As the vault faded around him Voy found he did not fall into the unwilling sleep of a regen coma, though fall he did, through a chasm of green shadows and spaces infinitely vast and incomprehensibly small. Towers of perfectly flat metal rose and twisted around him, columns supporting structures whose purpose escaped him. His heart might have hammered in his chest, his lungs may have worked frantically to draw in more oxygen and adrenaline may have stretched the moment into a chronicle if only his body had followed along with his mind into whatever space his mind was drawn.
When he finally struck the ground he did so painlessly, as if the physics of this place were incomplete and accounted only for there being nowhere left for him to fall. Voy rose to his feet as best he could manage, unsure of how he did or why such limits applied when he was incorporeal. An infinite desert of grey sand surrounded him in every direction, the sky above filled with uncountable schools of swimming green lights in a sea of starless night.
Voy’s mind spun, still reeling from the injuries he sustained in his fight with Samuine. Pain had not followed him down, but the fatigue of the ordeal clung just as it had above. He could not look down enough to see himself, nor raise his hands into his field of view. Was this death? Heaven? Hell? Something else? Explanation was not forthcoming, but Voy couldn’t shake the sensation of standing on a stage before a crowd of thousands. He waited in the sands for a time, how long was impossible to say. As the indefinite minutes stretched into absurdity Voy’s patience began to fray and dwindle.
“Hello?” Voy called out to the sky, he knew whatever was here could hear him if it could see him. No response.
“Why am I here? What is this place?” Voy shouted again. Again there was no reply. Frayed patience became anger.
“If you’re going to kill me get it over with, if you’re not come out and speak but by the Redeemer stop wasting my time!” For a moment there was no response. Voy prepared to shout again just as the sky and ground around him began to shimmer and melt into something else.
Grey sands trembled and became churned, muddy earth. The sky turned shades of orange, red, purple, and blue as it morphed into a sunrise lit unnaturally by fires around him. In the distance a mountain rose, alone and immense. Before it a city stacked upon itself too many times to be comfortable sprawled itself out over an island until it reached the sea. Its buildings were aflame and in ruin.
The detritus of war lay everywhere; bodies of the innocent bystander and the trained warrior shared the same muddy craters, streaks of combustive and energy weapon fire tore through the air. An army of dark steel surrounded and poured out from the mountain, surging masses of armored men and automatons charging against… thurgians. Thurgian jolters and regulars garrisoned the city, holding their ground against the tide of war rushing upon them.
Two kartorim led the defense from the front, and even in this place Voy’s heart leapt for joy when recognized them. Samuine and Illati stood their ground side by side, shields and swords raised, against one foe, one… monster. A shiver ran down Voy’s incorporeal back as his attention pulled unnaturally to this one, a towering black armored kartorim the likes of which he’d never seen in any record. Through all of Thurgia, there was no House that bore black alone as its color. The monster’s eyes burned red, his aerials rose high like two pillars on either side of his head. The army behind him gave a wide berth. Thurgians who failed to give him the same cautionary space died in droves before his advance, every motion this monster made dealt a lethal toll.
Behind the black armored kartorim a single battle cry roared over the chaos of battle from the thousands of warriors fighting in his name. The monster was unfamiliar to Voy, but the war cry struck a cord of familiarity he wished it had not.
“All hail Raikon! All hail Raikon! All hail Raikon!” it went, and not once did it slow or cease. Fanaticism spread like a virus over the forces of the mountain. When the champion of the mountain drew close enough to the two kartorim standing valiant against him, he stopped and spoke in a language Voy knew not, reaching out his hand and balling it into a fist. Whatever his meaning, it seemed to fall flat before his friends.
Samuine and Illati charged forth to face down the monster, moving with unnatural speed and coordination to bring low their foe. For a moment Voy felt hope they might succeed, such was the quality of their effort. Yet even as they put forth their best, the one that stood against them was more than they could bear. Each of his sword swings carried the force of a landslide, his size offered no hindrance to his preternatural speed. With vicious fury the monster’s blade cut them down. Voy tried desperately to move, to help, to run at the evil slaying his friends but he had no legs to run with, no hands to strike with. He was but a spectator through to will of his own.
He cried out without lungs his misery as the bodies of his friends fell to the ground, the light flickering and leaving their helms’ eyes. The obsidian demon took notice of him then, and with slow deliberate steps did it approach. The world around him melted away with each step. By the time it stopped in front of him the rest of the battlefield was gone, replaced again by the grey sands and strange sky.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Only the monster remained, twice his size and staring down upon him with the crimson eyes of a kin-killer. Voy met its gaze, every ounce of fury within him poured out upon the one he watched kill the closest thing he had to family. It was blurry to look at, its visage was distorted and wrong as though he were looking through a camera that refused to focus.
“You dare stand in my way?” The figure asked, his voice deep and drenched in malice.
“The planet will break beneath me before I do otherwise,” Voy said as though his jaw were partially clenched, “I won’t let you hurt my friends.” The monster bent forward, bringing its face in line with Voy’s. Voy was unmoved, returning the fiend’s contempt with his own. Understanding graced him as his hatred blossomed into resolve. If he wasn’t dead, this could only be a projection. This wasn’t real. If he had his way it never would be.
“We shall see.” The monster melted away like the rest of the illusion before him, the last thing to fade being his red eyes. Voy began to ascend up and away from the sand again, through the sky and back to his body above. As he ascended one thought dominated his mind.
