Nightlord: Orb (3 page)

Extraction

Things are going well.  I venture out of my head, kill some nasty Things, scrounge and scavenge amid the ruins, put out some fires, sort through piles of junk, and generally put another area into a semblance of order.  There’s only so much you can do with piles of rust and garbage, but at least I’ve got the area around my head all laid out neatly.  My neighborhood is still a trash heap, but it’s the difference between a dump and a recycling center.

Is my OCD showing?  Excuse me.

I’ve even killed two more harpies—the ones with the faces of Shada and Sasha.  The bow works pretty well, but I’m an indifferent archer.  Shooting them dead on the wing was out of the question.  Bringing one down, on the other hand, just involved persistence and a lot of lost arrows.

Once I had them on the ground, though, I proved I’m much more proficient with mace and spear.

The fiery representation of my hatred for the Mother of Flame still shows up unpredictably.  I’ve shot it/her a dozen times, even gotten close enough to ruin a spear by sticking it in her leg.  She doesn’t like any of that, but that doesn’t stop her.  She’s shifted from a pursuing presence to a lurking one, though.  I think she’s afraid to let me get close to her.  She still to shows up unpredictably to mock and distract me, and I put arrows into her for it, for all the good it does.  She just won’t go down.

Typical.

Apparently, I can hate more thoroughly than I can fear.  Maybe it’s because I have more reason to hate.  And, since I don’t like hating things, I’ve done a good job repressing it until now.

The tall, handsome guy is also following me around, but he’s kept his distance ever since I stopped running.  Maybe he has a better instinct for self-preservation than other manifestations.  He needs a good one.  I’m in no mood to take any crap from a psychological personification.  He could probably tell from the glare I shot at him whenever I noticed him in the shadows.  The arrows were probably a clue, too, but he’s fast and he always keeps close to cover.  He’s more resourceful than I am, damn him.

I was reaching for another arrow while he effortlessly slid around a corner, out of my line of sight.  As I was working up a good glare and wondering if I should waste another arrow, a flame-shrouded wall of metal sliced downward from the blackness above.  It towered straight up into the black sky like a rainbow bridge done in fire and steel, stretching into infinity, wide as a highway.

The wavy-patterned, flame-shrouded metal rang with a rapid, four-beat clanging, the sound of bells cast from bronze and steel.  A flash of understanding struck me.  Firebrand was the bridge, thrust into this place of thought, and Bronze, a part of my spirit or soul, was coming to get me.

In that instant, there she was, Bronze, standing sideways on the wall of fiery steel, looking at me.  She turned in place to face upward along the wall and glanced over her shoulder at me.  I wasn’t slow to take the hint; I leaped aboard, fighting my way up to sit astride.  Once I found my seat, everything twisted.  The ground beneath me was now behind me and the flaming steel of the once-vertical wall was now
down
.  The world was a black wall behind me as we stood on a bridge of steel and fire.

Bronze took a step forward, snorting jets of spark-shot smoke and leaning into it as though pulling a load.  The world behind us
bent
, as if it were a sheet being pulled in the middle.  Things of all sorts came out of hiding, staring at us, chattering, clattering, squealing.  I felt something pulling at me, as though I were tied to the ground behind us.

Bronze took another step, leaning more steeply, greenish lightning playing about her hooves. The world bent even more, distorted all out of shape.  She grabbed my forearms with her mane, holding me on.  Her tail lashed out as though in a hurricane.  Fire shot from her nostrils.  Things behind us screamed and shrieked as they bent and twisted in the strange ripples and curves of the world itself.

Bronze took another step, jets of fire roared from her mouth and nose like rockets.  The green lightning gained a hint of blue, arcing and sparking as high as her knees.  Metal screamed on metal, or maybe the scream was Firebrand.

The world gave way, snapping like an umbrella jerked inside-out, suddenly loose behind us.  We shot away through the fire and into darkness.

