Chapter Four
When Faith woke up, she first found herself greeted by an empty bed, and not Erlandur’s slumbering form as she had hopefully anticipated. Her body ached, both in a good and bad way, and she forced herself upright in the sheets. She saw the undead wolves, who looked a lot better for wear now. The one she landed on no longer dragged its feet upon the ground.
They’re regenerating?
It certainly looked like it. Where in curses was Erlandur, though? Puzzled, she went to relieve herself, then pulled on her clothes, teeth chattering as she did so. The black knight obviously had a lot on his mind, but part of Faith wished he might have at least stuck around for her to wake up, and to give himself the rest he clearly needed.
The river’s trickling magnified in sound through the cavern, sounding like a constant gurgle and babble, soothing and disconcerting at the same time.
Where in blasted skies was he? She rubbed her eyes, annoyed. What did she expect from Erlandur, exactly? People like Faith didn’t grow attached in that way. Didn’t love. Not without dire consequences. People died all the time in the Lunar Wastes. Only through constant vigilance did anyone survive, through hours of training and patrols, of never giving a chance for the Shadows to win. Yet, despite herself, she had grown fond of Erlandur Malgrave.
Something in the way he stood as he surveyed others, lonely but powerful at the same time. It was as if a personal blizzard whorled around him, obscuring him from the sight of everyone else. The wolves were his barrier, circling on the edges, and he shared nothing, not even with the sister he grew up with, loved, and left.
Something about that loneliness called to Faith. She sat on a pedestal as well, not quite as condemned as Erlandur, with the marked veins, the Shadow blood coursing through, but she did stand somewhere no one else could reach.
Even with her former passion to annihilate Shadows, she felt empty as she did it. Battle wasn’t fun, just a mechanic she did well. Sure, sometimes she got herself in the mood, but the Shadows kept coming. They never stopped.
Now this man offered an answer to their plight, but played his cards close to his chest. He had seen things in that city. Something that convinced him to keep going.
But whatever made him leave home in the first place?
I like him more than I’m willing to admit. But like? Affection? That won’t stop either of us dying. It didn’t stop us suffocating in the death zone. Tumbling through space from the avalanche, by the Shadow that shouldn’t have been there.
Almost as if they were prepared. Expecting the scouts to come, to make it through the mountain.
No way can we send our whole army through that.
Fully dressed and armed, she hovered by the entrance to the cave. No sense disappearing, in case he made it back and found her absent. Still, she itched to move. To do something other than wait around for events to occur.
Acting was so much better than merely reacting.
To calm her fraying nerves, she did some stretches, limbering up her muscles, focusing on her breathing and making sure she drowned out the sound of the trickling water behind.
“What is this?” The voice carried across the dimly lit cavern.
Faith started in fright when she turned, and stared directly into the cold black eyes of a Shadow. One that wore a female form.
How in the world had she not sensed that foul creature? Instantly she unsheathed her blades, taking a battle-ready stance.
The Shadow’s lips curled in a dry, sardonic smile. “We knew the caves under the mountain would be used at some point. But to see someone like you? Ah…” the Shadow stepped closer, before hesitating. “You seem… familiar, somehow.”
Not wanting to give the Shadow anymore time to prepare, Faith lunged.
The Supreme, to her surprise, unsheathed a blade as well, and sidestepped the attack. The blade spun at her size, and Faith perfectly avoided it, in-stepping forward for the uppercut she knew the Shadow wouldn’t avoid in time.
Except, it did.
What?
Their swords clashed together in a frightening blur of movement, each duellist avoiding blows, slamming attacks into one another.
The Shadow seemed just as surprised as Faith as they both danced, both mirroring each other’s moves, neither able to get the upper hand.
The opening should be here! Three successive hits, but then she felt in her intuition, the Shadow planning to exploit her momentum, she stopped, then anticipated the attack, then anticipated the change of tactic –
Her mind overloaded with confusion – the Shadow kept changing, as if they were both playing a mental game where they saw each other’s moves, thousands of steps ahead.
