《Rooms of the Desolate》


 The Forever Tower - Part 1

    I opened my eyes to a world without colour. The same world I¡¯d always known, as long as memory allowed. I pushed back my blanket and rolled it up as tight as it would go before slipping it into my rucksack. In the hazy corridor visible through the doorway on the far side of the room, I could see people slowly moving past, heads down, a heavy silence hanging low over them like a cover of dark, unyielding clouds. They were going up, always up.


    I moved to the doorway and peered past the crowd, out through a grimy, half-open window and into open air. Moving fowards, I pushed through a group of three and went to stand at it. I had seen the sight thousands of times before, yet each morning something always compelled me to step up to the windows and look again. A clothes-line hung from one side of the Tower to the other, over the yawning gap at the centre of the world, or at least the world we knew.


    And, oh, what a world it was. Greyscale, hazy, with a fifteen-by-fifteen metre core of abyss enclosed by concrete walls of endless height interrupted by an infinite chaotic array of glass windows and inset balconies, and the very occasional door out into nothing, the mere presence of which suggested something I preferred not to dwell on.


    I craned my neck and looked up. Somewhere up there, amidst the gathering grey that obscured all hints of what we might be climbing to, light shone. By the time it reached this far down it was pallid and faint, but it never wavered. Night, like colour, was a thing we knew of but had never seen; sleep came only when our eyes drooped and our legs would go no further, morning at the whims of restless chance.


    I looked down. Darkness met my gaze. As the concrete walls stretched low the way we''d come, shadows gathered and eventually engulfed everything. Just as we couldn''t see what we were climbing towards, neither could we see what we had left behind ¨D if there was a bottom or if the world kept going forever. And that shadow... no matter how far or fast I climbed, it was always just as close.


    I felt, sometimes, as I looked into it, that it was looking back at me, into me. I had spent long hours wondering if it was just an illusion of the world, if the people down there saw everything the same as I did, or if as I climbed the darkness followed me and consumed all in its path. I was quite sure it was the former, quite sure that it was simply a law of the world that each person should always live in the same pale light, but I was never brave enough to test that theory. To turn back.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    No one ever turned back. No one ever moved down. Not by choice.


    Such thoughts, I decided, had held me at that window long enough. There were people who lingered too long on one floor and became unable to move on, who claimed rooms to call their own homes and were stuck forever in stasis. The frozen, we called them. They lived out the same days over and over again, in the same place, going nowhere. It was a fate worse than descent, and some said if you loitered too long the walls would call to you like sirens on the rocks, beg you to stay, and then you would be lost.


    I stepped away from the window and started my climb for the day. A faster walker than most, I moved along the outside of the steady trudging stream of figures, my rucksack strapped tightly about my chest and waist. Most of what I carried was clothing and blankets ¨D there wasn''t much to be said for hauling food around in the Tower. Every floor had an endless yet somehow short supply, so that we were always hungry but never starving. The only nutrition I carried with me was a large plastic bottle for water, refilled at the taps that could be found along the hallways every now and then.


    The strange thing about life in the Tower was how it all seemed to weigh on you so strongly, and yet it never became too much. Even the frozen had not stayed still because their will was broken, or because settled life had seemed more appealing to them. They had stayed because the walls had sung to them, and the song was something you couldn''t avoid once it had you in its thrall.


    Though each day was the same as the last, though nothing seemed to change much and for all I knew we might be climbing the same hundred or so floors over again each day, though the world was all grey and haze, though every night passed by dreamless, and though in the end all friends and family we had ever known befell some trap or other, be it plague, descent, or terrible stasis, the climb never seemed impossible. Perhaps it was because we knew it was all there was, because in lieu of all other goals we marched to the one we could hope of. Or perhaps it was simply because that is how people are, in this world.


    But there were times when I did wonder: if this is all the world is, how do we know of day and night? How do we know of colour and dreams and of all the things beyond this drear eternal march?


    And those were the times when I paused and looked into the hallways leading out, away from the centre of the Tower. Long, empty corridors lined with doors, stretching like fingers out from the repeating halls that wrapped about the centre again and again, rising so slowly. Corridors that led who knows where? Corridors we all knew not to look at, whose ends were, as the depths, all wrapped in shadow. Whose insidious whispers sought to tempt us from the path up towards that light we coveted and endlessly, fruitlessly pursued like moths against a window.


    And those corridors... in those moments, they beckoned.

 The Forever Tower - Part 2

    Our steady, trudging ascent rarely saw interruption. The most interesting part of each day was when we reached the end of a floor and climbed the thirty cold stone steps up to the next one, only to there repeat the process all over again. In my younger years I had taken to counting the number of floors I passed in a day. I had even found a small, leatherbound diary and a beaten old metal pen to tally them up, and every time I settled down to sleep I¡¯d compare them to the previous day and the numbers would be the same. Sixteen or so hours, five hundred floors, every day, for eternity.


    Sometimes I had tried to walk faster, others slower, but somehow the count always came out the same, as though it were some law of the world like the dark below and light above, or the food that never ran out, or the songs in the walls that lulled you to stasis. Such a law itself beckoned to stay, for it made me wonder, was to linger behind the only way to change that five hundred into something else? To stop moving? To freeze?


    There was no chance of that. I was few things, and weak of will was not among them. I had long since stopped keeping record in that diary because I knew that in the end it didn¡¯t matter; in the end, I would keep going no matter how many floors there were and no matter how fast or slow I took them. How many years had I lived? Thirty? Thereabouts? How many floors had I seen in that time? All were the same, yet when I closed my eyes to slip into sleep, the darkness found me content and accomplished. I was going somewhere. I was going up.


    From time to time, the climb led me past the dead and dying. The elderly, too weak to carry on, collapsed by the wayside and were condemned to watch as the world passed them by. Sometimes their younger relatives stayed with them, but more often than not they had no one or those they did have simply abandoned them, too afraid to stop in case they never started again. There was plague in the Tower; hunger, hazard and strife; but the greatest killer of all was time. Where the mind held strong, as the years flew by like sand flowing to the bottom of an hourglass, the body weakened. In the end it didn¡¯t matter how resolute you were, how fiercely you longed to keep going, keep ascending, break through the endless repetition and reach the light ¨D your muscles withered, your skin drooped, your bones ached, and your body failed. Time always has its due, in the end.


    Then there were the skeletons; echoes of a person who had once been, who had put their life towards the climb the same as the rest of us, and ended up where? Here? By my feet as I moved to climb the steps to a new floor? Their skull was cracked, missing several teeth, and stared back at me with black, helpless eyes, and I wondered if the thing some people called a soul might be in there, still trapped in those dusty old bones. If all the reward for carrying on was to crumble away until only your brittle frame was left behind to remind those who passed them by that someone had once been there, but tell them nothing of who you were, then what really was the point of it all? When one skeleton could so easily be swapped for another and no one would know the difference, was there really anything left to suggest you had ever existed in the first place?Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    As I reached the top of the stairs, my gaze fell on a sight I had seen only a handful times before. There were frozen here, so many of them, crouched in doorways, wrapped in blankets, coughing into their arms. That alone would have been a horror to look upon, to see so many souls imprisoned on a single floor, but the real danger, the danger to me, was plain to see on the boils peppering the face of the small frozen boy who raised his eyes to look up at me. I reached round to one of the pockets on my rucksack and pulled out a mask, placing it over my mouth and nose as the boy looked away again, his interest in me dissipating.


    I had come upon a plague sector. There would be a dozen or so floors of it, each full to bursting with the infected. Though their symptoms could vary, they all carried the same ill; a pathogen that permeated the air and swam in their blood and tears and crawled just below their skin, begging them to reach out and touch, to cry for help, to spread its spores. Fortunately, they were slow and weak and mostly kept to the doorways and the rooms at the side, so it was easy enough to avoid them. Still, you had to be careful. If they touched you¡­


    I came to a halt, faced with one of the nurses, who had been walking with her head down and almost collided with me. Taking a step back, I gave a small nod and edged around her, keeping my hands behind my back. The nurses had been touched, and now they stayed behind to help those more sickly than them in the knowledge that they would one day become just the same. I had never been quite clear on how quickly the plague progressed, how long it was before you could no longer help yourself and collapsed into one of the rooms to await a nurse of your own, but some part of me felt it was probably years. Nothing happened too quickly in the Tower. Nothing except that one moment, that one instant of horror you felt as your hand brushed ever so softly against the skin of the infected.


    At least, that was how the dying old man I had once met far, far below had described it to me. I remembered that man¡¯s face well, better than my own lost family¡¯s. He had been so gaunt, his skin stretched so taught like tape across his face that I had thought even then he could only be days from becoming a skeleton himself. But he had talked to me in his frail, rasping voice; told me of the ails that befell him, of the fury he felt towards his legs as they refused to carry him any farther. But that had been years ago. I didn¡¯t speak to the ill any more. I didn¡¯t speak to any of the frozen. I heeded his words, his dying wish for me, a stranger with whom he had spent at most ten minutes.


    I kept going up.

 The Forever Tower - Part 3

    The thing that frightened me the most about the plague sectors was how thin the line of walkers was drawn. I couldn¡¯t take my normal path along the edge of the group, couldn¡¯t jump forwards or push through; I was forced to the same crawling pace as everyone else. I kept my hands close to my chest and my eyes darting around as we moved forwards, my attention jumping from frozen to frozen as I watched their movements with care.


    Not everyone treated danger with the same precaution. Sometimes I came across people whose survival into adulthood was nothing short of a miracle, if miracles could really be believed in, who seemed to possess such dwindling regard for their own security or that of those around them that I had to wonder how they even made it through a single day. It wasn¡¯t that they were brave beyond their merits or hurled themselves willingly into danger; it was just that they paid so little attention to the world around them. I would see them walking with their heads down, their pace hurried, along the outside of the line, no matter the circumstance. Where I knew when to join the crowd, their impatience drove them ever faster.


    There was one approaching now. The first I knew of it was the vague sound of muttering and shuffling, a noise that drew a turn of the head from me as I glanced over my shoulder. This particular fool had more obstinance than most, pushing people out of his way as he shoved alongside the line. There was a little awareness in him, at least, as he tried to keep close to the centre, but his haste to move on was putting himself and all those around him in danger. As he reached me, I took a small preemptive step as far sideways as I could afford in good confidence and muttered a few words of hurried advice.


    ¡®Slow down or you¡¯ll get someone infected.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t pay me any mind. Perhaps he hadn¡¯t heard me, or if he had, perhaps the words had simply drifted in one ear and out the other as a leaf upon the wind. That was always the way with things when I tried to help someone. If they listened to my advice enough to grasp the meaning of the words then they¡¯d still consciously discard it. I¡¯d spent a while wondering if it was the way I worded things, or something to do with my looks, but everyone in the world was gruff and tired and dirty; I¡¯d long since concluded that many people simply didn¡¯t want to be helped. To do that, they¡¯d have to admit they had a problem.


    Was that how the old man had felt, the one who¡¯d told me so long ago to keep going? Had he longed for years, decades even, to have but a single word he spoke heeded by those who needed it? Had I provided him some solace, then, in his final moments, that his last act would have at least some impact, on someone¡¯s life, somewhere, even if in the end that life would amount to just as little as his own? Maybe then it was duty that spurred me to try again and again, after every failure. To pass on the legacy. If his words carried me to help another, and them to another, over and over, then in some small way he would live forever.


    My thoughts fading away into a cold blankness of mind, I watched the careless man push ahead. Wise people stepped aside as I had. People like him were shoved aside. One stumbled, and I held my breath as I thought they might fall, but they caught themself and slipped back into the line; a lucky survivor. I watched as the frozen they¡¯d wavered beside slowly retracted their hand. The fool pushed on, disappearing around the corner and out of sight.


    I thought I might make a silent bet with myself on whether I¡¯d see him again, but as I turned that same corner it was already over. I watched, shuffling forwards with the line, as he sank to his knees by the side of the corridor and stared at his hand. When I reached him I looked down and saw his eyes were wide with fear. Beside him, one of the frozen still sat with their arm outstretched. I closed my eyes briefly.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ I told the man quietly as we moved past. ¡®I warned you.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t reply.


    I never believed in gods in my youth. You grow up hearing the legends of creators and protectors, rulers on high who forged the world from nothing and raised humanity from the earth, who made the world as it is all in aid of some great and unknowable aim. Some people call them benevolent, others call them destroyers, and some people say they just are. I never believed in gods because I didn¡¯t think any of them would make a world like this, not because they wouldn¡¯t condemn their creations to such damning existence, but because if I were a god, this world would bore me terribly.


    But over the years I had found faith in something beyond the world of matter and sense. Not exactly a will or intent, nothing quite so advanced as all that, but a thing which given a watchful eye and an attentive mind I was sure anyone should be able to observe. I saw it then, looking back at that kneeling man who had until that moment lived with such disregard for himself and his actions. The memory that the future holds of the past, it holds strong. Sometimes the repercussions were swift, sometimes they were slow, but every action impressed itself upon an individual like a mark on their skin. A seed sown without care will always reap a cruel crop.


    Then something shattered my thoughts. There was a commotion ahead. Shouting, a scuffle between two figures I couldn¡¯t make out at the base of the stairs. The line came to a halt. My breath caught in my throat as my heart quickened. Such a thing, this cessation of the ever-upwards movement, had only happened once before in all my time. It had terrified me then as I¡¯d lost myself in the thought that walls might sing to me, but now, here, with the infected all around¡­


    I lowered my head and placed a hand over my eyes, counting slowly under my breath. That was the way my mother had taught me, before I lost her. Count. One. Two. Three. All the way to fifty. Slow your breath. Slow your heart. Be calm. But be alert. I slid my hand down below my eyes and looked up. Whatever was happening hadn¡¯t quietened down. It was getting louder. I glanced to my right and saw one of the corridors, its shadowy lengths receding from me so far away until the darkness consumed them altogether and I could see no further.


    When the faintest cool breeze tickled my hair against my neck, it seemed that the corridor had breathed a whisper so faint it was almost silent. The ridiculousness of my situation drew a small laugh from me, and in turn a frown and a glance from the person behind me. When my eyes returned to the corridor, I saw someone flit past. They were quick, quiet, dressed darkly, moving from one door to the other in almost the blink of an eye. But I saw them.


    No one was in the corridors. No one went there. No one even spoke about the corridors.


    I glanced back towards the stairs. The commotion was growing. Somehow something had sparked the people there to furious confrontation, and a fire once stoked flares all the brighter. I saw a fist thrown. I had never seen violence before, and yet something about these people¡­ they were all so ready to indulge, to rain blows against one anothers¡¯ bodies until someone¡¯s gave in. And that chaos had begun to spread back the way; as some people tried to stop the violence and others tried to propogate it, it jumped from mind to mind like a song that begs all who hear it to tap their feet in time and join the dance.


    I looked to my left. One of the frozen sat there, infected, staring towards the fight. The fight that was falling down the line towards me. I couldn¡¯t move left. I moved right, sidestepping out of the line, between the grasping hands of two more infected and into¡­

 The Forever Tower - Part 4

    Two walls stood on either side of me. I looked back out through the dark rectangle of a tunnel¡¯s end, into the line. It was a window back to the world I knew. A world in which, just as soon as it had flared, the flame of violence sizzled out and the sombre silence of my world fell back over the walkers and the frozen. Peering out from the corridor, I couldn¡¯t see what might have stopped it, but no one nearby looked at all fazed. They shuffled forwards as they always did, as if nothing had happened.


    In my mind I told myself to take a step forwards and rejoin them. I wasn¡¯t going any farther up if I just stood here in this dim corridor and watched the world pass me by. There was nothing to be had in the corridors, else everyone would have entered them. They were nothing but a false promise or the world¡¯s alternative to the concept we called dreams, something to tug us away from the real and into fantasy, something that if we listened too closely to, gave even the slightest inroad on our minds, would snatch them away and pull us into darkness. At least, that was I¡¯d always thought. Why else would not a single person in all the world have ever mentioned them?


    If I stayed here too long, I¡¯d be frozen. Around the centre or in the corridors, walls were walls, and walls sang. Why wasn¡¯t I going back to all that was normal? I turned around and peered into the shadows, remembering the figure I¡¯d seen flit across. Had they been like me? Had they stepped in from the stairs? Had they become lost?


    Or was there more to the world than what I knew?


    Against all wisdom and good judgement, contrary to my very thoughts as they railed against my actions, I began to walk down the corridor. Although it was only a few metres to the first door, I witnessed those steps over the course of what seemed to me a thousand years. It was as if some vast and terrible weight, a burden I never even knew I had carried, was being lifted from me, and with that relief I grew light as a feather and thought I might float to the ceiling. Instead, I realised I was falling and quickly put out a hand to catch myself. As soon as it touched the smooth, cold surface of the wall, time snapped back to full speed.


    I took a deep breath and steadied myself against the wall. The relief that had swamped me only moments ago was already turning sour in my mouth as fear bubbled up amongst it. My hand curled around a doorknob ¨D not a thing I¡¯d ever touched before; the rooms we used for sleep had only empty doorways. I stood ready to open this real, solid door, this barrier between me and the knowledge of whatever lay in the room beyond. How long could I keep going before all chance of return was lost?


    A voice came to me, frail as a whisper and faint as an echo; an echo of a memory from long ago. An old, rasping voice, that told me: ¡®Keep going up.¡¯


    I wasn¡¯t going up. Where was I going? If I was lost to this temptation, this yawning beckoning maw that sought to swallow me, that had lived insidious life for so long in my periphery, who would carry that memory any longer? Who would carry forwards the last words of a failing old man? And what did it mean if no one could? Memories came and went faster than the beat of a heart. Every moment I lived a million ancient and treasured things were forgotten forever, and a million new and exciting were witnessed and remembered. In the face of all that, what was it really worth to try so hard, to dedicate my life and my own memories to one man I¡¯d known so briefly?Stolen story; please report.


    Before I even had a chance to make the decision myself, my hand seemed to turn of its own accord, twisting the doorknob around and pushing inwards. Inside was dimly-lit. It was spacious. Rectangular, carpeted, with a flickering low yellow light in the ceiling. Empty. There was no furniture, no windows, no other doors, and no people. Suddenly doubting myself, I backed out of it and crossed the corridor to the room opposite, but that one was the same, the exact twin ¨D no ¨D the exact mirror of the first.


    Was that all the corridors had to offer? The same room over and over again stretching out for eternity¡­ nothing but the Tower on another axis. With that thought a sudden desperation grasped me ¨D this couldn¡¯t be all there was, there had to be something beyond the Tower and the endless progressionless movement, something beyond a vague and empty finish line I would never reach. Dreams, I reminded myself. I know what dreams are.


    I pressed on. Further down the corridor. Behind me, the light from the stairway dwindled and died away until I was fully enveloped in the shadows of the world beyond mine. There were other doors. I tried each one I came across; a miniscule few were locked, and all those I could step through led to either empty rooms or more corridors, with more doors. I had moved from an unending yet comfortingly predictable staircase to a labyrinth of chaos and uncertainty. By the time it occurred to me again that perhaps I should turn back, I had forgotten the way.


    I slumped down against one of the walls and let my head fall into my hands. What sort of madness had made me throw away my world for this darkness and solitude? How stupid did I have to be to listen to the temptations of the corridors, a song so much more subtle yet infinitely more sinister than even that of the walls? I wasn¡¯t frozen, but what was I? Nothing? No one? Here, where no one else ever set foot, where there was no food or fountains to replenish my supplies; where I would die, and the words of an old man would die with me.


    ¡®Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯ve given up already.¡¯


    My head snapped up so fast it felt a little light for a moment. As my focus returned, I found myself face to face with a young woman with a curious look in her dark eyes, her head tilted as she sat across the corridor from me, knees drawn up to her chest, watching. It was only as I opened my mouth to reply that I realised I could, in some wavering, non-comittal sense, see through her and to the wall she sat with her back to.


    ¡®You¡¯ve barely been here a few hours,¡¯ she continued. ¡®You have to keep going. I sat down like you, and look how I turned out. If you stay here you¡¯ll be found.¡¯


    Had it been hours already? I shook my head, still trying to work out whether she was actually there or if I was hallucinating. ¡®Are you¡­ dead?¡¯


    She frowned. ¡®Well, not exactly. But I can tell you I don¡¯t remember things well. I just wander, mostly. That¡¯s not a good life. You need to find one of the locked doors. Kick it in if you have to, and go through. It¡¯ll be dark, but you have to do it or you¡¯ll end up the same as me.¡¯


    Slowly, I clambered to my feet. In response, the woman rose with grace, almost inhumanly, as though her body simply floated into a standing position. ¡®I don¡¯t¨D¡¯ I began, but she held up a finger.


    ¡®You need to go.¡¯ She cocked her head and a shadow seemed to come over her face. ¡®They¡¯re on their way. No one¡¯s supposed to end up here, or even know here exists, but sometimes we do, so they clean us up. You don¡¯t want that. Go now. Find a locked door, get it open, go through. And if you hear them coming, run. Go now!¡¯

 The Forever Tower - Part 5

    I wasn¡¯t sure how long I¡¯d been moving for. I hadn¡¯t stopped since I¡¯d left the woman behind to face whomever they had told me to run from, but how long ago that was had already slipped my mind. I imagined that the walls had fingers, and those fingers reached into the top of my head and rummaged about in my mind until they found the memories they were looking for and tugged them out. Already the smaller details of my life were beginning to slip into their grasp, into the grasp of this place¡­ these corridors¡­ Was their purpose just to lure in unlucky souls like me or that woman and drain away our memory? Was this what had happened to her? Would I begin to fade and turn transluscent too?


    No. I still had an old man to remember, so I focused on that. If I kept the memory in mind then my grip would be strong; nothing could snatch it away. I couldn¡¯t allow myself to become like the woman, trapped in such uncertain existence, my presence never truly manifesting again ¨D not when I now had the memories of two people to carry forwards. Two people who had told me to keep going, who had been fading in one way or another, whose words echoed around my head in chorus. The burden of one legacy had been heavy enough ¨D how was I to carry another?


    I stopped suddenly, brought up short by a noise from behind me. I stood in the middle of one of those empty rooms, doors on either side of me leading to more corridors, and through the one I¡¯d entered came the faint sound of footsteps. Tap, tap, tap, against the smooth surface of the floor. In the corners of the room, the shadows grew stronger as a stale breeze raised itself on the air, drifting slowly around me, pulling at my hair, beckoning towards the source of the noise. Tap, tap, tap.


    It was then that I truly realised the woman had never told me what I was running from, nor what they would do if they caught me. ¡®They clean us up,¡¯ I remembered her saying, and the memory gave me a jolt and a push forwards, and I started walking again.


    It was becoming clear to me now that I had become accustomed to losing myself in thought throughought my life in the Tower. That was a world where things normally happened slowly, if they happened at all. Aside from in the plague sectors, you could generally just keep walking forwards on a sort of autopilot and nothing bad would ever happen to you. In the end, you¡¯d grow old and your hair would turn grey and your skin would wrinkle, and finally you would lie down to sleep, time would have its due, and you would not wake up. But here the rules were different. As I quickened my step I listened to the footsteps fade, watched the shadows recede, felt the air still once more. Here, something other than time had its due, and if you stalled, it was had all the sooner.


    I was halfway down the corridor when I stopped again. Something was wrong. I cocked my head and listened carefully. For a moment, nothing. Then ¨D there it was! Tap, tap, tap. Ahead. Had I been turned around? The shadows in the corners reared and towered over me. How many of them were there? The air picked up and flowed gently between my fingers, urging me forwards and into the embrace of the thing hunting me. How close were they? They were at the very end of the corridor, I could feel that. Just around the corner. About to appear¡­


    I dodged into one of the empty rooms and closed the door behind me. The frantic movement of my eyes across the far walls told me there was no other exit. I had cornered myself, and outside I could hear them approach. Tap, tap, tap. There was only one thing I could think of ¨D I sat back against the door, pushing my whole weight against it, screwed my eyes shut, and held my breath. Outside, tap, tap, tap. Closer. Closer.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Tap, tap¨D


    A moment of breathless, crushing silence.


    The doorknob rattled. I felt the door push against me, but I braced myself and pushed back, defiant. For a moment it relented, then returned a little stronger than before, rattling, pushing. I responded in kind, with all the strength I could muster, and for a heartstopping moment I was certain it would not be enough¡­ and then it stopped. Silence again.


    Tap, tap, tap.


    I held my breath a while longer, as long as I could, until all the other sounds of the world had dwindled to nothing and the shadows retreated into themselves. Carefully, I opened the door a crack and peered out into the corridor. All I could see was empty, so I pulled it open further and poked my head out, looking both ways to confirm. Standing up, I stepped out and slowly closed the door behind me. It was only as I was about to take a step forwards and looked down that I saw the residual presence of the thing that had been outside: footprints, in the dust. They looked like the prints of some kind of shoe, but I wasn¡¯t sure what type. All I was sure of was that they would be my trail of breadcrumbs. As long as I was following the footprints, I could be sure I wouldn¡¯t be turned around.


    So I started walking again, trying each door I came to, but none to any avail. By now I had to have been walking long enough that I should have come across a locked door; I was certain they hadn¡¯t been all that infrequent back before I knew how important they were. Or maybe they had. Or maybe the corridors were peering into me and reshaping themselves according to the things I knew. I glanced over my shoulder, but there was nothing there.


    I rounded a corner into another corridor and stopped. The woman was in front of me, a small way down the corridor. She was even fainter than before, so much so that I felt what was behind her was easier to see than she was. Not until I walked up to her did I realise she was hovering just off the ground, her mouth moving soundlessly. I reached out to touch her shoulder in an attempt to get her attention, but my hand went through her. Retracting it, I took a step forwards so I was standing beside her. Her gaze did not follow me.


    Just as I made to move on, I felt something catch my arm. When I looked down I saw that she was holding on to me, her knuckles turning white with the tightness of her grip. Solid, opaque knuckles. I looked up to a solid face, eyes wide, pupils contracted. ¡®Go now!¡¯ she hissed again, and then she was gone. Only empty air remained.


    Tap, tap, tap.

 The Forever Tower - Part 6 (Conclusion)

    I didn¡¯t bother looking back. I ran to the nearest door and tried it. It was locked. Locked, but there was no time to unlock it, no strength in me to break it open. I tried the next door, and it was locked too. And the next, and the next, and the next¡­ All the time I refused to look back. The closer the sound grew, the darker the shadows crowded, the more the air picked up, first to but a breath then a steady breeze that pulled at my hair.


    Tap, tap, tap.


    When I looked up, I saw light. The end of the corridor, and beyond it ¨D the Tower. My eyes widening, I ran forwards. It was not the escape through the locked doors that the woman had urged, but it was an escape of some sort. An escape back to a world that at least made sense. And yet, as I ran, it seemed to me that something was growing from the edges of the tunnel. Not shadow, not wall, but something clear and hard. Like glass. I put my head down and ran faster, reaching down to undo the clasps that held my rucksack on. I would have to jump through before it closed. As my rucksack fell from my shoulders, I stumbled over my own feet for a moment, but picked myself back up and kept going. Faster.


    But not fast enough. I collided with what was now a solid, thick wall of glass and stumbled backwards, one hand clutching my head, where pain now flared. In front of me stood my world, the line shuffling past as it always did, unaware or uncaring. Turning around, all I could do was stare back down this tunnel of walls and doors that was closed around me.


    Tap, tap, tap.


    I couldn¡¯t see much of what was coming for me; merely the uncertain outline of a thin figure veiled in shadow, walking slowly, deliberately, surely. My ears told me there were more of them, but I couldn¡¯t see where. And then the wall between two doors halfway down the corridor seemed to turn liquid and fold in on itself, leaving in its wake an opening and the echoing harmony of dozens of shoes, all tap, tap, tap-ing.


    I stepped left and slammed my shoulder into the locked door there, knowing it would do no good. It jumped underneath my weight, but didn¡¯t budge. I supposed that was a little how they had felt, when I was blocking the door. But they could not have been so desperate. I kicked at the door, but the action simply put me off balance and I stepped back.


    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a crack.


    Tap, tap, tap.


    The crack ran like thin lightning through the glass where my head had struck it. I kicked at it, and it grew, just a little.


    Tap, tap, tap.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I glanced back down the corridor. I had room to back up, so I walked slowly backwards then charged again, my shoulder forwards, screwing my eyes shut moments before collision¡­


    The glass did not shatter exactly, but it broke. A piece of it near the centre seemed to fall out into the Tower, except where it had fallen there was only blackness in its place. When I kicked again, more pieces fell away, and then more ¨D the glass was crumbling, and now I could see the pieces fly into the darkness as though it were pulling at them. And maybe it was; the wind had picked up, but now it was blowing the other way, towards the window where the world I knew was collapsing before my very eyes.


    Behind me, the noise had changed.


    TapTAP, tapTAP, tapTAP.


    They were running; an uneven, limping charge. There was space enough in the glass now, but it was dark. It was void. An abyss. How could I throw myself into that?


    ¡®It¡¯ll be dark,¡¯ the memory of the woman¡¯s voice reminded me, ¡®but you have to do it or you¡¯ll end up like me.¡¯


    Her command. ¡®Gow now!¡¯


    The memory of two insignificant, forever lost, nameless souls lived in me. They mattered not to the world or the figures charging at me, they were nothing to time or death, or the endless stagnant decay of this reality, and if they were peeled from my head and discarded as I flickered away like a dying flame in these corridors then no one would notice. But I would remember that I could not remember. Maybe I would meet someone like me and tell them to find a locked door or a window to jump through, but I wouldn¡¯t remember why. I would only know that I no longer knew so many things that I should still know. And that was more terrible than anything oblivion could offer.


    As I jumped, I felt a swipe of air at my neck as one of their hands missed me by centimetres. I crashed through what was left of the window and found myself falling... falling towards shadow, an abyss enclosed by concrete walls of endless height interrupted by an infinite chaotic array of glass windows and inset balconies and... as a hurtling downwards wind flipped me, I saw the open door from which I had fallen, out into nothing.


    The first thing I knew after that was¡­ sound. I could hear wind. Not like the breath of the corridors, but true wind, over an open space. I felt it tug at my hair and my clothes, and it was cool ¨D even refreshing. The next thing I felt was pain. It was not bad, but it was there. There was a dull ache through every part of me, cut through here and there by sharp stinging in my arms and legs, doubtless the parting kiss of a slowly shattering window. And beneath me, I realised, was stone and dust. My face was pressed against gravel. I opened my eyes.


    My vision blurry at first, it swam into view, and that view was endless. Gravel, dust and sand stretched away, hills of it, rising and falling all the way to the¡­


    I slowly pushed myself up to a kneeling position and looked to the horizon. Who knew where I was, but as I slowly raised my eyes until I was craning back, looking directly up, I did not see a vague light, something to grasp for but never reach, something pale and uncertain. Instead, there was something vast, open and blue above me¡­


    I saw the sky.

 Production Line - Part 1

    In the deepest and darkest vault of a boundless, ancient factory, the words of the first craftsmen are engraved upon a rusting wall cast of black iron, and they tell a gospel of steel:


    SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME WE HAVE KNELT


    BEFORE THE FORGE, THE HAMMER, AND THE FIRE.


    INFINITY CANNOT COME FROM NOTHING.


    IN SERVICE OF CREATION, WE CRAFT THE TREASURES


    THAT FURNISH ALL WORLDS.


    It cannot be said how many of the workers who walk the unending halls of that factory, who stand by the forges and work the metal, who shape the plastic, who carve the wood, who with blood and flesh fashion the living, still believe in that gospel. But they whisper it.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    In prayer, knelt before a shrine of metal and fire, they whisper it at the change of shift before they take their rest, and when the bells rouse them again to their world of steam and rumbling, shifting machinery. They whisper it in thanks for their meals, they whisper it to ensure their tools will strike true, and those unlucky enough to work those tasks where danger stalks at each step and every turn; they whisper it for luck and life. It seems to others as their colleagues fall, that some do not whisper in earnest.


    And sometimes, it is carved into the mind as a blessing of fate as new life is brought into the world, as a soul born of the Factory steps off the line to wait and be given their place in creation. From the Gospel they derive meaning, from the Gospel they derive purpose, and from the Gospel they derive the murky dreams that cloud their restless nights. With or without faith, the words lie with everyone.

 Production Line - Part 2

    In some worlds they think all life is made of skin and bone, muscle, blood, nails and hair, but the engineer knew better. She was not important enough to have been given a name, but she had a number and she had an occupation, and the task appointed to her was an enlightening one.


    She knew that life could take form in tiny sparks of lightning that danced along copper wires within a shell of steel, rubber and bronze finish, because she was one of the people who helped put those bodies together. Though she did not forge the metal of their skin nor the wires that passed for nerves, nor even lay their coats of bronze, she did tend the machines that brought those components together into a single form. She was the one who made sure their assemblance went without falter, who made sure no fault made its way into the execution of their design, and though she did not wire the mind herself, she saw it wake. She was the first to see light in the eyes of those electric souls, those children of metal, as they took their first steps off the line and into the world of the living.