I’ve noticed a trend.  When I wake up in pain, it’s significant.  Is that because I remember it better?  I mean, I wake up in bed, warm and comfortable, possibly snuggled up to someone, and I don’t really mention it much.  Do I regard pleasant—or non-unpleasant—wakings as “normal,” or what I hope is normal?  And, hopefully, waking up feeling as though I’ve been run over by a manure truck is unusual?  Or am I a pessimist who remembers all the bad times and painful experiences better than I remember the good times and pleasant experiences?

This was a bad way to wake up.

My eyes snapped open.  I heaved in a breath as my heart pounded violently.  I gasped for air, thrashing up into a sitting position while my heart thundered faster.  Hands helped me sit up and someone offered me water.  I sucked up some of the water immediately; I felt hot, immensely hot, deeply feverish.

“This isn’t right,” someone insisted.  I wasn’t sure who it was.  Everything seemed dim and fuzzy and faint.  Someone dialed down the gain on the world and I wasn’t getting enough signal.  That, or something was seriously amiss with my eyes and ears, along with my heart and lungs.  And my head; the headache was getting worse by the second.

“He’s on fire,” agreed another voice, the one holding the cup.  I drank off the rest of the water in one draft, then went back to hyperventilating.  I couldn’t seem to get enough air.  Sweat poured off me.

“Are we sure it’s him?” asked a third voice.

“
I
am.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“It could be the shock of the transfer.”

“Then
fix
it!”

“I don’t know how!”

“I thought you and Tort figured out how to do this!”

“We did!  But this wasn’t supposed to happen!
He
is the only expert!”

“We have to
do
something!  He’s dying!”

I had to agree with that last assessment.  My breathing wasn’t getting any easier; I felt suffocated.  My heart was practically vibrating instead of beating.  I felt hot enough to cook on.  Blood gushed from my nose.

“How’s his life force?”

“The body has lots; I’m seeing to it—but it’s coming apart!”

“We knew that would happen!

“Not this fast!  We were counting on at least a few hours!”

“How long?”

“Minutes.  Maybe seconds!”

“Get that crystal.  We’ll have to try—”

I didn’t get to hear what they were going to try.  About that point, I felt a wracking pain in my chest and coughed a red mist into the air.

My heart ripped open and I died.

Well, okay, my body died.  I found myself floating above it all, contemplating the mess below.  We were all inside a complicated diagram—a six-pointed star with lines connecting each point to all the others, with a central circle for me and lesser circles at each point for the operators.  Just reading the symbols inscribed along the outer edge would take a while; some of them were unfamiliar, and that’s unusual for me.

The corpse didn’t look like my body, but it was obviously the one I most recently occupied.  Blood soaked the thing as though someone had used it for a mop.  It—he?  I?—had bled from everywhere.  Nose, eyes, ears, even from under the fingernails and the gums.  It might even have started sweating blood before I coughed up the remains of the lungs.  I wondered who he was.

On the other hand, I felt much better outside the corpse.  True, I was confined inside the circle, but at least I wasn’t burning up a body.  I wondered if that was the usual reaction.  Judging by my own experiments and the commentary during my brief occupation, I didn’t think so.  Was it a problem with me or a problem with the body?  Could the flesh have rejected me the same way it might reject an incompatible organ?

Of more immediate concern, however, was how long I could stay like this.  People who step outside their flesh have a nasty tendency to come apart at the seams and bleed their energy out.  I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but it might not be something I could easily sense.  A person bleeding to death doesn’t have an internal gauge they can watch, after all.  Depending on the method of departure from the flesh, the spiritual disintegration can be fairly quick or take quite a while.  It all comes down to whether you rip free or carefully step out.

The three people—the three organic people—down by the corpse seemed familiar.  Their spirits seemed more visible than their flesh, but I blame my state of being for that.  Each was composed of complicated layers of energies, all mixed together and interrelating, but without actually mixing, with the system as a whole surrounded by a faint, shadowy form shaped like a human being.  With some concentration, I could focus on their physical forms and recognize the flesh.

