Disciple of Vengeance, CC Rasmussen [best english books to read TXT] 📗
- Author: CC Rasmussen
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He came back to Urias and saw that the Hussars were barreling towards Ruck. He gave it thirty seconds.
“Wait here,” he said, then turned back towards the mountain behind him. Ruck shouted, but the boy’s voice faded as he sprinted up the mountain. He rounded the corner. It was there, chained to a spike embedded in the ground within a small alcove carved out of the sheer rock. It stood to its full height, craning its neck so that its eyes could regard him above its stubby snout, the elaborate horns that jut from out of its forehead coalescing into one emphatic promontory of steely bone. Janis had never seen a creature like it before. It was like a horse, only the size of two horses both width, height, and length-wise. It had a long neck and horns. A true beast, though from the saddle strapped on its back it was clear they must at least try to ride it. He approached. It exhaled sharply and lowered its head. He didn’t have time for this.
He ran towards it. It flung its head up to skewer him and he crouched, leaping just as it would have struck him. He ran along the curved wall to get around to its back. It gave out a sharp, enraged shriek as it tried to turn its head back and twist its body away. Janis landed on the massive saddle and found two footholds for a regular-sized sapien to take command of it. With one flick of his fingers, he sent a tight kinetic scythe that cut the chain, then gripped the reins back towards him as the creature rose on its massive legs and bucked. He threw his weight forward, towards the creature’s neck, and forced it back down. He let his mind go tranquil as it had when speaking to Cth’tata, feeling for the horse’s mind or life force, whatever it was he could manipulate, and exuded his desire to escape. What he found underneath him was utterly foreign.
“I’ll give you freedom. Just do the same for me,” he intimated. In response, it thundered forward and out towards the cliffside. Janis pulled with the reins as best he could, guiding it in a sclerotic way towards Ruck below. They passed debris from the bandit position on their way down, bodies and equipment splayed like so many tossed pebbles. He saw a half-broken bolt caster and thrust out with his mind, yanking it into his right hand.
The tank was beyond the rock face, Hussar mercenaries spread out and approaching the boy. Janis grit his teeth. He was going to crack the reins when the creature leaped into their midst, throwing Janis back in the saddle like a warrior god, arc caster lowered towards them as it trampled a Hussar without stumbling. Janis jutted his arm forward to send the charged bolt towards the first Hussar in his sight. The blue energy singed the air and blew the man’s body apart. His creature thundered over more of the Hussars, Janis catching stragglers with bolts of energy every time he felt the rod recharge, sucking their life forces into himself as they scrambled for cover hopelessly. The last couple made for the tank as its operator tried to bring its weapons to focus on them. He could feel the creature’s bloodlust give way to fear. Janis wondered how the beast could understand what it was facing. He fired one last bolt at the two escaping Hussars and missed, the energy ball screaming into the dented hull of the chariot. Sparks flew. The chariot remained.
The power of so many lives surged through him. The creature remained immobile below him as he held his hands out towards the tank, super-heating the air between them until a ball of liquid plasma expanded and grew. He fed it, spending much of the lives he’d gathered, watching as the arc caster charged on the tank’s top, ready to fire and destroy him. The blue energy glowed at the end of the barrel. He thundered his hands together.
The plasma smothered the tank, melting it on contact until it was a jagged sphere the size of a handball in less than a second. The sound was unlike anything he’d ever heard. It reminded him of scratching a chalkboard like he used to do to torture his tutors as a child, only happening so fast it hurt. A slight wind blew through the sudden silence in the ravine and out towards the marsh, as though the ravine was hoping to expel them like mucous. It caught his robes and caressed his skin. He let his bloodlust and the symbiote’s strange high settle down. The creature pawed at the ground. He tried to read its emotions, but it was too bizarre to understand. He was probably fooling himself, but he got the sense it was thankful, or maybe even in awe.
Janis looked back towards the rock outcropping. “It’s finished.”
Ruck peeked out from behind it, then stepped out and took in the scene. He looked scared when he saw what was left of the tank. “I thought you’d run away,” he said.
“Had to find us a proper way out,” Janis replied. He guided the creature towards Ruck. The boy backed away. “It’s okay,” Janis said. “I think he’s proven he’s with us.”
Ruck shook his head. “You can’t just ride creatures in the Waste. You don’t know who they might serve, or what they might eat…”
“I can.” Janis ushered the creature towards him. “You coming with?”
Ruck swallowed, then held his hand up. Janis reached down and pulled the boy up behind him. “What about Sciana?” Ruck asked.