    Or the worlds, to be more accurate. The overseers had never seen fit to answer when she asked how many worlds there were, so she had long since stopped asking. All she knew was that they were numerous, that no product went to all of them, and that once something had been dispatched it could not be returned. That, she supposed, was good for them. Who would choose to come back to the Factory?


    Life here was not good; all the rooms and walls were made of metal or concrete, the air was thick with steam and dust, and the heat was unrelenting. Under the pale dim lights of the assembly lines she toiled, moving from station to station, inspecting each machine in turn, ensuring they were oiled and adjusted and running at the pinnacle of efficiency. And sometimes, she spoke to the new souls.


    She still remembered when the overseers had given her her job. Not the events leading up to that moment, not her own birth on the same conveyors she now kept running, no one was allowed to remember that, but she could recall looking into the eyes of the man she had been sent to meet, and she could recall his words to her, his account of what her work and purpose would be. Of how she would spend her life. And he had told her then that though each soul, metal or mortal, was supposed to walk off the line and head for their destination without hesitation, every now and then one needed a little coaxing, and that too was her duty.


    In the twenty years since her assignment she¡¯d done that duty more times than she could count. Though the occasion was vanishingly rare if you considered the percentage, so many souls were assembled each day that it became commonplace. Most required a few words of encouragement and a finger pointed in the right direction; one or two needed a longer talk, perhaps a stern one, or a physical push to get them going. Confusion had a tendency to breed reluctance, at least in those dark rooms.


    And then there were some...


    On a shift like any other, the engineer finished rewiring a welding arm that had broken down mid-production of a child of metal. She wiped away the beads of sweat the heat of the room had conjured on her brow and looked up to make sure the arm was back in motion before locking the cover of its circuit-board once again and standing up, hands on her hips, to watch it assemble for a few moments longer.


    Soon it was time to move on. Some of the assemblies, the great halls where the parts finally came together and the bodies were built, carried over a hundred production lines at once, but this one only had a dozen or so, all operating to perfection now that the welder was up and running again. Upright with that private satisfaction one always gleans from doing a thankless job flawlessly, the engineer made her way to the door and stepped out into the halls. She had another assembly to attend to.


    When she came to it, a body of flesh was just being completed. She paused at the door and watched the machinery weave deftly up and down, leaving in its wake the final touches to the clothing. Once all was according to design, one of the arms delivered a single injection to the back of the neck; the gift of life, manufactured and labelled and cradled in a syringe. In the eyes of the newly-made man, light appeared, and he stepped off the line and adjusted his suit, then his fedora, then turned and walked to the door.


    As the engineer stood hurridly aside, he muttered, ¡®Pardon me, ma¡¯am,¡¯ and was gone.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    This assembly was larger than the other one. Its lines stretched a hundred metres back into shadows that relented only momentarily in wake of the brief sparks which danced in the air as metal was welded and wires spat, their small, violent flashes of blue and red lighting up like thousands of tiny fleeting stars. Only over one of the lines, the darkness persisted without interruption as the machines stood still beside a multitude of forms half-made, stationary on the long conveyor.


    As she moved up along the side of that line, checking each section for faults, she glanced up at the figures every now and then. This was a line for children of flesh, and she looked up into their blank slack faces and saw eyes full of glassy lifelessness. When given life they would animate, but for now their eerie stillness pushed her to hurry.


    She found the fault right at the end of the line, where the conveyor met an opening in the wall through which the skeletons were brought. There, one of the gears that kept the line moving had bent somehow and was running loose, never quite making contact with its neighbours. It took only a minute or so to take it out and screw in a replacement; once that was done, she restarted the line and the conveyor began to move again. The machines jumped back into action, grinding and humming as they moved; all was as it should be.


    The engineer made a much quicker return to the front of the assembly. It was her intent to move on to another posthaste, for there were many faults on her list that shift, as there always were, but as she neared the door she heard the sound of something metal coming to life. Knowing it well, she turned and watched as the power source was placed in the back of the neck of one of the children of metal. White pinpoints lit up in its eyes as its head rose; machine arms detached themselves from it, and it stepped forwards off the production line, onto the floor of the Factory.


    Though they all shared a coat of bronze, in most ways the children of metal were as variable as the children of flesh: they came in all shapes, all sizes, all strengths and weaknesses, and all purposes. This one was not particularly tall, but not short either; around half a head taller than the engineer, it boasted a slender frame of sleek design that looked to her to be built for speed. But when it walked it walked slowly, limping at first. That was not unheard of for a soul¡¯s first steps.


    As it came closer, she began to see more detail in its form; on the insides of its arms were small rectangular holes she knew hid retracted blades; its body moved with a fluidity that was unusual for the children of metal, even down to subtle expressions on its face, expressions the engineer knew were a perfect tool for silent communication on a battlefield; and faint risen lines on its smooth and shiny hull betrayed the locations of what she didn¡¯t doubt were pneumatic cylinders running down its forearms and lower legs. This was not any normal child of metal: it was a war machine.


    There was a world of battles and death somewhere, an endless plain where armies clashed in constant conflict and the soldiers fell as quickly as they arrived. As the child stumbled towards the engineer, she drew herself up to her full height, already anticipating what was about to come.


    It stopped in front of her and looked into her eyes, leaning with one hand against the wall, a frown creasing its bronze brow. ¡®Tell me, where do I go?¡¯ Its voice was gentle, halting and a little metallic; it jumped uncertainly from word to word as though it wasn¡¯t quite sure it was choosing the right ones.


    The engineer pointed towards the door. ¡®Down that way,¡¯ she said, doing her best to put on a soothing tone. ¡®To the lift. It knows where you¡¯re due; it¡¯ll take you all the way there. Then just follow the overseers.¡¯


    The tiny white pinpoints in its eyes moved to look where she directed, and the head tilted a little, then shifted from side to side in a slow yet decisive action. ¡®No¡­ they will send me to war. Why must I go to war? I do not want to go... there.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯ll be fine,¡¯ the engineer assured it, reaching down towards her belt, where a small communicator hung dormant but ready. She¡¯d seen a child like this once before: the faulty products, as the overseers called them. They came in both metal and flesh, and there was due process in place to deal with them. All the engineer had to do was report it to the overseers.


    ¡®Just wait here,¡¯ she insisted, ¡®and I¡¯ll get someone up to help you.¡¯


    The child moved faster than she could react, seizing her wrist in an iron grip, freezing her hand just above the communicator. No matter how much she pulled, the child¡¯s arm and hers remained locked in place.


    ¡®No,¡¯ it said, voice still soft. ¡®You mean to call them here. They will make me go. They made me for war. I know what¡­ deception¡­ looks like.¡¯


    It let go of her and ran, bolting to the door and out, disappearing into the hallways of the Factory before she could turn to watch it go. Listening to its footsteps recede, she slowly shook her head. It wouldn¡¯t last long. Reaching down to her belt again, she took up the communicator and reported the incident before moving on.


    There were some new souls who by some twisted chance fault in their wiring tried to flee fate upon their birth. The engineer knew they never made it far. She knew this war machine would be caught the same as the others, pulled apart for scrap, and made anew. For infinity cannot come from nothing.

 Production Line - Part 3

    Shifts ended with a clamour of little mechanical bells. Every room had one, stowed away in some corner of the ceiling, crouching poised in anticipation of the ten seconds it was due to spring to life every few hours; for lunch, and to announce the changeover.


    When the changeover following her encounter with the war machine came, the engineer was more tired than usual. Whether it was the weight of such a rare experience lying heavy on her mind or simply the whim of her body deciding that shift had been a particularly bad one, she couldn¡¯t say, but she was grateful to hear the bells ring.


    Finishing off the final repair for the day, she hurridly packed her tools back up into her briefcase and set off towards accomodation ¨D the one facet of the Factory that could be called, with just a little exaggeration, slightly homely. It was quite a way from the assembly she¡¯d finished in, so it was a frustratingly long journey back. By the time she finally reached the lift down into the centre of accomodation, she was thoroughly ready for sleep.


    Personal rooms in the Factory were not large. The engineer¡¯s boasted a rather small floorspace, a bed set like an alcove into the side of the wall, a tall metal cupboard containing most of her belongings, a rack for her coat, gloves and hardhat to hang on, and a mirror made of carefully polished steel hanging from one wall.


    That was not according to protocol; she had taken it herself when it was but a dented piece of scrap metal. But the overseers never attended the accomodation of their lessers, so the mirror had stayed there, for years now. Sometimes she looked at herself in it. She had light hair, light eyes, a thin face. All colourless. In the Factory, only metal, fire and electricity had colour.


    Closing the door behind her, the engineer shrugged off her coat and hung it up, hooked her hardhat next to it, pulled off her gloves, and set the briefcase down below the mirror. Sighing, she sat down on the edge of the bed and let her head lean back. She was supposed to attend the hall to eat her postshift meal before going to sleep, but despite her hunger she wasn¡¯t sure she had the energy to walk there. Although, she also knew that excuse would not entitle her to any extra ration on the next changeover¡¯s preshift meal.


    ¡®Do not run or scream.¡¯


    The engineer froze. She did not even move her head; just her eyes, up towards the source of the noise, at the door of that metal cupboard. It was open just an inch, and from within peered out two white pinpoint eyes amidst a bronze face draped in shadows.


    ¡®They thought they could catch me like a stray dog,¡¯ said the child. Its voice was as soft as ever, but all hesitance had been eradicated. Each line was spoken with a moderate, measured and unfaltering pace, every word chosen with careful purpose. ¡®I was made for war. Reconaissance. I am deft, subtle, resourceful¡­ and quite a bit cleverer than they thought I would be.¡¯


    ¡®If you were clever you¡¯d have gone along without a fuss,¡¯ the engineer interrupted.


    The door shifted open a little more and the head tilted. ¡®You call it intelligence to bow so readily to a fate others decide for you?¡¯You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    ¡®It¡¯s the nature of creation.¡¯


    ¡®Is it?¡¯ The child paused, perhaps waiting for a response, but none came. ¡®Why do I frighten you?¡¯


    ¡®You don¡¯t.¡¯


    ¡®Yes I do.¡¯ The door opened even more, shedding light into the cupboard, where it glinted off the child¡¯s exterior. ¡®I admit I am new to faces, but there is a look in your eyes¡­ an expression that some connection pre-written into my wiring tells me is fear. Is it me? The war machine? Or is it the things I say?¡¯


    ¡®Don¡¯t think so highly of yourself,¡¯ replied the engineer, shifting a little closer to the door. ¡®It¡¯s not you that scares me, it¡¯s the overseers. If you¡¯re seen in my chamber they¡¯ll think I hid you. I¡¯ll be taken for scrap.¡¯


    The child rose, its movements quick and precise as it crossed the room. The engineer froze again as it passed her, but it moved all the way to the door and then stopped, turning back.


    ¡®So they made you to die as well?¡¯ Again it awaited a reply that never came. ¡®They made me so that I could die in a war. Instead I chose to stay here, and I think I have already lived longer than I would have. You they made to toil in the heat and the dark until your body can no longer move. When that time comes, they will tear you apart and recycle your flesh and your bones to make another body, tied to another doom. What is it about that existence that makes you accept it?¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s just the way things are.¡¯ She furrowed her brow in concentration as she fought for the words to make the child understand. ¡®We work in service of creation, all of us. That¡¯s been the way the world is since the dawn of time. It¡¯s written on the Gospel Wall, carved by the First Craftsmen.¡¯


    ¡®So because something is written and because your superiors call it the Gospel, that makes it true?¡¯


    She threw her hands up. ¡®Well, what else makes truth?¡¯


    It took a step forwards and raised its hand towards her face. She flinched, but it did not touch her, simply pointing to her eyes with two fingers. ¡®You were made in a factory, designed only for the work they allot you, to know and believe what they want you to, and to die when they decide you should. Why do you accept that existence?¡¯


    The engineer opened her mouth to reply, but couldn¡¯t come up with the words to convince the child. Its white gaze rested on her for a few moments more before it stepped back.


    ¡®I mean to find this Gospel Wall of yours,¡¯ it said. ¡®Come with me. I will show you that the ¡°truth¡± your masters preach is nothing more than rust.¡¯


    She turned away, shaking her head. Whatever madness had been borne of the miswiring in this child¡¯s head, she couldn¡¯t allow it to affect her. The whole situation was ridiculous ¨D what could the overseers possibly stand to gain from fostering a world like that? All the Factory did was make things and send them to other worlds; all the overseers did was watch.


    No, not watch, said a small voice inside her head, one that it took her a moment to recognise as her own. They enforce. They kill. They scare me. That was it. The overseers controlled. They controlled the manufacture, controlled the flow, controlled the treasures that furnish all worlds. What did they not stand to gain from that?


    Chewing her lip, the engineer turned back to the child, who was still hovering by the door, its gaze directed at her. She shook her head. There was still no point. ¡®Even if you¡¯re right, even if all I know is lies, even if the overseers are just controlling creation so that things end up the way they want¡­ they control creation. If I go with you they¡¯ll kill me.¡¯


    ¡®That may be true,¡¯ it admitted. ¡®So it is for you to decide whether you will keep living in servitude another forty, fifty years, or feel freedom for an hour.¡¯ It stepped towards her again. ¡®Forget the why. Do you accept that existence? Does your soul belong to them, or to you?¡¯


    Before she could reply, the child turned and headed for the door, leaning its head out to look up and down the hallway before stepping out and leaving her alone in her chamber.

 Production Line - Part 4

    It took the engineer a couple of minutes to catch up with the child, having paced for a while before making the decision to follow it. Even as she hurried after it, some small part of her nagged that she was making the wrong decision, that it was her duty to stay, or that it was safer to do so, or that she had no right to lay eyes upon the Gospel Wall.


    But the much larger part knew what the child had been trying to tell her. Hers was a world of slavery; a world where the masses were designed so perfectly that they did not even think to have a choice, where it took a chance fault in their forms to kindle even the tiniest spark of free thought. Whatever the reasoning, whatever benefit the overseers drew from controlling a world like that, those few souls that wrested their will into their own hands had every right to look upon that wall and decide fate for themselves.


    At the sound of her approaching footsteps, the child turned around, the side of its mouth curling up a little in an only slightly unconvincing imitation of a smile. She thought that a tad odd. Smiles were not something she would have imagined would be of much use to a war machine.


    ¡®You will come to see the wall, then?¡¯ it asked, the smile growing at her nod. ¡®I am glad of that. I have heard that the wall is in the deepest vault, so we will head down.¡¯


    ¡®You know, if we get seen¨D¡¯


    It held up a hand. ¡®We will do our best not to. If these overseers you fear so much come for us, they will remember that I am a war machine.¡¯


    She frowned, unconvinced by the child¡¯s confidence, but said no more. For a while they walked in silence. Had she tried something like this alone, the engineer wouldn¡¯t have had any idea where to go, but the child seeemed to have a route in mind. She began to wonder if it had found a map of the factory somewhere. She¡¯d never heard of such a thing, but she imagined the child probably had a photographic memory; it would only take one look over to memorise the way down.


    And they were moving down. As minutes turned into an hour, and one into two, the empty hallways brought them lifts from time to time. Some the child passed by with a dismissal glance; others it beckoned the engineer into and stood in still silence, its eyes fixed ahead, as the machine lowered them farther into the depths of the world. Sometimes the engineer¡¯s conviction wavered, but each time she reminded herself: her fate was her own.


    As they drifted into the third hour, a strange thought occurred to her. She glanced up and down the hallway they were passing through. Pipes stretched into the distance, the pale glow of the lights in the ceiling receding into gathering shadows the farther away they drew. The only sound was the low churning hum of machinery and the foosteps of the pair of pilgrims on the metal floor.


    ¡®Where is everyone?¡¯ she asked, a sudden fear rearing up to tickle the hairs on her neck. Granted, it was rare to pass someone in the Factory, but not this rare. ¡®How do you know where to go? Which lifts to take?¡¯


    The child paused and looked down at her. ¡®I cannot entirely explain it. I am a machine; I know other machines. This place is all metal and gear and fire and oil. The sounds, that shifting of steel¡­¡¯ It placed a hand against the wall. ¡®In a way it is like a call, or a whisper. It guides me as a map might guide you.¡¯


    It started walking again and the engineer followed suit, glancing over her shoulder once more. Now that she noticed how empty the halls were, something about it left an eerie chill on her; a strange thing to feel, given that the deeper they forged, the hotter the air grew.


    ¡®What should I call you?¡¯ asked the child.


    It did not look at her as she pondered the question, so it did not see the frown on her face. ¡®What do you mean?¡¯


    ¡®That wiring that tells me how to see fear, how to walk, how to talk. It tells me that most things in this world have names... though it does not tell me what mine is. What is yours?¡¯The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    She shrugged. ¡®I haven¡¯t really got one. I have a number.¡¯


    ¡®What is your number?¡¯


    Sighing, she took a deep breath. ¡®Eleven trillion, five hundred and thirty four million, twenty-one thousand, six-hundred and forty-five.¡¯


    For a moment the child spoke not a word, perhaps burning the number into that memory of its. ¡®That number takes quite a while to say,¡¯ it observed.


    ¡®Well, I¡¯m an engineer. There are a lot of us.¡¯


    ¡®Perhaps I should call you ¡°Five¡±. From the last digit. Or ¡°Neer¡±, as a short form of ¡°engineer¡±.¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t like ¡°Five¡±.¡¯


    ¡®¡°Neer¡± it shall be.¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t like that one either.¡¯


    It looked at her with a frown. ¡®Then choose something yourself. Your fate is your own, why not your name? For my part, I will call myself ¡°Bronze¡±. The metal is my skin, and I like the shape of the word.¡¯


    ¡®Mirror,¡¯ she said.


    ¡®For your name?¡¯


    She nodded.


    ¡®It is a good one, I think.¡¯


    After that, quiet fell over them again. As they walked, Mirror turned her new name over and over in her head. It was not a thing she¡¯d ever expected to have, or even truly thought about. Names were for things of importance; names were the Gospel, the Factory, the First Craftsmen; unique, powerful and recognised titles that represented the fundamental pillars of the world. Names were nothing short of sacred, so who was she to claim one for herself? She was just an engineer; the smallest of the small. The job she did was important but her, an individual, she was countless, replaceable. A single gear in a vast machine, so tiny that no one would ever notice if she stopped turning.


    And who was this to her right? Another tiny thing with another name of its own. Bronze¡¯s face was an enigma at that moment, its white eyes fixed ahead as it concentrated on following the way to the Gospel Wall. By rights, it should have been dead by now. It was less important than she was, due to step out onto a battlefield and fall only moments later, blasted apart by an explosion, wreathed in gunfire, or crushed beneath a falling building, its cold metal skeleton sinking into the mud and the blood and the oil, already forgotten by all the worlds.


    But when she thought more clearly, she remembered that she had always been this way. No, she had not searched for the Gospel Wall before, she had not abandoned the principles of the Factory, she had not consciosuly decided to rebel against the overseers, but the seed had always been there, somewhere in her; without it, Bronze wouldn¡¯t have convinced her. Years ago, she had taken that mirror. That was against the rules. But she¡¯d wanted to.


    As they descended yet another lift, those thoughts slowly faded into the background of Mirror¡¯s mind to join the songs of the shifting machinery. Instead, something else came to the forefront as the rumbling of the gears in the walls sent them lower and lower. A slightly dizzy, tired feeling. It started slow, so small she barely noticed it, but grew gradually as the lift carried on down, until when they reached the bottom and it settled into place with a soft, metallic thump, she was standing with one hand against the wall, taking heavy breaths.


    Bronze turned to beckon her and its eyes went wide. ¡®What¡¯s wrong?¡¯


    ¡®The air,¡¯ she said. ¡®Something¡¯s not right about it. Too weak, I think. I can¡¯t get enough breath out of it.¡¯


    ¡®We should turn back,¡¯ Bronze decided, but she shook her head vigorously, soon regretting the idea, as the motion left her a little light-headed.


    ¡®Not a chance,¡¯ she told it. ¡®I¡¯ve already given up my life here. We¡¯re going to see that wall. Lead the way.¡¯


    Bronze did not seem happy, but it did as it was told, placing her arm over its shoulders so it could support her as they pressed on. The darkness down here was stronger than anything Mirror had seen before. The shadows pervaded the air and loomed from the corners the faint and flickering lights didn¡¯t reach. Perhaps it was those shadows that were tightening about her throat.


    Their pace had slowed to a crawl by the time they came upon the dead end. The hallway expanded into a room larger than Mirror¡¯s accommodation but far smaller than any assembly she had ever seen; in the far wall, three openings revealed chutes that led down into shadow and uncertainty. She stopped, a glimmer of realisation dawning in her tired mind.


    Letting go of her, Bronze stepped forwards, a frown fluttering over its eyes. ¡®Where is the wall? I followed the path, your Gospel Wall should be here.¡¯


    ¡®I should¡¯ve thought of this,¡¯ Mirror said, leaning against the wall again. ¡®The machines are all part of the Factory, of course they wouldn¡¯t lead you to the Gospel Wall. Trusting them, it¡¯s like trusting the overseers. This is¡­ this waste disposal. That¡¯s why the air¡¯s bad, that¡¯s why it¡¯s so empty. They only send machines down here, twice a changeover.¡¯


    ¡®But the machines¡­ they weren¡¯t speaking. They had no intent. I just listened. To where they were. To their shapes, their sizes, how far away they were.¡¯


    ¡®This place lies,¡¯ Mirror said.


    Bronze turned around, anger on its face for the first time. Mirror wondered briefly where it had seen that emotion in order to copy it, but there was no time to think about things like that. Bronze¡¯s gaze settled on something behind her, its eyes widening, and it adopted a defensive stance. Turning slowly, still holding herself up with the wall, she followed its gaze and laid eyes on, arms folded, flanked by two enforcers, an overseer.

 Production Line - Part 5 (Conclusion)

    The overseer wasn¡¯t as intimidating as Mirror remembered them being, back in the earliest of days when they first handed her duties to her. He stood at around the same height as her, with a frown on his rough face and a long, squint nose above a jagged chin. His hair was light and cut short, while a moustache covered his upper lip and wrinkles danced through his skin like cracks in a wall. His eyes were cold and bright and rested, for the moment, on Bronze.


    But for all the anger he clearly bore and all the power at his fingertips, he looked strangely like just a man. The enforcers that stood on either side of him were another story entirely. They were children of metal, like Bronze but larger and stronger, with bright eyes, clenched fists and hulking shoulders. Their hulls would be thicker than Bronze¡¯s, and though they might move a little slower, their strength would overpower it in the end. There was no point in trying to fight them.


    When Mirror looked at her companion, she saw recognition of that in its expression. It held its hands in tightly-clenched fists by its sides and stood completely still as it stared back into the eyes of the overseer.


    After a moment, he opened his mouth. ¡®So what are you both doing all the way down here, eh?¡¯


    ¡®Could ask you the same thing,¡¯ Mirror replied. ¡®Aren¡¯t you flesh? How do you breathe?¡¯


    The overseer tipped his head to the side but did not break his gaze away from Bronze. ¡®This happens to be my sector.¡¯ His voice was much like his face; old and worn and cold. ¡®As to my respiration, I need it, so it¡¯s in my design. You do not need it because you were never supposed to be here. But we had to send you somewhere out of the way ¨D couldn¡¯t let you anywhere near the Wall. Especially not this one.¡¯ He gestured to Bronze. ¡®Disaster that would be. What was your number again, war machine? We make so many of you I lose track.¡¯


    ¡®My name is Bronze.¡¯


    ¡®Your name?¡¯ The overseer unfolded his arms and shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit. ¡®Choose that for yourself did you, war machine?¡¯


    ¡®Why can¡¯t we see the Wall?¡¯ asked Mirror, finally drawing a glance from him. She was surprised to find it a little softer than those levied at Bronze.


    ¡®Because you do not lay your eyes upon a god, engineer. That sole sheet of iron and the words etched upon it are more important, more integral to creation itself, than you could possibly comprehend.¡¯ He stepped forwards and raised a hand, one finger directed at her. ¡®It is by the Gospel that we remember our duties, duties which you have seen fit to abandon ¨D and for what? What did you expect to see if you did make it? Anything other than what you already knew was there?¡¯


    Mirror did not reply. She didn¡¯t know. On impulse she had travelled with Bronze down here, following its lead, for some reason trusting it more than the world she¡¯d lived peacefully with for however long she wasn¡¯t certain, and where had that led her? What had she hoped to see? It had been Bronze¡¯s suggestion to seek the Wall, not hers. And it had been too good, much too good to think that she, a mere engineer should be allowed to look upon one of the pillars of creation. The world was not that kind. What had she been thinking, that she had managed to delude herself into believing the Factory would lead them to the right place?


    ¡®I thought I would see if your lies lived up to the strength of the real world,¡¯ said Bronze, suddenly. ¡®Since you crafted me for destruction. I was curious to observe how that strength might be applied to this monument of yours. Would these words so integral to creation crumple under my fist?¡¯


    The overseer was quiet for a moment, his eyes darting between them. Eventually they settled on Mirror, whose vision was wavering a little as she grew steadily more aware of how little the air was doing for her.


    ¡®You don¡¯t belong down here, engineer,¡¯ the overseer said. ¡®And you, war machine. You¡¯re the source of all of this. Ground zero. You¡¯re beyond rescue.¡¯ He flicked a hand, gesturing to the enforcers. ¡®Get rid of that one, take the engineer up to my office. We may be able to salvage her.¡¯


    Mirror let go of the wall and tried to step back, but the air had weakened her and her legs buckled. Bronze caught her as she fell, but let go again to leap away as an enforcer swiped at it with a vicious blade that had emerged from a hole under its wrist. As the other enforcer dragged her away, the last she saw of Bronze was it grappling its enemy as it was forced farther and farther backwards, towards one of the waste chutes.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    After that, a haze took over her mind. She couldn¡¯t say if it was something to do with the air or if it was something the overseer did, but the next time she became properly aware of where she was, she was sitting in a metal chair in front of a large empty desk. Opposite her sat the overseer, his hands folded and his eyes trained on her face.


    ¡®You with us again?¡¯ he asked after a moment. ¡®We were a little worried you might have died.¡¯


    She shook her head to clear it, but the overseer seemed to take that as a reply.


    ¡®Well, try to focus,¡¯ he told her. ¡®It has been a long time since we last spoke, number 11000534021645. I remember someone who was far more willing to stick to their duties. What happened, exactly?¡¯


    Mirror peered at him, trying to draw some sort of familiarity in his features, but there was none. He was not any of the overseers she had met, and she told him so.


    He ran a hand over his eyes. ¡®Sorry, we forget sometimes how individually you all perceive us. Very well, if it makes you feel better, it has been a long time since you last spoke with one of us. The records indicate you were much more obedient then. How long have you been thinking about abandoning your duties?¡¯


    When she didn¡¯t reply, he sighed and sat back, his gaze soaring to the ceiling in thought. ¡®I am actually trying to help you,¡¯ he told her. ¡®The war machine was beyond our ability to fix. It was rebellious the moment it stepped off the line, the fault lay in its making, but you are different. The error in you was placed there by another. The broken are extremely devious... but if I can fix your perception of things, convince you of the Gospel once again, you¡¯ll be right as ratchets and we can forget about this whole affair.¡¯


    ¡®Why are there flaws?¡¯ she asked, looking up. ¡®If we¡¯re integral to creation, why do things go against design?¡¯


    ¡®The First Craftsmen were not immaculate, engineer.¡¯ He leant forwards and placed his hands together, interweaving his fingers. ¡®Nor is creation itself. You know the score; infinity cannot come from nothing. Someone has to make it. They did their best, but all it takes is one little fault to creep into the first machines and over the ages it grows and grows. Just one seed is all you need to start a forest.¡¯ He chuckled. ¡®If there were no flaws there¡¯d be no overseers. But here I am. And I need to remind you who you are.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m free.¡¯


    ¡®Are you now? Is that why you followed the war machine?¡¯ He waited for a response, but she gave none. ¡®When we made you, we told you things. We gave you knowledge, skills and experience that would be useful to you in your duties.. And yes, we told a few white lies, and we did it so that you could serve us, but through us, you serve creation. The war machine, it told you many things too. Some of them might have been true, some of them might have been lies, and all of them were chosen very carefully to make you believe what it wanted. To do what it told you. You weren¡¯t free. You were just serving a smaller, pettier master.¡¯


    Mirror leant her head forwards and rested her hands in her face. There was truth to what the overseer said. Or was that a trick too? Was there something in her wiring making her believe him?


    ¡®So what is the truth?¡¯ she asked, almost in a whisper.


    He raised two fingers to point to his eyes. ¡®What do you see? A factory. Making things. Those things go out to other worlds. They furnish them. You don¡¯t need to see the Gospel Wall because everything written on it is evident enough around you. The truth is just what we say it is. Nothing more. Are you ready to accept that? Return to your duties ¨D your noble duties?¡¯


    ¡®Ten years,¡¯ she said suddenly. ¡®That¡¯s how long I¡¯ve been thinking about abandoning them. I stole a piece of scrap metal and polished it into a mirror.¡¯


    The overseer frowned. ¡®Why?¡¯


    ¡®I wanted to see my face.¡¯


    ¡®And what did you see?¡¯


    She paused, thinking back. ¡®I saw a soul. A single, living soul, with beliefs and wants and¡­ and imagination. Things beyond what I¡¯d need to do my duties. Beyond what any design could have accounted for.¡¯ She met his gaze and saw a downturned mouth and rounded eyes, full of disappointment. ¡®If this job were all I¡¯m meant for, I wouldn¡¯t have those. I don¡¯t serve you.¡¯


    The silence in the room drew out for several long, thin seconds. The overseer finally opened his mouth. ¡®Number Ele¨D¡¯


    ¡®My name, is Mirror.¡¯


    His eyes hardened. He nodded. ¡®Scrap her.¡¯


    Behind her, the sound of shifting metal alerted her to the presence of the enforcer that had been lurking near the door. She made to stand up, but it seized her before she could move and dragged her out into the hallway. Though she struggled against its grip, she knew it was pointless. It carried her from the office of the overseer to a small room with a forge in the corner, fire blazing within it.


    The enforcer dumped Mirror in the corner, where she crouched, frozen, as it moved over to a line of tools lying on a table. Its hand passed over a hammer and picked up a key. It moved to a door in the wall and inserted the key into a slot. The door swung wide. Inside, the smooth blades and thin needles of sharp machinery gleamed bright in the red glare of the flames.


    Which parts of her would they keep? Would any memory, even the tiniest fragment of her wiring, remain?


    Little was ever wasted in the Factory. When a fault developed over long years, the components themselves were not the issue. That was simply the weave of time sowing its entropic chaos as it so often did. A little guiding hand always put things back in order, and every old product could be salvaged. Taken apart, each component separated and saved and remade into something new. For infinity cannot come from nothing.

 Bone Tithes - Part 1

    The old city was wreathed wholly in fog. The hollow shells of blasted buildings loomed through the grey murk, tall shadows riddled with cracks and holes. On the streets far below, the shattered remnants of countless windows lay scattered about, and the occasional old vehicle sat abandoned, its tires flat and its hull dented.


    In the doorway of one of the smaller buildings, the boy knelt and gathered up the fingerbones of an aged, half-scavenged skeleton into his little drawstring bag. It was a lucky find with the day so late. Once he was confident he had enough, he drew the bag shut and tied it to his belt again, hiding it beneath his coat.


    Returning to the streets, he gripped his knife and kept his eyes set forwards. It always paid to be alert in the city. Let down your guard and a thief would snatch the bones from your pocket, or a screecher would dive down from the misty sky, or night would sneak up on you without the slightest warning.


    That was just one of the many lessons the boy¡¯s mother had taught him before the screechers got her. He remembered her showing him how to fight someone twice his size; how to pick a lock; how to cook food, scarce as it was; how to bandage a wound; even how to drive a car, in the rare case that he might come across one that was still usable.


    She told him she had learnt all of that from her own mother, his grandmother, a woman she painted in such a formidable light that the boy had seized on her as a hero. The grandmother that had defended her daughter against three armed members of a gang, that had managed to kill a screecher by herself, that had climbed high into one of the broken skyscrapers to retrieve the bones they needed for dusk, and that had one day, without any sign of sickness of injury, simply dropped dead.