He would do whatever it took to stop this monster from harming those he swore to protect, and he would stop it from harming his friends, Voy would allow no alternative.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Voy’s eyes peeled open slowly under the sterile white lighting of an infirmary. His mouth was dry, his thoughts swam through a soupy mire that stalled his mind, and everything hurt. As for what was new, the bed beneath him was one of four large single occupant beds in its own stall-like space surrounded by diagnostic machines, cabinets with medicines and tools, and a number of IV tubes running from his body to pouches of blue re-gel.
Two of the medical stalls were entirely pristine, untouched and unused in any recent stretch of time. Across from him the only other bed that appeared to see use was much the same, but bore a fresher shine on the smooth surfaces and no dust on the bedding. By all rights it was pristine as well, just more recently made so. Voy’s heart skipped as a wave of worry forced him fully awake. A recently vacated hospital bed meant one of two things, and there was only one other person on board who would have any reason to use a kartorim sized bed.
Elara disappeared on him shortly before he encountered Fenrothyne, and prior to his ‘reunion’ with Samuine he didn’t know about the handshake-link that they could have used. Come to think of it, it was strange Elara hadn’t suggested it. The corner of his own vision no longer bore an indicator for Samuine, but without any experience to draw from Voy had no idea if it was the sort of thing that expired after a time or had a maximum distance. If the latter, it meant the Auric Wind put some amount of breathing room between itself and the Merriment.
Warning beeps sounded around him from the various machines he was plugged into as he awoke. A nurse next to him jumped back as he went to sit up, dropping the IV bag she was preparing to swap out for a nearly empty one.
“Where is Elara?” Voy managed to croak, his lungs too stiff for easy speech so soon after his regen coma. She clutched at her chest with one hand before providing him an answer. Voy noticed her name tag when she did and made a point to remember it.
“I’ll let her know you’re awake,” she backed away as she spoke, finishing before she turned around and headed out of the infirmary, presumably to make the comm call.
“Thank you Ms. Waylen!” Voy croaked after her. Reassured that she was alive, Voy fell back into his bed from sitting up. Everything hurt. It always did, especially when compounded with the post recovery soreness. Everything except his left arm which, now that he was paying attention to it, didn’t register at all. Puzzled, Voy went to raise his hand up to his face and give it a once over only to find it didn’t heed his command.
Paralyzed, great. Nerve damage was such a chore to heal if it didn’t grow back right the first time. With a huff Voy turned to look at his limp arm only to make another discovery; it wasn’t paralyzed. His left arm was entirely absent past the middle of his shoulder.
Memory rushed back now. His fight with Samuine, if calling it a fight wasn’t too generous, had ended when Samuine severed his left arm. That had to be days ago by now, his arm should have grown back at least partially by now. Every other injury he had from that day was nearly gone if a bit sore. Panic driven instinct demanded he try moving his missing arm again and again, his subconscious unwilling to accept it was gone.
It had to grow back, Voy couldn’t accept the truth right in front of him. This wasn’t how being a kartorim worked! You get hurt but you bounce back, you didn’t have permanent injury, what good would an immortal be if they didn’t regenerate from injury? Shaking free his bed sheets Voy bounced up out of bed, adrenaline burned away the last wisps of haziness from his mind.
As sure as there was a ship around him, his arm was missing. Blue re-gel had been applied liberally to the wound, but all it seemed to do was speed up the growth of skin over the wound. There was no indication of his arm forming again.
“Is now a bad time?” Voy turned toward the infirmary door to see Elara leaned against it, her helm retracted. She had a gentle smile on her face that sat somewhere between playful and sympathetic, her hair fell over one shoulder and her eyes caught the clinical light from the infirmary and reflected it as small twinkles just outside her irises. For a moment Voy forgot what he’d been so worked up over.
“No, now is good, great even. It’s a great time. What uh… what do you need?” Voy tried to stand straight and look unbothered by her sudden appearance. She sized him up for a moment before she chose to speak.
“What I want can wait. You need an arm, and I have to go pay a visit to the engineering section. Join me and I’m sure I can convince Undahiil to set you up,” she tilted her head back to the hall, motioning for him to walk with her. Voy looked down at the hospital gown and the plethora of IVs and diagnostic nodes fixed to his skin before looking back at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Right now? Like this?” he asked rhetorically.
“One, you have a carapace, and two,” she walked behind him and bound up the various tubes and cables in one hand before yanking them out at once in one swift motion. Compared to what Voy was already feeling the pain didn’t really register, but Voy made an obviously exaggerated display of wincing before offering a goofy grin. Elara returned an equally feigned scoff followed with a grin of her own.
“Armor up Shatter-Batter we have places to be,” she said while snapping her fingers, making sure to shoot him an unserious grin to diffuse any chance he took her snappiness as genuine bossiness. Voy frowned and squinted at her ad-hoc nickname.
“Shatter-Batter?? Really?” Voy said as his armor crept out from the patch-ports in his skin, “Workshop that,” he teased. Voy ignored the pain extending his carapace caused, a task altogether easier with her as a distraction. He left his helm retracted, no need to don more than what was required to be decent. The hospital gown he’d been wearing lay in tatters around him, unlike a slip suit it was not designed to work in conjunction with carapace armor. He’d have to apologize to the med staff about that later.
Elara was already moving out into the hall. Voy jogged out a few steps to catch up with her, a giddy grin planted firmly on his face. For now the vision he’d seen slipped easily from his mind, he’d make a point of bringing it up with Hembrandt later. There were more important things demanding his attention at the moment.
