Authors: Steven Montano
Soulrazor (26 page)
Like the avatars. They have to exist like I did when I piloted the Woman in the Ice – something of the shadows, out of synch with time and space. That was the only way I’d been able to fight The Sleeper at all
in the same space as that shadow, that blade, Soulrazor. Korva can touch it – she is like him, somehow, infused with shadow energies, even though she is an avatar of the pale goddess. He doesn’t know what she wants with it, but he can’t imagine it’s anything good.
But if I exist out of synch with time, that means I should be able to ignore its boundaries. I should be able to go where and when I want.
If only there was some means for him to control his newfound state.
He wanders through the ruined city. Somewhere, in a distance that can’t be measured by spatial or temporal boundaries, he feels something change. It is himself, a separate self, not a different version but another
aspect
, himself removed, one that exists somewhere else, and as
aspect
, himself removed, one that exists somewhere else, and as
I know
he feels that change
that I have to stop it, and now I can, only
the sky falls onto him, and he is smothered by the burning stars.
it won’t be me.
The keep hangs dangerously over the dark sea. Black water crashes against the rocky shore. A ship rocks beneath him, and it is all he can do to cling to the mast. The tattered sail flaps in the storm like a battered ghost.
The water freezes his skin. His eyes burn from the touch of shadows.
The wall before him stretches for hundreds of miles, and it is the same wall he stood upon before,
stands on now, there is no time
with its bladed crenellations and grim glowing pyres.
Collapsed siege equipment and crushed bastions are littered on the ground near the sea. A channel of water winds its way directly into the keep between two tightly-positioned walls. The dark waters cuts through the barbican and into a wasteland of rotting timber and shattered girders.
A woman stands on the far shore. He doesn’t want to see her face. Ethereal wisps of white smoke connect like tendrils to her shadow-flesh. Nothing about her is certain: she is a dark slate, a silhouette with pale and glowing eyes.
He is in the city. It is alive and well.
What the hell is happening to me?
The vampires have launched an attack. Gol-piloted dirigibles launch short-range missiles that perforate Razorwing bodies. Chunks of meat and steel hail down from the sky. Automatic weapons fire and mortar blasts detonate in the air. Klaxons sound into the sky.
Southern Claw soldiers run and meet their attackers. Ice cannons launch liquid blasts that turn the air to frost. Poison fumes deploy over the city in a shimmering green wave filled with acid sparks. People flee into bomb shelters and iron-bound rooms.
Gargoyles fly and collide with their brethren, and they slam into one another like flesh hammers. Wings and claws rip and tear in an orgy of blood and skin.
Shards of steel rip into buildings. Vampire warships and Razorwings soar overhead, and they are cut down by massive motorguns and Flak 38’s. His ears ring from the force of explosions and the screams of the dying.
He can’t interfere. He isn’t really there.
He sees Danica. She stands outside the mansion with the others, where she stands alongside Kane and Ronan and uses her spirit against the vampires. They plough through shock-troops and undead foot soldiers and skewer enemy gargoyles on their blades and burn through hordes of ghouls.
She senses the bomb the same time that he does. She moves towards the portal through which he fell, the liquid mirror that leads to the uncertain barrier between those cryptic realities.
He helps her. He isn’t sure how he knows, but the vortex bomb wasn’t placed here, was not meant for Thornn, but it will destroy the city nevertheless. Soulrazor has sliced between the worlds. Thornn, the crater, the keep (before it is destroyed, and after) are all connected. Soulrazor exists in all four places. In order to break it free, Korva has placed a bomb that can destroy all of the locales: it will detonate across the arcane threads of time.
He and his spirit dissolve, melt, and fall around Black. He pushes against her from the other side of a liquid veil of night, closer than he has ever been, closer than he would ever be again, but still separated by the skin of worlds. He lifts her into the sky.
The portal shimmers and expands. He senses the bomb, feels it, but he can’t pinpoint it.
He feels a heartbeat. Slowing, slowing. He moves sluggishly. He feels Danica look at him as the crescendo of power builds.
She’s looking at me. Looking
into
me.
into
me.
His heart glows like a swelling silver sun. He feels dark blood pour through his veins and tear his brittle unskin apart. Power scorches his flesh.
The Black is inside of me. The dark blood…it’s stained my soul.
I
am
the bomb.
am
the bomb.
It is his last thought before he explodes. Light tears out of his body in a rippling liquid storm that carries his consciousness like ripples across the sea of worlds. He travels to the edge of reality and watches the blast tear through the dome that staves off the realms of oblivion.
There, waiting on the other side, is The Black. It is a vast and incomprehensible presence. He sees eyes like frozen suns and claws that ooze through the veil of stars. He senses hearts as cold and as hollow as the void.
The explosion rips across the world, and tears it apart.
Where is Jennar? This is
his
doing. The Black is trying to invade. What came before…the event that we call The Black…was only the beginning. The invasion has just begun.
his
doing. The Black is trying to invade. What came before…the event that we call The Black…was only the beginning. The invasion has just begun.
He wakes at the edge of the crater. He floats, returns to where he was, to where he is meant to be. Everything feels lost, and disjointed.
She is there: the Woman in the Ice.
How?
he asks.
he asks.
Rules are broken here.
Where is here?
Nowhere.
He stands, shaking. They are at the center of the crater.