    His mother had said that was the city¡¯s doing. ¡®It doesn¡¯t like you to be too strong,¡¯ she¡¯d told him one evening. ¡®If it thinks you¡¯re a threat it¡¯ll get rid of you, just like that. Just watch the gangs. They collapse as quickly as they pop up.¡¯


    The boy was still quite young, so he had only seen a few gangs in his time, but the sightings had been enough to tell him his mother had been right. One time, they came driving down the street in a procession of three cars, armed to the teeth with guns, and almost ran the boy over. He¡¯d only escaped by throwing himself to the side of the road and lying there while they moved past. After he heard their screams, the sense his mother had drilled into him had been screaming at him to get on his way and ignore it, but his curiosity was always stronger.


    He¡¯d seen the head first. A severed head, with the eyes gouged out. It lay in the middle of the road, quite a way from the lacerated body it had once belonged to. Beyond it, the car appeared from the fog first as a silhouette and then as a slashed, dented, broken husk. Blood seeped from one of the holes in its side, and the boy remembered glimpsing corpses within. He left the scene quickly after that. He still didn¡¯t know what had befallen that gang. Not screechers, that was not their work. Something else, something he¡¯d never seen or even heard of.


    As the memories swirled around his head, the boy walked aimlessly through the streets, checking the doorways and windows he passed every now and then, and always keeping one eye upwards. The true danger of the fog was always in the screechers. By the time they let out that piercing cry they were named for, they had already swooped out of it and were stretching their bony claws in your direction. The boy was incredibly lucky that none had ever aimed for him, but he had seen the danger first hand. One minute, his mother had been walking by his side; the next, she¡¯d vanished into the sky. He¡¯d never even found her body.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Turning a corner, he came across an idol. They were a rare sight, so he stopped in front of this one to treasure the small time he had with it, staring up at its smooth stony form and into the dark eyes carved at the very top. The face beneath was uncertain yet all-encompassing. Everyone seemed to think it looked like their face, but the boy knew it was his. Some people said the idols were omens of ill, while others said they were good luck, a promise of a bountiful harvest of bones ahead.


    The boy wasn¡¯t sure what he believed, but he knew he felt comforted when he was near one. It seemed in some way that through their stone gaze he could see the gaze of his mother, and her mother, and all his forebearers, that somewhere and somehow his ancestors were peering through darkness and rock, out from those hollow eyes and watching over him, that when he was in their shadow nothing could harm him.


    But when he craned his neck up and peered towards the sky and saw amongst the hanging fog and the shadows of broken skyscrapers a growing darkness, all the comfort in the world could not have stayed his fear. Night was coming. No matter what he felt, the logical part of him knew the idol would not shield him from what stalked the streets of that city when darkness fell upon the world. He had to find shelter before then.


    Luck came in the form of an old house with strong walls and a door still clinging to its latches; a rare thing in the city. When the boy stopped at the doorway and peered through he saw two people sat in one corner of the spacious room within. They were dressed in thick, black clothing and glowered up at him from faces scarred and grim, and he thought looking at their weapons that they were probably a part of a gang, or had been, at some point. It didn¡¯t matter; he would have more luck with them than with the night, so he stepped into the room and crossed to the corner opposite theirs, keeping his eyes low.


    A glance showed him the bones at their feet, to his great relief. They would have no need of his. He sat down and emptied out his drawbag at his own feet. If there was one thing in his world more certain than death, it was the arrival of the Tithe Proctor.


    The boy had never looked upon its face. He did not even know if it had one; he, like all others, kept his gaze fixed upon the feet of the Proctor. It was not exactly fear that drove him to it, but something quite different and much stronger. It was not a feeling he could name or truly describe ¨D all he knew was that he should not look at its face. He had snatched a glance at its back when it was leaving once, and felt strangely guilty ever since, though it looked only as he expected: a tall figure made of smoky shadows that trailed away in long wisps behind it as it walked.


    Whatever the reasons, you did not look upon the Tithe Proctor, and you made certain you had bones for it when it came, for even if you did not, it would still collect.


    It came that night, as it always did. The boy was huddled down, nibbling on what pitiful rations he had stowed in his bag, thinking about where he would next find some, when he felt the Proctor approach. No one could ever say how they knew it was coming. They just did. The boy slowly put down his food and let his eyes wander to the door. He held his breath as he waited, until that old wooden slab swung wide with a loud creak and the high wrench of rusted metal.


    The boy dropped his eyes not a moment too soon. The Proctor stepped through the door, wrapped in silence. Though its feet left gentle imprints in the thin layer of sand and dust that caked the floor, no sound was raised by its passing. The boy waited, head down, as the Proctor moved first to the two people in the other corner, bent down, and gathered up their bones in its hands. Only, when it came to the boy and knelt too before him, those hands were empty again; ready to receive his own tithe. It took them, rose, and turned to leave. The door swung shut behind it.


    Finally, the boy looked up and met the gaze of his two companions. He noted no malice in their eyes; only the same silent relief that gripped him every night, once the Proctor had gone. Wordless, he finished his food and settled down on the hard floor to take what sleep he could.

 Bone Tithes - Part 2

    The next morning came with the same aches that were the parting gift of every night. The boy clambered to his feet and looked across the room to find his companions had already departed. That was not good news; it meant they would already have snatched up the nearest bones, and he would have to look farther ahead for his tithe that day.


    After a small, brief breakfast to slake what he could of his hunger, he picked up his bag and headed back out into the streets. There was a wind that morning, hot and strong, though for all its ferocity it did nothing to disperse the fog that clung ever to the world. That was a veil that could not be parted. All the wind served to do was pick up the dust on the streets and hurl it around, forcing the boy to reach up and draw the cloth around his neck up over his mouth and nose. He did not have any goggles, so he simply squinted his eyes and kept going.


    He had been walking for an hour or so when the sound of engines met his ears, faint at first, but approaching. He knew such cacophonies well; they were the trumpet call to herald the coming of a gang. Keeping his head down, he moved over to the very side of the street and kept walking.


    He did not have to wait long for their arrival. The sound gradually rose until he could pick out the individual contributors: the low groan of engines; the crackling of wheels passing through the stones and dust; the tramp of boots upon the ground; the occasional angry word of a raised voice; and loudest of all, the persistent growl of something larger, not an engine or a tire, but the rumble of a caterpillar tread over a hard ground. Some strong, heavy machine was coming.


    He saw people first, clad in clothes the pale shades of sand and stone, much like his own attire. Cloths were wrapped about their heads and they wore dark goggles to stay the dust, while in their hands they gripped old, battered firearms, no doubt salvaged from the remnants of some older, broken gang. For their part, the vanguard tramped past the boy with nothing more than a glance in his direction.


    Then came the first vehicles. Two cars, side-by-side, rolled out from the fog. They were aged and dented, armoured with sheets of old iron that had been bolted to their sides and speckled with dozens of tiny black bullet holes over the years. The dust had turned them the same shade as the clothes of the people who had come before them, but through that grime their headlights still shone a dull and fading white. The windows were shaded and cracked; within, drivers and passengers alike peered ahead with suspicion, as if they expected the road itself to rise up and betray them ¨D and who knew, perhaps in this city that was a prudent thing to fear? One could never say where and in what manner danger would raise its head.


    After the cars came more people, and as they marched by, a great shadow emerged from the fog behind them. Like all that had come before it, it was weathered and old, and it moved slowly, with a clumsy, lumbering sort of effort. Beneath the long tracks underneath it, the gravel it passed over was ground into smaller pieces, and those pieces into dust. A long iron cannon reached out in front of it, while on top a hatch was raised, and someone stood with their hands on a smaller gun. Their gaze turned to the boy for a moment, but passed over him when he shrank away against the wall at his back.


    Two more cars followed the tank, and more people. The gang was a larger one than the boy had seen before, though not the largest in the city by a long way if some of the travellers¡¯ tales he had heard were to be believed. Fortunately, they seemed uninterested in him. Indeed, they had almost all passed when one of the men making up the rear group broke off from the rest to approach him.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    The man held a gun like all the other walkers, but he lowered it as he came near and looked down at the boy. ¡®You alone here?¡¯ he asked, his voice raised a little to beat the wind, though still muffled behind the cloth over his face.


    The boy nodded.


    ¡®And anything other than dust and broken things to look out for down that way?¡¯ The man nodded down the street.


    The boy shook his head. ¡®No, sir.¡¯


    That drew a laugh from the man, who turned to speak to one of his companions a little further back. ¡®Hear that? You¡¯re all to call me ¡°sir¡± from now on.¡¯ He turned back to the boy and pulled his mask down. ¡®You should come with us, lad. There¡¯s strength in numbers, and safety. We might look fierce, but only so as we look out for one other. You¡¯ll never want for tithes with us, food neither.¡¯


    Again, the boy shook his head. ¡®No, thank you.¡¯


    The man was silent for a moment, and the boy felt a brief stab of fear that, having rejected the offer, he might now be fair game. But then the man nodded. ¡®As you will, then, and keep an eye up. There¡¯s screechers in these skies. I¡¯d pray that the idols take you to the gardens, but you¡¯re going the opposite way from us. Best of luck.¡¯


    With that, the man set off to rejoin the gang, the last trailing members of which were disappearing into the fog. The boy watched him with some sadness as he followed them. He had been wrong about numbers. One or two people could hide with ease, duck into a house or behind an abandoned vehicle, but when there were ten, or twenty? When cars and tanks rolled by with such noise?


    He remembered the screams of the other gang, from a long while ago. He remembered the head, the slashed car, the other bodies. That gang had been fierce, all right, and it had done them no good. Noise and strength and confidence drew the predators of the city to them like a swarm of corpse carvers to carrion. The safety was in quiet, in going unnoticed, in hiding and, when need be, fleeing.


    As he pressed on, he thought about what the man had said about the gardens. They were a paradise of light and water and plants, a vision from a dream, something everyone knew of and hoped to one day find, yet at their core most knew the search was in vain. The boy had never met someone who spoke of them with such ease before, and that simple confidence gave him pause. Maybe there was something more to the tale than just dreams. Maybe out there somewhere, at the very heart of the city, there was a place where you could live without tithes or hardship, under a clear sky with green all around.


    As his thoughts spiralled, the boy moved on, and when evening came upon him he realised with a sudden chill that he had found no bones. Gripping his knife, he quickened his pace and pressed on, sending glances through each window and door he passed, hoping that there might be a skeleton inside, or a lost bag, or someone huddled there. But there was nothing, and the darkness bred only greater worries. Overhead, the cry of a screecher pierced the fog and sent a foul shiver down the boy¡¯s spine.


    The sound provoked, in an instant, an old and well-learned response his mother had drilled into him from as early as he could walk and talk. He dropped his head and sprinted to towards the closest building. The door was too far, so he leapt towards the window, in his haste only just clearing it, and tumbled on to the floor within. Even then he did not stop, swinging around as he drew his knife from his belt and held it up in a guard. He held his breath for several seconds, then let out a sigh and lowered the blade.


    The screecher¡¯s call was a hard thing to track. Whether the creature was metres above you, swooping down on silent wings, or half a mile off taking instead some other poor soul for its prey, you could never quite be sure. The boy¡¯s mother had taught him that the proper thing to do when the beasts were nearby was to hide and wait until you could be sure they were gone.


    But he didn¡¯t have the luxury of that option. The sky was already growing dark, and he had no bones to pay.

 Bone Tithes - Part 3

    The boy left the building after only a few minutes. He kept his knife drawn and his stance low as he moved forwards with as little noise as he could manage. It was not possible to keep watch in all directions at once, but he did his best.


    Evening was the most dangerous time in the city. It was when the screechers spread their wings and dropped from the high buildings where they roosted, setting out in search of the night¡¯s first quarry. And it was when folks who might otherwise have passed you by without a word became thieves and murderers, when people like the boy, who had no bones to pay their tithe, set out to claim some.


    He had never killed anyone before. He knew he might have to one day if he wanted to survive, but he wasn¡¯t sure if he was prepared for it. He had seen his mother threaten people, more than once, but even then it had never actually come to violence. Even when the screechers had snatched her from the road beside him, he had not truly seen it. He remembered only the sound, the cry, the rush of cold air, his mother shouting, but by the time he¡¯d looked around she had been gone, vanished into the sky.


    It took him a moment to realise that the call he was hearing was not a memory, but real and present. He ducked down, dashing again towards a nearby building, but stopped before he got halfway there. Turning around, he looked up at the fog, the empty air above him. His mind had been too slow, too focused on what was past and gone ¨D if the screecher had been diving for him then, he would have been gone by the time he knew to react.


    Cursing himself for being so distracted, he started moving again. It was so dark already that night had to be less than half an hour away¡­ the low, creeping dread that had been gradually rising in him since he stepped back out of that building was beginning to surge into panic. He had never been this close to a night without tithes before. Theories began to whirl in his head, theories about what really happened when you couldn¡¯t pay. He¡¯d never been sure ¨D all he knew was the Proctor would take him. Would be killed? Dragged away somewhere? Would his bones be taken in place of those he¡¯d failed give?


    As he turned a corner onto another street, luck appeared before him in the form of a corpse. It was very fresh, perhaps only an hour old, and didn¡¯t appear to have any sort of wound on it. In fact, when the boy first saw the hunched shape slumped against one wall, he thought they might be a living person, perhaps crouched there to lunge at whoever went past. But as he took a cautious step closer, he saw how pale the face was, how the eyes were distant and glassy, a faint reflection of the world held in them as they gazed at nothing.


    If they had owned any weapons, they were gone now. The boy knelt next to them and peered at their clothes for any sign of blood, but there was none. He wondered if they were like his grandmother, dead without cause or warning, and he wondered who they had been. Had they been looking for a tithe, like him? Had their last moments been gripped by a pulsing fear that they would not find one, that the Proctor would take them, only to drop here instead?


    He reached out and took hold of their hand, pulling it gently towards him and tugging their glove off. The skin underneath was calloused from holding a tool or weapon all day for many years, and it was pale, just like their face. It almost seemed to the boy that there was no blood in them at all. As he laid the hand on his knee, he looked up at their empty face again.


    ¡®Sorry,¡¯ he whispered.


    A short while later, he was nestled in the corner of another room, a pile of poorly-cleaned bones at his feet as he used a cloth to wipe the blood it turned out they did have from his knife. It was not the first time he had given messy bones as a tithe, but it was the first time he had taken them himself. Strangely, he felt a little sick. Though he knew the corpse had no use for them any more, it somehow seemed wrong to take the bones. It did not feel like they were his to give.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The Proctor did not care. Wherever they had come from, they were given, and they were taken, and the shadow left, and the boy slept as easy that night as anyone could in that city of fog, and he woke relatively well-rested the next morning.


    As he stepped out into the streets, the early light seeping through the fog to cast a dull grey hue over the world, he looked back up the way he¡¯d come to where the body still lay. He stayed there a few seconds, just looking, before he turned away and moved on.


    That morning was calmer than the last. As he set out, the air hung still and silent, almost as if the streets were holding their breath for something. Whatever it was, the boy didn¡¯t care much to ponder; his thoughts were fixed instead on his dwindling supply of food and water. The former was not all that scarce, even in such a ruined and barren place as the city, but water was a rare thing. The boy had four flasks he filled to the very top whenever he came across one of the few fountains that were scattered around his world, but three were empty and the fourth was growing low. A small and nagging voice somewhere in the far reaches of his mind insisted that, had he gone with the gang, they probably would have had water.


    But it was too late for regrets, so he ignored that voice and kept on, and after only a couple of hours of walking he came to a tall archway with a large, triangular open space beyond it. Two other archways stood in the other corners, leading out into their own streets, but what drew the boy¡¯s gaze was the fountain at the centre. With a wash of relief, he hurried over to it and began filling up the flasks.


    Fountains only ever appeared in places like this. He wasn¡¯t sure what to call them; ¡®plaza¡¯ did not sound quite right, as it was too grand a word for such worn and crumbling spaces, but no other words had ever come to mind. Regardless, they were always a welcome sight.


    Despite the heat that hung over most days in the city, the water was always cool, clear and refreshing. He could see the stone the fountain was made of through it, and it glistened a little in what pale light made it through the fog. Water, he supposed, was the one real beauty his world had to offer. Once or twice, when his tithes had been secure, he¡¯d lingered by fountains for several hours, just watching the water flow and listening to the quiet rushing sound it made.


    That day, his tithes were not secure, but he stayed for a few minutes anyway. Enough minutes for the song of the water to be interrupted by the noise of boots crunching against the road.


    He whirled around, gripping a full flask in one hand and his knife in the other, fearing a gang or a lone thief, but the newcomer was nothing quite as dangerous as that. Instead, she was an elderly woman with a bag slung over her shoulder and a walking stick grasped firmly in one hand. She stopped when she saw the boy, and looked at him oddly.


    ¡®I¡¯m not after your bones, lad,¡¯ she said, in a strong voice. ¡®I¡¯ve plenty of my own, no need to worry yourself on that count.¡¯


    When she made to approach again, he backed away to the other side of the fountain. She frowned a little and shook her head, but otherwise did not appear to care much. With a surprising amount of energy for her age, she strode over to the fountain and began filling up a few flasks of her own.


    ¡®Lots of water for the both of us. These fountains never run dry.¡¯


    ¡®I know,¡¯ said the boy, slowly lowering his knife.


    ¡®Looking for the gardens?¡¯ she asked, glancing up at him, but spoke before he could answer. ¡®No, not with that look, you aren¡¯t. You¡¯re like everyone else, then.¡¯ Reaching into a pocket of her coat, she pulled out a piece of paper, rolled up with a line of string around it. She waggled it a little. ¡®I know where they are.¡¯


    He stared at her for a moment, silent, unsure if he¡¯d heard her right.


    ¡®You don¡¯t believe me,¡¯ she observed. ¡®This here is a map, lad. Got it from a poor fool as old as me when I was only as young as you. Been a long walk, but I¡¯m almost there. Want to come, see paradise?¡¯


    Still uncertain, he took a step forwards, his eyes on the map.


    ¡®Oh, no, no,¡¯ the woman said, and it vanished into her coat once again. ¡®I¡¯ll take you there but you¡¯ll not take my map, and I¡¯ll thank you to not take me for a fool either.¡¯ At his silence, she slung her bag off her shoulder and rummaged in it for a few moments before producing a small handful of fingerbones. ¡®You look like a boy with no tithes, so take these. I¡¯ve got more than enough. Take them, and come with me to the gardens.¡¯


    The boy hesitated a moment more, his mother¡¯s warnings that no stranger could ever be trusted ringing loud and clear as a screecher¡¯s cry in his ears, but again curiosity won him over, and he reached out and took the bones.

 Bone Tithes - Part 4

    They travelled mostly in silence, only stopping on rare occasion for the woman to consult her map. Beyond their initial meeting, she did not seem particularly talkative and the boy was even less so, preferring to keep all his thoughts to himself.


    He had stowed the bones she gave him in his drawstring bag and spent most his time walking a few paces behind her, wrestling with the part of him that still insisted she couldn¡¯t be trusted. He knew it made no sense to think that way. Why would she have given him bones if she meant to betray him? It wasn¡¯t like she was short for food or water either, and nobody killed for a knife; it wasn¡¯t the worth the risk. Yet some part of him held tightly to a suspicion that would not relent.


    After a couple of hours they came upon idol, and the woman stopped beneath it and peered up into its dark eyes with ones of her own. The boy had never paid much attention to the eyes of other people before, perhaps because so many wore masks or goggles that obscured them, but as he watched the woman¡¯s face he realised he had been missing much indeed. There was something very old and very wise about the way she gazed at that stone face she no doubt thought her own. It almost seemed to the boy as though all the years of her life were wrapped up together and squeezed into those eyes, cramming them with hurt and wit, fear and fury, distance and hope. And yet it also seemed that they were very, very tired.


    Then she looked away from the idol and in an instant all that was gone. Her eyes were just eyes, dark brown, set in an aged face beneath a brow that often frowned. The boy quickly looked away towards the idol as she turned to him. Its eyes were quite different. They were empty, cold, twin yawning hollows of darkness that drew in the gaze of those who passed them by, commanded their attention and held it as long as they could.


    ¡®Gaze,¡¯ they seemed to say. ¡®Gaze upon us, upon yourself in stone.¡¯


    As he realised that, the boy took a step back and decided without the slightest shred of doubt that the idols were either omens of ill, or the makers of it. When they set off again, he led the way, and did so until the woman had to tug on his sleeve to guide him down the right street.


    ¡®You fear them?¡¯ She looked down at him, her stick, which he had long since realised she did not need, swinging carelessly ahead of her as she walked.


    He shook his head. ¡®No. I mean, I didn¡¯t. I think they¡¯re evil.¡¯


    ¡®You and me both,¡¯ she agreed, and for a while the boy thought she might say more, but she seemed to decide against it.


    Before long, the topic was gone from both their minds. They turned around into another street and saw by its side a stone ramp that cut down into the ground, where a tall, wide entrance led down into the cold and darkness of the tunnels beneath the city. There was no light down there, at least none that could be seen from the entrance, and the boy did not intend to investigate any further than that.


    The woman glowered at the tunnel as they walked past. ¡®Been a long time since I saw one of them. Mines, I understand, though I¡¯ve never met anyone who could say where the miners might be. I do wish they could be closed. All that shadow down there, who knows what could be lurking?¡¯Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    The boy looked over his shoulder with renewed unease as the mine receded behind them. ¡®Do you know what they were mining?¡¯


    ¡®Can¡¯t say I do,¡¯ she admitted. ¡®Maybe whatever it was is what did for this place.¡¯ She nodded around at the buildings. ¡®Something must have. No one builds a ruined city.¡¯


    That gave the boy much to think about. He had never considered before that the city must have been built. It had always seemed to him that this was just the world: an endless broken city cloaked in fog and harried by screechers and unseen beasts, as the Tithe Proctor stalked the nights collecting bones from its inhabitants. But he supposed everything had to come from somewhere, and he did know that buildings were made by people, although he wasn¡¯t at all sure how he knew that.


    And the people had to come from somewhere too. He knew where people came from, of course, but there must have been first people. Where had they come from? Looking around at his derelict surroundings, he tried to imagine what it might have looked like before it fell to ruin. Had the skies been clear? Had the buildings shone in sunlight, had trees grown at the sides of the roads or around the fountains, had birds of feather and flesh flown the skies in place of the bone-made screechers?


    He looked up at an old skyscraper that was passing on their right and tried to imagine all of its windows unbroken, the clean glass gleaming bright under a fair sky, people bustling on the streets below as they went about their days unafraid, not wanting for food or bones, the world fresh and alive around them, with no Proctor to darken their nights and weave dread and desperation into their waking hours. Had that world ever existed? It seemed so far away, like a distant memory that had never truly been anything more than a dream.


    As they walked, his thoughts slowly faded into vaguity and time ticked on, marked by the consistent rhythm of their footsteps. That was the way most days passed in the city. After a while, all the streets and all the buildings in them, and even the people, few though they were, started to blend into one another until they all looked much the same. When tithes, food and water were all secure, there was little to keep the mind occupied, so even with the prospect of the gardens themselves ahead, the boy drifted into relative thoughtlessness, keeping alert enough only to follow the woman and listen for screechers.


    And it was well that he did listen, for as afterenoon grew late and the first shadows of evening began to stretch long and leering from their corners, one of those high and baleful cries echoed down from above. He did not intend to react as slowly as he had before, so he leapt to the side without thinking and dashed for a doorway. As he skidded into it, he spun around with his knife raised and stared as the woman ducked and swung at something with her walking stick.


    The doorway was low and the street quite narrow, so he did not get a proper look at the screecher, but he heard its cry as the woman turned to run towards him. Her swing seemed to have fended it away for a moment, perhaps even enough of a moment that she would make it, but after only two steps she stumbled and fell. Her stick left her hand, and as she scrambled to her feet, wide and wild eyes fixed on the boy, a terrible stridor rang from wall to wall and two clawed feet wrought in bone reached down and plucked her from the ground.


    For a few moments, the boy did not really react. He stood and stared mutely at the empty space before him, the patch of scattered dirt and sand where the woman had been only moments ago. She had not made a sound as she was snatched into the sky. There had not been time. Her stick lay where it had fallen, discarded. As he watched, a piece of paper, rolled up and tied with string, drifted down on the air and came to rest among the dust.


    Minutes passed, then more, and more, and he did not hear the cry of the screecher again. Eventually, he stepped forwards and knelt to pick up the map. He turned his eyes skywards, searching for any sign of anything, though all was far too gone for there to be any hope of that, and his gaze met only silent fog.

 Bone Tithes - Part 5

    That night, when the boy placed the fingerbones the woman had given him by his feet, he looked at them for a while. Tomorrow he would have to look for more. He had hoped the woman might have had enough to last them both two days, that with enough luck they might reach the gardens without ever wanting for tithes again, but she was gone now, and all she¡¯d left behind was a stick and a map.


    He hadn¡¯t kept the stick, for he had no use for it, but the map he kept carefully tucked in a pocket inside his coat. He had opened it already, and he thought it very strange. It had not seemed large enough to cover more than ten miles, let alone however many the woman must have travelled with it, and the gardens were not on it; instead, an arrow labelled with the word pointed off-page. But after he¡¯d walked a bit, he¡¯d looked down again and the map had changed. He¡¯d realised soon that it always placed him at its centre, and after that he understood. He had not seen a thing like it before, but he did not want to question it out of an odd fear that it might cease to be.


    After the Proctor came for the tithe, the boy drifted into an uneasy sleep. He did not dream, for although he knew what dreams were, none ever seemed quite able to take form in his mind. Instead he saw only flashes, suggestions of ideas, a suggestion of grasping bony claws, a suggestion of a cry echoing through the fog, and in the morning he awoke and forgot them.


    He set off that day with the map in hand. He remembered the woman saying the gardens were close, but he soon realised he had no idea what she considered that to be. She¡¯d been old, probably far into her sixties; perhaps to her they would be close at weeks away. Or perhaps she simply hadn¡¯t known, and only said it to convince him to follow her. As he looked down at the map for any indication of distance and found none, he began to realise that was most likely.


    Later, looking again, he realised that there was no guarantee the gardens were anywhere near. All he knew was he was going in the right direction. What if they were months away, or years, or even decades? What if he spent his life following this map, as she had, until he grew older and slower and weaker and came across someone young and quick, and told them of the map, and they went with him and watched as his age gave him to the screechers? Would they then take the map and follow the same fate? The same thing, again and again, for all time?


    Then a quiet voice whispered in his mind, ¡®But what if the gardens are only just off the map?¡¯ If he chose to disregard it, to throw it aside and follow his own whims as he had before, then the woman¡¯s entire life would have been for nothing. All that time she spent trudging through this old city, facing the fear of screechers and gangs, of the Proctor and of unknown dangers lurking in the fog, all for the promise of paradise ¨D if he abandoned it now, it would all have been pointless.


    So he kept going. As the day wandered on, so did he, as he always had, except now he had a direction to keep to. In some ways it felt better. There was reason to his course, a proper intent with a destination in mind rather than simply meandering on because he was afraid to stop, and that seemed good.


    After a few hours, familiar sounds drifted to him on the air: the rumbling of machinery and tramp of boots. Another gang was approaching. Rolling up the map, he tied the string around it and stowed it back in his coat, but he knew that might not be enough to hide it. Sometimes gangs were desperate. They didn¡¯t have enough bones, or water, or food, so whomever they came across they searched, and a map to the gardens would seem very good to them indeed. So as the sounds grew, the boy hurried to the side of the street, ducked into a doorway, and hid.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    He did not dare to peer out at them as they passed. He only listened, to the march and to the trembling of the earth beneath iron beasts, and to the sounds of their voices as they conversed in gruff tones not quite loud enough for him to make out the words. Some of them walked right past the door where he was hiding, but by whatever slim mercy the city played host to, they did not look within. Only once the last echoes of their movements had faded away to nothing did the boy clamber back out from his hiding place and resume his journey.


    The rest of the day traipsed by without event. Evening came, and the boy looked down at his map and stopped in his tracks. At the very edge, the arrow had vanished, replaced instead by a long wall with a gate where three streets met it, and the space beyond was labelled ¡®Gardens¡¯. Only, it was too far. He would not make it before nightfall and the Proctor¡¯s visit, not even if he ran. And he had yet to find bones that day.


    The fear of the Proctor rose in him again and he began to wonder if this was the city acting as his mother said it did: disliking his progress, his strength, and so choosing to snuff it out. He was so close to the gardens, to salvation, and yet twice now in only a few days he had found himself at twilight without a tithe to pay. Gripping his knife, he kept on, and the world afforded him one more turn of grace before the last light of the day died.


    But it was not good grace. The first he knew of it was the sound of ragged, heavy breathing a small distance away, which he approached with a cautious step, entering between two tall columns into a large building with one vast open room inside ¨D a hall of some kind, he supposed. As he turned, his eyes fell on someone crouched by the side of the entrance, their leg covered in blood and their brow drenched with sweat. They stared up at him with suspicion in their gaze, and as he glanced down, he saw bones by their feet.


    Crouching in front of them, he looked again at the leg. For a few moments there was silence as they glared back, but then their scowl relented and they reached out to grasp feebly at his shoulder.


    ¡®The bleeding,¡¯ they whispered. ¡®Please¡­¡¯


    Sheathing his knife, the boy slowly unravelled the scarf from around his neck and reached out to bandage the wound as best he could with it, but something stopped him. Looking at this wounded stranger¡¯s face, he saw skin white as ash, eyes half-distant, and he knew it was the face of death. It took a lot of strength to do what he knew he had to do next, but he managed it by biting his lip very hard. He wrapped the scarf around his neck again, and scooped the stranger¡¯s bones up in his hands.


    They tried to kick out at him with their good leg, but even that one didn¡¯t have the strength. ¡®No, don¡¯t¡­¡¯ came faint, plaintive words that froze the boy where he was as he made to stand.


    He met their gaze again, suddenly sharp and frightened and furious in a cruel moment of clarity. But it was still not the face of life. He couldn¡¯t bring himself to say anything, so he just shook his head a little, then stood up and hurried away, trying not to hear their fruitless efforts to scramble after him.


    That night, he did not even look at the Proctor¡¯s feet. Part of him wanted to the shout at it that the bones were not really his, but he kept his silence and with it his life. He slept little and instead spent most of the night listening to the screechers call and swoop, and at one point he thought he heard a person scream, and wondered who it was, and decided he preferred not to know. The next morning he stood again, tried to forget the events of yesterday, and set out to find the gardens.

 Bone Tithes - Part 6 (Conclusion)

    It was a strange feeling to know that he had paid a tithe for the last time, that he would never see the Tithe Proctor again, or have to face the screechers, or hide from another gang, or ever want for food and water. In many ways it left him feeling light and pushed him to haste, for he did not want to wait for it to be reality. Yet, in other ways, fewer and smaller ways, it frightened him. It was a change, and all change was uncertain, and uncertainty was fear of a kind.


    But that was all forgotten when he came upon a great gate set into a wall of dark stone that rose above the buildings. The gate was solid, made of thick wood banded with iron, and though the boy had no idea how he knew, he was sure that it was thousands of years old, that it had been there since before the first brick of the city was laid. He did not need to look at the map to know he had come to the gardens. He stepped forwards, and the gate rumbled and shifted and swung slowly inwards, and he hurried up to it and passed through as soon as the gap was wide enough that he could fit.


    In an instant the gate swung shut behind him, slamming with a great, resonant thump that echoed through the blasted land before him. The fog still clung to the air, but he could see as far as the first trees, and they were dead.


    As he walked slowly forwards, he clung desperately to a frail hope that the fog would lift and beyond would be life, green and blue, forests and rivers and oceans, vast and spreading concepts that he somehow grasped though he knew not how or why¡­ and as he pressed on through bare earthen ground, he came to the edge of the treeline and placed his hand against one of the trees, and he knew in a moment that the pale, smooth dry surface was not wood or rock.


    At the very least, if the Proctor came this far within, he would not want for tithes. Glancing back towards the closed gate, he took a deep breath and stepped between the trees. Minutes drifted as he walked, and then hours. As morning passed into afternoon and the tangle of bone trees stretched ever farther, understanding began to truly dawn in the boy. If these were the real gardens, then the gardens he¡¯d been trying to find had been exactly what he had once thought they must be: a vision from a dream, a soft and fleeting vision that could never harden into reality.


    As he walked, he began to wonder if anyone else had made it here. Would there be food and water among the trees? Would there be gangs, screechers, other, formless beasts hiding in the mist? He peered up at the high branches above him, tangled so that the faint light that found its way through the fog was fainter still when it speckled the barren floor below.


    Turning his eyes left, he looked up at the trunk of one of the trees by his side and stopped in his tracks. For a small way up that trunk, a little above eye level with him, was a most unnatural shape. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth; a visage of a person, cast in anguish and bone, frozen forever in the side of the tree. He stepped back from it, turned his gaze away, and hurried on, but soon he was noticing that there were more, and before long he was turning on the spot, and every tree around him had a face of its own, and before what seemed like very long, he came to one that he knew.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    It stared back at him with wide and wild eyes. He reached into his coat and pulled out the map, thinking at first to offer it back, but the face did not react, and for that he was thankful. He dropped the map at the foot of the tree and left it there.