She’s dead, Janis wanted to say. Guilt, unbidden and foreign, unspooled itself in his mind. She’d signed up for risking death, but then she’d been right about choosing this path, and she’d saved his life. He grit his teeth at that. It was the Aphora way to owe no one anything, not even family. That was a road to servitude and weakness, to depending on politics like the Arawat instead of financial position and power like his own family. But look at what had happened to that, and now he owed her, even if she was dead. Especially because she was. It was a debt he couldn’t allow to hang over his head.
He stopped their strange steed by the wreckage of the chariot and slid off it. Ruck held on tightly like the thing might take off, but it watched Janis instead as he climbed inside the ruined artifact and returned with Sciana’s body. Ruck helped him pull it up and place her along the creature’s back. He strapped her in as Ruck looked at her, his face scrunched with pain. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“You wanted to get her.”
“I mean, I don’t like that she died.”
Janis tightened the last cinch. “Me neither,” he wanted to say. He tasted metal in the back of his throat.
“She was our friend,” Ruck replied. He pulled himself up in front of the boy, sat, and cracked the reins. As they approached the marsh, he wondered if he’d ever gotten used to it himself, or ever would.
“Yes,” he said. “And for that, we’ll honor her.” He led them towards the marsh. As they crossed into the deep bog, he hoped the boy couldn’t read the symbiote’s disturbing desire on his face.
THEY BURIED HER on the other side of the bog. Janis didn’t know the Uma custom, but he knew that in J’Soon one only buried enemies in soft sand or clay to show how little they mattered. He and Ruck dug up the hard, rich dirt beyond the bog and placed her inside of it. He felt hollow; her face branded in his memory. Another victim of his cursed fate. When they were finished, they got back on the creature and continued to Vrear.
The Domain was a rigidly regimented place. That much was clear from the rows of segmented farmland that stretched to either side of them on the busy road. Golems lumbered through rows of wheat, barley, and plants Janis had no name for. Some were as tall as the trees they plucked fruit from, others only the size of his legs. Ruck had a million questions about them, but he stopped asking after an hour of riding. Janis didn’t have any answers. He’d never been to the Domain. All he knew about it was that being the priests of ancient Set had bound to living stone managed it. Its essence gave the golems life, its mind directed the lives of the citizens of Vrear. More than that, Janis couldn’t say.
They could see it in the distance by midday on their third day of travel. The ancient metal tower at its center shone like a beacon. The walls were as strange as Janis remembered from his vision, etched with symbols and topped with ancient weapons. As they crossed the bridge, Janis couldn’t help but look for where he’d seen Renea and her kidnapper on it. Orinax must have hurt her to get her to influence the bandits like that. That they’d fought the Hussars as well showed that she’d at least tried to balance it out, had fought back against his influence the only way she could.
The closer they got, the colder Vrear looked. As they approached the Auspicious Gate, they had to walk their steed on foot. Ruck pointed out the various lights and faces swimming on the walls, watching them. Is that why they were so strangely shaped? Guards approached, one of them towering almost to the ceiling of the gate. He was encased in boxy metal plate armor so that it impossible to know if it was a giant in armor or a golem. “Your Zata must be lodged outside the walls,” the regular-sized sapien said. Janis looked among the group of them. They had broad swords at their hips.
“My what?”
He indicated their steed, his eyes irritated from deep behind the helmet. “Your Zata. Biomanced creatures are not allowed within the walls of Vrear.”
“I have nowhere to put it.”
The guard held out his gauntleted hand. “We have a stable. It’s 30 specs a day.”
Janis had only known the thing for a day or two, and yet he felt some turmoil handing the reins to the guard. It looked at him and snorted. He approached it and held his arm out. It lowered its head towards his own. “I’ll come for you when my business here is done,” he whispered to it. Could feel it had conflicting emotions. “Serve me well, and I’ll see to it you’re free after this,” he continued. It grunted in understanding. He watched as two guards guided it away. The rest directed him inside, towards the Visitor’s Quadrant.
Most of Vrear was off-limits to visitors. It was just as well. J’Soon’s streets might swim in blood, arteries pressurized by greed and politics, but at least there was a soul there. His memories of the spires of the Confederacy’s H’laal dome, or the minarets with their House flags swaying in the Waste’s wind, still conjured nostalgia. Vrear had nothing like that. Its streets were sterile metal walkways, its impressive ziggurats and towers ultimately lacking in inspiration. They were sheer metal, flat and gray. All he knew of it was the name of an inn where Brethor kept a safehouse. They got directions, and he led the boy towards it, past the
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