Impossible.
The blade snaked past Faith’s defenses for the first time in her life, the same moment she struck the Shadow. Both opponents leapt back, the Shadow hissing in shock, Faith trembling from the fresh crimson wound near her clavicle.
She’d never been hit. Never.
Realization struck her like a thunderbolt. “You’re a combat Shadow.”
The Shadow hesitated. “I have never seen another combat witch before. So many moves… so far ahead. So hard to see…”
Both fighters had momentarily stopped, stunned by the revelation.
“There is only one bloodline that has the power. You must be of the same blood as my body.” The Shadow leered, and something about the jawline made Faith pause. It looked eerily like her father’s jawline.
“Who are you?” Wrong. “Who were you?”
They both began circling again, unwilling to take eyes off one another. The scent of danger intoxicated them, made their bodies tremble.
“I see the memories,” the Shadow murmured. “The memories of this body, so long ago… why, she was gone before your time, but you must be her flesh, her blood. Your necklace. I recognize it. That used to be mine – hers.”
No.
“My grandmother.” Faith gaped, her hands shaking, nerveless.
“Perhaps. It took hundreds of us to wear her down. And I have never been beaten since. It’s a good body. A strong one.” The Shadow smiled brilliantly, a manic gleam in its dead eyes. “Will you be the one to beat me? Will you? Will you?” With a frenzied roar, the Shadow dashed forward.
Faith barely avoided the blow, the mental game panning out again in her brain. Strike after strike. Dodge after dodge. Neither could outmatch the other.
For the first time, along with the fresh cut, Faith realized she was fighting for her life.
The terror flooded her, along with a deep surge of adrenaline. Her eyes hardened in resolve. The trembles in her arms stopped as she set her jaw grimly.
They continued their elaborate dance, hacking at one another, neither willing to stop, to slip up enough in the mental game so that one of them crashed out forever.
It disturbed Faith, dimly, on a level, to see that the Supremes were all Shadows that had hosted themselves in powerful witch bodies. They wore the faces of those long dead and stole the magic, warping it to their twisted desires.
Candles scattered about as Faith jumped and ran over a table, avoiding a scything blow, tumbling towards the Supreme and hacking at their heels.
Anticipate. It knows everything I’m doing, and I know everything it’s doing.
She stopped suddenly and leapt backwards, just in time to avoid a crackling bolt of lightning. Her attention turned on another Supreme – the same bastard that had caused the avalanche on the mountains. It sneered.
“I notice you’re having trouble with the human. I thought you were supposed to be the best,” the newcomer hissed. “Always insisting you should be head of the council.”
“Watch out,” the Shadow using her grandmother’s body snapped, “she’s the same as me!”
The newcomer zapped out more black lightning, and Faith swerved, just moving enough to avoid the licking tendrils of her demise, hurtling towards the Supreme which could not predict her movements in the same way.
She halted and ducked, rolling clear of the combat Supreme’s assault. Of course, the Supreme knew she intended to take out the weak link…
One movement possibility ignited her brain. Her heart pounded faster as she considered in a split second, before letting a scream rip out her throat.
She dived forwards, blocking everything the combat Supreme delivered her way.
“Run!” The combat Supreme flung the warning at its companion. “Don’t be stupid, you can’t take this one.”
“How dare you tell me what to do…”
Faith allowed the combat Supreme to stab her through the side. She winced but in one fell swoop, swept the lightning Supreme’s blocking hands aside and decapitated it. In the same movement, she levelled a slash towards the combat Supreme, who was forced to let go before she eliminated it from the world.
Footsteps could be heard resounding in the narrow chasm outside the cave. The Supreme chuckled as Faith continued her advance, lumbering because of the injury.
“I look forward to fighting you again. You might be the one to kill me. You might…” a strange, almost fond smile stretched its lips, before it backed away, beginning to dissolve into the walls, out of the sphere of influence of Faith’s living body.