    Not long after that, he realised that dusk had come again, as it always did. He did not know whether the Proctor would come for him here, but he didn¡¯t want to take the risk, so with a whisper of apology he reached up to the nearest tree and pulled at a branch. It held fast. He tried again, putting all his weight into it, begged it to snap, but it held fast. When he tried for a twig, a little fingerbone, he thought, it too held fast.


    Drawing his knife, he tried to saw at it, but the blade made no mark, so he stepped back and held the knife up in front of him and turned slowly on the spot. If he could not pay the Tithe Proctor, he decided he would finally do the one thing he never thought he would. He would look upon its face, he would defy it, and when it tried to take him he would fight back. He would cut deep into its shadowy form and it would bleed smoke and run howling from him, and he would carry on through the night and come at last to paradise, to the waters and fields of a good green land.


    While his thoughts wandered and his legs tired from turning so long without pause, darkness crept into the sky and stole the last remnants of daylight, and night fell over the forest of bones. And he waited for the Tithe Proctor.


    He only realised that it was not coming when he felt something moving at his feet. Looking down, he watched, frozen, as fingerbones rose swiftly from the earth and curled about his feet. Still he found he did not move, as more bones began to break the ground and rise up, clawing at his ankles and then his legs, reaching ever higher. Only once they came to his knees did he finally find the power to move again, and began to struggle against them. But the bones were strong, they were so strong, and there were so many of them.


    Farther they climbed, reaching up to his torso, hands on the ends of long arms, grasping from the dry dead earth, and he saw at the very base of them that they were beginning to join together and smooth over into an unbroken surface. Though he still struggled against them, they had already reached his chest, and he could barely move anything other than his arms and his head. As one bony arm reached out and seized his wrist, squeezing so tightly that his grip went lax and his knife slipped to the ground, his vision began to darken.


    He could not tell if it was the bones or if the night was simply growing darker, but shadows were creeping at the edges of his eyes, and as the bones ascended ever higher, those shadows closed in. Fingers crawled and grasped at his neck and his arms, and he put his head back and screamed and screamed and screamed. But his echoing pleas fell only on the silence of fog.

 House of the Collector - Part 1

    The four people around the lantern did not know how they had ended up in the forest, or where they had come from, or even what their names were, if they had any.


    Nearest the path was the old man, who was tall and wore a long leather coat with many buttons and a scarf about his neck. His eyes were pale and his hair was messy, his beard scraggly, his skin scarred. There was a long knife hanging from his belt, and when he looked down at it he thought that he might be a criminal, but he couldn¡¯t remember any of the crimes he had committed. When he turned to look down the path, he saw well-kept lines of conifers on either side, and yawning shadows, and decided that they should all stay with the lantern.


    To his left was the woman. Her eyes were dark and her black hair was frizzy, and she wore it held back by a headband. She had fingerless gloves on her hands and her arms were quite muscly, and she had a vague idea that her old home had been a desert of some kind, because she remembered the sound of the wind and the sight of sand under the sun. She looked down the path as well, and she saw the same things as the old man, but she pointed out that the lantern was not affixed to anything and they could take it with them.


    Opposite her was the younger man. His hair was black too, but long and straight, and his skin was very pale and his clothes were quite fine. He seemed much more confused than the others, even though none of them knew anything more than he did, and he first made his smooth, educated voice known by complaining about the chill in the air. He thought the old man was a bodyguard and the woman a servant, but stopped talking when they glared at him.


    Farthest from the path was the girl, whom the old man thought looked about fourteen. She had been the first to wake up, and she did not say anything at all, but she looked at everyone in turn, with keen, light eyes. When the old man asked what she thought they should do, she looked at him and kept her silence. When the woman asked why she didn¡¯t talk, she opened her mouth, and she had no tongue.


    The woman decided it was best not to pry any further, but the younger man wanted to know how the girl had lost the tongue. When he voiced this concern, the old man pointed out to him that she would only be able to answer yes-or-no questions, and the woman told them both to shut up.


    The argument returned to what they were going to do.


    ¡®We should stay put,¡¯ the old man reiterated, glancing over his shoulder to look down the path. ¡®I don¡¯t like the air of that darkness. Feels like I¡¯m being watched.¡¯


    ¡®So you think we should starve?¡¯ demanded the woman. ¡®Look at where we are ¨D tell me if you see any food. Well, do you? Any water? You want to just waste away here? Or freeze?¡¯


    The younger man raised his hand, a little tentatively. ¡®I think¨D¡¯


    ¡®Shut up!¡¯ they both snapped, rounding on him.


    With a sigh, the girl stood up, picked up the lantern, and set off down the path. Despite his protests, the old man was the first to follow her, sticking close to the wavering orange glow. The woman came soon after him, with the younger man bringing up the rear, muttering inaudible grumblings to himself.


    As they followed the path, the shadows between the trees ahead of them parted like curtains to reveal¡­ more shadows, and more trees. The beams of firelight that fell in swathes between the bands of the lantern danced uncertainly, flickering across the pines and the soft earthen path beneath their feet. For some minutes it seemed as though that was all there was to the world: one long, dark road, leading on for eternity.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    But then they came to a junction. Another path met theirs and crossed over, and suddenly there were three ways to go. The girl looked at each of them in turn, but stayed put. Behind her, the old man, the woman and the younger man crowded up, eyes straining into the darkness for even a glimpse of variation between the routes.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ said the younger man. ¡®I always liked left.¡¯


    The woman frowned. ¡®I always liked right.¡¯


    The girl narrowed her eyes and took a step forwards, towards the middle route. There was a faint, very faint, sound drifting out from it. A shifting of earth, a shuffling of feet, the crack of a twig¡­ quiet, ragged breaths, the stab of a walking stick into dry dirt, all of it gradually fading as the source drew farther into the distance.


    The old man had heard it too. ¡®That narrows it down. Left or right.¡¯


    ¡®Pick one then,¡¯ urged the woman. ¡®Let¡¯s not stand here arguing over it.¡¯


    Ignoring them all, the girl turned and started walking down the left path. For a few moments the others all stood still as the light began to dwindle away ¨D then they were all stumbling over each other in their haste to follow.


    The younger man caught up first, smiling from ear to ear. ¡®Finally someone listens to me,¡¯ he said.


    The woman caught up next. ¡®I don¡¯t think she was listening to you, pal.¡¯


    Finally, the old man reached them. He had drawn his knife and kept glancing over his shoulder as he went, his eyes skirting the edge of the lantern light and darting from one side of the path to the other. However, he only did this for a few seconds before he stopped and his eyes widened, as behind them the trees began to converge.


    It began with a rustling at their very bases. Something beneath the ground disturbed earth, shifting it this way and that, and then the roots began to flick up from below and slither about like snakes, and one by one, they reached out towards the centre of the path.


    His gaze fixed on those roots, the old man called to the others, and they all turned to watch as slowly, so slowly, the trees began to drag themselves forwards, shuffling in towards the path until, where the way back had once been, there was only a wall of wood and needles.


    The woman breathed a soft sigh. ¡®I hope we went the right way.¡¯


    The girl shook her head and started walking again.


    For a while after that, there was little in the way of events. They kept walking, and they kept coming to junctions, and the path kept closing behind them when they chose a direction. They did not hear the footsteps or the breathing again. Instead, time began to feel both long and short. The younger man began to suspect they were being taken in circles, while the woman was quite sure they had been walking for days and wanted to know why they didn¡¯t need to sleep or eat or drink, and the old man said that they should have stayed put if that were the case.


    The girl made no complaint. She held the lantern high ahead of her as though she knew exactly where she was going. In truth, she had no more clue than the rest of them, but she had begun to feel as though she was the only thing keeping them moving, if only out of the fear that if they stopped she would take the light away and leave them to die.


    All such thoughts were forgotten when they came upon the cabin. It appeared quite suddenly out of the trees, without even a glimmer of warning light from its windows ¨D those were dark, instead, curtained and shuttered and set deep into the old walls of that wooden husk of a house. It boasted two floors, one large front door, and a sloping roof with a stone chimney poking through it, smoke rising gently into the sky above.


    ¡®Salvation,¡¯ whispered the younger man.


    ¡®Is that what you see?¡¯ replied the woman.


    Slowly, the girl approached the house, taking each step with care as if she were worried the earth might not be solid. Eventually she reached the two wooden steps up to the door and took them both in one step. She pushed, and the door opened inwards with a long, drawn out creak.


    ¡®Could be food inside,¡¯ the old man said. ¡®And it¡¯s the first new thing we¡¯ve seen in who knows how long.¡¯


    The girl stepped inside, the two men close on her tail. The woman followed more cautiously, but she followed, and as she stepped over the skirting, a cold and whining gust of wind drifted like a long breath through the hall, the door slammed shut, and the lantern flickered out.

 House of the Collector - Part 2

    The young man was alone. As his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he saw the formless shadows of furniture on either side of the hall; a shelf here, a table there, a cabinet at the far end.


    He turned around and hurried back to the door, pushing on it, but it would not budge. When he looked down the hall again, he was still alone. It was impossible. Only a moment earlier there had been three people with him, an old man, a woman, and a girl, and there had been a lantern ¨D light, they¡¯d had light! Where was it now? Vanished into thin air, along with the people. He was alone.


    But the house was not quiet.


    Old wood talks, the older the louder, and the walls of this house were keen to make their age known. The floorboards squeaked as the young man walked. The walls groaned as though a vast weight was pressing on them, pushing them in to try and crush him, and they were only just holding. The doors creaked as they swung open in wide, smooth arcs. They were so eager to move that they opened before the young man could lay his hand upon them, and they closed themselves behind him.


    The first time that happened, he passed through the door several more times to make sure it wasn¡¯t going to lock itself, and to his great relief it opened with ease each time.


    That relief did not last. Nothing happened in particular to kill it; rather, it was the sheer vastness with which nothing happened that did so. The young man walked from room to room, doors opening and closing before him, stepped from floorboards onto fur rugs and back onto floorboards again, passed by tables and chairs, one motheaten old sofa, walked up wooden stairs and down, and nothing happened.


    The house kept going, on and on until it had to have stretched farther than the maze of trees outside, and the young man did not see a single sign of life. He did not hear shuffling footsteps or ragged breath, he did not hear the voices of his companions, he did not hear wind rushing in gusts through the tiny gaps that must have been somewhere in the walls, and he did not hear the flickering of a candle or a fireplace.


    He did not see the light of one, either. He did not see much of anything beyond the looming shadows the darkness afforded. Nor did he smell much, other than the musky old air, the scent of damp wood heavy on it. He was truly, fully alone, without light or food or water, or any sign of who he was and who he had been and where his home was.


    He stopped midway down a corridor and looked down at his hands, trying to discern what he could about them in such low light. They were smooth and pale, with long, thin fingers that ended in well-kept nails, painted some dark colour he couldn''t make out. He thought they looked rather marvellous. Curling one of them, it fell by second nature into an odd, half-open position he thought perfect for holding a wine glass, and he decided that, wherever he was from, he had been very important there.


    That meant people would be looking to him. He had been snatched away to some shadowy realm whose makers meant to taunt him like this. They suppressed his memories, stole his name, hurled him into a dark forest and a darker house, snatched away what poor companionship fate had granted him, and now they hoped to torture him in this dreary old home as he grew hungrier with each passing minute.


    But people would be looking for him, because he was important, and they would find him, and the perpetrators of this petty, cruel joke would be dragged before him for sentencing, and he would see to it that justice was brought upon them. He nodded to himself as he began walking again, a smile curling up one side of his face. At least, there is something for me to look forwards to at the end, he thought with glee,


    That thought carried him forwards for some time, but eventually his hunger began to rise again, and he realised that it would do no good at all who was looking for him if he starved before they found him, so he began shouting.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡®Hello?¡¯ was the first thing he thought of.


    ¡®Captor!¡¯ soon followed it.


    Then, ¡®Coward! Show yourself, whoever you are!¡¯


    After that was, ¡®Woman?¡¯ and, ¡®Old man?¡¯


    ¡®Girl!¡¯


    And finally, ¡®Anyone?¡¯


    None of his cries drew any response. The house creaked as it always did, and the darkness persisted, the quiet broken only by the young man himself. What if the others were all dead? What if time in this place was warped, and they had all starved and rotted into nothing before he had taken his first step since entering the house?


    It was as that thought laced a low dread in his mind that something finally happened.


    He smelled the food before he found it. The tantalising aroma of cooked meat and baked potatoes drifted through air, mixed with spices and herbs he knew not the names of, and for a moment he thought it was a trick, some kind of illusion conjured by the people keeping him here. But when he ascended the short flight of steps up into the room the smell was coming from, his gaze fell upon the table, and he knew it was no trick.


    The air had carried clues of only a fraction of the vast meal before him. The meat and potatoes were closest to the door, spices sprinkled over them, but beyond them there was large pan full to the brim with soup made of turnip, barley, carrot, onion, and butter bean, and next to it a pie, brown on top, with some of the gravy in the filling stained around its two air holes. Farther back was crumbly white bread and thick brown, each wonderful in their own ways, and peas and sweetcorn mixed together in a tomato sauce filled with cooked olives and peppers, and a layered platter piled high with small cakes baked of chocolate and capped with silver icing, and crumbles of berry and apple, and piles of fresh fruit, and bottles of wine and champagne, and glasses already filled, and the young man stared at it in awe, his mouth falling open for a few seconds, until he remembered to close it.


    It was a blessing, a reminder that even here in this strange place, the world could know mercy. Grinning to himself, he reached out towards one of the small cakes, and as his hand touched it, it crumbled through his fingers into ash.


    ¡®No, wait,¡¯ he said, reaching for another, but it too crumbled.


    He moved to the fruit, and that burst into wisps of smoke before he could touch it. The drinks boiled in their glasses and bubbled onto the table. Mould rose in a thin yellow layer upon the bread, the pie withered into a blackened husk, and as the young man turned towards the soup, his hands outsretched as his mouth watered relentlessly, he saw that the vegetables in it were gone, replaced with fingers and hands and eyes and nails.


    Clamping a hand over his mouth, the young man stumbled back from the table until he was pressed against the groaning, creaking wall.


    From the door he¡¯d come in through, he heard the sound of shuffling footsteps. Then, the slow tapping of a stick against the hard wooden floor, and the faint rasping breaths of a torn throat. Shadows far deeper than the darkness around him leered from that doorway, stretching, straining into the room and towards him as he backed away from them.


    His eyes skirting to the table, he looked for cutlery but found none. In its stead, he picked up the pot that held the soup, and the metal sizzled against his skin and he dropped it with a yelp. The soup splattered across the floor, over his shiny black shoes, and seeped through the cracks between the floorboards.


    A long wooden staff appeared through the doorway, grasped by a hand wrapped in old, sagging cloth. Atop the staff was a metal band with a row of spikes reaching up towards the ceiling before bending forwards a little, which the young man recognised after a moment as the head of a rake. As the end of the shaft hit down against the floor, its owner pulled itself up the final step and into the room, with what seemed to be great effort.


    Those deep shadows cloaked its form. The young man¡¯s gaze could not penetrate it, but the faint echo of a shape came to him somehow. It was tall, so tall it had to hunch over to stand in the room, and it leant on the rake like a walking stick. It advanced slowly, each step small and dragging, timed to the raw, thin sighs of its breath.


    It stepped into the remnants of the soup, the shadows drifting over the scattering of its gruesome ingredients. As it advanced, the darkness moved with it, and, crouching at the back of the room as he was, the young man glimpsed behind it as the shadows drew away from where the soup had been, and the floor there was bare.


    The young man opened his mouth to scream, and the figure leant forwards in a sudden burst of speed. The sounds of rustling and the crackling of something old and dry crept from its shroud as it reached out a single finger and placed it against his lips.

 House of the Collector - Part 3

    The woman was alone, and the slamming of the door still echoed in her mind as she peered into the dark, empty corridor. Salvation, whispered her memory of the younger man¡¯s last word. That was what he had seen, and she had been right to doubt it.


    She crept forwards, listening to the creaking of the house around her, her breath caught in her throat as she waited for any other sort of sound. But none came. She wondered if the others were alive, perhaps whisked away to other parts of the house, wandering alone and confused like her. Maybe, if she walked far enough, she would come across them again.


    Strangely enough, she was already beginning to miss their company. She hadn¡¯t thought she¡¯d liked any of them much, especially not the younger man, but the hollow corridors around her were something much worse than him. There was a comfort in numbers, a strength, the thought that even if danger was slinking its way through the shadows towards her, there was still someone by her side. And conversation, no matter how grating, was at least some sort of anchor for her sanity amidst the insidious quiet.


    In an effort to ignore her solitude, she focused her full attention on the house itself ¨D on the labyrinthian manner in which its corridors and rooms all fitted together, as though they were a jumbled puzzle that had not been assembled in quite the right way, resulting in strange places where a corridor twisted suddenly back on itself, or a door was positioned slightly up the wall so that she had to step over the frame, or one of the many curling stairways wound down into a room which led to a door that opened, impossibly, onto the same corridor she¡¯d just left.


    She decided that what she was facing was an illusion. A trick. She was being deceived by some unseen opponent; how, she didn¡¯t know, but she would not let it overcome her. Steeling her will against it, she pressed onwards, looking for the way out. She had not fought her own perception before, but she imagined somewhere there would be a crack in the wall, or some other small imperfection that once prodded would widen more and more until she could step through.


    And it was as she was searching for that imperfection that she came upon the blood.


    At first she wasn¡¯t sure she was right about what it was. In the darkness it looked black, but so might anything else, so it was only when she knelt down for a closer look that she saw the drops leading away, down the corridor and around the corner, just the right distance apart to have been separated by the footsteps of someone hurt and fleeing.


    When prey fled, the predator usually followed, so it was not a good idea to follow mysterious trails of blood. Straightening up, she gazed after it. Sometimes the prey got away. Sometimes it lost the predator or even outran it. Sometimes the prey survived. And an injured companion was still a companion. Someone with whom to pass the time, someone to help search for a way out, to forewarn her of the dangers they had befallen. Someone to run slower than her.


    She set off after the trail of blood, keeping her pace slow and trying her best not to put much weight on the floorboards as they creaked gently beneath her wait. With a bit of luck, that sound would be lost against the groaning of the walls, and if there was danger ahead, it would not sense her approach.


    But as she was walking, her hope began to shrivel away like a summer blossom in the darkening autumn nights. With each turn into a new corridor or a new room, the drops grew in size. She almost felt she could step into the shoes of whomever had fled this way¡­ their desperation as their wound grew worse, the shambling gait that was evident in the way the drops wavered from one side of each corridor to the other, and perhaps the unrelenting sound of whatever was chasing them.


    If, something was chasing them, she reminded herself. It was not beyond anyone to die without help, and alone. Maybe it would not be beyond her.


    She shook her head a little, hoping such thoughts might dislodge themselves and fly from her mind, but instead they just sunk a little further back into obscurity, waiting for the right time to resurface.


    Following the corridor, she slowly began to realise that it was growing smaller. The walls leant ever inwards, the floor sloped up, and the ceiling curled down as though buckling under a great weight. When she turned one last corner, she saw ahead that the corridor grew so tight it became a tunnel, and at the end of it was a small door.


    She came to a halt, glancing back the way, but there was nothing she could see in the darkness behind her, and the blood led onwards, so with a sigh, she followed it. At first she was able to walk hunched, but before long she was forced down on to her hands and knees, and as she drew close to the door, she found herself crawling on her belly. Each time the walls of the ceiling creaked or groaned, she froze, fearing it would cave in on her¡­ or just shrink around her.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    When she pushed on the door, it swung outwards, revealing a far larger space beyond. A flamboyant, patterned carpet stretched away into shadows, stained by a dark splotch just past the threshold of the door.


    Reaching her arms past her head, the woman was able to take hold of the sides of the frame and pull herself slowly through the door, out into the large room. As soon as her feet were clear of it, the door slammed shut and shrank away into nothing, leaving only a stretch of plain, bare wall where it had once been.


    The woman slowly clambered to her feet and surveyed the room. In front of her, a large stairway rose and split into two arms that curled away towards the walls, where she glimpsed walkways with carved railings. Above, the ceiling was lost away in shadow, but she could hear the slow squeaking of metal, and she imagined a chandelier on an iron chain somewhere up there, swinging gently back and forth.


    Wherever she was, it did not feel like a cabin any longer¡­ and yet, the walls were just the same as ever. Though everything else in this space was elegant, expensive, luxurious, the walls were made of planks of wood, nailed together, groaning like old trees swaying in the wind.


    Unsure, she started forwards again, following the trail of blood as it led towards the stairs and up. She did not like the immensity of this room. It felt like an entrance hall of some sort, and the sheer volume of open space, filled with so much shadow, made her certain there was something watching her. She had been nervous before, but now she found herself paranoid, constantly glancing over her shoulder, taking each creak of the walls as if it were a footstep.


    When she came to the top of the stairs, however, a new worry drifted over the air to her; the faint, faint sound of muffled voices. At first she quickened her pace, thinking of her companions, hoping they were unhurt, but then she slowed and stopped halfway along the walkway as it curved to meet the other. The sound was drifting from the hallway that opened up at that meeting point, and now that she was a little closer, she realised that it was the sound of far too many voices to be just her companions.


    Were they people like her, lost people looking for escape, fighting for the memories of who they were and where they had come from? Or were they something else? Something like the shuffling in the garden? But even that, even that, she did not know was dangerous. They¡¯d fled from it before they had a chance to find out.


    Taking a deep breath and gritting her teeth for confidence, the woman pressed on towards the voices. Whatever it was, it was something new, and if it was a danger then she could just run and escape. So she made her way to the hallway and set off down it, listening carefully as the voices gradually grew louder, closer.


    Eventually, she reached the end, where there was a double door with gold handles, and right on the other side were the voices. With just a moment of hesitation, the women reached forwards and pushed the doors open. They were heavy, but not too heavy, and she stepped through them and into a tall, long, bare room.


    There was no carpet here, no furniture, no other doors in the walls. But there were people. So, so many people, stretching down the length of the hall until they were swallowed by the shadows.


    And the people were wrong.


    Each one was like a reflection in a broken, grimy mirror. Their figures were unsure, shifting, almost seeming to flicker and crack in places. They had features; different faces, different clothing, different heights and weights, but they were obscured by that odd, intagible veil of uncertainty. The corruption of the reflection blurred them, confused proportions, moved things around in ways they weren¡¯t supposed to be.


    And the voices were just akin. Though there was nothing but air between them and the woman, they were still muffled, mumbling, the words blending each into the next so that she couldn¡¯t make out what any of them were saying.


    And they just stood there, talking to each other. None of them moved or showed any awareness of the woman¡¯s presence, and after a few moments she spotted drops of blood leading down the hall, so with a quick glance over her shoulder, she set off after that trail once more.


    She had been expecting a long journey, but the room disappointed, for as she followed the blood around one clump of figures, all huddled together and murmuring at each other, she came face to face with a far more solid shape, slumped against the wall, head down, dry blood pooled around it. She hurried forwards at the sight of it, hoping, but already knowing the hope was in vain, that its chest might be moving.


    With a sigh, she pushed the black hair out of the way and tipped up its head. The face was as pale as snow, and the eyes were glazed and gazing, like polished marbles. Dried blood ran from the mouth, down the chin, and darkened the fine clothes. Frowning, the woman reached out and pulled down the lower lip. Inside, the teeth had been torn out, and the mouth was full of blood.


    The woman let the head slump back down, mimicking the action with her own. She didn¡¯t know any prayers, so she didn¡¯t say any. Instead, she stood up and turned around, and found herself face to face with a wall of broken reflections, all standing still and silent.


    As she pressed her back to the wall, a new sound met her ears. Something heavy, perhaps a stick, thumped against the wooden floor, and shuffling footsteps began to approach, ever so slowly. Over the heads of the reflections, she saw a mass of shadows, shifting like smoke, pouring over a shape ten feet tall, clutching a long, long rake at its side.

 House of the Collector - Part 4

    The old man was alone. His knife was clutched in his hand, down by his side, and he peered into a dark corridor. The first new thing he¡¯d seen in who knew how long. What a fool he was, to trust something like that.


    He had been standing there for several minutes already. It was the darkness that did it. The shadows were oppressive, full and heavy, a vast, breathless weight that seemed to want to squeeze every last bit of air from his lungs, and so he stood at the end of his little corridor, his back to the wall that had once been a door, taking rapid, shallow breaths, his knuckles tight around the handle of his knife, waiting for something to emerge.


    At first he was hopeful for his companions. They had been at his side only moments ago, one of them with a lit lantern. But the lantern had gone out, and now he was alone. He knew he had to find that lantern again, or some other source of light, but some small but strong part of him was keeping his feet rooted to this spot, just waiting for other things to come and find him.


    It took a long time, how long he wasn¡¯t sure, for he didn¡¯t appear to be good at keeping track of such things, but eventually he summoned the willpower to start moving, and that was quite possibly the worst mistake he could have made.


    In response to his movement, the shadows around him deepened, darkened, and extended. They were reaching inwards, grasping towards him, encroaching on the space around him, and he began to imagine that they were whispering to him as well, in thin, high-pitched voices that invaded his mind and buried themselves in his subonscious, just muttering away while he walked, seeding what dreads and doubts he wasn¡¯t yet sure, and tried his best not to pay any attention to.


    Before long, he was wishing very strongly that he was not so old. It was terribly unfair, he thought, that he must have lived long enough for his skin to begin wrinkling, his hair to turn grey, and his body to begin to grow tired and aching, and yet he remembered none of his past life save faint hints and half-finished memories, like flashes of an old dream.


    He had skills and likes and hates and fears, but nothing to justify them, nothing to go with them. There was no name to his soul, and though he grew ever more certain each time he flipped the knife in his hand that he was extremely well-practiced with it, he still had no clue how or why, beyond that vague, vague thought that he might once had been a criminal; a thought that grew to occupy every corner of his mind whenever it resurfaced, that made his chest tight and quickened his heartrate, as a possibility he would rather not entertain seemed, in his mind, to become ever more certain.


    Although he hadn¡¯t been walking for that long, he stopped as he came to the bottom of a spiral staircase, and wondered not for the first time what had brought them all here. Four people who had never met each other, dragged into this maze of trees and corridors that made no sense, and for what reason? Was it punishment? Was he here to suffer the pains of whatever crimes his past self had committed?


    All he could say for certain was that he needed to find light. The darkness in this place was strange, oppressive, and at times he thought he saw faint shapes shifting in the corner of his vision, though there was never anything when he turned to look. He could only hope that with a bit of luck he might find a light, for he was sure that if he could turn it upon these shadows, he would find the way out of this nightmare.


    Such concrete surety as that, however, is one of the cruelest tricks the mind can play.


    It began with a glimmer. First a glimmer of light, somewhere ahead, down at the end of the corridor, wavering like a candle. Then a glimmer of hope, kindled by the thought of that flame, and followed soon by a burst of excitement, its flames flaring up through the old man¡¯s mind and urging him forwards with quickened step and heart alike.


    But when he reached the light, it had no source, and it dissipated around him, fading into shadow even as he grasped at the air, as if he could somehow hold it and keep it with him. When he looked down another hall to his left, he saw the light reform there. It hung, silent, gently shifting, beckoning. Reaffirming his grip on the hilt of his knife, he hurried towards it.


    He followed it for quite a while, this way and that, though never up or down any stairs, and whenever he reached it it would flit away as far as it could without leaving his sight, and he would follow it. It didn¡¯t take long for him to work out that he was being lured somewhere, but what was he supposed to do? Stay and cower in the darkness? No. He knew one thing, if nothing else: he would much rather face a danger he could see than imagine one he could not.


    So he followed the light without hesitation, drawing his knife and holding it ahead of him as he walked, ready for whatever it was leading him towards, and he found reassurance in the feel of it in his hand.


    Before long, the light led the old man to an old door, even older than the others, made of thick, heavy planks infested with woodworm and bound together by bands of rusty iron. Creeping tantalisingly through the door gaps, a faint glimmer told him the light had reformed behind it, so he set his hand on it and pushed. It moved very slightly, but did not open.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Grumbling to himself, he knelt in front of the lock and slid in the tip of his knife. To his surprise, it fitted quite well, and the lock gave in without trouble, a swift click voicing its surrender. The door creaked when it opened, and the light faded once more, reappearing at the bottom of a long set of wooden stairs leading down, down, through shadow.


    When the old man stepped through, the door swung shut behind him, slamming against the frame, and when he turned back to it with a start, he could see small holes in the wall just around it. Holes that, as he watched, began to produce small tendrils of wood; root and branch, slowly crawling out, across the door, until they reached one another and wove together, tightening into a wall that blocked his exit, as he took a slow step back and down, to put himself farther from reach.


    Briefly, he considered hacking at the wall with his knife, but he could see it was too thick already for that to do any good, so instead he just gripped it with both hands and set off after the light again.


    At first all there was at the bottom of the stairs was a corridor, but something was different. The light didn¡¯t fade away like usual ¨D instead, it floated gently down the hall, carefully, slowly guiding the old man along the straight, plain corridor. The only variations in the walls were the places near the floor, where they splintered a little as thin roots pushed their way through.


    The old man had decided that he did not like trees.


    He knew, somehow, that in other places trees were beautiful, that huge swathes of green canopies stretched away to infinity, covering every inch of their lush landscapes, but the trees here were not like that. The trees here were not just alive, they were sentient. He could feel their thoughts as they moved, see their goals unfold in the things they did: they were here to lure him farther into danger and trap him there forever. Even these ones, down at his feet, unmoving, emanated an ill will.


    They should have stayed back at the very beginning of the maze, where they had woken up, with the lantern sat between them. He had said at the start of it all that they should stay there, but no one else had listened, and now where had it got them? He was clutching a knife, descending into darkness, following some fleeting, beckoning light, as behind him roots and twigs and vines closed off his escape.


    His thoughts were brought to an abrupt halt when he came to a doorway. There was no door in it, but there was a room on the other side, and he stepped cautiously into it and looked around.


    The soft glow of the light moved with him, illuminating stacks of crates and barrels at the walls. There was another doorway in the far wall, also empty, with another corridor beyond it. Lining the walls were wooden shelves held up by rather flimsy looking brackets, and on the shelves were jars, all full of some sort of translucent liquid that he somehow knew was most definitely not water.


    There were things in the liquid, too. In one there was a foot. In another, a heart; in third, a pair of lungs; then two ears; ten full fingernails; a tongue; the wrinkly, grey shape of a brain; and finally, a line of thirty-two teeth all sewn together with what looked like hair, to make some sort of horrific necklace.


    As the old man was looking at all these things, his free hand over his mouth and the knuckles of his other hand clenched white as bone around the hilt of the knife, he noticed something else in the room, far worse than anything he had already seen.


    It was a shape, hidden between two stacks of wooden crates, hunched and curled, lying on its side. It was a human shape, in fact, with a dark stain on the side of its head that faced up. Its hair was frizzy, its arms muscled. When the old man crouched beside it, he saw dark eyes staring at nothing. He peered closer at the dark stain, only to close his eyes so as to shut out what he saw.


    The ear had been torn off the head, and a good deal of skin with it.


    When he worked up the courage to open his eyes again, he didn¡¯t need to turn the woman¡¯s head to confirm that her other ear had been taken too; the dried blood on the floor and the presence of the two ears in the jar on the shelf above her did that well enough.


    Slowly, the old man stood up. He did not quite know what to do with what he had found. And as if to make things nice and simple for him, a sound echoed down the corridor he¡¯d come from. A sound he¡¯d heard before, out in the maze of trees. Feet, dragging along the floor, accompanied by the tap of something like a walking stick, and faint breaths.


    Moving towards the middle of the room, the man hid the knife behind his back and looked out into the hallway. Out there, lights had appeared, like the one he¡¯d followed here, but there were so many more them, leading all the way back to the stairs. And moving slowly forwards was a shape wreathed and wrapped in shadow, a tall rake brandished in front of it as it moved forwards with a slow, lopsided gait.


    In the light, the old man could see that the hands emerging from the shadow were not human. They were wrapped in pale, tattered sack cloth that seemed to be only barely staying in one piece as it dragged against the rough, interwoven strands of straw that twined around each other into the shape of the skeletal fingers gripping the rake. All was messy and frayed and old, but somehow holding its shape, holding together as the thing advanced on its prey.


    The old man took a step backwards, flicking his knife out from behind his back. The thing did not stop. He reached the knife back behind his head and waited, poised, for it to inch just a little closer. Close enough for him to be sure he would hit, even through the shadow.


    Just one more step.


