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ACoL Book 2 - Chapter 2: Help Is Coming
🕑 Added 2024-10-27 19:30:31 +0000 UTC(I bet you guys didn't expect this, did you? Well, I just wanted to show the progress I've made. There are still some rough edges and I'll probably continue to tweak things, but it's far more polished than chapter 1. )
Vincent was home again, back on Earth. But the hallways of his house were bigger than they should have been, and the doors were askew. Objects were placed in strange locations: a television in the ceiling, a toilet in the kitchen, and there was an elevator in the laundry room. And yet, it was his home.
He called out to his father to let him know he was home, that he was okay. But there was no answer, no answer except for silence. The floor flexed as he walked, acting as if it were made of some sort of rubber membrane rather than linoleum and subflooring. He saw toys on the living room floor and recognized them. Some of them belonged to his sisters when they had been kids, dolls and dollhouses. Some belonged to him, action figures and legos. They were scattered all over creation. He called out to his sisters but again, it was silence that answered him.
There was a scratching noise nearby. Vincent turned his head in its direction. Nothing. Where had it come from?
“Kris?” he said, “Sarah? Dad?”
Nobody answered. It was still silent, silent except for the scratching noise. It was coming from inside the wall, as if something had gotten itself trapped behind the drywall. Vincent didn’t like the quiet. It was sinister. Somebody had to be around. The toys were played with recently, so his siblings had to be nearby. There was even a dinner plate on the coffee table with a partially eaten sandwich on it.
He walked around in a place that looked familiar enough to be recognizable yet alien enough to be uncanny. Rooms were not where they should have been. Outside the windows, it was completely black. Not just night, but black, as if the house itself were floating in an abyss. He heard his cat meow.
“Skittles?” Vincent said.
He chased the sound of his cat down the hallways. He thought he saw a tail disappear around a corner, so he followed. The scratching in the walls grew more eager, frantic. Vincent didn’t like it, but he didn’t know why. It didn’t belong to his cat, that much he knew.
Skittles meowed again. Vincent followed the sound into his bathroom. There were no places to hide in it. The bathtub had its curtain drawn, the closet was open and so, he should have found his cat. And yet Skittles was not there. Still, Vincent heard him meow a third time. It came from the sink, and yet nothing was on the countertop or in the sink itself. Vincent approached the mirror and looked at his reflection.
Like his home, the face staring back at him was both familiar, yet off. His skin was olive and his eyes were brown. That was right. But there were patches of blue in places, shifting constantly. His eyes were misaligned, and his mouth was sagging. The scratching returned and he saw something move behind him, something in the wall itself. The drywall flexed and a shape rose from its featureless surface, as if the drywall were being stretched over an object behind it. A snout with hollow sockets pushed through, pushing the drywall to its limit. He heard his cat meow.
He ran. Or at least, he tried to. But the air became as thick as water. It was hard to move. His body would not obey. He had to get out. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. All around him, the walls came alive. Snouts rose from them, joined by limbs. They were trying to break through. He forced himself forward, stumbling through the impossibly thick air, moving in slow motion. He tried not to look, he didn’t want to see them. But he heard the wall behind him rupture.
A heartbeat thrummed throughout the house. He could feel it pulsing in the air. It was a sickly, gangrenous sound. Something wet slopped onto the floor. He heard viscera sliding over itself, gurgling, choking. Voices drowning in wetness tried to cry out.
“Kris! Dad! Help!” Vincent tried to shout. But his words came out as a whisper. He had no voice. He could not yell. Something warm and damp curled around his legs and began to slide up them.
He awoke with a gasp and found himself staring at the roof of a leather canopy. He was hyperventilating, gasping for air. It took an effort to calm himself down. He heard motion all around him and remembered where he was and realized he had been dreaming. He was on Falius, accompanying The La’ark’s forces. This was their camp. That’s right. He just had another nightmare. Swearing, he wiped off his brow. The shandan were already awake from the sound of it, getting ready for the day ahead. Relieved that he wasn’t alone, he took a few deep breaths.