Faith gasped, swords clattering from her hands. The pain surged through the adrenaline haze. It shouldn’t be a fatal wound, she deliberately plotted that out – but the blood loss and pain rapidly spiraled her system into shock.
Erlandur burst into the cavern, gaping at the dead Supreme, followed by others – others Faith didn’t recognize.
“Faith!” Erlandur flung himself beside her, eyes darting frantically from her face to her wound. “No! What happened?”
“By the moon,” one of Erlandur’s companions whispered. “She killed a Supreme.”
Borderline worship slid across his face – his black veined face. Faith stared at him through her blossoming fever. What was this?
Who were these people?
“Ssh. It’s okay.” Erlandur seemed truly panicked, hand twitching as he grasped the blade. “Should I?”
“No,” one of the companions said, her voice low, almost a growl. “Take her to our care unit. That blade is serrated. It may cause more damage coming out of her than going in. She’ll have more chance with our med unit.”
“What’s going on?” Faith’s voice rasped, as she clutched at Erlandur’s armor. “Who…?”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. It was stupid of me. Oh blasted moon.”
“She fended for herself very well.”
“This is Aria’s body,” a black veined male said, examining the head. “She doesn’t use weapons.”
The people in the room took time to digest the news.
“What happened, child?” The oldest member of the group, a wizened woman, old enough to be Faith’s, no, she couldn’t use the word grandmother without a deep sense of pain – old enough to be her elder.
“I fought two of them,” Faith wheezed, struggling to keep herself conscious. Her body wanted to shut down, to remove her mind from the pain. Erlandur clasped her hand, and she found herself reaching out to him, soothing him of all people.
She saw the terror in his eyes. He didn’t want to lose someone. He didn’t want to lose the woman who had seen the secrets under his armor, who understood a glint of that emptiness inside.
“Blast! I think this is Grace’s blade. You know.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “My grandmother’s body.”
Surprised mutterings broke out.
“No wonder. Two Supremes, my word. You weren’t joking, Erlandur. You said you’d put together the best fighting force the north’s ever seen. You’d help us…”
Faith almost screamed when she saw a Shadow walk in behind the babbling group. “S-Shadow…”
The Shadow in question waited for the humans to step aside. “That I am.”
Faith felt her whole world toppling upside down.
A Shadow.
Black veined humans.
Erlandur, not reacting to the Shadow’s presence, even smiling at it.
What in the moon…
Why was no one reacting? Why smile at it?
I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I just fought my grandmother. I found the secret under Erlandur’s skin. And there are humans near the Fractured City?
“There’s a lot to explain,” Erlandur admitted. “I think we should save it for after the operating theatre.”
Faith noted that all of the people in the room wore crescent necklaces. The same symbol Erlandur had told them to watch out for.
Even the Shadow wore it. The Shadow with the face of a white-haired woman.
“I’m not falling unconscious,” Faith said. “You’ll carry me, and you’ll be giving me some blasting answers. If you want me to trust you. If you want me to stay by your side.”
“Of course,” Erlandur said, kissing her forehead, stroking her short hair. “Anything. And I’m so sorry. I should have waited. I didn’t think it through very well at all, did I?”
“To be fair, I doubt you’d expect two Supremes to be walking around the chasms.”
“Not a good sign,” the Shadow said. “They’re already aware something’s up. They’re trying to flush out the rats.”
Faith squinted at the Shadow. “I need a name from you. Otherwise I will see you as nothing but as an enemy.”
The Shadow nodded. “Helena. Or, at least – this is what this body used to be called.”
Helena. Not a name I’ve heard. She is not anything significant to me or the legends I know. “I hate Shadows, Helena.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Helena’s peculiar silver eyes clouded over for a moment.
“This was what the original scouting party was meant to do,” Erlandur said, carefully draping Faith in his arms. They began the walk, everyone quiet as they moved, the black veined humans, the Shadow known as Helena. “We needed to find the Fractured Ones – those who live near and within the city, resisting the absolute influence of the ruling council.”
Ruling council? “Wait. The Shadows have a society?”