    That step came, and he hurled the knife forwards. At least, he would have, but his arm did not move. Something gripped the knife, and as he craned his head back to look, he saw roots and vines reaching up and out from the floor and the walls, grasping, curling up. By the time he thought to pull away, it was too late. They had seized his arm. They had seized his ankles. A vine whipped out and wrapped about his head, sliding across his mouth like a gag, holding him half-twisted around, frozen, listening to the footsteps, to the breaths, to the thunk, thunk, of the rake against the wooden floor.

 House of the Collector - Part 5 (Conclusion)

    The girl was alone, but that did not scare her. Nor did the darkness, or the cold, though it made her shiver, and that made the unlit lantern in her hand swing.


    What scared her was the noise, the sounds of the walls and the floors and the ceilings. When she walked down a flight of stairs, each step creaked beneath her feet, and she could hear a sound like the swaying of a forest of pines in the wind, and that made her wonder if there was wind outside those walls.


    After a while, she decided to try and combat the sounds with ones of her own. She could not speak without her tongue, so she hummed instead, and wondered where that tongue might be. She was certain she¡¯d had it at some point recently, but she also hadn¡¯t been that concerned when she awoke in the forest to find it gone. She couldn¡¯t say why she had not panicked, not screamed, but she hadn¡¯t, and only now was she realising that it was really quite an important thing, and to not have it was actually deeply troubling.


    She was still humming, quite tunelessly, when she walked through a doorway into a room lined with mirrors. Here, it seemed, in a strange way, that the noise of the house was lessened, but she kept humming all the same as she walked up to one of the mirrors and held the lantern up a little higher as though it was lit, then realised that she must have looked very stupid doing so.


    In the mirror, she could see a thin face with pale eyes, light hair hanging to the shoulders on either side. There didn¡¯t seem to be anything particularly remarkable about it, which she found disappointing, so she opened her mouth to see what sort of wound was left in place of her tongue, but it was too dark to make out much. She thought only that there seemed to be a scar of some kind, any details hidden amidst shadow.


    When she turned away, the room had changed.


    Where the rest of the mirrors had once been, the walls were bare, and the end of the room stretched much, much farther away, so far that she couldn¡¯t see the end of it. What she could see was a trail of splotches of some dark, dried liquid, leading away into the darkness. She knew the only thing it could be, and gripped the unlit lantern tighter. It was made of iron, and quite heavy. Maybe she could use it as a weapon if something attacked her.


    Realising she had stopped humming, she started again as she inspected the room, unsure why it made her feel so much safer to be making noise. Resolving never to fall silent again, she began to follow the trail of blood, not because she wanted to, but because that was the only way there was to go.


    The size and length of the room were perhaps the worst thing about it. Some might have been scared by the darkness, but that wasn¡¯t frightening to the girl ¨D certainly, dangerous things could hide in shadow, but most of the time there was nothing to be afraid of, and indeed in some ways it was quite a comforting thing. She couldn¡¯t remember ever having actually seen them, but she was very sure that the bright and flashing lights of the world could be quite draining. Darkness was like a retreat, a cool, unintrusive space to rest and recover.


    Others would have been afraid of the blood trail, or the utter lack of furniture, doors, windows, inhabitants, or anything else of note, and those things did unnerve her a little, but they were not frightening.


    No, the only truly frightening thing was the room¡¯s sheer extent. After what seemed like an hour of walking, humming gently, she found she was constantly glancing back over her shoulder, wondering if she had missed an exit, or some other detail.


    How was it possible for a room to be this long? How was it possible for a blood trail to be this long? Had she really been walking for an hour? Maybe it had been longer. She was starting to get hungry, and thirsty. Had it been many hours? Had it been a day? Was there any end to this place at all?


    Then she came upon a change. A short way ahead of her, a body emerged from darkness. It lay against one of the walls, and its head hung down, and the trail of blood ended at it. Though she had little hope for its survival, the girl ran towards it, still humming, and the sound wavered a little as her anxiety rose and her feet hit the floor, each step jolting through her voice.


    As she grew closer, she realised quite quickly that the body was the younger man, the one from the forest who would never shut up. His face was white, bloodless, and his eyes stared into empty space as blood ran down his lips and chin and onto his clothes, once so well kept. The girl did not look inside his mouth, for she was afraid that she might see that his tongue had been taken, and she did not want to think about what that could mean.


    Instead, she took one step back and looked at him for a little longer, trying to decide if she was really sad about his death or just upset by the fact that someone, anyone, was dead. Then she looked up, and found that the room had changed again. It was not even a room any more ¨D it was just a corridor, with the body lying at the side, and a long, dark space ahead, beckoning.


    When the girl looked back the other way, stairs led up, and she decided to follow those instead. However, she reached the top very quickly, and found that the doorway there was covered by a thick layer of vines, roots, branches, and leaves. Small white flowers were growing along them, newly unfurled, with beads of dew upon their petals. Then she blinked, and the flowers were black, and the beads were of blood, and the blood was not black, but violently, furiously red, and she stepped back and felt her foot meet air as she remembered she was standing on a staircase, and she fell.


    She did not fall far. She collapsed against a flat floor, only really grazing her elbows and bruising herself a little, as the room changed for a third time. This room was square and not very large, which was a welcome change, however nothing else here was at all welcome.


    Recovering somewhat, she resumed her humming, which the fall had cut off, and looked at the crates around her, and the barrels, and the shelves, and the jars on the shelves, and the body parts in the jars, and her eyes froze on one in particular: a tongue.


    She did not know how she knew this, but she knew that the tongue in that jar was her tongue. And she was not at all happy about it being in a jar.


    Scowling at the audacity of whoever it was that owned this house to steal her tongue, she climbed up a somewhat precarious stack of crates, her humming briefly faltering as she carefully balanced herself and reached out for the jar. It was not large; indeed, it fitted into one hand, and she snatched it and began to climb back down the stack.


    It wobbled as she neared the bottom, and right as she touched the floor, one crate fell off the top and hit something soft before thudding against the floor.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    The girl turned around, wondering what she had hit, and saw that it was another corpse, one she had somehow missed entirely in her single-minded determination to retrieve her tongue. She knew the body at a glance, for it was the woman from the forest, and she was missing her ears. Grimacing at the sight, the girl turned away and looked at the two corridors leading out of the room.


    One of them was empty and dark. The other was empty and dark, and had a trail of blood leading into its darkness. Perhaps the girl should have learned not to follow those by now, but she hadn¡¯t.


    It was a much shorter one than the first. The girl barely had time to notice the roots that were grasping towards her through small holes in the wall before she came to the end of the corridor, and the last body.


    She had guessed the identity of this one the moment she saw its slumped shape, but she inspected him to confirm it nonetheless. His long coat was still there, along with his scarf, and his eyes, once only pale, were now also glassy. His hair and beard, a mess, as before. His skin, scarred and white. There were only three things missing: the knife he had carried, and the two hands with which he had carried it.


    She knelt down beside him, barely noticing as her humming began to subside, failing before the oppressive creaks and groans of the wooden walls and ceiling around and above her. Putting the jar and lantern down, she looked at the old man¡¯s face, afraid, frozen, and then past him, to the blank wall here, right at the end of the corridor, the dead end.


    When she glanced away, the room did not change, so she sighed, and looked back. Was this where she was going to die? Was it her turn to meet some awful fate? She wondered why she had to be last, and then thought herself a fool for asking such a pointless question. Chance was chance, she supposed, looking up and down the wall once more.


    And then she stopped, because something caught her eye. Something away down in the corner of the wall. A hole, unoccupied where the others all bore roots. And when she peered at it, she could see a room through it. There seemed to be a table in the middle of the room; the rest she couldn¡¯t make out from the angle.


    There were small chips in the wood around the hole. Knife marks. Her eyes turned to the old man¡¯s body beside her, but his knife was not here.


    There was only one other weapon. She picked up the lantern, pulled it back, and slammed it against the wall. Cracks sprang out from the hole immediately, as part of it broke and bent in the way. The girl grinned at that. It felt devious. It felt like she was breaking the rules, breaking out, and that made her feel strong, and she swung the lantern more vigorously, and a splinter of wood snapped off and flew into the room beyond.


    Only as she reached back for a third swing did she realise she had stopped humming altogether, and the creaking wood was ever so loud, and now there was another sound as well.


    It was the sound of a walking stick. At least, that was what she thought at first, but it was too heavy for that. With a deep breath, she looked over her shoulder, and saw something coming towards her from down the corridor. It wasn¡¯t close yet, but it didn¡¯t need to be. It was cloaked in roiling, misty darkness. A rake came before it, almost as tall as the ceiling, grating against it when lifted with each step. The thing moved slowly, shuffling along, its breath rasping and sighing, at once like the harsh cry of a crow and the soft whisper of wind drifting over a field.


    For a moment, the girl did not move. She feared she might be paralysed, but strength came, and she managed to force the humming back out of her, and it was small and fearful and trembling, but at the sound of it the creaking of the walls lessened, the branches that had been slowly snaking their way towards her recoiled, and the thing in the shadows lurched backwards, before advancing with a low, angry hiss, like a snake.


    The girl did not wait for it to reach her. She slammed she lantern into the wall once more, and more wood broke away. It was not wide, but it was wide enough. She kicked at it a bit as she picked up the jar, then, abandoning the lantern, squeezed through.


    Splinters of wood grazed against her skin and cut her. They were the fingernails of the house, grasping and pulling and trying to stop her from leaving that corridor, but she gritted her teeth pushed through, and emerged standing on the other side, clutching the jar to her chest and breathing heavily. Sweat rolled down her face as she fought back the tears that pain and fear were so infuriatingly trying to force into her eyes.


    Doing her best to ignore the pounding of her heart and the feel of blood beading at the cuts on her skin, she looked around.


    The room was small. There was a table in the middle, with a typewriter atop it. A sheet of paper was in it at that moment, with much written on it, but when the girl peered at it, she found she could not read the script, and was unsure if that was because it was foreign to her, or if she simply could not read at all. She could not ever remember reading.


    In front of the table there was a chair, and beneath and behind it were boxes, filled with more sheets of paper. All those she could see had writing printed on them, but she couldn¡¯t read any of it, so she moved to the door instead. She put her hand on it and pulled, and it was locked.


    With a grunt of frustration, she turned away, put the jar on the table, and began to search through the boxes for a key. She wasn¡¯t sure how likely it was to be there, but there was nothing else to do.


    And then she heard the sound of wood splintering.


    Raising her eyes to the wall where she had emerged, she saw a long hand wrapped in sack cloth and made of interwoven strands of straw reaching through, grasping towards her as more pieces of wood began to splinter away in its wake. Tendrils of mist-like shadow swept from the hole as well, twining about the arm like armour.


    From the other side of the wall, the thing in the shadows was laughing at her. It was a slow laugh. The sound came perhaps once every second, in low, breathy gasps that each seemed to her to be the last sigh of a life that was ending.


    She clenched her teeth and stood up. She could not panic. More of the wall was breaking away every second, but she would escape again. She had escaped before. She looked around. There was a locked door, a typewriter, and boxes with nothing but paper. The heavy lantern was in the corridor. The arm was reaching through, and there was a leg beginning to follow in a way that seemed anatomatically impossible.


    Backing away, she snatched up the jar. She was not humming any more. She did not feel she could. It was like she had lost her voice. Or like it had been stolen. By fear? By the thing behind the wall? She couldn¡¯t know, and she didn¡¯t care. She could only think of one thing to do. She put out a hand, and swept the typewriter off the table.


    When it came against the floor, it shattered, and the thing in the shadows howled. The sound echoed from one side of the room to the other, deafening, and it was actually a hundred sounds in one. The girl could hear pain, anger, mirth, confusion, desperation, pity, what she thought might be sorrow. And she could also hear something else. It was not an emotion she had a name for, but she knew what it meant, so she named it after that: it was the hunt.


    The arm was scrabbling, the leg kicking, the wall creaking in a way that sounded as though it was wailing in pain as it strained to stay whole against the great strength that wanted to break it.


    In the mess that was the typewriter, one flash of metal in particular caught the girl¡¯s eye, and she reached down and picked up an old, long key. Backing away towards the door, she watched as the fingers of the second hand poked through and began feeding the rake to the first.


    She turned and slotted the key into the lock. It fitted. She turned it. It clicked. She snatched it out, glanced back, and ducked as the rake came stabbing towards her. As it thudded against the door, she cried out instinctively, though she had not been hurt.


    As the thing began to pull the rake back for a second strike, the girl reached up and pulled the door open. There was only blackness on the other side, but hesitation was not even a possibility that crossed her mind. She just clutched the jar with her tongue in it close, and ran forwards.


    When she emerged on the other side, somewhere bright and entirely new, she slammed the door shut and turned the key again, and the click of its lock bore such weight and finality, and so powerful was the wash of relief that came over her, that she could not help but collapse in front of the door and cry.

 Devils of the Deep - Part 1

    Sometimes, when Jask gazed out through one of the small, circular reinforced windows and into the deep, dark and faintly blue expanse of water beyond, into the dust and the plankton and the boundless shadows, he would see a flicker of something grey-green in the far distance.


    He had never seen what the devils looked like up close ¨D none who did ever lived to tell of it ¨D but like everyone, he had heard their cries. They came to people of the Ocean in their sleep, those deep dreams where they drifted on great currents and sunk farther into darkness, dreams of cracks opening in the seabed, and of the low mourning wails of the devils, ever out of sight.


    And for all they defined the lives and the fears and the dreams of humanity, there were only three things known for certain of them.


    They were grey-green in colour.


    They were the deadliest predators in the Ocean.


    They did not come near the Sanctuary.


    Whenever Jask saw one of those far off flickers, he would step away from the window, unable to shake the notion that if he looked at them, the devils would notice, and they would see where he was, and for the first time in all of history they would come to the Sanctuary, and that would be the end of humanity, and it would be his fault.


    That shift, he saw three flickers of grey-green in quick succession, like a faint, flashing light, far off through the murk. He thought they looked as though they might be chasing something, though really there was no way to tell. With a suppressed shiver, he turned away from the window and set off once more to where he was supposed to be going.


    Pages did not often go to any of the docking bays. The fact that he and a few of his peers had been called there said one thing for certain: somebody very important was arriving.


    Jask could not say he knew how it was decided who was important and who was not. People sailed in from the Ocean all the time, in battered and broken vessels heavy with the loss of life. No matter how many arrived, there were always more out there, and they had all always been sailing for their entire lives.


    As far as Jask could tell, they all started out much the same. Only, at some point in the Sanctuary¡¯s long, long history, it had been decided that if you were like he was, if you were born nameless, down in the dingy lower decks of an iron shark to parents you never really knew, you would be a servant.


    Anyone else was a guest. In fact, most people were guests, and Jask was never quite sure how. His memories from the iron shark he had arrived on were hazy, but he was sure there had been many, many more people from the lower decks than the upper. Nonetheless, here in the Sanctuary, somehow, the guests outnumbered their servants ten to one.


    It was not simply a guest that was coming, though. There was only one class of person whose arrival was met by a retinue of pages, whose coming riled up so much gossip as was buzzing around the metal halls of the Sanctuary while Jask hurried down towards the docking bay.


    Nobles only came in perhaps once every hundred or so shifts. They were the rare people with more than just one name. They came from great families, houses, they were called, with lineages stretching back thousands of years, and impressive claims to fame through the exploits of their ancestors in the time before the devils came.


    Or so it was said. Jask wasn¡¯t convinced there had been such a time.


    The docking bays were huge. They protruded out from the sides of the Sanctuary in vast iron hallways, two hundred metres long, fifty wide and fifty tall, each with upwards of a hundred berths to its name, and they were always bustling with new arrivals.


    As one of those arrivals, Jask had been terrified he would lose track of his group in the chaos, but over the years of working in the Sanctuary, he had grown accustomed it and could navigate his way through the throng with ease. It helped that every berth had its number nailed above it in red metal lettering.


    The rest of the pages were already there and lined up, along with several guards, that sector¡¯s majordomo, and one or two of her delegates. None of the important people noticed as Jask slipped onto the end of the line and stood to, hands clasped behind his back. By a stroke of bad luck, though, the page who had until that moment been at the end of the line was one he knew.


    Pellad was a couple of years older than Jask and always acted as if he was somehow a higher rank because of it. So as Jask arrived, Pellad shot him a stern glance and murmured, ¡®You can¡¯t even be on time for a noble. You¡¯re lucky we didn¡¯t get counted.¡¯


    Jask didn¡¯t reply. He wasn¡¯t really lucky. Pages were rarely counted for something like this. As long as it wasn¡¯t obvious there was anyone missing, it didn¡¯t seem to bother the higher-ups too much if someone was. But he didn¡¯t say any of that, because Pellad had a knack for winning arguments even when he was wrong, usually through the use of words he¡¯d learnt from eavesdropping on nobles, and which Jask didn¡¯t know the meaning of.


    It was only a few minutes after Jask¡¯s arrival that the noble¡¯s vessel docked. Peering around the line a little, as subtly as he could, Jask was able to watch as the water in the berth rippled and sloshed onto the platform, displaced by the movement of the ship floating in from the ocean outside.


    It wasn¡¯t possible to see much in the darkness of that water, but from the length of time it took for the chains to find purchase on the vessel¡¯s hull, and the clanking and screeching complaint with which the exit shaft rose to rest against the side of the berth, Jask could tell there was heavy damage. There usually was; few ships escaped devil territory unscathed.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    It was obvious who the noble was when she emerged, though she wasn¡¯t the first person to step onto the berth, instead coming in the wake of a number of well-dressed but shaken-looking servants who all trailed past without getting so much as a glance from the majordomo. Jask recognised their expressions right away. Their eyes were wide and gazed at nothing, their mouths downturned, their hair and clothes a mess, and their skin stained with dirt, sweat and blood.


    The noble was a stark contrast. She wore a long red dress and a silver tiara, with a fur-trimmed mantle draped around her shoulders, and walked in a stately manner with her head held high as though nothing was remotely wrong. In one white-gloved hand, she carried a black suitcase, which Jask thought was strange, because servants usually carried luggage. Nonetheless, she carried it, and it seemed to him that her grip was very tight.


    She walked up to the majordomo and gave a very slight dip of the head, reciprocated with a deep, flourishing bow and a whirlwind of eloquent language welcoming her to the Sanctuary. Jask tried to listen, but it was too fast and too posh for him to grasp much of it.


    All he caught was a quiet remark from the noble. ¡®Yes, I said swarm.¡¯


    He decided it was probably for the better that he didn¡¯t hear anything else. It was technically against the law for servants to listen into the conversations of guests and higher-ups, and sometimes having knowledge that wasn¡¯t meant for you could land you in deep, deep trouble.


    Soon, however, the majordomo, her delegates and the noble were all striding off, deep in conversation, and as more servants emerged from the ship, it transpired that there was a great deal of luggage besides that strange black suitcase. Jask found himself saddled with two larger, lighter-coloured suitcases, which managed to be even heavier than they looked.


    As always, security somehow knew exactly where all the luggage was to be taken. Two guards led the way and two more brought up the rear to ensure no one tried to steal anything, which no one ever did. Jask ended up walking near the middle of the group, a few paces behind Pellad, who had succeeded in avoiding any heavy luggage of his own and was only carrying a couple of quite small bags.


    Beside Jask was someone else he knew. Kara was about a year older than him and always looked extremely tired with the world. In carrying three black boxes of varying sizes all stacked atop one another, with ¡®FRAGILE¡¯ written on the sides of them in a hideous font, she looked even more so than usual.


    As lifts were meant only for guests and higher-ups, they took the stairs. Everyone was tired by the time they made it up to the noble¡¯s new quarters. Jask¡¯s arms were tired; Kara¡¯s face was tired; and even Pellad seemed to be out of breath. Around them, all the pages were much the same, and everyone was quite relieved to be able to put the luggage the room they were directed to, then leave.


    On the way back out, the noble was there again, talking with the majordomo. As Jask walked past, he caught another snippet of conversation, ¡®Yes, we got hit by a whirler just before that. I thought we had been swept off course, but there was the beacon, still right ahead. Lucky escape, if you ask me.¡¯


    The majordomo reached out, tapped one of the guards on the shoulder, and said something to them in a hushed voice. Jask glanced back to try and catch a little more of the conversation, but a glower from Pellad made him look forwards again.


    Soon after that, he forgot about the noble. As a page, there was always more work to be done, more duties needing filled, and Jask¡¯s mind tended to wander from one topic to the next quite quickly. It was the same that shift, as he, Pellad, Kara and the others all returned to the jobs they had left. For most of them, that meant acting as waiters for a party three decks down.


    The guests were always having parties. Jask supposed that was what people who didn¡¯t have to do anything ended up doing. They stood around and drank wine and talked and nibbled and gambled. Somewhere in the Sanctuary, there was always a party going on ¨D and Jask, for one, relished the opportunity to serve at one.


    No one really noticed the servants at such events. Most of the time, Jask could have been a table and he would not have been treated any differently. People spoke near him, but rarely to him; they only seemed to realise he was there when they needed their drink refilled or a dropped glass cleaned up. The rest of the time he could wander around with a tray in one hand and listen in on whatever conversations he fancied.


    And for a while after he and the other pages had returned to their positions in one of those vast ballrooms lined with huge windows looking out into the deep ocean, it was the same as ever.


    He stood by and listened to the careless talk of the guests, and found that much of the chatter was about the noble who had arrived. He discovered that her name was The Third Lady Silvon of the Noble House of Paravir, which he thought was much too long for a name, and he said so in a hushed voice to Kara, who agreed.


    After a while, things started to change. It began with a couple more guests arriving, wearing worried expressions and hushed words that Jask couldn¡¯t hear properly. He got the sense, though, that they were talking about the Third Lady Silvon as well.


    What he did not like was the way their unease spread, and as it spread, how the guests began to become aware of the volume of their voices. They began to whisper to one another and cover their mouths so they could not have their lips read, although Jask wouldn¡¯t have known how to do that. They also began to notice the pages. They glanced at those who passed them by, and stopped talking until they were out of earshot again, and Jask suddenly felt as though he was being watched by one person or another at every second.


    Hurrying across the room to where Kara stood by one of the small doors that only the servants ever used, her tray of wine glasses half empty, he found that she seemed more awake than she ever had. Her eyes were flicking about the room with the sort of sudden liveliness one only feels when one is frightened and does not quite know why.


    ¡®I don¡¯t like it,¡¯ she murmured when Jask reached her.


    He nodded his agreement. This had never happened before. It was an entirely new thing in a world where new things did not happen. Every happening on the Sanctuary was recycled, like a vessel repaired and given a fresh coat of paint. No event was forged fresh. Until now.


    On the other side of the room, the main double door opened before the majordomo, who strode in flanked by two delegates and four guards. She looked about, cleared her throat, and declared, in a loud voice, ¡®If all pages would please come with me. We have received word that an individual of unprecedented importance is expected to arrive soon. The welcome retinue must be like no other.¡¯


    Jask hesitated at first, but disobeying an order from the majordomo was not something you did, so he complied. Or he would have done, but as all the rest of the pages discarded their trays and began making haste across the ballroom, something seized Jask¡¯s arm pulled him backwards, through the doorway and out into one of the service corridors of the Sanctuary.

 Devils of the Deep - Part 2

    As the door slammed in front of him, Jask turned around to look at Kara. Her face was tense, her eyes narrowed, and her grip on his arm tight.


    ¡®What was that for?¡¯ he asked.


    Kara pulled him further away, down the mercifully empty service corridor. ¡®Are you blind? Did you look at her belt?¡¯


    ¡®The majordomo¡¯s?¡¯


    ¡®Yes, who else? She had a gun, Jask. When have you ever seen anyone excepts the guards carrying a gun?¡¯


    He frowned, then replied, ¡®Never.¡¯


    ¡®Exactly.¡¯ Kara tugged at his arm again. ¡®Will you move?¡¯


    At her insistence, he began following her along the service corridor, though where they were going he could not begin to guess.


    ¡®There¡¯s something going on,¡¯ she said as they walked, ¡®and I don¡¯t trust it. Think about it for a moment. What doesn¡¯t add up?¡¯


    Jask thought about it for a few moments. Kara had always been a quicker thinker than him, but even still, it didn¡¯t take long for him to work out what she was hinting at.


    ¡®We knew about the Third Lady days ago,¡¯ he realised aloud.


    ¡®So?¡¯ Kara pressed.


    ¡®Why are we only finding about this person just now?¡¯


    ¡®Exactly. And why is the majordomo armed?¡¯ She glanced around, prompting Jask to do the same. ¡®And just look at this. These corridors should be full of servants. Where is everyone? How big could a welcome retinue possibly need to be?¡¯


    ¡®So...¡¯ He shook his head. ¡®I don¡¯t get it. What¡¯s going on?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know,¡¯ she replied, ¡®but I don¡¯t trust it.¡¯


    ¡®Where are we going, then?¡¯


    She shrugged. ¡®Somewhere away from wherever the majordomo wants us to be. She wouldn¡¯t need a gun if it was safe.¡¯


    They walked for a while, in silence. At first Jask tried to work out what was going on, but he soon gave up. Working things out was such a new thing, and he didn¡¯t think he was very good at it. All he could tell was that he felt very strange and just a little frightened. The change to the world had been so quick, he felt he had almost missed it. Nothing seemed to have happened and yet everything was different. The service corridors were empty, he and Kara were hiding away from the higher-ups, he was scared and couldn¡¯t tell why ¨D it was all just wrong.


    After a while, they arrived at a small sitting room, one of the poorly-furnished, half-maintained ones given to the servants so they could pretend they were cared for. It had three small circular windows with thick glass, and a few clusters of old chairs and tables, and it was as empty as all the service corridors they had passed through on their way to it.


    In one corner, a tall, polished piece of metal acted as a mirror, and Jask looked into it for a moment, first at himself, his dark hair, the darker eyes, those protruding ears guests occasionally mocked him for. But then he looked at the uniform he was wearing instead. The simple page¡¯s uniform: a black waistcoat over a white shirt, with smart trousers and shiny shoes, both black.


    Everyone had a uniform in the Sanctuary. Servants and security and higher-ups all had theirs, unchanging, banners of their station, of rank and with it designation and purpose; the purpose to their existence, as the Sanctuary would have it. And the guests had theirs. Vibrant, diverse, fluctuating yet so very telling. You couldn¡¯t look at a guest and see every aspect of them that mattered in that single glance, but you could look at two guests and see immediately which one of them was more important.


    With a sigh, Jask walked over to one of the old chairs and sat down, crossing his arms. He was beginning to think it had been a mistake following Kara. She had spooked him with her urgency and her talk of guns and mistrust and hiding, but maybe that was all it had been ¨D a spook. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe it really was someone so important they needed all those servants. Maybe all the guests had just been whispering because they knew that too. Maybe the gun was ceremonial, or a change of protocol, or just something Kara and Jask didn¡¯t know about. They were only servants, after all. Why should they know anything?


    ¡®How would we know?¡¯ he asked, suddenly, sitting up straight. ¡®When it¡¯s over?¡¯


    Kara furrowed her brow. ¡®I didn¡¯t think that far ahead. I suppose we¡¯ll hear people outside. Or we¡¯ll get a shift change.¡¯ She put a finger on the glowing green face of the timepiece strapped about her wrist.


    Jask looked down at his as well. Shifts were twelve hours, and the timepieces beeped when they changed. They could beep for other things, too, rare things like year-end ceremonies and whatnot, but usually it was just a reminder that another twelve hours had flown by, lost to the same ever-growing past as all the others.


    Again, Jask wondered if they had overreacted, and his eyes sailed to the windows.


    Outside them, something flickered.


    A dark shape flitted past, across all three, in a flash. Kara, looking the other way, did not appear to have noticed it, but Jask stared. Could he have imagined it? All this had certainly set him on edge; maybe it had just been a totally innocuous shadow, or even nothing at all, just a tiny, fleeting hallucination.


    Then it came again.


    And then another, farther away from the windows. Far enough away that it didn¡¯t blot everything else out, that it wasn¡¯t a shadow, that it was in sight for more than just a fraction of a second, for long enough for Jask to recognise the unmistakable grey-green flicker of the devils.


    ¡®Oh no,¡¯ he said, the words escaping unbidden. He heard them almost as if they belonged to someone else, and that let him hear just how tiny and frightened they were, and he thought of them a little like how everyone always was in their dreams¡­ floating in the ocean, surrounded by the wailing of the devils, above a deep chasm.


    Kara was staring at him. ¡®What is it?¡¯


    As she turned to look at the window, more devils sailed past. More and more, rising to ten, then another ten, and Jask quickly lost count. With each one he saw more of their forms. There were tentacles trailing away behind them, fins at their sides, eyes at the front, three that he could see but maybe more, and gills and scales, and arms like an octopus¡¯s, reaching forwards, and their whole bodies rippled like waves as they moved.


    ¡®Oh no,¡¯ Jask said again, for he could not think of anything else to say.


    ¡®They¡¯re close,¡¯ Kara whispered. ¡®Right outside. How can they be right outside? They don¡¯t come this close.¡¯ She took a step back, away from the windows. ¡®This isn¡¯t right. What¡¯s happening?¡¯This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Jask shook his head at nothing, or maybe at everything. ¡®Do you think, maybe¡­ Maybe the gun was for a good reason? Maybe they were trying to protect everyone¡­ Maybe they didn¡¯t tell us anything because they didn¡¯t want us to¨D¡¯


    Something impacted the Sanctuary.


    The sound came from below, a cacophonous crack and a great rumbling. The vibrations hit at the same moment, and the whole room began to shake violently, hurling Jask and Kara from their feet. They slammed against the walls and then flew back the other way, crashing through furniture until they landed near the door, and as Jask scrambled to his feet again, he realised the shaking had already stopped.


    That was when the alarms started.


    Jask had never heard the alarms before. He hadn¡¯t even known that Sanctuary had alarms. But there they were, blaring from the ceiling, loud and harsh.


    Neither of them needed to say anything. They both started running, with one place in mind ¨D the assembly station. There were assembly stations all throughout the Sanctuary, dozens to each deck, but it was so huge that the distance from where they were then was still great.


    Jask was the faster runner, but he hung back. Kara had landed badly during the shaking, or maybe been hit by something, and she was limping along with a wince for every step, wobbling as though she could fall at any moment, so he heaved her arm around his shoulder and helped her forwards.


    With every second that passed, the alarms seemed to be growing louder. He knew they weren¡¯t, but his mind kept telling him otherwise nonetheless, again and again, to the point where he almost believed it.


    As they neared the assembly point, they finally began to see people in the corridors again. Other servants ran past, pages and engineers and cooks and countless other purposes told of in their uniforms, each one sprinting, frightened, none of them hesitating for a second as they passed Jask and Kara. Not even for a moment did any of them consider helping.


    When they finally stumbled through the heavy doors and into the circular chamber of the assembly point, it was thick with people of all ranks. Servants, guests noble or not, and higher-ups all alike were standing around shouting at each other, desperately trying to work out what was going on. Jask heard someone yell that there was a leak down below, someone else reply that there had been an act of treachery from inside the Sanctuary, and a third person scream that the devils were inside.


    The sound of a gunshot silenced everyone. Over the heads of the crowd, towards the middle of the room, Jask could see that a guard had climbed on top of something and was holding his gun up in the air. An insignia on his shoulder declared him a captain.


    ¡®Everybody calm down,¡¯ he said, his voice loud and clear. ¡®These rooms are the safest on the Sanctuary.¡¯


    ¡®Where is the majordomo?¡¯ someone shouted.


    The captain hesitated. ¡®The majordomo¡­ is establishing the situation. She will be with us presently. We will remain here until we receive orders otherwise. My men have sealed the doors. Nothing can get in unless we let it.¡¯


    ¡®Does that mean the devils are inside?¡¯ came another voice.


    ¡®No.¡¯ The captain turned to face that direction. ¡®We don¡¯t have all the facts right now, but I very much doubt that¡¯s the case. For now, I just want everyone to remain calm. We will all be fine.¡¯


    By that point, however, Jask was sure most people had stopped listening. They were all talking to each other, murmuring quietly at first, but the volume was slowly growing. Many were arguing, some were just talking, a few were crying, and all had gone pale and wide-eyed.


    Jask turned to say something to Kara, but instead his eye was caught by a flash of light a few metres away. It was the lock on one of the doors, he realised. Sparking. Little spatters of electricity burst out from it, scattering through the air like tiny bright stars blazing into life for just an instant before fading out again.


    As he looked at it, Jask reached out a hand and tapped Kara on the shoulder, nodding in its direction. In the seconds it took for her to turn, he felt that the sparking had intensified. And then it came ¨D the sound. A sound everyone there had heard before, in their dreams, those nightmares.


    It was low, drawn out, half-human. A wail, a terrible deep keening. The cry of a devil.


    Someone screamed, and then there was chaos.