Groaning, he forced himself to get up. He had been laying on his back, so with a little concentration, he used his wings to push himself upright on his cot so he could sit. His human brain was getting better at controlling the form he found himself in. Though when he stood up, he stumbled a bit.
There was always a little bit of disorientation each morning. A lifetime of living as a human being could not be undone so easily. So even though he had been inhabiting a bipedal dragon body for weeks now, his mind was still human. It needed a few seconds to calibrate when he awoke. It needed to remember that there were wings and a tail. Both threw off his center of gravity.
The damp morning greeted him, clinging to his body like sweat. His scale-like skin glistened with its humidity. His feet squished the wet ground beneath him. Though the canopy had been erected before last night’s rain, it didn’t stop rivulets from running under the walls, turning dirt into mud. Frowning, Vincent walked around until he found a dry spot, his feet “grabbing” at the soil as he walked. He wiped them off.
There was a fire outside. He could hear the crackling and see its light flickering on the canopy walls. Though it wasn’t particularly cold, the wetness of the morning made the flames inviting. He wanted warmth. After putting on his shoes, which had been designed for dragon feet, he stepped outside. A light fog blanketed the terrain. It tumbled and flowed as winged figures moved in and out of it. Something was off. Usually, by this time, the soldiers would be breaking down the canopies for the day’s journey ahead. But nobody was packing anything up.
Shrugging, he headed toward the nearest fire, the one whose light he’d seen. As he drew closer, he saw Sperloc deep in conversation with Menik. Tuls, Madrian, Jeris and M’Kari were also there, warming themselves by the flames.
“I would not trust what the man says,” Menik was saying, “he’s a wing-shitter.”
Vincent’s ear twitched. Wing-shitter? he thought. He had no idea what that was or who they were discussing. He gathered that a “wing-shitter” was an insult of theirs. When Tuls saw him, he moved aside so he could take a spot.
“The guy does not know what he’s talking about,” Menik continued, “he thought he could join a roshenum team simply because he’s lithe and he has muscle. Guess what that got him? A broken rack and brain damage.”
Vincent had heard the soldiers talk about roshenum a few days ago. It was a Falian sport. He wasn’t privy to the rules, but from what he gathered, it involved gliding and air combat. Sperloc saw Vincent approach and glared at him. He didn’t say anything. Ever since the revelations in Crefield, the tuhli treated him with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. The others, however, welcomed him to the fire.
“Another bad dream?” Tuls was looking at him, his orange irises glowing like the embers in the fire.
“Yeah,” Vincent mumbled.
Tuls was attuned to his emotions, much like an empath. Loskia, he called himself. The others didn’t know he could do this, it was a secret he had shared with Vincent back in Crefield. Vincent had been fresh off of his nightmarish confrontation with the Puppeteer. And Tuls, out of some sense of comradery, shared this intimate secret. Vincent didn’t know what to think about this revelation.
“I have had a few nightmares myself,” Tuls said.
“Yeah...not surprising,” Vincent said, “I was back home. I mean back on Earth. But there was nobody there. Then these things burst out of the drywall and tried to get me.”
“Dry wall?” Tuls asked.
“What?” Vincent asked.
“The wall was dry?”
“Oh...no. It’s something we put on our walls. A lot of modern homes aren’t built with brick and mortar. We assemble a frame out of wooden studs. Drywall is what we call these panels we attach to the studs. Gives the wall a smooth surface. It’s cheaper and a lot faster than brick or logs.”
“Ah...”
Tuls nodded and turned his snout back toward the flames.
“How’s your tail?” Vincent asked. It was still wrapped in bandages after the incident in The Stillwater.
“It itches,” Tuls said, “but it heals.”
Vincent nodded. He didn’t know what else to say.
“I knew a wing-shitter once,” M’kari said, interjecting himself into Sperloc and Menik’s conversation. He was the only other channeler in Vincent’s cabras, the soldiers assigned to protect him. M’kari usually didn’t speak much.