“In a word,” Helena answered for Erlandur, her soft, melodic voice carrying over the darkness. “They also have a human population they subjugate to their demands. If you fail to satisfy them, they’ll turn you into a Tormented, and set you out into the wastelands. There’s millions of people here. The Fractured City is at least as large as your Lunar Wastes.”
The information processed through Faith’s brain.
All these years, she’d assumed the City was in ruins. The Shadows mindless entities. The north and south suffering the brunt of their evil for centuries.
She winced as Erlandur took a particularly heavy step, and he winced with her.
“Sorry.”
“You keep saying that.” She buried her face into his chest, taking comfort in it. “When I get better, I’m gonna kick you into the sky.”
He let out a half laugh, half scoff. “You can kick me around any time. Just get better. I need you. We need you,” he amended, but Faith most definitely caught the flush in his cheeks, the slip in his mind.
For whatever reason, this knight of the Lunar Wastes wanted her.
He didn’t act intimidated by her, afraid of her powers, afraid of who she was.
That touched her somewhere. Deep inside, where an icy fortress encased her heart. It thawed the cold there like the hot springs under Ghost Lake’s Mirror of the Sky. It left her with something more than just the thought of living, fighting and dying.
What if she could live for something? What if she could live for Erlandur? To see a smile upon his lips?
The thought warmed her up inside, breaking apart the bonds of her mind as he continued carrying her, towards whatever base that belonged to the self-proclaimed Fractured Ones, with the Shadow called Helena, a new mystery in the vast jigsaw puzzle the Lunar Wastes offered.
A new face to the war they fought.
I believe him. Faith reached up absently to stroke Erlandur’s stubble cheeks.
I really believe he’s not lying when he says there’s a way to end this once and for all.
She scowled at Helena’s back, where black energies unfurled out of her skin.
Answers lay within Erlandur. With this creature. And in the way that somehow, a Shadow had managed to procure the body of her long dead grandmother, who should have been buried under the snows.
Her grave had been desecrated without their knowing.
How many other witches had suffered the same fate, knowing no rest in death?
The implications of that thought terrified her.
They made it at last to an odd slit within the chasm, and a new network of caves, barely visible to the human eye.
“You’ll be treated soon,” Erlandur crooned to Faith.
“We’ll set up search parties for your missing scouting party as well,” Helena assured Erlandur. “Then we’ll try and figure out just where we can hide your army.”
“I can hardly wait,” Erlandur said dryly.
Faith grinned. She felt woozy, light headed, and more than a little nauseous, but she also felt confident. Hopeful.
Purposeful.
She breathed in Erlandur’s natural earth scent, her mind full of thoughts for the future that awaited.
Just as soon as she got patched up, of course.
That would help.
The End
Nox’s Rescue
Guardians of Lunar Wasteland
(Book 5)
Chapter One
Echo cowered in the rundown building. The market place, which resembled a ghost town at the best of times, shivered itself into non-existence as the Shadow parade filtered through the street. No one wanted to be picked, or to suffer the wrath of the upper class, or those finicky Supremes who meted out punishment as they saw fit. Didn’t matter if you were a model citizen or slave to them – sometimes the madness took over their souls and they’d lash out for no reason. Five mindless Shadows shuffled in front of a Supreme, who wore the face of an entitled bitch. Echo doubted the Supreme would pay any attention to her, but she didn’t want to conjure up any sort of suspicions her way. She was, after all, in the nature of doing illicit errands.
Living in the Fractured City wasn’t a life for the faint hearted. The Supreme herself appeared mildly disappointed that everyone had skittered off. They acted hurt, sometimes. Hurt that no one wanted to be around them, when they were known for their manic behaviour. Echo knew for a fact that a Supreme couldn’t feel. They mimicked emotions, sure. But basic human empathy? That lay beyond their skills.
Those poor, wretched souls though, the ones that ambled in front of the Supreme now – Echo wondered what slight they had committed. Now the Supreme would unleash them into the Wastes, so they could wander aimlessly, trying to devour any souls they came across.