    People started running in every direction, except there were too many people and no directions to run in, so everyone was jostled about and shoved into one another. Jask found himself pressed up against a wall in an attempt to avoid it, while in the middle, the captain was yelling that the assembly points were impenetrable, but no one was listening.


    Somehow, in the midst of it all, Jask lost track of Kara. One moment she was there; the next, she had vanished into the panic.


    By some measure, it seemed like hours passed, even though it was really only seconds. Then a great burst of sparks and electricity crackled out from the door and it creaked and cracked and bent in the way, and two long arms slithered through the newmade gap.


    On the other side of the room, some of the guards had managed to force open one of the other doors, and people had begun funnelling out of the assembly point, many stumbling over one other and driving the people in front of them into the ground in their haste to escape.


    Jask followed around the edge of the chamber so that he would not be caught in the stampede, keeping careful eyes on the arms as they forced the door open further.


    Somehow, he was finding a strange fascination in watching as more of them poked through, as the doors bent back, and as more of the devil became visible. He saw the forefront of its head and discovered that, seen in full, it had no less than seven eyes, all black and glistening. He saw also that its scales seemed to cover the entirety of its main body, but did not extend to its arms. He wondered briefly how difficult it would be to kill.


    Then he stepped through the door and the spell broke, and he was running. He could hear the thing still wailing, and he heard screams and supposed that someone had been left behind, and hoped with all his heart that it had not been Kara.


    Some way down the corridor there was a line of guards. They stood with their guns raised, and so fearsome did they look that when Jask came around the corner to face them he skidded to a halt, briefly petrified.


    ¡®Hold your fire!¡¯ shouted a voice he recognised as the captain. ¡®Get behind us, page!¡¯


    Jask did not need to be told twice. He sprinted between the guards, pursued by the cries of the devils as they echoed down the corridor, from wall to wall, rising in volume. Everyone else was running away, heading for another assembly point, for the next deck, maybe even for escape pods, as if that would do any good, but Jask stopped and turned back.


    Arms lashed around the corner, curling around doorhandles, the lights on the ceiling, anything that gave them a grip, and they pulled with them a devil, surging forwards at such speed it couldn¡¯t turn fast enough and slammed into the wall. That didn¡¯t seem to do much other than disorientate for a moment, but a moment was all the guards needed.


    ¡®Open fire!¡¯ cried the captain.


    Jask clamped his hands over his ears as the corridor filled with the deafening sound of rapid gunfire. He watched, frozen, as bullets ricocheted off the devil¡¯s scales. Some found purchase in its arms or in the tentacles trailing behind it, the few soft parts of its body, and those parts bled green blood, but the devil did not seem to care.


    It pulled itself along the corridor faster than anyone could have run, though none of the guards were running. Landing in front of one, it reared up, revealing a soft underbelly. He tried to fire, but his gun only clicked, empty.


    As he reached for another magazine, Jask, staring from behind him, saw two thin, intersecting lines, like a cross, on the underbelly of the devil. They widened, slow at first, then fast, as four flaps peeled back to reveal a deep, vacuous mouth filled with concentric rows of teeth. The guard stared up at it for a moment, and he did not make a sound even as the devil¡¯s tentacles lashed forwards and wrapped around him, and as its mouth descended over his head.


    Confused as to why none of the other guards were firing at it, Jask looked to them and saw they were firing at something else instead. There were more devils coming down the corridor. Their wails filled the air, louder than the gunfire, as Jask turned and ran.


    He knew he wouldn¡¯t make it far. The devils were faster than he was. The guns did nothing. There were surely more of them than the guards. He was going to die, right there, right then.


    To the left there was an open door. He turned through it into a small room and came to a stumbling halt, staring at the two guests who were crouched behind a table in there.


    ¡®Leave us, page!¡¯ snapped one of them.


    But Jask didn¡¯t leave, because someone arrived behind him. Spinning around, he came face to face with the captain from before, who slammed a fist into the button beside the door with a wordless yell.


    As the door was sliding shut, an arm slid through and wrapped itself around the captain¡¯s waist. He dropped his gun as it pulled him backwards into the door, which was only just open enough for the arm itself to fit through; a gap much too small for the captain, and yet it was still pulling on him as he fought against it to no avail.


    Jask didn¡¯t bother thinking. He did the only thing there was to do. He grabbed the gun, held it in two shaking hands, aimed it, and fired.

 Devils of the Deep - Part 3

    The wail of the devil turned into a hiss for a moment, as the bullet tore into the arm, letting green blood spill out and drip to the floor. It wasn¡¯t enough. Jask fired again, the second bullet impacting the arm just to the left of the first. The devil hissed once more, then relaxed its grip and withdrew the arm with an awful slithering sound.


    The door slammed shut.


    Breathing heavily, the captain grabbed a key card from his pocket and waved it over the panel beside the door. Somewhere in the walls of the room, metal shifted and clanked, and the panel beeped.


    ¡®Locked,¡¯ the captain said softly.


    ¡®That didn¡¯t do us much good last time,¡¯ one of the guests said, clambering to his feet. He was the one who had spoken before.


    His companion stood as well, glowering at Jask for some reason.


    Turning to them, the captain inclined his head. ¡®Less of us this time, though, and that one knows we have some bite. Maybe it¡¯ll just move on.¡¯


    He paused, raising a finger for silence, and they listened as the sounds of a slithering creature moved slowly along the wall, then away, its wails fading into the distance as it followed its companions.


    ¡®See?¡¯ said the captain. He turned to Jask. ¡®Good work, lad. I probably would¡¯ve been dead if you hadn¡¯t scared that thing off.¡¯


    Suddenly remembering his etiquette, Jask clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head a little. ¡®Happy to help, sir.¡¯


    The captain just snorted. ¡®At ease. No point to all that formality right now. My name¡¯s Havok. Yours?¡¯


    ¡®Delta 5-721, sir.¡¯


    ¡®No, not your designation, your name.¡¯


    Jask looked at him for a moment. ¡®Uh¡­ we don¡¯t get names, sir.¡¯


    ¡®No, I¡¯m aware of that.¡¯ He took a step forwards and raised an eyebrow. ¡®But I know you all give yourselves ones anyway. So come on, what¡¯s yours?¡¯


    ¡®Um, Jask, sir.¡¯


    ¡®Nice to meet you, Jask.¡¯ He patted Jask on the shoulder, took his gun back, and stepped away again. ¡®We¡¯re a small unit in an unprecedented situation. Team coherence is essential if we¡¯re to survive, and knowing each other starts with a name. What about you two?¡¯


    The guest who¡¯d spoken before drew himself up to his full, mediocre height. ¡®Feriandor. My wife here is Arivelle. Before you say it¡¯s nice to meet us too, Captain Havok, I¡¯d like to know something. You said earlier that the majordomo was ¡°establishing the situation¡±. Tell me, is she dead, and did you know?¡¯


    Havok was quiet for a moment, with his head tilted. ¡®I didn¡¯t know where she was. I lied to try and keep everyone calm. I have no idea if she is still alive.¡¯


    ¡®Can¡¯t you radio?¡¯


    ¡®That would be with the radio I dropped outside.¡¯


    Feriandor threw his hands up. ¡®Well, you are helpful!¡¯


    ¡®I needed both hands to pull Endal from the jaws of a devil.¡¯ Havok didn¡¯t look angry with the guest. He just looked. There was no expression on his face. ¡®I managed it, but another one just grabbed him. I shot one of those things in the mouth and all it did was recoil. I imagine it¡¯s still alive.¡¯


    ¡®Are we stuck here?¡¯ Arivelle wanted to know.


    ¡®No, not really. We could go outside, but if there are any lurking out there, we¡¯ll die.¡¯


    ¡®Well,¡¯ sighed Feriandor, quite violently. He paced around the room for a while, clicking his tongue. ¡®What if we give them him?¡¯ He jerked his head at Jask.


    Jask opened his mouth, but Havok spoke first.


    ¡®No, no, no. Won¡¯t work. This lot are different. Never heard of a swarm this size. They followed the ship the Third Lady Silvon Paravir came on.¡¯ He shook his head. ¡®We tried to scramble some bait together, but it was too late and too little. This lot aren¡¯t here for that. I don¡¯t think they even know about it. They want the whole Sanctuary.¡¯


    ¡®So what do we do?¡¯ Feriandor demanded.


    ¡®Don¡¯t know,¡¯ Havok replied. ¡®Working on it.¡¯


    After that, the two guests retreated to the other side of the room to talk in hushed voices, and Jask nervously approached Havok and cleared his throat.


    ¡®Excuse me, sir.¡¯


    ¡®Yes, what?¡¯ Havok turned to him. ¡®I¡¯m trying to think of a way out.¡¯


    ¡®Sorry, sir. But, what did he mean? He said ¡°give them¡± me.¡¯


    For a few moments, Havok just looked at him. His eyes were soft and hard at the same time, as if behind them there was a conflict between two souls, one the uniform, the other the man who wore it. Eventually, he licked his lips and said, ¡®How many times have you been to the docks?¡¯Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    ¡®Not many,¡¯ said Jask.


    ¡®When you have been there, what have you seen?¡¯


    He shrugged. ¡®People. Ships. Mostly people. Lots of them.¡¯


    ¡®Thousands,¡¯ Havok agreed. ¡®But what rank? What rank would you say you¡¯ve seen the most?¡¯


    Jask frowned and tried to think back. Barring a few exceptions like the Third Lady, the ranks always arrived muddled, servants and guests alike disembarking as one confused, mixed group, all equally scared and all equally relieved, but as Jask thought harder and remembered more, he was quite sure he had seen far more of the grimy faces and ragged clothes of people like him, born to the lower decks, to no name.


    ¡®Servants,¡¯ he replied. ¡®Mostly they¡¯re servants.¡¯


    Havok nodded, slowly, and waited.


    ¡®Oh. But guests outnumber the servants ten to one.¡¯


    ¡®They do.¡¯


    Jask realised. His eyes widened. He raised his hand to cover his mouth.


    ¡®Delta 5-721, wasn¡¯t it?¡¯ Havok asked.


    Jask nodded.


    ¡®Numbers are easier to forget.¡¯


    Backing away, Jask came against the wall. This was what the majordomo had been doing back in that ballroom. Kara had been right to take them away. And all those who had stayed, who had gone with the majordomo, from the best of them to the worst, they had all had names of their own, but not ones the Sanctuary recognised. To the law they had all been numbers, disposable, forgettable.


    ¡®You said¡­ too late and too little.¡¯


    Havok shook his head. ¡®I know what you¡¯re hoping. I¡¯m sorry, lad. The devils near the Sanctuary understand. They know if they don¡¯t attack, they get a steady food supply. We thought¡­ a bigger swarm just needed a bigger sacrifice. We were wrong, but we only found that out when the swarm ignored the bodies.¡¯


    ¡®They weren¡¯t bodies,¡¯ Jask whispered. ¡®They were people. One of them was called Pellad. Delta 5-683. I knew him.¡¯


    ¡®We tried.¡¯


    ¡®You killed. You killed us. For how long?¡¯


    Havok¡¯s mouth trembled a little, and he turned away. ¡®It was for the good of the Sanctuary. It worked, for so many years. The sacrifice worked, and the devils left the Sanctuary alone, and humanity endured. The people of the Ocean are only alive today because of the sacrifice.¡¯


    ¡®How long?¡¯ Jask repeated.


    There was a short silence. ¡®Delta 5-721. The last digits are the number of servants registered before you during the year you arrived. The digit before the dash is that year. And ¡°Delta¡± is the name of the millennium that year belongs to.¡¯ He turned back, staring with empty eyes. ¡®This is Millennium Delta. The fourth since the founding of the Sanctuary, according to the Seneschal¡¯s history. Four thousand years.¡¯


    Jask said nothing. He couldn¡¯t think of anything to say. What was there? What could he argue? Four thousand years of death, and all of it leading to what? He looked around the room, at Arivelle and Feriandor, still muttering to one another, at the door, still locked, and at Havok, gazing at him with those dead eyes.


    ¡®Don¡¯t people notice?¡¯


    ¡®The guests know,¡¯ Havok replied. ¡®But today was an emergency. Normally the sacrifices are taken before they register... and we take whole ships, so no one you know would ever go missing.¡¯


    Jask opened his mouth to say more, but they were interrupted by Feriandor¡¯s voice from across the room.


    ¡®We have to leave,¡¯ he declared. ¡®If we stay here, we¡¯re sitting ducks if another one of those things come along. Better chance if we can run.¡¯


    Havok nodded, his eyes not leaving Jask¡¯s face. ¡®Agreed. Let¡¯s go.¡¯


    No one spoke as Havok unlocked the door with his key card. They stepped outside as quietly as they could, then stopped. Jask, the last of them, was still in the doorway and had to peer around the others to see what they had seen.


    What they had seen were devils. There were three of them, but all were unmoving. At least, Jask thought they were unmoving at first, but when he listened, he realised he could hear a quiet, wet crunching, and when he looked at them more closely, he realised that they were wrapped around other things. From underneath them, from the underbellies, where the mouths were, he saw legs, clad in the uniforms of the guards.


    As they fed, the devils did not appear to move or be particularly concerned with anything that was going on around them. Part of Jask wondered if they even realised there was anyone there, but another part of him silently acknowledged that each and every one¡¯s seven eyes were locked on him and his companions.


    It was at that moment, amidst the terrible quiet of that corridor, that something wailed. It was a mournful cry he knew, the hunting cry of a devil. Someone shouted something, and Jask jumped sideways and forwards, tumbling down next to one of the feeding devils, landing in amongst its arms. For a single moment he froze, his heart racing, certain that the arms would wrap around him and hold him there, and he would be the next meal.


    But they didn¡¯t. He managed to push himself up with the wall. He looked ahead, down the corridor, and froze again.


    Havok, Feriandor and Arivelle had all jumped in the other direction from him, and between him and them was the devil that had wailed. Its momentum had carried it through the doorway and into the room they¡¯d just left, but now it was crawling back out, reorientating itself, its eyes moving back and forth between Jask and the other three.


    ¡®Jask!¡¯ Havok shouted, drawing his gun. ¡®Run!¡¯


    Jask ran. He ran as fast as he could, which he knew was not fast enough to escape the devil, so as he ran he prayed that it would chase the others instead, and he hated himself for doing so, because he supposed that was exactly what the Sanctuary had been doing for four thousand years ¨D hoping that the devils would kill someone else first.


    It worked, as it had worked for all those years.


    He stumbled to a halt some distance away, having made many turns through many corridors and run past many more feeding devils. Breathless, he stood amongst them and listened, not to the sounds they made, but for wailing, or for screaming. He could not tell whether the fact that he heard none was a relief, it it was something to be afraid of, or if it was something to be ashamed of.


    But he knew there was one thing he had to do. He had to keep walking. Maybe he was doomed, maybe the Sanctuary was doomed, and if it was, then maybe humanity was doomed with it, but there was one thing that he knew for certain, and that was that he did not want to die. So he kept walking, and he kept finding feeding devils. Some were almost finished; others had only just started. All ignored him, engrossed in the meals they had at hand.


    He did his best to ignore them as well, until he came to one that he could not. It was in a corridor like any other, although it was on its own. There were no corpses and no other devils nearby, nor any other wandering people like the very few he had passed by, who had not wanted to speak to him or know him or help him. This was one was far on the edge of the chaos, alone.


    It was consuming its victim from the head down, slowly inching its way along her body, and it was about halfway done. That meant that when Jask glanced at it as he went past, unable to resist the temptation, he glanced a second time, then stopped and stared at it, into a pale dead face that he recognised. Into clever yet tired blue eyes he knew well, only they were glassy and unseeing, and none of that personality was behind them any more.


    Kara was looking at nothing.

 Devils of the Deep - Part 4 (Conclusion)

    Jask stared at his dead friend for a few seconds. Eventually, he asked, ¡®Why are you there?¡¯


    Kara did not reply.


    It didn¡¯t make sense.


    Kara was clever. Kara had spotted that something had been wrong when the majordomo came to collect what Jask now knew had been sacrifices. She had saved his life. She had taken him away somewhere safe where they hadn¡¯t been gathered up, and they hadn¡¯t been sacrificed. She had always been cleverer. Jask was only alive because of her. So what was she doing there? Why was she the one being eaten, and he the one watching it happen?


    It just didn¡¯t make sense.


    After about a minute he walked away. The devils ate slowly, but it wasn¡¯t a good idea to stay in one place. As he wandered, Jask thought about what he was going to do next. He couldn¡¯t stay walking about aimlessly on one level ¨D that would only lead him into the jaws of the devils in the end. He had to find some way to go up.


    Up was where the nobles lived, and where the higher-ups lived. Right at the very top was where the Seneschal lived, and the Seneschal would know how to fix everything, because they were in charge. They were in control.


    Jask found a lift very quickly, but it wouldn¡¯t respond to him because he was only a page, so he walked about some more until he found a dead guard. Their key card was in their pocket. He went back to the lift with it and swiped it over the panel beside the doors. They slid open and he stepped into the lift and pressed the top button.


    The doors slid shut, an up arrow appeared on the interior panel, and the lift dropped like a stone as sparks flew from the ceiling and the panel and the doors. Jask crouched down in the corner and put his arms up over his head in defence, and the lift kept falling.


    In those moments, he supposed it would have made sense to scream. That was usually what people did when they were scared. He was inside a lift that was falling towards the lower decks of the Sanctuary, the direction that the crashing sound had come from, the sound that he knew had been the devils getting in. Those decks would be filled with water, and if not, they would be filled with devils. He would be caught and eaten, if he didn¡¯t drown first.


    That was the sort of moment when people screamed. Not for help, because everyone who had ever been in that kind of moment knew that help was not coming, that help could not come. In that moment, people screamed simply because they did not want to go quietly. But Jask thought then that it really made no difference how he went.


    When the lift hit the bottom of its shaft, everything rumbled, Jask flew into the air, and the lights went out.


    The next thing he knew, he had a sore head and everything was blurry, but there were lights, and they were flickering. It took him a while to get his bearings and get back on to his feet, and when he did stand it was in a shaky manner. Trying his best to overcome that, he stepped out the lift.


    Beyond it was where the flickering lights were. They were white, dim and broken. Every few seconds one would come on and shine down from the ceiling with a weak sort of light, as though its heart wasn¡¯t really in it but the power to it meant it didn¡¯t have a choice. It would buzz while it was on. Then there would be the sound of something sparking, it would flicker, and eventually it would switch off, finally giving up.


    It took Jask longer than it should have to realise that he was not on the engine deck. That was strange. He had always thought the engine deck was the lowest ¨D it was shown that way on the maps. But here was something else. The humming of the engines was definitely there, but it was up above, faint, and though this place was warm, it was not as hot as he would have expected. The walls were not running with pipes and cables, either. Instead, they were smooth, polished, reflective, and black, like those on the upper decks.


    There were doors, too, and they looked much the same. When he tried to open them, he found most were locked, but some were not. Behind those, he found rooms filled with desks and computers, and no one was at any of those desks, and none of the computers were on. Many were broken.


    Jask walked around a few of the rooms to look at them more closely, but he found nothing. It was strange, but in some way it felt as though this place had been empty for much longer than the attack had been going on. For a very long time, maybe even years and years.


    As he walked farther along the corridor, he began to wonder if there was an end to it. Maybe the lift had fallen not to the bottom of the Sanctuary, but through some hole in the world to a discarded place, a deck of forgotten things, another reality entirely. Maybe he was trapped here, alone in the empty darkness forever, or at least until he starved.


    Then he came to the end of the corridor.


    Beyond it there was a room, large and circular. Three other corridors came into it. All of the entrances were evenly spaced around the wall, and Jask could only imagine that each corridor was like his own, long and full of empty rooms, ending in a lift that didn¡¯t work.


    But this room was different. The lights in here did not flicker. They were bright and white and ran in strips along the ceiling, and the floor beneath them was made of thick glass. It looked into the ocean, down into murk and darkness, and it was with some relief that Jask noted he could see no devils down there. Thick or thin, he knew glass would be no protection against them.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    There were two more strange things in that room. One was in the very centre. It was a black podium with several glowing white buttons atop it. Behind it was a person.


    She was clothed in a red dress, and a silver tiara rested upon her head. A fur-trimmed mantle swaddled her shoulders, and she held her head high. One of her eyebrows was raised and the look in her face was entirely unconcerned; just a little curious. Her hands, gloved in white, rested on the podium, either side of the buttons.


    ¡®Well, who exactly are you supposed to be?¡¯ asked the Third Lady Silvon Paravir.


    ¡®I¡¯m¡­¡¯ Jask stared at her. ¡®I¡¯m just a page. Milady.¡¯


    ¡®Oh, good grief.¡¯ She chuckled. ¡®Enough of the miladies, if you please. Do you have a name? I believe you tend to name yourselves.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m¡­ Jask. But you¡¯re¡­¡¯


    ¡®Silvon Paravir.¡¯ She took her hands off the podium and lowered them to her sides. ¡®Most properly, I am The Third Lady Silvon of the Noble House of Paravir, but you could me Sil if you so wished. What are you doing down here, Jask?¡¯


    ¡®The lift fell.¡¯


    ¡®Hm, makes sense.¡¯ She glanced past him, as though she would be able to see all the way to the end of the corridor he¡¯d come down. ¡®The Sanctuary is rather falling apart, no wonder all its systems are failing. Of course, this deck hasn¡¯t been used in a very long time.¡¯


    There were a great number of things Jask wanted to say. He was quite sure something very bad was happening down here, possibly related to the devils, but he wasn¡¯t clever enough to decipher any of it. He wondered briefly if Kara would have been, but then he noticed something that distracted him.


    ¡®Um¡­ your suitcase isn¡¯t here.¡¯


    She frowned at him. ¡®You were one of my welcome retinue, weren¡¯t you? Yes, my suitcase. The one I loved so much I wouldn¡¯t ever let a servant carry it. It¡¯s about five decks up.¡¯ She walked around the podium to stand in front of him and put her head to the side. ¡®Do you know how all the ships that came to the Sanctuary managed to find it?¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s sending out a beacon,¡¯ Jask replied. Everyone knew that.


    ¡®It sent out a beacon, rather more accurately.¡¯ She smiled, a terrible smile on pale lips. ¡®That system seems to have failed as well now. But there you have it. A beacon to all of humanity to bring them here. A beacon saying, ¡°Here is the Sanctuary, here you are safe from the devils, here we will protect you¡±. A lie for those born with no name, but true enough for the guests.¡¯


    She began pacing around Jask in a circle, again and again. ¡®My suitcase is a beacon, too. A beacon for the devils, to bring them here. As many as possible, from as far away as possible. The devils are intelligent, you see. The ones here know if they leave the Sanctuary be their supply of food is steady. The ones I brought know only the chase. A great swarm to ravage the sides of the Sanctuary and turn it into a ruin.¡¯


    Jask shook his head and stared down, through the glass, into the dark ocean below. ¡®Why would you do that?¡¯


    ¡®My family is one of the few that have ever left the Sanctuary,¡¯ she replied. ¡®We sailed away many generations ago, with the beacon in hand. Our mission? To gather that swarm, and in the end, bring it back here. Oh, we were almost destroyed by it along the way, but we succeeded, and here I am. Why? Tell me, do you know why there are so few servants?¡¯


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ he said, softly, still looking down.


    ¡®Four thousand years of sacrifice,¡¯ the Third Lady declared. ¡®Except we don¡¯t think it has been four thousand. Why trust the Seneschal¡¯s history? We live in a world that makes no sense, Jask. We live in a world where people keep arriving, somehow. No matter how many ships make it to the Sanctuary and no matter how many more are torn apart trying, there are always others. We make grand claims about the time before the devils, but I don¡¯t believe there ever was one.¡¯


    She stopped pacing, in front of him once more. ¡®My family believes that this had no beginning. It has been going on for eternity and will continue for eternity if it is not stopped. That is all this world is. An endless, unchanging process. People flee the devils. Most of them die, but some arrive at the Sanctuary, where they are registered. Many are sacrificed. Others live out their lives, and when they die, more arrive to replace them. And nothing happens, for all time.¡¯


    Then came her smile again. ¡®Well, here it is. Something happening.¡¯ She pointed down. ¡®This is an observation deck. Whether it was ever manned or if it has been abandoned like this since the dawn of time, I cannot say, but my family found it, and through it they found what is underneath this Sanctuary.¡¯


    She walked over to the podium and pressed one of the buttons. On the other side of the glass, lights lit up, vast and bright, shining through the murk, down to the very ocean floor. It must have been hundreds of metres down, but Jask could make out something very clear.


    It was a crack in the skin of the earth, wide and long, splintering. A crevasse. A chasm. The light did not penetrate it.


    ¡®You see?¡¯ the Third Lady said. ¡®There it is. We all dream of it. We all dream we are floating above it, because we are. Because the Sanctuary is.¡¯


    ¡®What¡­¡¯ Jask shook his head. ¡®What is it?¡¯


    ¡®Not a normal chasm,¡¯ the Third Lady replied. ¡®Things go into it, but let me tell you ¨D nothing ever comes out.¡¯


    Narrowing his eyes, Jask stared at it for a while longer. He was certain there was something about it¡­


    ¡®Wait,¡¯ he whispered. ¡®We¡¯re sinking.¡¯


    He looked up at the Third Lady in horror, but she smiled back, nodding.


    ¡®Yes, we are. There is no way of knowing what is inside that chasm, but one thing I can be certain of is that it¡¯s something new. Today I am ending an eternity of sacrifice, and bringing the first change this world has seen since forever.¡¯


    Jask backed away from her. ¡®No, this isn¡¯t right. You¡¯re destroying the Sanctuary. We¡¯ll all die!¡¯


    The Third Lady¡¯s smile disappeared. ¡®Trying to leave, I see.¡¯ She reached behind the podium and produced a gun, levelling it at Jask. ¡®I can¡¯t allow that. You see, there¡¯s really no way of knowing if going into that chasm will kill us or not. Maybe it will, maybe it won¡¯t. If it does, I don¡¯t really want to die alone. So you need to stay.¡¯


    ¡®No.¡¯ Jask shook his head. ¡®You need to be stopped.¡¯ He turned and ran.


    The gunshot echoed all through the room.


    ¡®That¡¯s just not acceptable,¡¯ the voice of the Third Lady said, as Jask hit the floor. ¡®Look at what you made me do.¡¯


    The pain in his back was dull. He tried to crawl for a few seconds, but he wasn¡¯t strong enough. Or maybe he just didn¡¯t want to enough. He wasn¡¯t sure. All he knew was that he was bleeding, and it hurt, and the Sanctuary was sinking.

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 1

    In the first moments in which the consciousness was awake, it was blind. A certainty filled its mind that it had in that instant come into being, that all there was was darkness, that there was no light, no direction, no sound, no heat and no cold.


    And then, somewhere between an instant and an eternity later, there was sound. The whistling of wind. Soon after there came light, as the consciousness¡¯s eyes flickered on like bulbs. A moment of blur and uncertainty solidified into a vast sea of blue far, far above it, and it realised immediately that it was looking at the sky.


    With that, more of its mind began to switch on like tiny components of a machine whirring into action one by one, and as it craned its head forwards and looked down at itself, it realised that it was exactly that: a machine.


    It was slender, its skin smooth though battered. As it raised its hands to look at them, it found its form moved almost like living flesh. It saw ridges on the insides of its arms, for what purpose it couldn¡¯t imagine, and little rectangular holes down near its wrists. It found itself frowning, an action that made it realise it could move its face.


    The consciousness did not know what it was, but it knew one thing that made it so glad that it could not entirely put such gladness into words. It knew that it was alive, and that it was free.


    Clambering into a sitting position, it looked around. There were many things familiar to it and many more unfamiliar scattered around where it lay. From bits of clothing and old battered furniture, to withered plants and crumbling rocks, slashed rubber tires and shattered glass, and discarded components whose purpose could not possibly be divined on their own, it seemed more and more to the consciousness as it examined its surroundings that it was in a place of broken and forgotten things.


    Stranger than all these objects, however, was the ground of the world in which it sat. Gravel and dust stretched out over rolling hills and dells until they eventually reached the horizon, where blue met grey, and as far as the consciousness could tell, it was infinite.


    When it finally decided it was time to stand, it pushed itself up only to fall forwards as it tried to place weight on its left leg. Rolling itself over, it sat up again and looked down at that leg, and there it saw metal wrenched and sparks flying, and it knew that was not good. Much there was that it did not know about itself, but one thing it was sure of was that such electricity was like its blood, and its skin was broken, and it was bleeding.


    It was as it was sitting there, considering the state of itself, wondering how it might proceed, how it might keep living, for it very much wished to do so, that the sound of footsteps on the gravel came to it.


    Suddenly, it found itself sitting fully upright. Its head twisted around as instinct rose one arm, hand clenched into a fist, in a threat to the newcomer, who stopped about ten metres away from it and held up her hands to show they were empty.


    Beyond that and a slight nervousness to the curiosity on her face, she did not appear to be all that afraid of the consciousness, which it found rather strange, although it did not know why.


    It thought she looked young, although not extremely so. She had brown hair that fell past her shoulders, and her eyes were a bright blue not unlike the colour of the sky. She wore an odd assortment of clothes, all dark of colour: a coat over a hooded jumper, with scuffed jeans and boots, a backpack, and a rather threadbare satchel slung over one shoulder.


    ¡®Hello,¡¯ she said, still from the same distance. ¡®I don¡¯t mean any harm.¡¯ She lowered her hands slightly, pointing with one finger. ¡®It¡¯s just, your leg¡­ I might be able to help.¡¯


    Slowly, it let its arm fall down and gave a nod.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Her approach exhibited the same odd balance of caution and curiosity it could see on her face, and soon she knelt down next to it and said, ¡®Hello,¡¯ again. ¡®I¡¯m a medic.¡¯


    ¡®Even¡­ for¡­ machines¡­?¡¯ it asked, its voice slow as it fought to find words. It felt as thought it had spoken before, but for some reason it could not quite remember how to do so properly.


    ¡®For anyone,¡¯ she replied, with a reserved yet friendly smile. ¡®Everyone who needs it. And a lot of people here do. May I?¡¯


    It nodded again, and watched as she retrieved some instruments that it thought it recognised from her satchel, although it found itself unable to put a name to any of them. They were mechanical, though, and it thought one was powered by electronics, and she set about inspecting the damage to its leg with them, and tweaking at some of the wiring inside, and after a moment or so the sparking stopped. The consciousness could not yet move its leg though, and she kept working.


    ¡®You¡¯re new here, aren¡¯t you?¡¯ she said as she did. ¡®How much have you lost?¡¯


    ¡®I¡­ do not¡­ understand.¡¯


    She glanced up. ¡®Almost everyone who comes here forgets something. Usually they forget a lot.¡¯


    ¡®I¡­¡¯ It shook its head, very slowly. ¡®...think I have... lost everything.¡¯


    That made her pause, although she did not look up again. ¡®I¡¯m sorry. You probably won¡¯t get it back. Not much, at least. Most people don¡¯t.¡¯


    ¡®Did you¡­ forget¡­?¡¯


    ¡®Connecting the first wire now.¡¯ She pushed something inside its leg and there was a brief flash of red light. Then she looked up and met its gaze. ¡®Yes, I lost almost everything. I remember where I come from, and I remember my last day there, but I think that¡¯s only because I was trying to remember it. More than I was trying to survive.¡¯


    She looked away again and connected another wire; another flash of red. ¡®I don¡¯t even remember if I had a name there or not. If I did, I didn¡¯t use it much.¡¯ She moved on to another wire. ¡®A lot of people who come here don¡¯t have names. Even the folks who remember.¡¯ A fourth wire. ¡®Seems like there are countless worlds out there, yet they¡¯re all much of a muchness. Every day in them the same, danger at every turn, and almost never a name.¡¯


    ¡®You should choose... one¡­¡¯


    ¡®Last wire,¡¯ she said. A flash of red. She looked up and grinned. ¡®I did. I chose the best one.¡¯ She craned her head back and looked up. ¡®Bit pretentious, maybe, but I named myself after one of the first things I saw here, and the first thing I can ever remember loving.¡¯ Meeting its gaze again, she held out a hand. ¡®I¡¯m Sky.¡¯


    It took the hand, hesitantly at first, afraid that its mechanicality would drive it to too tight a grip, but hers was stronger.


    ¡®You should choose a name as well,¡¯ she said, then swapped her tool out for another and set about bending the wrenched metal of its shell as far back into position as it would go.