“Everybody knows a wing-shitter,” Sperloc said.
“No. Not jesting,” M’kari said, “he shit on his wings.”
“Who?” Jeris asked. His tone was incredulous.
“Shan Stenson. Went into the woods to shit. Heard him yell. Ran to him, found him holding a wing out in disgust. Shit on it. Used his wings to stabilize himself when he squat. One was folded underneath him too much. Made me swear not to tell anybody or he would gut me.”
“So why are you telling us?” Jeris asked while Menik started to make a strange, hissing sound. He was cracking up.
“Probably because Stenson is dead,” Sperloc said.
“Because Stenson is dead,” M’Kari confirmed. His tail twitched.
Vincent just listened, a slight grin curling the corners of his mouth. Ever since the confrontation with the Puppeteer in Crefield, he had been shaken to his core. The darkness inside made him feel disconnected from his body, moving like a zombie among these people. The revelations the Puppeteer imparted unsettled him. It had not been his kidnapper. It wasn’t the one responsible for taking him from Earth, ripping him apart and transforming him into the body he now inhabited. Though it corrupted flesh and had used its storms to spawn abominations, it did not create Vincent.
It claimed that the one responsible for his kidnapping and transformation was called Girashnal The Hunter. It was a Black Herald. Vincent didn’t know what that was, but when he revealed this to his hosts, their reactions spoke volumes.
“We do not know what they were,” The La’ark, the leader of the expedition, had said, “only that they were one of the worst things to ever happen to Admoran until Naikira Laneus gave her life to defeat them. So do not go repeating what you just said to anybody... if word gets out that a Black Herald brought you here, entire nations will put a target on your back. They will want you dead.”
It had been a week since the confrontation. Vincent’s thoughts were like the fog that settled upon the camp this morning. He did not know what to think. In fact, he was almost afraid to let himself think. He recognized that he was traumatized, and that this disassociation was a coping mechanism.
He had confronted the entity behind the storms himself, a presence that could sculpt flesh into nightmares. And he used a power to defeat it, a power he didn’t even know he had. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Fear? Regret? Numbness? He was glad to have companions. And so, he listened to the soldiers’ banter and took solace in their humor. Occasionally, he saw something in their eyes that he had not seen before. Was it...was it admiration? Awe? Or was he delusional to read these things? It had not been officially confirmed that he was responsible for defeating the Puppeteer. But the soldiery knew. He heard whispers from other soldiers around the camp.
Tuls offered him a piece of feln loaf. Thanking him, Vincent took the confused loaf of berries, nuts, and bread, and began to tear it into smaller chunks and ate them one by one. The feln loaf was nothing to write home about. But it seemed to have enough nutrients to keep the soldiers running.
“I’m sick of this shit...” Vincent muttered.
Menik’s ear twitched. “What was that?” he asked, “You are sick of what?”
“This stuff,” Vincent said, “I don’t mean to whine, but it’s like I’m eating dirt.”
“You have been with us since Meldohv Syredel and you just now noticed that?” Madrian asked incredulously.
“Oh, I noticed it. But it’s getting unbearable. God, I miss bacon and eggs...”
“Bacon and eggs?” Tuls repeated.
“Bacon and eggs,” Vincent continued, “Maybe some hash browns, biscuits and gravy. Damn...I just want a home-cooked meal.”
Before Vincent could explain, Jeris interrupted. “Well stop whining and eat it. It’s good for you.”
“Stop tearing it up. Just shove the whole thing in,” Menik said, “then you would not have to worry about the taste.”
“Man, I thought I explained this to you guys. My brain’s not used to that yet. It still thinks it’s in a human body. It thinks my mouth is smaller than it is. If I just shove it into my mouth like you guys do, I start gagging and choking.”
Menik shrugged and continued to talk to Sperloc about roshenum.