Echo scratched at her black veined arms, watching the Supreme disappear from the quiet street with their batch of former citizens.
Within a moment, the stalls and shops declared themselves open again, and hooded figures emerged from their respective buildings or rubble to sell their wares. Chewing upon a strand of white hair, Echo ventured over to the market stall responsible for selling medical supplies. “Ho,” she said, striking a confident pose, so she looked less like a street rat without money, and more like a shady underground dealer, which of course, most of them were. Out of hours, anyway.
“Ho,” the man responded, narrowing his eyes, before scratching at his armpit.
She looked into his dark brown eyes and smiled warmly. “I’m looking to buy the flesh pills that I know you have tucked in a hole in the floor somewhere.”
The man bristled, his gray beard almost crackling with suspicion. “Why would I be selling something like that, even if I did have it, to a street urchin like you?”
In response, Echo slapped down a vial of Shadow blood on his stall table. The trader’s eyes boggled at the sight. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It is. So, now you know I have something illegal as well, I’m also supposed to tell you that I’ve been sent by Helena herself.”
At the name drop, the man’s face paled. The slight hesitation told Echo everything she needed to know. “Right. Right. Well, if you wait here a second, I’ll just go in and grab the… pills.”
He turned and went inside the dilapidated building. Throwing caution to the wind, Echo vaulted over the stall and followed the trader inside. He glanced back nervously. “Why are you following me inside?”
“Because I don’t trust you.” Echo concentrated, and the headache formed in her skull. Magic coursed through her blackened veins, and she delved into herself, into the darkness that was a part of her and tore it out.
The darkness coalesced into a monstrous, shadowy form, growling ominously. The trader made an odd squeaking noise.
“If you try to contact any of the authorities, you traitor, I’ll set my friend on you. It’s not too picky about flesh, bones and clothing. Echo felt momentary relief upon separating the evil, in giving it a form, rather than letting it nestle inside her. Just a shame she couldn’t control it for long.
The trader began to sweat profusely, knowing he’d been caught. “They have my wife. They said if I didn’t cooperate, they’d turn her into a Shadow. What choice do I have?”
“Easy. Give me the pills. You can take this vial. Don’t breathe a word about this to anyone. And I’ll tell Helena you’re compromised.”
The trader shivered, but did as she asked, goaded by the threat of what Echo had dubbed as Monster. Monster crept after the trader as he hastily dug up the flagstone of his stone floor, and pulled out a bag of pills. He flung them her way, refusing to go near her.
Echo wondered if he’d try to follow her after they departed, since she knew the desperation he must be feeling, missing the love of his life. She had no time for that, though. If need be, she’d kill the trader to cut out the complications in her life. The last thing Helena needed was a Supreme and upper class raid upon their hide outs. Not before they had secured everything in order.
The underbelly, the heart of the resistance, had scooped up Echo as a baby. No one knew the parents of the body she possessed, but the resistance relished the chance to train an upper child. Given a normal life, Echo would have grown up in the dense spires of the Fractured City, learning the ways of the Shadows, spouting the ideology that humans had taken everything from them.
Helena changed that.
My soul came from the origin land. I am a Shadow in a human body. A body that has emotions, conflicting with a Shadow that does not.
With the bag of pills, she left the trader’s ruined house, letting Monster dissolve. The headache throbbed, but she kept a calm, almost sedate pace, as if nothing scared her, and she didn’t feel the desperate urge to get as far away from the outskirts as possible.
She glanced back a few times along the snow-flecked street, but saw no peep of the trader. Just as well. He would have been moon-cursing foolish to do so.
Soon, she left the main trading slums of the outskirts, heading for the ruins to the south-west, where the caves and the villages accumulated, next to the great chasm that split the land.
I get tired of living on scraps. Of always fearing a Shadow’s whim, of letting them see the humanity in me. If there’s one thing they hate more than a human, it’s a traitor.
Echo smiled darkly to herself. Abomination. I belong to nothing.