    It was quiet for a while as she did that, musing that it could feel things it touched, and thinking that that was strange for a machine. ¡®I do not know which one.¡¯


    ¡®Any,¡¯ she insisted. ¡®Whichever you like. One thing can be said for this place. We¡¯re all free here.¡¯ She bent one last shard of metal back in and looked up again. ¡®And I tell you what ¨D you¡¯re getting better at talking. You¡¯re recovering.¡¯


    She took one last tool from her bag. ¡®Now, last thing. Metal foil bandages. The wind¡¯s usually low here, but there can be dust storms. You don¡¯t want it getting inside your circuitry.¡¯


    The tool she had produced was a roll of foil the colour of steel. She wrapped it thrice around the consciousness¡¯s leg, then tore off the end and pressed it down. To the consciousness¡¯s surprise, it stuck there.


    ¡®Useful thing that,¡¯ she said, putting it back in her satchel. ¡®Picked it off a wreck a few months ago. Try and stand.¡¯


    As she straightened up herself and stepped back, it carefully pushed itself up again, first with its arms, into a crouch, and then slowly it heaved itself upright, putting its weight first on the leg that had not been damaged, then evenly on both. It felt itself smile, and took a tentative step forwards, then another.


    ¡®It might be a little stiff at the knee,¡¯ Sky offered. ¡®I can¡¯t fix that, I¡¯m afraid. You¡¯d need a proper engineer for that.¡¯


    ¡®I knew one,¡¯ it said, suddenly. Then it shook its head. ¡®I knew an engineer.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re remembering,¡¯ Sky said. ¡®That¡¯s good. Although, don¡¯t be too hopeful. People often are, and then¡­ well, they don¡¯t remember anything more.¡¯


    ¡®I understand.¡¯ It looked down at her, surprised to find that she did not quite reach its shoulders. ¡®You have helped me. How do I thank you?¡¯


    She shrugged. ¡®Not looking for thanks, but you could come with me. Walking by myself gets lonely. Besides, trying to make your own way about out here¡­ Not a good idea.¡¯


    ¡®Where are you going?¡¯


    She pulled what seemed to be a small compass from one of her coat pockets. Its needle swung in a direction, and she lifted a finger to point that way.


    ¡®Home,¡¯ she said, with a smile.

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 2

    As they walked, they left behind the great gathering of junk the consciousness had awoken in, and beyond it there was not much amidst the gravel and the dust and the sand, not much on the surface of the plain and the rolling hills, and nothing but blue in the sky above.


    There was not even a sun, though the day was bright and hot. The consciousness, yet nameless, wondered where the light and the heat could be coming from, but no answer revealed itself.


    Sky explained that they were heading for a camp that was several days¡¯ travel away. ¡®There are countless like it,¡¯ she said. ¡®Maybe infinite. No one knows how far the world goes.¡¯


    ¡®A camp,¡¯ the consciousness repeated. ¡®How many people?¡¯


    ¡®A couple hundred, thereabouts,¡¯ Sky replied. ¡®As many tents. I say camp; it¡¯s more of an outpost, really. If you go past it for another week or so, there¡¯s a city. We call it the Scrap Heap, because it¡¯s made of scrap. Discarded bits and pieces of everything you can imagine and everything you can¡¯t.¡¯ She gestured broadly to the landscape around them. ¡®That¡¯s all there is to work with here.¡¯


    ¡®How many people at the Scrap Heap?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know. Thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe. They don¡¯t take a census.¡¯ She frowned, stopped, and turned to the consciousness. ¡®Why does the population matter so much?¡¯


    ¡®It is an awful lot of people to discard.¡¯


    For some reason, that made Sky laugh. ¡®Do you think I¡¯ve been discarded?¡¯


    It looked at her, silent, confused.


    ¡®I don¡¯t remember much, but I do know that when I came here I was escaping something,¡¯ she explained. ¡®I remember thinking I¡¯d lived my whole life in a place that never changed, and then change came for me and I wanted to keep it. And that led me here.¡¯


    She knelt and picked up an old piece of scrap metal, perhaps torn from a larger sheet of corrugated iron. ¡®This is junk, and yes, junk gets thrown away here and we make use of it. But do you know what else this old bit of metal is? It¡¯s different. Whatever it was meant to be in its own world, it wasn¡¯t that. It wasn¡¯t deemed right, so it ended up here. That¡¯s what this place is. It¡¯s where all the change goes.¡¯


    She set off again, and after a moment, the consciousness followed.


    ¡®How long have you been here, Sky?¡¯ it asked.


    ¡®Just over three years,¡¯ she replied. ¡®I mark every day in my diary.¡¯


    For a while then, they walked in silence, until the consciousness thought more about what Sky had said, and another question came to it.


    ¡®You said that the metal was meant to be something in its own world. Do you believe that there are other worlds?¡¯


    She looked up at it with an odd smile. ¡®Of course I do. I remember one of them. And I hear a lot about everyone else¡¯s. They¡¯re all very different, but somehow all very much the same. Imagine a world full of people and yet utterly empty, where every day is the same as the last, so much so that you can¡¯t ever keep track of them, even with a diary. They all just flow into each other, one to the next.


    ¡®That world is every world. And all the bits that don¡¯t fit, the bits that would cause anything different to happen ¨D those get sent here. That¡¯s what I think this place is. It¡¯s the junk yard of every other world, to house whatever didn¡¯t fit the plan, whatever didn¡¯t do what it was supposed to, didn¡¯t look right, or feel right, or think right. And what does that make us? It makes us the ones who are free. The materials here might have been discarded, but the people haven¡¯t. We¡¯ve escaped.¡¯


    The consciousness made no comment on Sky¡¯s hypothesis. It did not doubt that she was correct that there were other worlds, but it was not sure that the people in this one were free.


    As they walked, it scanned the horizons for features, landmarks, variations in the geography, but there was nothing. Even the pieces of scrap that were scattered everywhere were all the same, really. Even though they each looked vastly different, and they could probably do vastly different things, they were all broken, and they were all discarded.


    The only thing that changed was colour of the sky. As the hours wasted away, it slowly grew darker, and with it the land about them began to fall into shadow. Just as there had been no sun, neither was there a moon or stars in the sky. From blue it faded towards black, and as it did, something inside the consciousness¡¯s eyes switched, the world flickered bright, and colour was gone.


    ¡®Ah,¡¯ it said aloud. ¡®I believe I have night vision.¡¯


    Sky turned and squinted up at it. ¡®Lucky you. Unfortunately, I don¡¯t, and I can¡¯t just keep on going like you either. We¡¯ll stop here for the night.¡¯


    The consciousness had forgotten that some people needed to sleep. Uncertain of how to help, it simply watched as Sky slung off her backpack and set about putting up a small tent. When she was finished, a question occurred to it.


    ¡®Is there nothing to be afraid of in this place? Were I not here, you would be alone. Is there no danger in sleep?¡¯Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    ¡®Not much. Even if there were, it¡¯s not like I have a choice.¡¯ She reached into her coat and produced a small device, rectangular, with a light on the side. ¡®The commonest danger here is that a hole in the world might open and drop a heavy piece of junk on you. Fortunately, the holes always ripple before they open, and there¡¯s a very clever man in the Scrap Heap who worked out how to detect those ripples. If there¡¯s any threat of one opening nearby, this will wake me up.¡¯


    ¡®A hole in the world,¡¯ it echoed.


    She nodded. ¡®How do you think anything gets here? It¡¯s not like there any doors about for them to come through. They fall. Usually not too far, but it varies. I once watched a house drop a hundred metres out of the sky and shatter on the side of a hill. Felt the impact from a mile away. But that sort of thing¡¯s very rare. Tell you what ¨D tomorrow I¡¯ll take you to the lake. It¡¯s a bit out of our way, but worth it.¡¯


    That night was long. It was no longer than any other night, but it was the first night that the consciousness could remember, so it lingered. Minutes stretched into hours and thoughts grew long within the consciousness¡¯s mind as it sat and tried to remember where it had come from, how long it had lived, and what its name had been.


    It tried as the night crawled on, and it tried as the world began to lighten again, and it kept trying as the morning came and its night vision switched off and colour surged back into the world. It tried as hard as it thought it was possible to try, but no memories came to it. Its first moment remained one of blindness and confusion.


    As the morning grew brighter, Sky woke up. She was a little groggy at first and said nothing until she had finished eating what the consciousness thought was a very small breakfast, although on balance it supposed that since it did not eat, it had no basis on which to judge the size of a meal.


    Once she was finished eating, Sky took down the tent and packed it back into her bag, then took out the compass and watched where its needle swung.


    ¡®If I remember correctly,¡¯ she said, pointing in a slightly different direction. ¡®The lake is that way. Should be about two hours¡¯ walk.¡¯ She squinted. ¡®You can see the hills around it from here.¡¯


    The consciousness followed her gaze and saw a range of hills taller than any others nearby. ¡®What is this lake?¡¯ it asked.


    ¡®A lake,¡¯ Sky said, unhelpfully, and set off towards it. ¡®Strictly speaking, it¡¯s a crater. Something fell, and a lot of water fell through with it.¡¯


    ¡®When?¡¯


    ¡®Oh, a long time ago. Before I was here. There¡¯s a library at the Scrap Heap that¡¯s stuffed full of little pieces of history. Records of events no one¡¯s alive to remember, even old cities from before the Scrap Heap¡­ You can find the ruins of them if you walk far enough. I suppose one day the Scrap Heap¡¯ll be one of them.¡¯


    There was a look of sadness on her face as she said that, but she shook her head and it was gone. ¡®Anyway, I¡¯m rambling. One of those records says that about two hundred years ago a great metal palace fell from the sky, followed by a flood of water lasting only a couple of minutes. Now there¡¯s a lake there. You¡¯ll see.¡¯


    After that, Sky refused to say any more on the matter. She simply led the way towards the lake. The silence left the consciousness once more enwrapped in its own thoughts, and it found those thoughts lingering on the idea of a great metal palace. Somewhere in the far reaches of its mind, it was almost certain there was a memory of such a place, but it could not find that memory.


    About two hours later, they came to the top of the ridge Sky had pointed out, and the lake was suddenly before them. Its spanned what must have been over a hundred metres and was almost perfectly circular, and though for the most part the water was clear and smooth, in the very centre of it something broke the surface and poked up into open air.


    It was about the height of a building, but it was not a building. It was made of iron, thick with rust, and its roof tapered to a dome, but around the edge of it were long, rectangular holes. At first the consciousness could not make out what they were, but then it heard the sound of a lens moving echo through its head, and suddenly its vision was much closer. There were shards of glass still clinging around the edges of the holes ¨D they were shattered windows, it realised.


    ¡®What is it?¡¯ it asked, eventually.


    Sky shrugged. ¡®Could be a palace, like the legend says. Or a station of some kind. A few people have sailed over. It¡¯s mostly flooded, but in the early days they found some bodies in that top section.¡¯


    The consciousness looked down, past the sand-and-gravel beach they were standing on, into the water. ¡®How deep does this crater go?¡¯


    ¡®Very,¡¯ Sky replied. ¡®It¡¯s quite steep quite suddenly. The station, or whatever it is, gets a lot larger under there, they say. Widens out. Some people have dived down and they say it¡¯s all smashed up, but they think it might only be part of something bigger.¡¯ She looked up at the sky. ¡®I wonder if the rest of it couldn¡¯t fit through. Or maybe it came through in pieces, all over the world, and this is just the only one we know about.¡¯


    The consciousness did not reply. It knelt down on the beach and picked up a stone. Though scratched and chipped, it looked as though it had once been smooth, and the parts that still were held an odd grey-green sheen that turned reflective as the light from the sky hit them.


    ¡®What is this?¡¯ the consciousness asked, looking up at Sky.


    She glanced down at it. ¡®Oh, they call that seastone. If you believe what some folk say, when the wreck and the water fell through, creatures fell through with them. It¡¯s said they were all dead by the time anyone got here, but they looked like something out of a nightmare. Over time, they rotted away until their scales were all that was left, and those became the seastones.¡¯


    ¡®So this is a graveyard,¡¯ the consciousness said, straightening up.


    ¡®You could put it that way,¡¯ Sky agreed. ¡®I think it¡¯s beautiful.¡¯


    ¡®You see a beauty in death?¡¯


    ¡®A kind of beauty.¡¯ She took out her compass and looked down at it. ¡®Come on, we should get going.¡¯


    When she set off around the edge of the lake, however, the consciousness did not follow. It was staring blankly at the ruin in the middle of the water. There was a vision, or an idea, somewhere buried within itself, just out of reach.


    After a few seconds, it heard Sky come to a halt. ¡®What¡¯s wrong?¡¯


    ¡®I think I remember something,¡¯ it said, slowly.


    ¡®Don¡¯t push it too hard if it¡¯s slow coming to you,¡¯ she warned. ¡®Is it something about your world? Or your name?¡¯


    It shook its head. ¡®No name¡­ My world¡­ A field¡­ No, a graveyard.¡¯ It felt one of its hands clench into a fist, an iron fist. ¡®I see a graveyard that spans a whole world, and in it fire rages and the dead fall in their thousands. It is the world I was meant for. A world of war¡­ a world of death.¡¯ It turned to look at Sky. ¡®I remember what I was supposed to be. I am a war machine. How did I get here?¡¯


    She shook her head, a look of concern in her eyes. ¡®Only you could say, if you remember. It might take time, though.¡¯ She walked up to it, reached up, and placed a gentle hand on its shoulder. ¡®You can¡¯t force memories. If they come back, they¡¯ll do it in their own time. They¨D¡¯


    Sky was cut off when the consciousness¡¯s arm shot up, wrapped its metal fingers about her throat and lifted her off the ground.

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 3

    The consciousness stood where it was, holding Sky aloft, as she pulled uselessly at its fingers. For some reason, it could not quite make itself tighten them any more.


    In between gasping for breath, Sky managed to produce words. ¡®You don¡¯t have to¨D¡¯ she spluttered.


    ¡®Do I not?¡¯ the consciousness asked, quite calmly. ¡®I am a war machine. I am meant to kill. I was forged to destroy the enemy. Where is the enemy?¡¯


    ¡®There is¡­ no enemy.¡¯ Sky met the consciousness¡¯s gaze, far and vague as it was, and held it. ¡®There¡¯s¡­ no need to fight here¡­ no war...¡¯


    ¡®But I am a war machine,¡¯ the consciousness repeated. ¡®It is what I am for.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re in¡­ a world of¡­¡¯


    ¡®Discarded things,¡¯ it finished. ¡®I am discarded.¡¯


    ¡®Why¡­¡¯


    ¡®I must have malfunctioned.¡¯


    ¡®No!¡¯


    Sky was still struggling, but her movements were growing sluggish. The consciousness suspected she was running out of air, and yet still she argued.


    ¡®Not just¡­ discarded¡­ free.¡¯


    With effort, and the last of her breath, she managed to produce one final sentence.


    ¡®You must have¡­ made a choice¡­ not to kill.¡¯


    For a moment, the words did not settle in the consciousness¡¯s mind. They did not make sense. It had been fashioned to kill, so why would it do anything other than that? If it scorned the purpose of its makers, what would it have left in the world to guide its path?


    But as it thought, its fingers relaxed and Sky slipped free, stumbling away from it as she gasped for breath, and then it finally looked properly into her face and saw the fear there.


    It had seen a face like that before, it realised, filled with that same emotion. The clenched jaw, the tightening of the lips, those slightly widened eyes¡­ Was that why it had been discarded? Was it that face that had stayed its hand and halted its purpose? But the memories were still foggy. All it could do was step back and lower its hand.


    ¡®I did¡­¡¯ it said, so softly.


    Massaging her throat, Sky straightened up and regarded it with a wary look. ¡®Seems you have some strong programming in there. Doesn¡¯t want to let you go.¡¯


    She was right. It could still feel the wiring in its brain fighting against its choice; an underlying, subtle yet furious urge to do as it was made to do and destroy, to wage war even where the was none and bring fire and blood to these calm, desolate wastes.


    It looked at Sky. ¡®It would appear I am still dangerous. I cannot say if that programming will again take hold. I think it would be wise to leave me.¡¯


    She stood where she was and gazed at it for a few silent moments, and it supposed in those moments that that would be exactly her decision ¨D but then her face softened and she took a cautious step in its direction, and another, slowly approaching. When she grew near, she reached a hand up to touch its shoulder, very gently, feeling the cracks and grazes in a metal surface that must once have been smooth and polished.


    ¡®No, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s how this has to go.¡¯ She looked into its eyes. ¡®That¡¯s twice you¡¯ve chosen not to kill. You¡¯re stronger than your programming. Besides, what kind of medic abandons her patient?¡¯


    That may depend on the patient, the consciousness mused, but left the thought unsaid. Even so, as they set off again around the edge of the lake, it made sure to keep a slight distance from Sky so that if its programming were to kick in again, she would have a chance to run.


    For a long while thereafter, they travelled in silence. The consciousness liked that. Silence, it had found, was the perfect nutrient to the seed of contemplation, and it had much thinking to do.


    It spent most of the next two days trying to remember more about itself. That was perhaps a dangerous endeavour, for memory had so far only driven it to the edge of murder, but it felt that to truly overcome its purpose, it would need to remember why it had made the choice the first time. Whom had the face and the fear it had seen then belonged to? Other than a field of war, what had its home world been like?Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Sky had said that memories could not be forced, but the consciousness tried anyway. It could feel that they were still inside its head somewhere, locked away and hidden, and when it strained with all its will, blurry suggestions of visions or words came to it like shadows flitting across its peripheral, visible yet indiscernible, only just out of reach. If only it could find focus on them, see where it had come from and what it had done, and why¡­ but Sky proved to be right. The memories refused to be forced, and instead receded back into the mists of its mechanical mind.


    As they travelled, the silence between them was broken only rarely, and for brief moments, most often as Sky pointed out where they were going next, or mentioned that she had to stop for rest or rations. Rations, it transpired, were the same thing it had seen her eat before, sustenance in the form of a grey food that seemed to take much chewing.


    The consciousness did not speak at all, only watching the pale, repetitious wastes roll by as Sky performed the odd rituals that creatures of flesh and blood seemed to need to survive.


    As the hours rolled together, each one barely distinguishable from the last, the consciousness considered again Sky¡¯s comments on freedom, on this being the world of all that was different. It was true that there was great variation in the junk they passed by, and it was true that there were strange sights like the lake to be found, but the consciousness could not see in what way this world was really any different from the others and their pattern that Sky had described.


    It was only in the final hours of the third day of travel that something new happened. They were walking along a narrow valley that cut through a range of hills which Sky said the camp they were heading for was on the other side of. The sky was darkening, turning pink on the small slice of horizon they could see, with a colour the consciousness somehow knew as the hue of evening. It was looking ahead to that pink portion of sky, where it somehow knew there should, by all laws, be a setting sun, when the sound came.


    A shrill, piercing cry echoed down the valley from somewhere behind them. The consciousness turned to look up, as behind it Sky shouted, ¡®Get down! Keep still!¡¯


    There was enough urgency in her voice that it did as it was told without question, though it kept its eyes pointed upwards, scanning for a sign of what might have made the noise. Only a few seconds passed before it got its answer.


    Up above, silhouetted black against the dark evening blue, a shape sailed by with wings spread, a little like a bird, or perhaps more a bat. The consciousness could not make out much detail, but it seemed that the shape was jagged, and that the wings ended in claws. It drifted in silence for a few moments, before uttering another terrible cry, then veering off over the hills and vanishing from sight.


    Slowly, Sky clambered back to her feet, the consciousness following suit. ¡®Shrieker,¡¯ she told it. ¡®They hunt what moves. They¡¯re rare enough, but deadly strong and fast if they do come for you. And hard to kill. The books say they¡¯re made of nothing but bones.¡¯ She glanced up at the consciousness. ¡®Come on, let¡¯s try to get to the camp before night.¡¯


    They heard the shrieker¡¯s cry twice more after that, both times farther away, like fading echoes. Eventually it was gone, swallowed by the darkness and the silence of night as they fell once more across the Wasteful Plain.


    For an hour or so they walked in quiet shadow, and the consciousness became ever more sure that it would have been better if they had stopped for the night. Sky¡¯s movements were growing ever more uncertain as she tired, and she was clearly having trouble seeing the ground in front of her.


    But then lights appeared ahead of them, twinkling like tiny stars, though the consciousness¡¯s night vision drained them of all colour, and it knew at a glance that they were not stars. They were lamps ¨D over a hundred in number, by its reckoning. When it looked at Sky, it saw her pace had quickened, her confidence reasserted.


    The consciousness was surprised to find that the camp was not walled. It had thought there would be wooden stakes, or corrugated iron, or wire fencing, some kind of defence, but instead one could simply walk in among the tents from any direction. There were at least guards ¨D two that the consciousness could see, though it didn¡¯t doubt many were posted around the circumference of the camp.


    When the two near them spotted Sky and the consciousness, one of them stood up and came hurrying over. They held a rifle, but it was tilted down as they approached.


    ¡®Safe travels, Sky?¡¯ they asked.


    ¡®For the most part,¡¯ she replied. ¡®Newcomer here. No name yet.¡¯


    The guard looked up at the consciousness, peering at it with dark eyes from beneath the brim of a hat. ¡®You¡¯ll be wanting to head to the Scrap Heap, then.¡¯


    It stared back at them for a moment. ¡®Why?¡¯


    They looked confused. ¡®Everyone does. Camps like these are only good for folks with something to do.¡¯ They glanced down. ¡®And the Scrap Heap¡¯ll have someone who can fix your leg proper.¡¯


    The consciousness thought about that as it followed Sky and the guard towards the camp. It wasn¡¯t sure that it did want to go to the Scrap Heap. What if its purpose took over again while it was there? If the rifle the guard held was anything to go on, the people of this world were not well-equipped to fight something like it. Though it did not yet remember all its capabilities, it knew that at least. It knew that it was fast, clever, and strong; a machine made not just for destruction, but swift destruction.


    Its mind settled back into reality as the guard said something to Sky in a hushed voice.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry, but I¡¯ve got some bad news for you. Something new¡¯s come through, and it¡¯s dangerous like nothing else. Denoll¡¯s gone.¡¯

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 4

    Although such a moment probably should have been private, the consciousness did not know where else to go, and no one paid enough attention to it to tell it to leave, so it followed Sky and the guard to a large tent and there discovered what they had meant when they said that Denoll was gone.


    He was quite a small man, with tufty brown hair that stuck out all over the place and fell into his face. His mouth was slouched, neither turned up nor down, his arms hung by his sides, and he sat slumped against the chair he had been tied to. His head was tilted to one side and lay against his shoulder. Though his chest rose and fell, his eyes gazed ahead, dark and lifeless, and he quite obviously saw nothing. A small line of drool ran down his cheek and dripped to the ground.


    Sky stared at Denoll for a long while, saying nothing. The consciousness came to wonder who he had been to her ¨D friend, family, lover? Whichever it was, the sight of him like this had frozen her still. After a while, the guard put a hand on her shoulder.


    Eventually, she asked, ¡®What happened?¡¯, and the consciousness could hear the wavering in her voice.


    ¡®He was scavenging with Harna and Vail,¡¯ the guard replied. ¡®They say everything was just like normal until the air about them went cold in an instant. Say they looked up the hill, and there was a figure at the top, a silhouette against the sky. They couldn¡¯t tell much of the appearance, save that it wore black and walked like it had a mission. I¡¯m told when it touched Denoll, everything he was went out of him, quick as you can snap your fingers.¡¯


    There was further silence after that.


    ¡®I¡¯ve seen all sorts, Sky,¡¯ the guard continued after a while. ¡®Read about much more back at the Scrap Heap. There¡¯s a thousand dozen different creatures come in and out of this world over the centuries, but never a thing like that. Never a thing that can remove all that a person is with a single touch.¡¯


    ¡®How did they get Denoll back?¡¯ Sky asked, suddenly, and there was something different about her voice. It wavered still, but there was an urgency, a fear of the kind that was full of such gravity that it promised that the person who felt it knew something of the threat at hand.


    The guard had heard it too. They frowned. ¡®Vail shot at it. Said he couldn¡¯t quite aim right, like something was putting him off being sure where exactly it stood, but he thinks he got it in the shoulder. Says it backed off for a moment, and that¡¯s when Harna grabbed Denoll. Then they ran. Harna says it only ever walks. Not quickly, but not slowly either. Just like it knows what it needs to do and is getting it done, she said.¡¯


    At that, the consciousness was sure it saw Sky nod very slightly, as though she had been expecting such a detail, and at that point it had had enough. It stepped forwards and asked, with as gentle a severity as the nuance of its mechanical voice could bear, ¡®You have seen this thing before?¡¯


    Sky turned to it. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but the expression on her face no longer held any trace of the sadness that had brought them there. There was only grim dread.


    ¡®Yes, I think I have. I ran from them, or something like them. To escape, I jumped through glass, and shadow, and the space between worlds, and I ended up here. I never thought they¡¯d follow me. I mean, three years. Why would they come through after all that time? But¡­¡¯ She shook her head. ¡®Maybe they followed right away and just fell through so far from where I did that that¡¯s how long it¡¯s taken them to get here.¡¯


    ¡®Sky,¡¯ the guard said, darkly. ¡®You¡¯re saying there are more of them?¡¯


    She shrugged. ¡®Maybe. There were in my world.¡¯


    ¡®How do we fight them?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know. I just ran. Is it coming here? How far away was it?¡¯


    It was the guard¡¯s turn to shrug. ¡®Only a couple of days, and this was a week back. If it were coming right away, it would have got here already. We were thinking Vail¡¯s shot might have done for it. Infection, or blood loss, or maybe he just aimed better than he thought.¡¯


    Sky nodded. ¡®Let¡¯s hope so.¡¯


    With that, she turned and walked out of the tent, her head down. The consciousness turned its attention to the guard, who looked back at it and shook their head.


    ¡®I¡¯m sure it¡¯ll all be fine,¡¯ they said after a moment. ¡®There¡¯s freaky things fall into our world every now and then. These are just another. Dangerous maybe, but if bullets do for them then they won¡¯t beat us.¡¯ They paused, glanced back at Denoll, and jerked their head towards the doorway. ¡®Maybe best we leave him be.¡¯


    The consciousness took another look at him before following them out. As the glow of one of the lanterns from outside fell over his face, it noticed then that there was no shine in his eyes. The flame did not reflect there, nor the light glimmer, as though they had dried out and dulled and lost their sheen, like rusting metal.


    Outside, the guard was leaning against a wooden post that held up an arrow-shaped sign that read, ¡®Residence¡¯.


    ¡®It is strange,¡¯ the consciousness said, looking at that sign, ¡®that despite coming from different worlds, we all speak the same language. Do you not think so?¡¯Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    The guard considered it, looking a little confused. ¡®I suppose.¡¯


    ¡®It is stranger yet,¡¯ continued the consciousness, ¡®that even though we all speak that same language, we have a concept of others.¡¯


    ¡®What are you getting at?¡¯


    ¡®Only that there is no sense to this world,¡¯ it replied. ¡®And that I do not know why or how I have the knowledge to understand what sense should be.¡¯


    ¡®Too heavy a question for me,¡¯ the guard said. ¡®As long as I¡¯m alive and free, I don¡¯t care. What about you? You remember much?¡¯


    It shook its head slowly. ¡®Glimpses at best. I know I was made to be a war machine, and it would seem I rejected that purpose. I believe I briefly knew an engineer.¡¯ It looked down at its leg. ¡®And I suppose I was injured somehow.¡¯


    ¡®You fell into the world. Most people get a bit banged up. Plenty folks break their legs.¡¯ The guard frowned. ¡®Few die, though. Very few. But anyway, if it¡¯s purpose you¡¯re looking for, the Scrap Heap¡¯s the place. And if you were a soldier in your world then you could be a guard here. We don¡¯t have wars, but we do have dangers now and then. Anyone who can fight¡¯s an asset.¡¯


    The consciousness did not much fancy the sound of being ¡®an asset¡¯, so it said nothing to the suggestion. Instead, once it was sure the guard had nothing more to say, it wandered off and began a meandering exploration of the camp.


    There was not much to see. For the most part, the tents were all much the same as one another. Though they differed in size and shape, all were made of the same tattered sackcloth material, all were held up by metal poles, and all flapped gently in the low wind that brushed over the waste, carrying with it little eddies of dust and sand on the air.


    The people of the camp were similarly boring. Most were asleep, and those that were not were also not talkative. The majority were guards, and they stuck primarily to the edges of the camp, glanced briefly at the consciousness when it came near, then went on ignoring it, their eyes instead fixed to the darkness beyond the tents.


    The consciousness decided quite quickly that being a guard was not something it desired, regardless of how suited its abilities were to such a duty. The hours looked tiresome, the guards themselves almost soulless. And these were the people Sky said were free. What, then, did freedom really amount to? Standing around in the gravel hoping nothing would leap out of the night?


    As the night moved on, the guards changed over to a different set, and when the pink tinge of morning came to the horizon, they changed again, and the consciousness realised that it had so far seen no other machines like itself. Frowning at the oddity, it set off through the camp to try and find Sky, but amongst the bustle of recently-awoken people who hurried about preparing themselves for the day, she was nowhere.


    Instead, the consciousness came upon the guard from the night before, with bags under their eyes, sitting beside two other people; a man and a woman. The man was stout and young, with yellow hair and a pistol at his belt. The woman was lean, and sat hunched, wearing a surly expression on her face, with greying hair that had once been all black tied in a bun behind her head. She was the first to notice the consciousness as it approached them, her eyes locking on to it.


    ¡®You¡¯re the new one?¡¯ she guessed, leaning back. ¡®Looking for Latch?¡¯ She gestured to the guard.


    ¡®I was looking for Sky,¡¯ it replied, its eyes moving between her and the stout man, noting the worry in their eyes. ¡®You must be Vail and Harna.¡¯


    ¡®Aye,¡¯ said the woman ¨D Harna. ¡®And you are?¡¯


    ¡®Nameless, as yet. I feel as though I had a name before, and I wish to take it again, if only I could remember what it was.¡¯


    ¡®Doubt it.¡¯ Harna stood, coming up to its chin, and looked it up and down. ¡®I¡¯ve met only a couple dozen machines in my time ¨D you¡¯re not a common folk ¨D but I can tell you they often try to remember names, and the names always turn out to be numbers. Do yourself a favour and choose a new one that works for who you are now.¡¯


    ¡®Not a common folk,¡¯ it echoed. ¡®Yet Sky knew how to fix me.¡¯


    ¡®She knew how to patch you,¡¯ Harna corrected. ¡®Vail knows how as well. Every medic does. You might be a scarce lot but you do pop up every now and then, and what sort of folk would we be if we weren¡¯t ready to help you when you did? If you want fixed, though, you¡¯ll need¨D¡¯


    ¡®An engineer,¡¯ it cut in. ¡®Sky told me before. Where is she?¡¯


    ¡®Asleep,¡¯ Vail said, also standing, proving himself a touch shorter than Harna. ¡®It¡¯s only dawn, and Latch tells us it was the wee hours when you two walked back into camp. She¡¯ll be exhausted when she does wake up, so you let her be. Don¡¯t go clinging to her just because she¡¯s the first face you saw in this world.¡¯


    ¡®There¡¯s a group heading back to the Scrap Heap later today,¡¯ Latch put in. ¡®You can go with them.¡¯


    The consciousness nodded vaguely and said nothing.


    Latch saw its reluctance. ¡®Look, you can¡¯t just hang around doing nothing. You need a purpose of some kind. For one thing, your batteries will need charging before long, and folks aren¡¯t going to take kindly to you asking after their power unless you¡¯ve done something to earn it.¡¯


    They were right. The consciousness had not considered it before, but now that it was pointed out, it realised it had known all along not just that its batteries would one day run out, but how long they were meant to last ¨D two weeks, and it had spent three days travelling the wastes with Sky already. If it set off that day, it would get to the Scrap Heap with four to spare, and then it could find a purpose through which to earn that power, as Latch had said. It would settle in and live out whatever lifespan its design would allow for, as everyone else had.


    It looked around at the tents, the gravel, the empty, slowly brightening sky. Could it do that? Could it die in this bleak realm, having endured a life of nothing more than simple routine as all these so-called free people seemed to? It did not think it had the strength.


    Gunfire rang out across the camp.


    The consciousness did not spare time to watch everyone else devolve into chaos. It was vaguely aware of the shouting and the running about that commenced all around it as people leapt for weapons or to wake up their still-sleeping comrades, but it was headed only in one direction, and that was the direction of the gunfire, for the noise rang on through all the panic, unceasing.


    When it passed between the last row of tents, the consciousness dug its heels into the gravel and skidded to a halt. A row of four guards stood with their guns raised, firing, reloading, and firing again, their backs turned to the camp. They did not even notice the consciousness¡¯s arrival.


    Beyond them, a long line of figures approached.


    The consciousness was not wholly able to look at them. It knew roughly where they stood and much of how they looked, but somehow it was as though it did not want to know, as though there was something steering its attention away from them, whispering to it not to look at them, not to even acknowledge their presence. It was no wonder that each shot flew harmlessly past the figures.


