nineteen

rhaine

 

 

 

The remainder of the trek to Rhaine was grim.

The air turned greyer the further they walked. Cross’ eyes hurt, and he almost fell asleep while they marched. Only his spirit’s anxiousness kept him conscious. Dread built up deep in his chest, as strong and as heavy as if he’d swallowed a chunk of lead.

To a mage, being near death was like walking through a freezing waterfall. There was no mistaking its presence, and Cross had to constantly hold his spirit close and anchor her to his will. Otherwise, she might be drawn out and ambushed by free-roaming ghosts, or else so distracted by the deadly lull of lost souls that she’d never be able to return to him.

The task of keeping her contained grew more difficult the further they went. The squad passed the ruined remains of a remote cabin, once the property of a trapper or a mountain seer, which had been partially crushed beneath some great concussive force. Bone weary and on edge, they passed through a field of dark soil, and while both Cross and Cristena felt the proximity of death they still managed to slosh halfway across the field before they noticed a pale arm that jutted out of the loamy earth. Their boots sank in thin pools of blood that were just beneath the surface, and soon they were ankle deep in crimson slush.

They’d stumbled into a mass grave. Bodies addled by bullets and blades had been piled up and crudely buried beneath the surface of the rich mud. Soggy flesh sagged away from the corpses’ bones like melting fat, and everything was covered with worms. Cross and Cristena were forced to flee the scene.

Cross was sick. He felt like someone had pulled his insides out through his mouth.

He heard the screams of lost souls. He felt his spirit suffer as she was battered with clouds of pain that still surrounded the recently dead like a grim shroud. Everything Cross had ever seen and heard led him to believe that a person’s soul continued to exist long after the body had gone. They stayed, trapped in their last moments, forever locked in the eternal final seconds of life. Those souls were tortured to repeat their moment of death over and over and over again.

The squad made haste to move away from the field of carnage, only to discover more bodies. This time they were located off of a wide trade road that Cristena thought led directly into Rhaine. The naked corpses had been burned and hung at unnatural angles, held up only by strands of razor wire affixed to metal poles in the ground. Dead eyes stared at the squad, almost accusingly. Cross did all he could to keep their voices at bay.

“We’re too late,” Graves said after they passed the bodies. They came around a bend in the hills. The sky had filled with sickly bulbous clouds. “These people were either bound for Rhaine, or else they came from it.”

“We’ll check it out,” Stone said. No one questioned the decision.

They had to see Rhaine, but they already knew what they’d find. The Sorn did not take prisoners. If Rhaine’s residents were lucky, they’d been killed quickly.

They rested for a short time, drank some water, and calculated their position on the maps. No one ate, and they barely spoke. No one really wanted to move on, but they had to, and they all knew it.

They caught their first sight of Rhaine over the next ridge. It was a large settlement spaced across a massive hillside and built right up against the edge of the Carrion Rift. The walls that protected the city were low but solid, and they were set with battlements and a large number of crude towers. The city rolled and curved with the hill, and its districts had been separated by short intervening walls, visible even from outside the city.

Smoke drifted over much of Rhaine, filling the sky with red and gray war pollutants. Even from a distance the smell of burning fuel was strong. Cross saw a few large, gray-skinned figures moving around in the city even at the squad’s distance, and through his scope he confirmed their identity by their bladed armor, their black iron weapons, their heavy steam-powered firearms and the single, central eyes they bore on their smooth heads. Sorn.

“The easiest way to cross the Rift,” Cristena said, trying like the rest of them to ignore the fact that the city was likely filled with hundreds of dead people, “is to cross that bridge. We have to go through Rhaine to get to it.”

“Of course,” Graves said bitterly.

“There may be survivors,” Cross said quietly.

“Doubtful.” Stone took the scope and surveyed Rhaine’s smoking husk, starting at the gates and inspecting all of the way to the bridge at the far northern edge of the city. The bridge had been built into a tower set in Rhaine’s north wall, and it stretched across to a second tower on the far side of the Rift. From what Cross could tell, Rhaine’s north wall was flush with the canyon wall, which meant there was no other means of accessing that particular bridge from their side of the canyon.

Cross tasted sorcery in the air, and it was as thick and as pungent as the pollution. It was known that the Sorn made use of powerful military technology, steam and gear-driven devices powered by arcane fuel, and machines that relied as much on magic as they did on gears or engines to operate.

He heard dead whispers in the air, but fewer than he expected. The Sorn must have cleared away the bodies of their victims, maybe even dumped them into the Rift. They were nothing if not efficient.

