Glass cracks and shatters beneath his feet. Mortar crumbles into dust.
The air is suffused with choking debris. Flames burn in the distance and illuminate the crimson haze. He hears nothing but the moan of the wind and the occasional drifts of ruined buildings as the structures collapse.
He smells burned skin and feels cold ash in the air. There are no bodies. Whatever happened here reduced everyone to dust. He walks through the shifting remains of Thornn’s citizens, people he knew, and people he didn’t. People he desperately wanted to protect, only he hadn’t been strong enough.
It’s not your fault
, a voice tells him, but he can’t accept that, because it
is
. It is his fault, and always has been. He could have stopped it, if only he’d made better decisions.
, a voice tells him, but he can’t accept that, because it
is
. It is his fault, and always has been. He could have stopped it, if only he’d made better decisions.
This hasn’t happened yet.
He isn’t sure how he knows that, but he does. Everything has been in flux, ever since he fell into the black blood in the Bonespire. He has stepped out of synch, existed
Other books
The Devil's Demeanor by Hart, Jerry
Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) by Bogino, Jeanne
Murder at the Laurels by Lesley Cookman
Awakened by a Demoness by Heaton, Felicity
Touch of Love by Wolf, Ellen
The Vanishings by Jerry B. Jenkins, Tim LaHaye
An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson
In Heat (Sanctuary) by Michkal, Sydney
The Healing Wars: Book II: Blue Fire by Janice Hardy
The Darkest Day by Tom Wood