Pyrotic gases flood the sky and turn the area to a bowl of flame. Dark soil clings to his boots and cakes to his skin. He feels so very tired, like he hasn’t slept for years.
Please
, he implores her.
Tell me what’s going on.
, he implores her.
Tell me what’s going on.
You have determined much yourself….
Tell me anyway!!!!
He can’t control his rage. He stands at the brink of a dying world. Its death is his fault.
It is not,
she explains
. If not you, it would have been another.
she explains
. If not you, it would have been another.
He shudders at the power of her voice.
The avatars,
she continues.
The false avatars. They were not designed to battle the Dra’aalthakmar, or to retrieve Soulrazor, the blade that is The Black. They are just weapons: detonations held in stasis, waiting for the right moment to release. They bear a volatile mix of opposing energies…
she continues.
The false avatars. They were not designed to battle the Dra’aalthakmar, or to retrieve Soulrazor, the blade that is The Black. They are just weapons: detonations held in stasis, waiting for the right moment to release. They bear a volatile mix of opposing energies…
What opposing energies?!
he pleads.
God damn it, why can’t you stop speaking in fucking tongues??!!
he pleads.
God damn it, why can’t you stop speaking in fucking tongues??!!
She stares at him. Frost mist surrounds her. Her hair, her skin, her cloak and her armor are all silken white, pure and clean. She is a brutal contrast to the darkness of the crater and the blood red sky.
The Black. The realm beyond. It is not a person, or a people. It is not a place, or an item. It is not a concept. It is all of those things, and none of them. It has sought access to this realm since the beginning of what you call time. It was allowed to seep through – just a drop, and that came through a single tiny crack – and with that taste, it has been intoxicated with your world ever since. Obsessed. Something about your reality, your physicality, your temporality…the very fabric of your world…draws it. It is consumed by Earth, by a need to take it, and to destroy it.
His head spins.
And you?
he says.
What are you?
he says.
What are you?
Everything they are not. I am what came before. I have always guarded against these beings, these monsters. I cannot and will not let them destroy this place.
Her form starts to waver in the dank, cold wind.
You,
she continues
, are the most potent bomb now. You are bonded to me – to
us
– in a way no other living creature is, or could ever be, and you hold some of our power inside you.
she continues
, are the most potent bomb now. You are bonded to me – to
us
– in a way no other living creature is, or could ever be, and you hold some of our power inside you.
But you have also been infused with the power of The Black.
The dark blood you inadvertently fell in has seeped into your flesh and saturated your soul. It is only a matter of time before the energies, white and black, collide. If you follow Korva and her pursuit of Soulrazor, that explosion will happen in the void between the worlds…which is exactly what the creature you call Jennar wants, because that is where you will do the most damage, where you will destroy more than just
one
world.
one
world.
He understands. He will destroy
all
worlds, and all possible worlds. In that space where the holes exist between realities, where the muddied temporal bonds between time and place and possibility have been weakened by Soulrazor, his death will rip through that hole and sunder everything.
all
worlds, and all possible worlds. In that space where the holes exist between realities, where the muddied temporal bonds between time and place and possibility have been weakened by Soulrazor, his death will rip through that hole and sunder everything.
What can I do?
There is no escape
, she says.
The dichotomy of energies within you
must
be released.
, she says.
The dichotomy of energies within you
must
be released.
Until it does, you remain trapped in the unspace between worlds, and so long as that is true there is little you can do to avoid going exactly where Jennar wants you to go. He will hound you and pursue you. He has some measure of control over you now – he will find a way to ensure you are where he wants you to be when your power erupts.
But I’ve died already
, he says.
, he says.
Yes. And you will die again. But like all cycles, even the trap of time eventually comes to an end. That heartbeat you heard was the chime of inevitability. The cycle will only play out so many times. Eventually – inevitably – the loop will close, and when that happens…
The Black will win. Earth, already shattered and fused with the bastardized remains of other worlds, will be cast into a sea of instability, a void of uncertain darkness and crumbling banks of time, a place without dimension, and without form. It will slip like liquid through the cracks, and bleed into The Black.
You can contain the blast,
the Woman says.
You can curtail the damage.
the Woman says.
You can curtail the damage.
How?
The Soulweavers.
How can I find them here?
They pass through the realms, at will. They use the ether and weave it into their soul nets.
Find them
, she says
. They may help you.
, she says
. They may help you.
He doesn’t know how to find the Soulweavers. Soon, he has forgotten much of what the Woman in the Ice said to him.
His existence becomes a fugue of movement. He walks across landscapes blistered by explosive pores and rocks made of fused teeth. He stalks the parapets of the massive curtain wall, and walks among its ruins.
He sees the woman in the shadows, and he is afraid of her.
Jennar is behind him, always hedging him on, making sure he goes where The Sleeper wants him to be.
Ghost feet trek across fossilized plains and ossein hills. Banded pillars of bone hold flayed skins that ripple like flags in the bitter wind. Skeletons in armor man the catapults.
He sees the avatars and eludes them, just as before, but this time he tries to let Korva take the sword. He cannot, and he confronts her, and he finds the dead city, watches his friends die, stands in a boat that brings him before the dark woman he fears and knows.
Time revolves. He is doomed to exile in this quagmire of repeating moments. He is lost in a metaphoric maze, a cryptic temporal prison.
Skies of rust surround him. Iron statues leer at him from the keep walls, only to be reduced to little more than corroded metal the next time he sees them.
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