“The Sorn may be setting this place up for use as an outpost,” Stone said. He still held the scope to his eye. “They’re a big raiding party, but they’re conducting a very systematic search for survivors.” He lowered the scope. “This wasn’t a random attack. They’re making sure they’ve cleared the place out. They’re hunting down survivors.”

“How many Sorn are there?” Cross asked.

“I only saw seven, but a full raiding party is usually ten strong. The others might be invisible to us right now because of the smoke, or they might be out on patrol. We need to stay sharp.”

“The other three Sorn could be dead,” Cristena said, dubious by her tone. “Maybe they were killed during the attack?”

“I doubt we’re that lucky,” Stone said.

“We’re not,” Graves groaned. “Trust me. We’re not.” He looked down at the Rift. “But even if Cristena is right, there are still seven of them. Seven Sorn commandos,” he laughed. “Shit.”

“Are they as bad as I’ve heard?” Cross asked.

“Worse,” Stone said, and Cross was officially sorry he’d asked.

They decided to approach under cover of the foothills southeast of Rhaine. They heard gunshots and bodiless cries issue from deep inside the city. The setting sun bathed the world red. They decided that it would be best to enter the city under the cover of darkness, so as to capitalize on the Sorn’s poor night vision.

The foothills came to an end just a few hundred yards short of the city walls, which meant the squad would have to cross the last stretch across exposed ground. Lucky for them the city gates had been left wide open, and there were no sentries in sight anywhere on or near the walls.

Just to be sure, Cross and Cristena loosened their holds on their spirits and conducted an arcane reconnoiter. Cross breathed in ghostly steam, and he tasted bitter eldritch power that burned his lungs. They sensed a tremendous amount of residual magical energy inside the walls – most likely it was from the Sorn’s weaponry – but none of it was located near the gates.

There were also very few whisperings from the dead, all of them scattered and weak, and that was both reassuring and alarming. There should have been more dead whispers if the city had been wiped out.

Maybe they’re not dead. Maybe the Sorn took the city hostage.

Based on what they’d seen on the road into Rhaine, Cross doubted it, but that being the case neither he nor Cristena could explain why there was nary a lost spirit to be found anywhere near Rhaine.

We’ll have to figure it out later.

The sun had almost completely set by the time the squad made their run. Rhaine’s bulky shadow loomed before them. They had to leave the camel behind, since the load it carried jingled and clanged so loudly it was a surprise the Sorn hadn’t already heard them coming from a league away.

They raced across icy and brittle ground and passed through Rhaine’s gates. Not alarm was raised, and no shots were fired.

A good start.

Stone directed them with Southern Claw hand signals, the same system used by the old U.S. Army Rangers. Stone was at point, Cross and Cristena and their anxious spirits roamed in the center, and Graves brought up the rear. They moved quickly but quietly, checking every corner, careful not to trip in the thick shadows.

The level of debris and wreckage that blocked the way increased as the squad moved deeper into the city, and swift navigation soon became very difficult. The darkness didn’t help. An array of sounds echoed through the city streets – gunshots, bomb blasts, shouts, working machinery – but it was all so distant that it was hard to gauge its direction, especially with the echoing effect of the nearby Rift.

They passed buildings that had been hollowed out by mortar blasts and grenades. Entire streets had been cracked apart by gunfire. The red flames of burning buildings grew more intense as they neared Rhaine’s epicenter, and the fires cast everything in a bloody glow. Most of those flames were clustered near Rhaine’s heart, and those blazes were primarily what lit the squad’s way through the ugly night.

Fountains were cracked and dry, entire houses had been leveled, statues had been toppled and the fronts of buildings had been torn away. The streets were soon so littered with wreckage and rubble the ground was barely visible.

They saw only a few bodies, and there were no lost spirits to accompany them. If Rhaine’s citizens were dead, their spirits were no longer in the city. Both Cross and Cristena should have been deaf from the cries generated by that many lost souls.

Maybe that mass grave was filled with the people from Rhaine, Cross thought. It would explain why it’s so quiet here now.

But that wasn’t it. There should have been something more, some whispers of a lingering soul, some background spiritual static, a general unquiet in the nether region between worlds. There was nothing. Everything was empty, and utterly abandoned.

The squad passed through the open shell of a building, and for the first time the four of them were able to look into Rhaine’s central city square. Roaring fires burned in the shells of destroyed vehicles. Bright smoke billowed into the sky, and showers of sparks fell onto the bloodied pavement.