The fourth person was not an organic life form.  It was a huge, bronze statue of a horse, still smoking slightly from every surface and breathing fire.  That one was more than familiar.  I would recognize her even if I were blind.

T’yl, in his elf-body, was moderately familiar, but changed; he obviously did some remodeling.  He was taller than most elves, somewhat more heavily built, and he rounded off his ears.

Tort was still Tort, almost exactly as I recalled her.

The third person was a teenaged girl with reddish-orange hair; it appeared to be a cloud of fire to my spirit-vision.  As I watched, her gaze swept around the room; her eyes seemed to be orbs of flame.  She smiled up at me when she spotted me.  She waved.  I waved back, noting as I did so that I seemed to retain a shape even in a spirit-form.  Body afterimage?  Or self-image?  Or just the shape of my spirit, like the shape of clay after being pressed into a mold?

She spoke to Tort and T’yl; I couldn’t hear all that well.  It was similar to being submerged in the bathtub while someone tries to talk to you.

“It’s all right,” she said.  “Grandpa is hovering over us.”

Yeah, that’s Tianna.  I thought it might be.  So, a few years went by while I did time in my own head.  At least I wasn’t locked in my basement for
eighty-seven
years.  This seemed more like six or so, depending.  If this keeps up, a few more comas and they’ll be no worse than having a nap.  That’s encouraging.  Sort of.

Tort and T’yl looked up.  Neither of them seemed to see me.

“Is he well?” Tort asked.  “In his disembodied state, he may need to be contained.”

“I’m not sure the crystal’s big enough,” Tianna replied, casting her brilliant gaze over me.  “He’s…” she searched for a word.  “Big.  Even bigger than I remember.  He was a giant when I was a little girl; I thought it was because I was so small back then.”

“I know the feeling,” Tort muttered.

“Regardless,” T’yl interjected, “he may be losing cohesion.  Can you talk with him?”

“Grandpa?”

“Yo,” I responded.  She shook her head.

“I can’t hear him.”

“But you can see him?  And he can see you?”

I nodded.  Tianna nodded.

“Ask him how he… no, ask him if he feels all right,” T’yl instructed.  I nodded again and gave Tianna a thumbs-up.

“He does.  He can hear you, too.”

“That’s good.”

“He’s leaking,” Tianna reported.  I glanced down at myself.  I didn’t see anything wrong.  I looked as I usually do—lean, wiry, and naked as a jaybird.  Apparently, I don’t have a spiritual body-image that includes clothes.  Somehow, I wind up naked far more often than I find comfortable or convenient.  Where’s the Comics Code Authority to preserve my clothes, modesty, and what little dignity I have?

T’yl dragged the corpse out of the containment diagram, smearing blood everywhere as he did so.  I waited while he whisked the blood away from the painted lines and double-checked the containment spells.  While he did so, I carefully kept inside the lines on the theory they were there for a reason.  If the surgeon is setting up an operating theater for you, you don’t go wandering off or play with the instruments.  It’s rude.

Tort brought over a familiar-looking crystal.  It was one of the quantum computer cores I’d brought back from my own world.  She put it down in the middle of the diagram and everyone moved away.

“Ask him if he—excuse me.  My angel, would you please try to enter the crystal?”

I shrugged and pointed a toe, as though slipping into a boot.  I continued to slip into it, carefully.

“He’s trying,” Tianna told them.

As I continued to slide into it, I felt a sort of resistance, then a block.  I made it in up to about my knee—about like pulling on a tall boot.  I pushed a bit, but I thought I could feel it start to give.  I pulled my foot out again and shook my head at Tianna.

“He won’t fit.  He barely gets in up to one knee.”

Tort and T’yl glanced at each other.  They didn’t like that.  Tort’s spirit showed no change I could see; she seemed remarkably unmoved by the news. That seemed odd, possibly even unnatural.  T’yl’s spirit showed more than a hint of humiliation and concern.