She kept up her jaunt, taking around three hours to approach her destination. The snows whirled bitterly around, and she tucked her hands into her fur robe pockets, and buried her chin into the lump of fur by her collarbone. She stared resolutely ahead, that same empty feeling inside – the conflict of the Shadow which did not feel emotion the same way a human did, and the human body which served to override the hollow.
Still, if she didn’t cast Monster often enough, her emotions slanted over to empty. They made her do atrocious things at times and feel no remorse.
A memory flashed. A child, pointing at the chasm, laughing. Teasing Echo with his friends. Echo the loner, with her quiet, diminutive nature.
She still remembered the precise pitch of his scream, the hint of despair it embodied, as she shoved him over the abyss, then listened curiously to hear if his body would make a crunching noise as it hit the ground.
About a day after that, Helena discovered her.
Abomination. That’s all I am. I belong nowhere. I don’t fit in.
Still, even an abomination could be useful. So that was something. Out of a secret thrill, Echo edged herself close to the chasm’s vast drop, so she could peer down, and look at the jagged rocks, or the murk that obscured the bottom with the lack of light below. Nothing penetrated the deepest cracks, and sometimes, when Echo had nothing better to do, she explored them with Monster.
Shadows, for the most part, left her alone, sensing her as one of them.
She wasn’t, though.
She stopped. Something seemed out of place in the gloom. In the spidery embrace of the chasm, with the jutting crevices that punched into the sides like wide yawns, she saw something. A body? A skeleton? She continued walking, dismissing it as another unfortunate accident, when she saw it stir.
Oh. Hello. She crouched by the gap, noting the feeble movements of the person she’d mistaken for a corpse. Whoever they were, they looked seriously messed up. From what sort of height had they fallen from, as well? This whole area surrounded the basin of one of the mountain range that soared about eight thousand meters each. She bit her lip for a moment, contemplating. With her recent use of Monster, she felt more empathetic than usual, though the headache rang in the back of her skull.
I won’t be able to reach them from here or from down there. Reluctantly, she let the Shadow magic trickle through her veins again, and Monster formed beside her.
Fetch the one who has fallen. They would likely be too weak to try and lash out at her abomination. Monster’s form undulated down, its blue eyes glowing with that icy chill which unnerved so many people. Monster bobbled through the walls in places, until it reached the body. Monster grasped the body in tendril-like arms, then slithered up the cliff face again, shivering from the snow that hit it. Shadows did not like the cold, Echo included.
Let me see this one’s injuries. Monster set the body down, and Echo observed the male form, the thick robes, the snow caked all over him. He’d most certainly come tumbling off the mountain. She moved one of his eyelids, then cursed and snapped it back.
Yellow eyes. Werewolf. Of course. Only a werewolf or witch with their robust constitutions could survive such a sheer drop. But blasted skies and broken teeth, she didn’t want to be responsible for a werewolf. Even if there were still missing members of Erlandur’s scouting party floating about.
Curses! The headache grew. She ordered Monster to carry the werewolf, and clambered onto the creature herself, mentally directing it to chasm surf, so she could stay out of sight from any prying eyes upon the surface.
Again, the darkness unburdened from her mind, Echo drank in the crisp cold air, and appreciated the view she endured, even if the horrors it contained would give anyone second thoughts about living in such an area.
They arrived in sight of the town a short while later, with Echo mildly irritated by her headache. She examined her werewolf as he groaned, checking out his iron gray hair, his pale, wintery skin, his strong, muscular body. A fine specimen in human form. Probably a fearsome presence in werewolf form. Echo examined the taut muscles, the high cheekbones, the rapier curve of his face to a noble chin. She wondered if she’d need to knock him out. She highly doubted the werewolf would enjoy being held by a Shadow aberrant.
Thankfully, he stayed unconscious. Her headache pounded insistently at her skull, trying to tempt her to drop Monster – but no way was she carrying that great lump of flesh by herself. Just a little further. Then I’ll be with aunty Helena.
Aunty Helena. Helena wasn’t related to her in any shape or form, but the Supreme rescue baby Echo all those years ago.