A large crater rested at the exact center of Rhaine, at the spot that had likely once been occupied by the city hall. An imperfect orb made of black iron hovered over the hole. The lopsided sphere hummed and turned in place above the ovoid depths of the crater. Subtle lines of black lightning raced up and down the surface of the metal ball, and tendrils of energy danced between the orb and the ground in a ghastly web. The area that surrounded the crater was occupied by smoking and crumbling buildings, their ruins illuminated by red flames. The ground was torn granite that had been rent asunder by explosive blasts.

The wrecked plaza was also paved with the dead.

Scores of bodies lay heaped in orderly piles ten or fifteen feet high. They were neatly arranged columns of dead husks. The smell in the air was ghastly. The bodies had been left to decay for some time, and their proximity to so much heat and flame had sped the rate of deterioration. Cross gagged on the taste of overcooked meat that soiled the air.

“Holy shit,” Graves whispered.

“That’s an Egg, isn’t it?” Stone asked with a nod towards the floating black ball.

“Yeah,” Cross coughed. “That’s why we couldn’t sense any roaming spirits,” he said. “Because there aren’t any. There are no souls left to detect.”

“What do you mean?” Graves asked quietly. They all crouched down and did their best to stay out of sight.

“Sometimes the Sorn feed the souls of people they kill to the Black Eggs. No one has seen an Egg in over a decade. We thought they were all gone.”

The squad kept quiet, and clung to the shadow of the building shell. From their vantage they spied a half dozen Sorn who carefully navigated the urban graveyard with silent stoicism. The nearest was just a few blocks away.

The Sorn were essentially humanoid, save that their skin had the hue and texture of worked stone, and they stood nearly twelve feet tall. Their hairless heads were decorated with runic markings and ritualistic scars, and each bore a short row of onyx horns on his forehead. Each Sorn had but a single large eye in the center of its face, so large there was barely any room left for its tiny mouth. The Sorn’s armor was coal black steel set with iron plates and jagged spikes, and their weapons looked like industrial machines, heavy, functional, covered in gears and knobs, ugly but efficient.

Cross didn’t feel a single spirit aside from his and Cristena’s. There wasn’t a human soul left in Rhaine that didn’t belong to the squad. He didn’t know exactly how the Sorn fed souls to the living artifacts they worshipped, but he tasted the vile stench of black magic in the air. All of the Black Eggs were thought to have been destroyed during the Southern Claw’s last major engagement with the Sorn, back during the Battle at Horn’s Peak in A.B. 13. The spheres were malignant and intelligent orbs made of arcane iron reputedly taken from the core of an ancient meteorite. They possessed their own magic, and they demanded unquestioned loyalty from their Sorn followers. This one had been well fed.

“We can go around it…” Cristena began.

“No,” Stone said. “We can’t.” His tone made clear he would broker no argument.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Cristena,” Stone said, “but we do. There is no getting around this.” He quietly removed his extra equipment, and just kept his weapons and armor. Graves did the same.

And so did Cross, without even realizing it until he was almost done.

Am I insane?

“You can’t help these people,” Cristena said. “Do you hear me, you stupid, macho assholes? They’re dead, and their souls are dead. You should be worrying about the people you can help. I don’t believe this…why am I the only thinking about your mission? Eric, what about Snow? If you get yourself killed…”

“He won’t,” Stone said.

“God damn it, what will this prove?” Cristena said, loud enough that Cross was sure the Sorn overheard them. If they did, they made no indication of it, and the giants just tended to their business, organizing the bodies and patrolling the field of dead.

Nothing, Cross thought. This will prove nothing. And yet, we have to do it.

He stands in the glade. She is there, lovely and snow white pale, her hair blown back by the gentle breeze that circles down from the black mountain.

He thought of Snow. He hoped she’d understand.

Cristena conceded without further argument: after a minute or two of silence she, too, readied herself for battle.

Cross wasn’t surprised. He knew that she still wanted to die, even if she seemed to have forgotten for a while.

He didn’t think they were going to die. He wondered if she’d be disappointed.

It took a few minutes to set up the mini-gun, which they mounted on a low wall near a hollow building that overlooked the crater. Stone, still slowed from his cracked rib in spite of plenty of arcane first aid provided by the mages, decided to man the mini-gun, while Graves took the M16A2 with the M203. Cross and Cristena loaded up with most of the handguns. For some reason, Cross wondered about the camel, and hoped the creature had the good sense to stay out of danger.

They fanned out across the nearby section of town. There was debris everywhere -- shattered stone, broken pieces of furniture, collapsed ceilings and cracked walls -- so there was plenty of cover available. Cross found himself alone in the blasted remains of an old house.