“So...what’s going on?” Vincent asked when he was finished with the feln loaf. “Usually you all are breaking things down by the time I wake up.”
“Breaking things ‘down’?” Sperloc repeated.
“Taking the tents part, packing things,” Vincent clarified. Apparently ‘breaking things down’ was an Earthly idiom they were unfamiliar with.
“The Stillwater is still flooded,” Menik said.
The Stillwater was an expansive marsh whose ponds were bottomless pits. If something touched their waters, they could not escape. If a finger broke the surface, it could not be pulled back out. Because of this, it was incredibly dangerous to cross even under normal conditions. But when the expedition left Crefield to head back across the marsh, they found that it had become flooded.
And so, they had been traveling for a week at least, trying to circumvent it. Vincent was a thalassophobe. He didn’t want to go anywhere near that place ever again. Just seeing the Stillwater for a second time, now one expansive, bottomless lake, nearly sent him into a panic attack.
“I thought we were headed toward one of its dryer parts so we could get around it,” he said.
“The Shallows,” Menik said, “The zerok say they are flooded now too. This has never happened before in our known history, right, Sper?”
Sperloc grumbled a confirmation.
“And so now we’ve come to a stop. The La’ark is talking to the zerok of Gullreach. We may need to be rescued.”
“There’s no way around it?” Vincent asked.
Madrian, still holding a loaf of feln bread in his hands, extended a wing to the ground to draw in the mud.
“This is Crefield,” he said, drawing a dot, “and it is in the center of what we call the Aindo Ring–” He drew a ring around Crefield. “–The Stillwater forms a part of it, the bottom half.” As he explained this, he began to dot the bottom half of the circle he drew. “And the rest of the circle is mountains.” He scribbled a bunch of triangles to represent the mountains.
“All paths are effectively cut off,” Sperloc said, “we’re trapped. We would starve to death if we tried to travel through the mountains without a cleft strider.”
Vincent nodded. During the fight with the Puppeteer, several wagons filled with rations caught on fire. Food distribution, while the stores were not yet dwindling, had to be handled with care. There was some wildlife to hunt nearby, but not much, not enough to feed the entire expedition. The forests were unnaturally quiet. A silence fell among them like a pall. Being so close to Crefield when the Puppeteer appeared, it was surmised that the creatures in the surrounding lands were its first victims. There were plenty of empty nests and vacant burrows. And so, there were less animals to hunt.
“So, what now?” Vincent asked, “we sit here and wait?”
“If you have any better ideas,” a gravelly voice rasped from behind, “The La’ark would be honored to hear them.”
Vincent turned to find himself looking upward at Akhil. He was accompanied by his twin brother, Oris. Being two of the best fighters in the expedition, they were hulking beasts who were almost pure muscle. Akhil took a seat by the fire. Several had to move aside to account for his bulk. Oris joined them as well.
“Let loose your jowels, Akhil,” Sperloc demanded. It was an expression Vincent had not heard before. “What is the news?”
“Gullreach is sending aid. The zerok are bringing food. Gathering it from the nearest villages.”
“And then they will carry us out of here?” Menik asked. It sounded like he was joking. Vincent was confused by the tone. It sounded like a good idea.
“Not exactly, no. Not immediately.” It was Oris who answered. “The La’ark will stay behind with the rest of the expedition. In the meantime, Gullreach is sending a flock of Shaydos.”
Vincent felt his ear flick. It was a new word.
“The Shaydos will escort Vincent Cordell and the rest of us to Gullreach.”
“The Shaydos?” There was surprise in Menik’s voice. Jeris and Madrian exchanged looks. M’kari raised a brow. Sperloc was the only one who didn’t seem surprised by the news. He simply scribbled notes down on a scroll and tucked it away.
“What are ‘Shaydos’?” Vincent asked.
“They are the ‘silent minds’,” Sperloc said, “they have willingly cut themselves off from the voices of their flock. They are deaf to other zerok.”
“They can’t hear the ‘mind speak’?”