“I called you that name because you would repeat anything I said, but you’d get quieter with each iteration. It was such a weird characteristic. Well, it was either that, or Surprise Baby.”
Echo felt glad that Helena did not call her Surprise Baby.
Finally, within the town, she saw a few figures in the distance, who clearly recognized Monster, and came scampering to her.
Broth and Vallug of the underbelly greeted her, two traders of the resistance with a main focus on food supplies for the town.
“Ah! This must be one of Erlandur’s scouts,” Vallug said, helping to take the unconscious werewolf with Broth off Monster. Echo released her darkness with a sigh of relief. Monster dissolved into nothing, returning to that corner of her mind where it would slowly build up over time, overwhelming her ability to empathize.
The two black veined traders, those of the few who had managed to resist the Shadow corruption, smiled at her and draped the werewolf over their shoulders.
“Did you get the supplies, then?”
Echo nodded in response to Broth. “Yes, but we can’t use our former contact anymore. He’s been compromised. I had to spook him so he wouldn’t grass on us.”
“Blast.” Broth’s needle thin face screwed up in disgust. “Always knew Carlok was craven at heart. Probably trying to sell you out for a bite of coin.”
“He claimed the Shadows had his wife.”
“Nonsense,” Broth said, though Vallug immediately sympathized.
“Not a good day to be a citizen of the Fractured City,” he said.
“When is it ever?” Echo scoffed. She loved her home in some ways, though. Parts of the Fractured City had gone through revitalization projects, recreating flower-choked meadows in green biomes, though the energy it took to heat them up drained itself off the tax payers of the central city. The slums, the ruined and abandoned parts of the city due to neglect and the creeping fingers of the Lunar Wastes, mostly got ignored.
Sometimes, Shadows would organize little hunting parties to try and track “scum,” but for the most part, they left the bedraggled survivors of the wastelands alone.
She liked the massive underground network they had created over the years, hiding in plain sight, locked beneath the body of a rundown town. The black veined people who made their lives above ground provided a perfect buffer to avoid detection of the activity below.
Only so long they could keep it up, though, until people started opening up on their position. The upper echelons of the Fractured City sensed something on the wind, but as of yet, felt unthreatened by anything humans and werewolves could throw at them. Part of believing yourself as superior and other species as inferior tended to cultivate gross underestimation.
Which worked in the human’s favor.
Echo sighed relief as she dipped through the trapdoor concealed inside a broken building, and ended up in a warm, heated corridor, carved out by the local miners and stone masons, heated by pipelines that ran under the town.
She dropped off her fresh batch of pills to the med bay, and briefly greeted the witch known as Faith.
“How’s the hole in your stomach faring?”
“Better,” Faith responded, her dark eyes hooded. Her fingers drummed on the side of the bed, agitated and bored. “There’s a lot here to wrap my head around. I never thought the Fractured City would be so blasting huge.”
“Or that there’s an actual society in it, corrupt and messed up as it is, right?”
Faith smiled. “Well, it’s not like anyone ever returns when they come over here.”
“True. They get converted or they assimilate. And werewolves on this side of the mountain are very noticeable. If the Shadows get wind of them, they’ll eradicate them as soon as possible. They consider werewolves as a threat.”
Faith scrunched her brow, processing the info. The unconscious werewolf was placed in a bed nearby, and Faith’s attention turned to him instead. “Ah! That’s Nox. He’s the son of the Spine chieftain.”
“Son of a chieftain, eh?” Echo examined Nox in renewed interest. “Pretty risky to send him on a scouting mission.”
“He wanted to come. He’s the only one found so far…” Faith’s voice trailed off. “I’m fairly sure one of our scouts is dead. He fell unconscious in the death zone.”
Echo chewed the inside of her cheek as she regarded the round featured Faith, her plump lips. “I can offer to you and Erlandur later to look around and see if we can find anyone else. It’s not been that long. They might still be alive.”