This is insane. But it’s too late now.

A stream of white light burst out of the rotating barrels of the mini-gun a few houses away. Stone had waited until a pair of Sorn walked directly into his field of fire before he’d opened up on them.

Deafening blasts filled the air. Heavy chunks of Sorn armor collapsed beneath the thunderous barrage of the mini-gun, and while the creatures managed to draw their massive blades Stone eventually sent them both to the ground.

More Sorn suddenly appeared all over the square. The eye-numbing light made it so that many of them were difficult to see in spite of their size. Weapon blasts tore through the night. The Black Egg shifted and turned in place.

The mini-gun strafed the area. Small explosions boomed. Black dust drifted across Cross’ field of vision. He let his spirit swim out and over his body and through his fingers like water. Cross molded her form, squeezed his fingers together, and shaped her essence into a chain of eldritch blades that he cast out into the dark. The blades punched through concrete and embedded themselves into Sorn targets with audible force.

Moments later, a Sorn crashed through the walls of the building Cross was hiding in. The Sorn had suffered a gaping blade wound in its stomach, but it still yielded an enormous axe made of black steel in its gauntleted hands. Its single eye glared at Cross. Cross saw his battered and bruised reflection stare back at him.

Cross leapt back. He let his spirit explode away from him, and a battery of razor sharp stones curled up and shredded the Sorn’s face, ruining the massive eye. Even blinded the Sorn was relentless, and its axe-blade sank into the ground less than a foot from where Cross stood. Cross moved his hands in a slicing motion, and his spirit curled like a moonlit razor and cut clean through the Sorn’s throat, spilling a rain of purple blood.

One wall of the building collapsed, and what was left of the roof came down like oversized chunks of hail.

Cross ran for the square.

A Sorn stormed after him with a wide-muzzled and cannon-like weapon connected to its backpack with tubes and wires. The weapon growled like a locomotive as it fired nails the size of railroad spikes. Chunks of wood and stone were everywhere. Cross fled, trailed by a barrage of projectiles.

He ran through the field of bodies. His spirit was shrouded around him. Dead eyes stared at him from mattress-like piles of corpses. He brushed against cold hands and rotting feet. Cross heard the chaos of the battle: the mini-gun’s rapport, heavy mortar shots, the crackle of evil magic.

He was suddenly lost. He kept his spirit at hand, felt her excitement and fear burn cold against his skin. Cross tried to get his bearings.

He rounded a corner in the maze of the dead, and found himself thirty yards away and face-to-face with another Sorn. The stoic brute was armed with a broadsword in one hand and a pipe bomb the size of a watermelon in the other. Cross heard the dull hum of a metallic dirigible in the air behind him.

The Black Egg.

Its shadow loomed over him, and he saw the great orb reflected in the Sorn’s hateful stare. Cross pushed his spirit away in an eldritch wave. She melted into a tidal force of incandescent energy that flared like a jet of molten fuel. The pyromancy leapt off the ground and into the Sorn, setting its body ablaze. Even dying, the creature remained silent. It threw the bomb.

Cross ran. The heavy roar of the Egg’s chain guns and chemical charges filled his ears. The air tasted hot as exhaust from the Egg’s turbines washed over the ground like a blast of desert wind. The pipe bomb soared over his head. Cross heard it bounce against the Egg’s outer hull with a thud.

The force of the explosion threw Cross forward. He hung weightless for a moment, flying through air filled with shattered steel. Sharp pain drove through his body as he landed.

He was on his back. The air had been knocked from his lungs. He felt deflated.

The bomb had detonated behind him. He felt shrapnel in his back.

Still struggling for breath, Cross tried to rise, but he didn’t have the strength. His ears rang. Gory chunks of exploded corpse bits were everywhere.

The Egg was damaged, but not destroyed. Thick black smoke churned from a visible rent near the top of the machine, and a few metal plates burned and dangled from the sphere. Cross saw ancient gear works and broken tubes that dripped dark fluid through the damaged hull. The Egg listed to its left, incapable of properly maneuvering or lifting as high as it had before.

Damaged or no, the Egg bore down on him. It was as big as a wagon. It drew within a few yards before Cross got his exhausted legs beneath him and ran.

The Egg strafed the earth with small rotating guns built into its underbelly. Fist-sized bullets shredded the ground.

Cross moved as fast as he could. His chest pounded. He ran without any idea of where he was going. He heard the Egg closing in.