The zerok were the other sentient race in Falius. They were large, winged quadrupeds who resembled griffins in their body structure. Except their heads were a cross between something avian and crustacean. They had two eyes above a horizontal, pincer-like beak. And one large eye in their gullet, which they used to communicate telepathically.
“Mind speak...” Sperloc repeated, as if the phrase was offensive to his lips, “yes, they cannot hear the voices of their people.”
“Why, though?” Vincent asked.
It was Tuls who answered. “All creatures of reason have inherited the stain from The Severence, including zerok” he said, “The Shaydos believe they are devout in following the Naikiran Way. They believe that in order to grow closer to the Weaver, they have to cut themselves off from outside influence, even if it means having no flock. The silence, they believe, allows them to grow closer to the creator. It’s a tremendous, irreversible sacrifice. I am amazed...I’ve heard of the Shaydos before, but I never thought I would get to see one. Why would they send Shaydos?”
“The La’ark and Gullreach have their reasons,” Akhil said.
“Wait,” Vincent said, “why don’t we just have the zerok who are already with us fly us out of here? In fact, if they can do that, why didn’t we just have them fly us to Crefield?”
At these words, Vincent noticed the soldiers winced a little bit.
“Spoken like an outsider,” Sperloc chuffed, “Did I not regale you will tales of the conflicts between us groundwalkers and the zerok?”
“I don’t think so. When did you do this?”
“On the way to Crefield!” Sperloc barked. Vincent didn’t know why he was irritated so sudden. But then again, ever since the historian found out Vincent was “herald work”, his whole disposition toward him changed. It became hostile and suspicious.
“Was I lucid when you did this?”
Sperloc went silent for a moment. Apparently, Vincent’s schizophrenia still made them all uncomfortable. It was deadly to their people, a curse many believed was inherited from The Severence. The fact that Vincent was able to live with the Bane was an anomaly. These people were not familiar with the catatonic states that sometimes accompanied psychosis. He was not always present, not mentally, anyway.
“Then let me condense it for you. Almost a thousand years ago, we enslaved zerok,” Sperloc said, “We snuck into their nests and dens, killed the mothers and took the young ones. We raised them to be our servants, our beasts of labor. Wars between zerok and groundwalkers broke out. Blood blanketed the lands. The zerok are not a prolific people. They do not reproduce as fast as we do. What we lacked in size, we made up in number. But the skirmishes decimated both of our populations. Time has mended most of the wounds, but the zerok remember. And when I say ‘remember’, I mean remember.”
Sperloc’s beady black eyes seemed to pierce Vincent. “They don’t tell stories to their offspring. They give memories. If you ask a zerok to fly you into town as a favor, it will relive its ancestor’s memory. It will remember the time it was enslaved to do its master’s bidding, when it was asked to fly its master into town and paraded around as a status symbol.”
Jeez... Vincent thought. So, the zerok inherit thousand-year-old trauma.
“But they accompanied us to Crefield,” he said.
“Yes,” Oris said, “but few zerok will fly a groundwalker anywhere. Few of us have earned that respect. It’s denigrating to them. Only urgent circumstances would compel them to do such a thing.”
Well, the expedition’s situation seemed reasonably urgent. Couldn’t they all be evacuated? It didn’t make any rational sense. The zerok and the expedition worked together to tackle the stormspawn problem. Surely that was proof enough that they were allies? But Sperloc was right. He was an outsider. This wasn’t his world. And so, he refrained from commenting on it.
“But the Shaydos are willing to fly us?” Tuls asked.
“Yes,” Akhil said, “the circumstances are...urgent.”
It wasn’t often that Vincent heard hesitance in Akhil’s voice. He was direct and to the point, unlike his twin, who was more amicable and outgoing. “It will be explained why after we have already left.”
The rest of them grunted. They didn’t ask any questions.
“It will take them three days to reach us,” Oris said, “until then, relax. Train. Keep your minds sharp.”