“Good idea,” someone interrupted behind them, and Echo spun to face Helena, in all her terrifying glory. Faith narrowed her eyes distrustfully at the Supreme, with her black aura flickering about her form. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Echo wondered if Faith could feel the darkness that resided inside. Not everyone identified Echo as a human Shadow, but then again, not many human Shadows had survived the process of initiation.
“You got the medicine? Ah. Excellent. We’ll need that for Faith and her wolfy friends when we find them all. Including this one.” Helena wrinkled her nose at Nox. “When he starts coming to, you and Erlandur will need to break the news to him directly. Otherwise he may not react kindly to any of our presences here.”
“Noted,” Faith said dryly. “Who are you?”
“Echo.”
“Are you a witch?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Echo replied. “I have an… ability.”
Helena smiled grimly, but said nothing. She knew Echo’s secret. Not even the black veined humans knew who Echo was, really. They just assumed she was contaminated, like them. They didn’t feel the constant, encroaching darkness like she did, where her thoughts and feelings gradually drowned out in a tide of hate and death.
When Helena and Echo stepped out of the room, Helena said, “Vallug mentioned that we were betrayed. I’d like you to brief us on this.”
“Sure.” Echo told her about the trader, and picking up the werewolf. The Supreme, one of eight that worked in the underbelly, nodded thoughtfully.
“Our numbers grow every day. But still, twelve thousand of us versus over a hundred thousand Shadows is heinous numbers. We’ll have to act soon, though. There’s only so much longer we can keep this up. We’ll need to visit the Island with Erlandur as the final stage in the operation.” Helena paused then, her eyes infinitely sad. “If my people were more peaceful… we could have worked this out.”
“Why do we hate humans so much, actually?” Echo had thought about it before, but never fully understood why Shadows held such seething disdain for other races. She just knew they hated, and they blamed humans for the destruction of the origin planet. But how?
Helena twirled one strand of her white hair absently in her fingers. She had the same hair color as Echo, but there, the resemblance to a Supreme ended. Supremes pulsed a dark, noxious aura about them, had chilling, empty eyes, an ashen tint to their skin, and a pervasive feeling of death.
“The story goes with our kind is that the humans wanted to utilize powerful magic. The witches found a source in the origin world. They tapped into our world, fought their little wars, not realizing that they were killing off our entire planet and bringing our people to mass extinction.” Helena walked around a corner of the underground, lit by softly glowing braziers, adding a smoky infusion into the air, which got filtered out through patches in the walls.
“So, the humans started it?”
“Yes. I believe they were ignorant, but they destroyed the origin world, so only scattered fragments of that place remain. Our method was to fight back using our magic. We staged a huge takeover, and enslaved all the humans in the Fractured City – then the biggest human civilization on this planet.”
Echo imagined the conflict now. She saw Shadows pouring out of a rift in the sky, flooding down to a busy, shining city, full of humans minding their own business, perhaps unaware of the darkness the witches manipulated. She pictured the screams, the terror, and the savage vengeance of the Shadows, as they possessed, then converted other humans around them into mindless, making them tormented slaves.
She shivered.
“We wanted to take over the world as vengeance for the damage brought upon ours. But we couldn’t spawn anywhere else but at the Fractured City. And… well. When we invaded, we decimated cities, towns and people in the northlands. Right until the thousand and one witches obliterated themselves to create the Lunar Wastes, trapping us in a blanket of cold, and mountains of ice. Crippling our movement when we stepped into the cursed wasteland.”
Helena hesitated outside her sleeping quarters. “Ever since then, the Shadows worked on forming a proper society here, subjugating the remaining humans, and seeking a way to bypass the Lunar Wastes, to complete their objective of taking everything over.”
One thing occurred to Echo, as she listened to the Supreme’s words. “How do you know all this? You sound like you were there. When… the Wastes happened. But that was a long time ago. Wasn’t it?”
Helena’s smile then turned dark and pained. “It was,” she agreed, before promptly closing the door on Echo’s face.
Rude.
Sighing, Echo went to her room, to reflect on the day’s events, on the werewolf, and on Helena’s words.