He saw Cristena at the end of the row. Her leg seemed to be injured, and she hobbled along. She didn’t see him, just as she didn’t see the Sorn that rushed at her from behind. Its great blade was held high to deliver a killing blow.

“Cristena!” Cross shouted.

She looked up, surprised. Cross dove forward and sent his spirit ahead of him as a missile of pure force. He landed hard on the ground. The arcane bolt took both of the Sorn’s legs off at the knees in a splatter of purple blood, and the giant fell, soundlessly.

The Egg kept firing. Massive rounds soared over Cross and found Cristena. Blood exploded out of her back. She fell in a crumpled heap.

Cross turned, screaming. He held his fists in the air, and with a breath his spirit exploded away from his hands in a white maelstrom. The blast scorched his eyes and boiled his blood. Cross felt himself smolder. His soul burned and smoked.

A phalanx of hot razors converged on the damaged Egg, and they struck through the rent in the weakened hull. White fire flashed in a destructive corona. Cross was thrown backwards as shards of flaming metal flew from the explosion. The wind smelled of molten steel. The shriek of blasted metal deafened him.

Cross lay on his back for a long time, barely conscious. There was no more gun fire, no more sounds of fighting at all. He looked up into the blackened sky, which seemed impossibly vast and deep. He could have fallen up into it.

Cross rose, slowly. His body was wracked with pain. He’d been burned and badly bruised, but he was alive. He felt his spirit, soft and weak, clinging to him, but she was there. They were both there.

Easy, he thought. Easy.

Cristena.

He looked to where she fell, and slowly moved towards her. She’d warned them of the futility of their revenge.

After wanting so much not to come with them, not wanting to be involved…not wanting, even, to die a meaningful death, but instead to waste herself in the pits as just another anonymous gladiator in the lurid history of Dirge’s criminal sports…

She didn’t have to die. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be here, I know it.

None of that mattered now.

Cross’ legs burned with every step. He only made it a few feet when an injured Sorn appeared from around the bend. One hand clung to a gaping wound in its chest, while the other gripped a wide-bored pistol with rotating barrels the size of pipes. The Sorn blinked its one eye, and its expressionless face regarded Cross for a moment before it took aim. Cross braced himself, knowing he was about to die.

I’m sorry.

“Hey! Tough guy!”

The giant turned to face the voice. Graves came out of the shadows. The M203 belched out a grenade with a hollow thud. The shot took the Sorn in the chest and tore straight through its armor with a noisy explosion.

The Sorn fell backwards and fired its weapon as it died. The shot slammed into Graves and snapped his body backwards.

Cross screamed so loud his throat nearly tore.

He left the Sorn and Cristena behind him and ran as fast as his failing legs would carry him. He nearly passed out.

“SAAAAAM!!!”

The enormous bullet had blasted off most of Graves’ face. Bits of his jawbone and ruined tongue were just visible in the bloody mess. Cross put a hand on his friend’s arm and doubled over, sick.

He didn’t move for a long time. If there were more Sorn there in Rhaine, he hoped they’d just find him and finish him off.

 

Later, sometime near dawn, Cross left Graves and Cristena and went and found Stone. As he’d guessed, Stone was also dead, having been cut down by Sorn gunfire. He hadn’t left without giving them the proverbial fight. No fewer than four dead Sorn were near Stone’s body, each of them torn to ribbons by mini-gun fire, small explosions or sliced open by Stone’s black-bladed kukri. It was remarkable he’d lived long enough to do such damage. Cross could only barely recognize the body.

Cross stood at the edge of the Rift and stared out across the long and rickety bridge. Thick grey fumes floated in the depths of the canyon, a rich and poison fog. Strange shadows hovered there like drowning birds. Dismal calls echoed from the depths. The walls of the Rift were jagged and impossibly tall.

Across the canyon waited a dismal wasteland of cold steam and black hills. That bridge might as well have led through to another world. No reliable data of what lay on the other side of the Carrion Rift had ever been gathered.

Some movement from behind him caught Cross’ eye. A pale spider crawled across the ground, separated, it seemed, from the destruction all around it. It scuttled off into the shadows.

The camel found him later. It had wandered through the city, carefully avoiding the flames. Now it stood nearby, waiting. It knew they weren’t done.

But I am, Cross thought. I’m done.

No, she says, a voice from the edge of the glade. Will you let it end like this? Will they die in vain?

We all do, he replies. Each and every one of us.

And yet…

And yet there he was.

He would not leave this unfinished. He felt hollow inside, broken, and exhausted beyond measure, but he was alive, and their mission was now his burden alone to carry.

He decided, right then and there, that he would carry it.