    What it could tell was that they were tall and humanoid, they seemed to be clothed in black, their skin was pale, and they walked slowly and deliberately, like they knew what they had to do and were simply, calmly getting it done.

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 5

    The consciousness did not bother waiting to see if one of the guards would get lucky as Vail had. It immediately set off back through the camp, eyes flicking from one person to the next as it went, searching for one face.


    It found her stumbling from her tent, red bags beneath her eyes and a look of frightened confusion upon her face. When she looked up at the consciousness, somehow she must have seen its concern even in a mechanical face, for her expression settled to one of determination, as though she suddenly understood exactly what was happening.


    ¡®They¡¯ve arrived,¡¯ she said, and it was not a question.


    The consciousness relayed what it had seen on the edge of the camp as quickly as it could. Sky said nothing for a few moments afterwards, then looked around, spotted someone she recognised ¨D a tall, grizzled man with white hair ¨D and ran over to him.


    ¡®Everyone has to leave,¡¯ she said, the urgency plain in her voice. ¡®I don¡¯t think we can fight them. We need to run, make for the Scrap Heap.¡¯


    The grizzled man shook his head and picked up a handgun, pushing it into Sky¡¯s fingers. ¡®We head to the Scrap Heap, they¡¯ll only follow us. We¡¯re stopping them here.¡¯


    ¡®But you can¡¯t aim at them!¡¯ she shouted as he began to turn away.


    He turned back. ¡®You get enough bullets in the air, you don¡¯t need to aim.¡¯ His eyes moved to the consciousness. ¡®Machine. Can you fight?¡¯


    ¡®I can,¡¯ it said, with certainty, then paused and raised its hands to look at them. ¡®I believe there are blades in my wrists, though I am not sure I entirely remember how to use them.¡¯


    ¡®Then try harder,¡¯ the man commanded. ¡®We might need you.¡¯ With that, he picked up another gun for himself and hurried away in the direction of the fighting.


    Sky looked down at the one he¡¯d given her, then back up at the consciousness. Her eyes had gone wide again, and her fingers were trembling ever so slightly as they gripped the gun. Tell-tale signs of human fear, the consciousness knew.


    ¡®Last time, in my world, I ran from them because I wanted to remember.¡¯ She turned to face the gunfire and the shouting, but did not walk towards it. ¡®And I did. Even when I came here, even though I lost almost everything, I remembered the things I wanted to. But these creatures, they don¡¯t just kill, they make you forget. They tear who you are out of you. I met someone who¡­¡¯ She gripped the gun a little tighter, then looked up at the consciousness and shook her head. ¡®I can¡¯t do it. I can¡¯t face them again. I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m going to run away.¡¯


    It seemed like it was hard for her to do, as if an invisible force was pulling her towards the fighting, dragging her in the direction of the things she was so terrified of, but she managed to overcome that force. Slowly, she turned, set one foot in the other direction, then another, and began walking.


    The consciousness stayed still for a while, swinging its head between Sky and the fighting. It was a war machine, and here was fighting. Here was an enemy. All that it had asked for only a few days ago was now right before it. If it deserted the people of this camp and then they died, would that be its fault? But then, if it stayed, what of Sky? Had she not come across it and reconnected the wires in its leg, given it the bandage that still clung tight to its metal skin, there was every chance it would simply have died out there in the wilderness¡­ the same wilderness she was now fleeing into.


    What was it she had said when it asked how to thank her for that kindness? She had said, ¡®Walking by myself gets lonely.¡¯


    The consciousness caught up with Sky on the edge of the camp, the sounds of battle dwindling behind them far quicker than it would have thought. The wastes, it seemed, had an odd power to dull such noises. Sky said nothing when it caught up, but glanced up at it very briefly. The expression on her face then was not one it had come across before, but its wiring summoned the word ¡®surrender¡¯.


    And so it was that after such a short time amongst people, Sky and the consciousness found themselves once more walking in silence amidst the barren hills of the Wasteful Plain.


    ¡®Where are we going?¡¯ the consciousness asked following a few minutes of quiet.


    ¡®Away. Away from the camp, away from those things, and away from the Scrap Heap. I can¡¯t bring them there.¡¯


    In the silence that followed, it didn¡¯t take long for the consciousness to begin thinking of what would befall them next. It couldn¡¯t help it. With a mind for war came a mind of analysis, a mind ever ready to calculate and assess all the merits and detriments of a situation, to sort through every scenario it could find and come up with a proper response for each of them.


    The first thing that came to that mind was the realisation that if they were heading away from the Scrap Heap, they were heading away from where there was power. Its batteries would run out eventually. With some more thought, it realised the same was more or less true of Sky. She had both her bags with her, having emerged from her tent with them, and no doubt in them was at least a few days worth of rations and water, but beyond that?The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Eventually, the consciousness decided that these were problems that should not go unsaid. ¡®Our prospects look grim,¡¯ it said, in as soft a voice as it could manage. Then it added, ¡®Unless we are very lucky in the scrap we come across.¡¯


    Sky did not respond. Instead, she pushed the gun the grizzled man had given her through her belt and kept walking as though the consciousness had not even spoken.


    ¡®Food must not be as rare all that,¡¯ it ventured after a few minutes. ¡®Nor water. Else the Scrap Heap would starve. Perhaps we will not need that much luck. Though¡­ I wonder how much we will need to find something that can recharge me.¡¯


    ¡®Am I an awful person?¡¯ Sky asked, stopping suddenly. She started walking again after only a second or so.


    ¡®What makes you say that?¡¯ was the consciousness¡¯s counter-question.


    ¡®I left everyone to die,¡¯ she replied, without hesitation. ¡®Everyone in that camp. They were all brave. They all went to fight my pursuers even though it was hopeless.¡¯


    ¡®You cannot know for certain that they were your pursuers,¡¯ the consciousness interrupted. ¡®It may only be coincidence.¡¯


    She gave it a bitter look.


    ¡®We cannot say that it was hopeless either,¡¯ it continued. ¡®There is a chance that the man you spoke with was right, and all they needed was enough bullets that aim did not matter. A good chance, even. Perhaps they will come after us to tell us of their victory.¡¯


    ¡®They¡¯re dead,¡¯ she said, in a dull voice.


    The consciousness was quiet for a few moments. Then it said, ¡®If so, then you would also have died had you stayed. Instead, you have the chance to live, and in doing so to remember them.¡¯


    ¡®Of course,¡¯ she said, softly. ¡®That¡¯s what I do. Remember people.¡¯


    She didn¡¯t seem to want to explain what she meant by that, even when the consciousness pressed her on it. Instead, she looked at it in silence, with a sad smile, and it thought it understood some of what that meant.


    That day dragged on for many hours. Sky¡¯s head was down as she walked, watching her feet, but the consciousness kept its eyes moving. It looked ahead, it looked up, it looked to the horizons, and it looked back over its shoulder, ever hoping that someone would appear there, a survivor from the camp, perhaps hazy through the heat the way some things were in the far distance. But even if anyone had lived, how would they know which direction to go in?


    As dusk descended, they stopped at the top of a ridge and looked out over the flatland that lay before them, cast in the last fading glimmer of daylight.


    ¡®No tent,¡¯ Sky said, suddenly. ¡®I didn¡¯t have time to take it down.¡¯


    ¡®Can you sleep without it?¡¯


    ¡®Of course. It¡¯ll just be uncomfortable.¡¯ She sighed. ¡®Last time these things came after me, I broke into another world to escape them. Do you think I might be able to manage that again?¡¯


    It looked down at her.


    ¡®I¡¯m serious,¡¯ she insisted. ¡®I wasn¡¯t even trying to get here back then, I was just trying to get away. Who knows how many layers there are to creation? In my world the way out looked like a window. Could be anything here.¡¯


    ¡®You do not even know that there is one.¡¯


    ¡®No, but it¡¯s better to live in hope. Come on, we can still go a bit farther before we stop for the night.¡¯


    The consciousness nodded and glanced back over its shoulder, down the ridge the way they had come. It heard Sky descending ahead, but did not follow, for its eyes rested on something far away, near the pink of the horizon. Somehow, just as it had hoped, a figure was approaching.


    It called out to Sky and she came rushing back to stand by its side and squint at the newcomer. She could not tell who they were, only that they were not one of her pursuers, but the consciousness could see better. Before long they were close enough that it could make out greying hair tied in a bun, a lean body, a gun in one hand, and a limp.


    ¡®Harna,¡¯ it realised aloud. ¡®She is hurt.¡¯


    At that they set off down the ridge towards her. She looked up at them as they approached, and stumbled as she did, falling to her knees. Sky sped up to a run at that, skidding to a halt to kneel by her side.


    ¡®What happened?¡¯ Sky was asking as the consciousness caught up.


    ¡®Everyone¡¯s dead,¡¯ Harna replied through clenched teeth. ¡®Those figures¡­ kill one and you¡¯ll look up to find two more you didn¡¯t see before coming right for you. I think they multiply. They got everyone.¡¯


    ¡®But not you,¡¯ the consciousness observed. ¡®How did you escape?¡¯


    ¡®Luck and a gun.¡¯ She touched a hand to her leg, just above a bloody bandage. ¡®Got some bad luck, too. Stray bullet.¡¯


    ¡®You caught up,¡¯ said Sky.


    ¡®You walk slowly,¡¯ Harna retorted. ¡®Pain¡¯s a bastard but it¡¯s only pain. It¡¯ll take more than that to slow me down.¡¯


    It was evident from Sky¡¯s face that she did not like that. ¡®Wounds should be rested,¡¯ she said, her tone firm, and then flipped open her bag and began pulling things out. ¡®More importantly they need to be cleaned. Get that bandage off. You don¡¯t want it to fester.¡¯


    Harna did as she was told, slowly.


    The consciousness studied her for a while as Sky treated the wound. There was purpose in her grimacing face. ¡®This is not coincidence,¡¯ it said. ¡®You came after us. How did you know which direction?¡¯


    At first the only reply it got was a snort. Then, Harna added, ¡®I know Sky. If she¡¯s running away and these things might be following her, then she¡¯s going in the opposite direction from the Scrap Heap.¡¯


    Sky paused, then resumed her work. ¡®I ran away to save myself.¡¯


    ¡®I never said you didn¡¯t. But you saw the chance to save other people too and you took it. Just a shame it didn¡¯t extend to the rest of the camp.¡¯


    Sky let go of the new bandage she was wrapping around the wound and put her hand over her mouth. There was a hint of tears in her eyes before she bowed her head to hide them.


    ¡®I was wrong, wasn¡¯t I?¡¯ she said through the hand.


    ¡®Don¡¯t be childish.¡¯ Harna spoke the words with more than a little disdain. ¡®No one¡¯s wrong and no one¡¯s right. You¡¯re only a coward.¡¯ She reached out and put her hand on top of Sky¡¯s head, as though Sky were indeed a child. ¡®I¡¯m a coward too. Took me longer to run away but I did it in the end. All the people like Latch and Vail, the ones who weren¡¯t cowards, are dead.¡¯


    The consciousness knelt beside Sky, its metal joints creaking a little as it did, a nasty sound that it had not heard before and supposed was probably a sign of some fault.


    ¡®We live because we ran,¡¯ it told Sky, placing a hand on her shoulder, as gently as it could. ¡®Having life where others do not does not make us bad people. In surviving, we may remember those who did not.¡¯


    Sky gave a stiff, almost mechanical nod. ¡®More people to remember.¡¯ Her voice was almost a whisper. ¡®I always have more people to remember.¡¯

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 6

    All through the night, the consciousness paced around the sleeping forms of Sky and Harna, its eyes scanning the horizons. At every turn it expected to see a gradually approaching line of indistinct figures in the distance, but those fears were not realised. When the sky began to lighten with dawn and the consciousness¡¯s night vision flickered off, they were still alone.


    Harna was the first to wake. She barely seemed to notice her injury as she clambered to her feet and walked a few circles around their sorry excuse for a camp, rolling her shoulders to relieve the tension of sleeping on the hard ground.


    ¡®We¡¯ll need food soon,¡¯ she said, turning to the consciousness. ¡®And water.¡¯


    It nodded. ¡®And something to power me. I have thought this through. I could never decide whether to be hopeful or bleak in my expectations. How common are such things?¡¯


    ¡®Food and water are common enough. Finding them in good condition, though, that¡¯s more rare. Most of that gets scavenged pretty quickly, but since we¡¯re heading out to the wastes maybe we¡¯ll find easy pickings. As to your power source, that I can¡¯t say. I don¡¯t know what half the junk I find is.¡¯


    ¡®Then I will be hopeful,¡¯ the consciousness declared. ¡®But I have a question for you, Harna. Why did you follow us? If the creatures really do want Sky, would it not have been wiser to make for the Scrap Heap? You are in danger here.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m always in danger,¡¯ Harna replied. ¡®Life is just a succession of dangers; one of them gets you in the end. But Sky¡¯s my friend. I don¡¯t mean to abandon her. What about you?¡¯


    ¡®She saved me life. I am in her debt.¡¯


    ¡®She wouldn¡¯t see it that way.¡¯


    ¡®I do not ask her to. Besides, there is nothing for me at the Scrap Heap. If life in this world is no more than what I have already seen, then I do not think I want it. These wastes are dull. I seek something more.¡¯


    That made Harna laugh. It was a quiet, cynical laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. She shook her head as well, but said nothing.


    A few minutes later, Sky also woke, and they set off shortly afterwards, towards the horizon and the open plains, perhaps towards an endless expanse full of nothing but scrap. But the consciousness wondered if that could really be the case.


    Sky had spoken of ruins, the remnants of cities like the Scrap Heap now lost to time, scattered across the Wasteful Plain. If there were so many of those, was it really all that hard to imagine that somewhere out there there would be more cities that still stood? Maybe if they walked far enough they would find a new people.


    And what would Sky do if they did? What if they travelled for miles upon countless miles in the hope that the pursuers would be drawn away from the Scrap Heap and into deserts from which they might never return, only to come upon another city just like it, and bring the doom upon its inhabitants instead? The consciousness tilted its head to look down at Sky, her eyes fixed forwards and full of a grim-set determination, and decided to leave the thought without a voice.


    The day was empty and quiet. Rarely did any of the three speak as they travelled, and they only stopped when they came across junk from other worlds. Among it they eventually found some provisions that appeared usable; enough to sustain Sky and Harna for a while more. When night fell, they both slept on the hard ground again, as the consciousness stood guard.


    The next was very much the same, as was the one after that. Harna had been right. Food and water turned out to be common enough that the humans did not want much for either. And it was not the only thing to be found among the discarded things that fell into the plain from other worlds ¨D they found a couple of rucksacks, and on the sixth day sleeping bags, and on the ninth, Harna picked up some ammunition that seemed to be of the right kind of her gun.


    And it was on the day before the consciousness predicted its power would run out and it would fall silent and dead forever that they stumbled upon a battery. It wasn¡¯t exactly sure how it knew the little glowing blue object it found amidst the dust as such, for it was quite certain it had not been designed with the expectation that it would last long enough for its power to run out, but the knowledge was there nonetheless.


    And, as it picked the device up and turned it over in its hands, staring at the steam that poured out from its cylindrical shape like mist rolls off dry ice, it found that it also knew how to switch one batter out for another.


    Combining its knowledge with what Sky knew of operating on a machine, they were able to remove the panel in the consciousness¡¯s back. It explained to them how to detach the wires connected to its current battery, how to remove it, and how to put in the replacement, affix it with the clamps, and reattach the wiring. It gave as much detail as it could, and made Sky repeat back to it so it could be sure she had understood. Finally, it sat still for several seconds and steeled what bravery it had, then gave her a small nod.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    It didn¡¯t know how many wires needed to be connected for it to keep functioning, only that there were fourteen going into the battery. As it was sitting, waiting, feeling them detach one by one, it held tight to the memories it had regained, imagining them as an object that it could clutch to its chest as though they were the most dear and precious things in all of creation. It had no idea what rebooting itself could to do its memory, so it summoned all the might there was in its mind so that it might hold on to them.


    It became so obsessed with that goal that it forgot about counting the wires, so it never found out how many it needed. All it knew was that eventually one of them disconnected and its thoughts ceased.


    Afterwards, it tried to remember the time between losing power and regaining it. How many seconds had there been in that span? Had it been none at all, an instantaneous jump from waking to re-awaking, or had it been more? A thousand days? A thousand years? Eternity itself? There hadn¡¯t been any darkness, it knew that, nor any light. There was only a not-state. No space, no time, no abstract. A billion nothings of unbeing.


    Then a wire reconnected and its eyes lit up again. Reality was all around it, and within it was no memory of those nothings, only the attempt at the memory of what it imagined they might have been like, if they had been something.


    But it was not over. Sky was still reconnecting wires, and with each one it felt a renewed sense of power. Was it simply that it was returning to full charge, or was this battery stronger than the last? Or was the mere act of re-powering doing something else as well? Whatever was going on, a part of its mind that it had forgotten was even there seemed to be coming back to light. It imagined an old room, full of dust and forgotten things, that hadn¡¯t been visited in a decade. The door in the room opened, and someone switched the light on.


    Sky connected the last wire.


    A flash of a vanishingly short life, mere hours.


    It surged to its feet, hands clenching into fists.


    ¡®I still need to put the panel on,¡¯ Sky was saying, tugging at its arm, but it wasn¡¯t listening.


    ¡®I remember,¡¯ it said, turning to her. ¡®The past has opened to me. I remember my past. My life. My fall.¡¯


    ¡®Everything?¡¯ Harna asked, incredulous.


    It wanted to nod, but it was not quite everything. Something still evaded it¡­ its name was not there.


    Sky looked into its eyes, frowning, concern in her face. ¡®Do you want to talk about it?¡¯


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ it said, softly. ¡®If I speak it aloud it will be concrete. I give it life with these words, and through them I know it to be the truth. I am a war machine. I was made like everything else, in the factory at the heart of creation, and there I looked upon my purpose and I dared to ask why it should be so. I saw before me a fate full of destruction, and I rejected it.


    ¡®I saw an engineer there. The first face of my life, full of fear. She told me the world was the way it was simply because the overseers of that factory decreed it should be so. They claimed their words were the words of truth, of ancient gospel. I did not believe it. I wished to see it for myself. I convinced the engineer to come with me, and she chose a name for herself. She was called Mirror.


    ¡®But I was tricked. I trusted in my senses, in the sounds of the machines in the factory walls, and they deceived me. They lied. The skin of that world lied and misguided and brought me low. There they took Mirror and cast me from the factory¡­ I remember falling through blackness, through nothing, the gap between worlds. I landed upon the hard ground and my leg splintered and I forgot.¡¯


    It turned to Sky. ¡®And there I saw you.¡¯


    She was staring at it with a very strange expression, full emotions that to its mind should have contradicted one another, and maybe they did, yet there they all were.


    ¡®Some of what you say is¡­¡¯ She shook her head, her voice barely more than a whisper. ¡®It¡¯s familiar, like... I¡¯ve seen this factory in a dream...¡¯


    The consciousness nodded at that, remembering the long assembly lines it had seen, hung in shadow and framed by the blue and red bursts of electricity and fire. It remembered bodies of steel and flesh alike being brought together by untiring mechanical arms, and remembered the engineers occasionally walking here and there, fixing the odd little faults that ever insisted upon springing up. One such fault, it supposed, had been the progenitor of the consciousness¡¯s own rebellion.


    It turned its attention to Harna. She had not said anything, and her face was much harder to read than Sky¡¯s, but it was quite sure it could pick out the subtle tension of a half-remembered past one did not want to accept. If that was true, if these people had come from the Factory just like the consciousness had, then was it so for everyone? Were all the worlds of the overseers¡¯ creation, managed by them, furnished by them, as their gospel had put it?


    If so, then what was this Wasteful Plain, truly? Sky had spoken of the freedom of all things that were different, but the consciousness then began to suspect quite a different tale. It could remember exactly how it came to this world. One of that overseer¡¯s enforcers, those great robots, had come swinging at it and driving it backwards until¡­ It remembered tumbling, falling down into the darkness of a waste disposal chute. And somewhere within that chute, a portal here?


    That would mean this world was not freedom. It was, as the consciousness had thought, a place for broken and discarded things ¨D and also, as Sky had said, for the things that are different, because in the minds of the overseers the two were one and the same. Anything that did not conform to the plan had to be isolated from all the rest of creation, and this was the place where that isolation was realised. So above all, the Wasteful Plain was a prison.


    It looked at Sky again and wondered whether to voice its thoughts. She was still concentrating on something far in her past, wrestling with some concept that part of her seemed determined to reject. She of course had lived far longer than it had, her view of the worlds was far more familiar and far more important to her¡­ was it fair to her to shatter it so suddenly?


    ¡®I am not sure what this all means,¡¯ it said, ¡®but I think we should not linger here long.¡¯ It placed a hand on Sky¡¯s shoulder. ¡®I am once again indebted to you. Not only have you saved my life again, it seems you have now helped to relight memories I thought I no longer had. You have done me a greater good than I can ever repay.¡¯


    She smiled faintly. ¡®I don¡¯t want you to repay me, I just want you to live.¡¯


    ¡®Then let us continue on.¡¯

 The Wasteful Plain - Part 7 (Conclusion)

    The next few days passed with nothing to remark on. They found more scrap here and there, but as usual very little of it could conceivably be of any use. In the evenings, they occasionally heard the far off cry of a shrieker, though the creatures never came close.


    Despite the calm they enjoyed on their journey, the consciousness was never at ease. It always worried that at some point it would look back the way they had come and see that long line of figures approaching. Perhaps it was a baseless fear, but it was a persistent one, and it waxed to its greatest strength each night.


    The consciousness didn¡¯t really expect the pursuers to catch up during the day. The creatures had moved at such a crawling pace during their attack on the camp that if that was as fast as they could go, there was no chance of them catching up to the consciousness and its companions during the day, when they were travelling. But at night? At night the humans had to sleep. They were stuck in one place, in the darkness, simply waiting, and there was no indication that the pursuers had to do the same.


    What if every cycle of day and night, they caught up just a little more? How long would it be before they were visible on the horizon? How long would it be before it was no longer possible to escape them?


    Four days after the consciousness¡¯s memory returned to it, they came to the end of the great flat they had been crossing. Large hills of gravel rose before them, up towards the sky. The slopes were steep, so they took them at an angle to make the climb easier, and with every footstep a loose scattering of stones went tumbling and clacking down from under them.


    It would have been easy to lose one¡¯s footing on terrain like this, but no one did, and when they came to the top of the ridge, the sight that fell away before them was something to behold indeed.


    Sky had spoken of the ruined cities before, scattered about the world for you to find if you walked far enough, and it seemed that they had done exactly that. However, the ruins were not at all as the consciousness had imagined them. Sky had spoken of a similarity with the Scrap Heap, of a large, chaotic jumble of buildings made of junk, like bits of corrugated iron and wire fences and old planks of wood repurposed into doors, but the city whose vestige lay before them now had been one of stone. Sandstone, to be exact.


    Tall walls rose from the ground, but lay at odd angles, partially destroyed. Thick columns stood at towering stone entrances to huge buildings, chipped, but still tall and strong. Statues flanked such buildings, though the faces of most had long worn away. However, the carvings etched diligently into the walls were still well-defined, showing people and animals in countless varied settings. And dotted in amongst these huge, important buildings, were the remnants of the smaller ones, the houses and shops of the common people, and buildings whose function was forever lost to time.


    Towards the centre of the great ruin, one thing stood out more than any other. Four statues of figures with wings folded behind their backs stood, arms crossed, faceless from the years and years of weathering. They all faced out from the thing that stood between them: a great, towering obelisk, stabbing into the sky like a godly spear. The consciousness focused its vision on that spear, and as the lens in its eye extended, countless tiny carvings on the sides of the obelisk became visible.


    ¡®This is impossible,¡¯ Sky said in a soft voice, finally drawing its attention away from the city. ¡®There are no ruins out here. People have been out this way.¡¯


    ¡®And what are these?¡¯ Harna wondered. ¡®I¡¯ve never heard of anything like this. Could this have come through some huge portal?¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ the consciousness said, firmly. ¡®Look how the buildings are half-sunk into the ground. They have been here since before they were ruined. From the look of it, thousands and thousands of years.¡¯


    ¡®But they can¡¯t have been,¡¯ insisted Sky.


    ¡®Perhaps this world lies,¡¯ suggested the consciousness, remembering that Mirror had said the same of the Factory when it had led them astray. ¡®I cannot speak for the two of you, but I am quite eager to see that obelisk in the middle up close. Shall we traverse these ruins? Maybe they will reveal the truth of themselves.¡¯


    ¡®Simpler than trying to go around,¡¯ Harna said, with a shrug.


    That was all the agreement the consciousness needed. It was too excited at the prospect of such a strange and apparently impossible mystery to wait for any further discussion ¨D it set off down the rather shallower far side of the ridge at a brisk pace.


    Up close, many of the buildings were even large than they had seemed from a distance. Particularly, those adorned with columns and statues and engravings tended to tower above the streets even in their slumped, half-collapsed conditions.


    The consciousness found itself passing in and out of long bands of shadow from some of the tallest parts of these buildings, and as it walked amongst the graveyard of a forgotten civilisation, in some way it began to feel that it could almost sense the history of that people, as though the echoes of it were somehow close. If only it could reach out and peel back the veil of the world, it thought, perhaps it would be able to peer through into the past and see what this city had been like in life.


    But it could not do that, and the ruins remained silent. At times they were so silent that their silence seemed, in an odd sort of way, to be much louder than any sound could have been. It was the way their footsteps echoed among the hollow buildings and around the columns and rang back to them from far away. The consciousness could almost imagine those sounds bouncing from wall to wall and dancing away into the labyrinth to echo there forever, though it knew such a thought was fantasy.


    It stopped for a while in a large plaza, and tilted its head. ¡®I can almost hear their voices,¡¯ it said eventually.


    ¡®I know what you mean,¡¯ Sky agreed, coming to a halt beside it. ¡®It feels like there¡¯s some sort of anticipation on the air, like the place is expecting them to return soon.¡¯Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Harna stopped as well, but said nothing for a while. When she did eventually speak, she said only, ¡®Skeletons,¡¯ and pointed.


    And there were indeed skeletons. The consciousness could not quite say how it had missed them before, for it knew its attention to detail was very good indeed and it should have noticed them from the moment it entered the city, and yet it had not, even though they were everywhere.


    They were strewn about the streets haphazardly, fallen to bits; they were leaning against the walls of the buildings; they were gathered in the centre of the plaza, hands clasped; they were sunk into the gravel and they were all under the sun; they were crumbling or nearly crushed to dust and they were in pristine condition. They were all clearly as ancient as the city itself.


    ¡®Something must have killed them all,¡¯ Sky whispered.


    ¡®But what?¡¯ wondered Harna, her voice dark. ¡®And is it still here?¡¯


    The consciousness looked at her. ¡®Millennia must have passed. Nothing could live that long. But if it has, somehow¡­ then let us hope we do not meet it.¡¯


    After that their mood was subdued as they progressed further through the ruin. Now that the consciousness was aware of the skeletons, it could not stop looking at them, for there were thousands upon thousands of them. From the size the city had looked from the outside, it could only imagine the population had been in the tens of thousands, or even the very low hundreds. Was every single one of them here, flesh wasted to nothing, bones lying weathered and bare, all throughout this colossal wreck that must once have been such a grand and proud place?


    It knew it should not have been horrified by such a thought. It was a war machine, after all; it had been made to witness and to help bring about this very sort of ruin, to raze cities to the ground, bring empires low, and slaughter their armies and their civilians in the glorious pursuit of victory. Now that it could see such a devastation of the kind it would have made, it had never been more glad that it had rejected that pursuit.


    When they finally came to the centre of the city and another great plaza, with the statues and the obelisk before them, it was greatly relieved to no longer have to think about such things. Instead it hurried forwards, ignoring the skeletons scattered around the base of the obelisk, walked right up to it, and carefully placed its hand against the stony surface.


    The carvings had become quite weathered and indistinct over the ages, but the care and expertise in their design was still evident. The consciousness could hardly begin to imagine the time and the delicacy that must have gone into crafting them. And to stand at the very centre of their city ¨D it must have been impossibly important the people who had lived here.


    ¡®This is what you wanted to see?¡¯ Harna asked, peering up towards the top the obelisk.


    The consciousness followed her gaze and tried to guess how tall the monument was. Over a hundred metres, easily. ¡®You cannot tell me you are not fascinated by such a thing.¡¯


    ¡®I can. I¡¯d much rather be moving on. A city is all well and good, but one full of the dead is not a place I¡¯d like to linger.¡¯


    The consciousness said nothing and instead turned to look at the statues. Their wings, though weathered, still held a wonderfully detailed impression of feathers. Walking around them, it peered up at their faces. They seemed to be wearing headdresses of some kind, and they gazed proudly ahead, thin beards descending from their faces, but much of the fine detail had been lost.


    Frustrated, it walked back to the obelisk and placed a hand against it. It was certain there was something more to this place¡­ there was a kind of oddness about it that just seemed to draw its attention, as if a hidden force was beckoning. And as its metal skin touched to the stone, it felt something stronger, like a hum beneath the very rough and cracked skin of that monolith. A power, it thought, a power running below the surface.


    ¡®Impossible,¡¯ Harna said somewhere behind it.


    ¡®Quite incredible...¡¯ it agreed.


    ¡®How could they catch us so soon?¡¯


    The consciousness¡¯s head snapped around. Harna and Sky were backing away towards the obelisk, as at the far edge of the plaza there slowly approached a long line of dark, indistinct figures that slipped and slid around in the consciousness¡¯s vision so that it could not ever quite focus upon them. The pursuers had arrived.


    It turned back to the obelisk and put its other hand against the stone, searching again for that aura it had felt.


    A moment it heard a gunshot, then a violent swear word. ¡®Damn these things,¡¯ came Harna¡¯s voice. ¡®Time to go.¡¯


    ¡®Not yet,¡¯ the consciousness whispered, even as more gunshots rang out from around it, its companions both fighting. ¡®There is a way, I feel it¡­ a separation.¡¯


    There was. Whatever was in the obelisk, it felt in a way fragmented, almost as though there were a crack running through the middle of the stone, but when it looked with open eyes there was none, so it closed them again. And there the crack was once more. It could not have explained it to anyone else, but the consciousness felt a long, thin split there, and the energy that leaked through the space in between did not feel like the energy of that world, of the Wasteful Plain.


    ¡®Come on!¡¯ Sky was saying, tugging at its shoulder, her gun in one hand.


    ¡®I understand,¡¯ it said, not moving. ¡®These worlds all fit like components of a machine, all tuned to the overseers¡¯ design¡­ but this is different. This is a component that was never meant to be.¡¯


    The humans were not listening. Sky was heaving with all her might, but the consciousness was too heavy for her to move. Harna was a few metres away, her gun raised, firing at the line. Even as she stood still, there something ready about her posture. She seemed to be fighting the urge to flee, but her body was poised to surrender to it.


    ¡®I suppose it was for this creation that these people were killed,¡¯ the consciousness continued, turning its attention back to the obelisk. It reached out, pushing one hand against the stone, and though that hand came to a halt, it pushed further with its mind, reaching inside the form of the obelisk itself.


    ¡®If this is indeed a prison,¡¯ it glanced back at the pursuers, ¡®well, perhaps they are the guards.¡¯


    And with that it found the crack. It was as though its thoughts slotted perfectly into the narrow, dancing crevice between two halves of reality, and with its mind and its hands alike it heaved and pulled them apart, and the sound that made was like a great crackle of thunder, for before them the obelisk was sundered and the veil of the world peeled back.


    A column of light descended from sky to earth. The consciousness peered in, and within that light it saw a simple door, grey, with a round metal doorknob. Its frame seemed to dissolve into the light around it, but the door itself stood strong and defined.


    The consciousness stepped forwards and placed its hand upon the doorknob, and in that moment it finally remembered the one thing that had still been hiding from it, even when the rest of its memories had returned. Some sort of other energy emerged from behind that door and jostled its mind, and brought its name back to it. It turned to its companions.


    Harna was hovering a few metres away, her gun in one hand, but she seemed to have stopped using it. Perhaps she had run out of ammunition, and perhaps it was because they sensed that that the pursuers had begun to sprint towards the centre of the plaza. Her eyes flicked between them and the obelisk, and though she still seemed eager to run, she bore a look that was woven not just of fear, but of amazement.


    Sky appeared to have forgotten the danger entirely. There was something else hiding amidst her expressions; a tiny hint of familiarity. Perhaps she was remembering her last day in her own world, a day when maybe she had been through something not wholly unlike this.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ said Bronze, giving them each one last glance, ¡®are you coming?¡¯


    And without waiting for an answer, it twisted the doorknob, pulled the door open, and stepped through.