CHAPTER 10 - THE ALLEYWAY

  Pain swam.

  It swam like a fleet of warships, rocking back and forth to hammer against the back of his eyeballs and forehead.

  It was like no headache he’d ever experienced.

  He staggered in the street, letting out a moan that—were he an extra in a movie--a dying soldier on the battlefield, maybe—would have sounded unrealistic enough to get him kicked out of the film.

  Then, in a instant, it was gone.

  “That wasn’t so—” Levan began.

  “Bad,” he was going to say.

  “BHeeeeerrrrr,” he said, gasping for air as a tumult of fire spread across his lungs in an acrid, battery-acid masquerade.

  His hands flew to his ribs, as if somehow he could do anything.

  The moment he did so, the burning sensation faded as quickly as it had come, only for him to retract his wrist as if from a hot stove.

  Red circles lined his forearm, cruel and red, burning with agitation.

  The shoulder of the acolyte’s tunic frayed near his bicep, following the burning circular pattern.

  Then it was gone.

  The headache, the frayed lungs, and the searing chemical burns on his wrists and arms. All had appeared for an instant, lasted an instant, and faded an instant later.

  The only sign any of it had actually happened was the last bits of Aether Particulate falling away in the night air, and the edge of the robes, which still bore the fringe mark of the burn.

  Levan braced, jaw clenched, ready for the next crazy-ass pain thing to come and get him. But it was over. He could somehow feel it was over, without any direct confirmation.

  His mind worked, feeling lighter than air now that it was free from life under migraine.

  An alleyway to his right seemed to keep leading upward, without any people in the distance. He wasn’t ready to talk to the people of this world quite yet. He was still dealing with too much.

  “Excuse me,” he asked, both mentally and aloud. “Co..dex?”

  [ Codex ]

  “Right,” he said, “Is that your name?”

  No answer.

  Feeling a bit foolish, he tested the external steward of information into his mind.

  “Can you show me the codex entry for Aether again?” he asked, thinking of a particular aspect of the definition.

  [ Codex > Elements > Aether | Aether Damage inflicts additional damage that might have occurred. ]

  “Additional damage that might have occurred,” he mumbled, examining his own arm, thinking of the burn spots there. “Hey, how come that’s not the entire definition?”

  [ Codex > Codex Information > Chosen Soul Lensing | When the Codex and Chosen Soul interact, they influence one another. The Codex will still contain the same objective information, but what is and isn’t shared, and how it is presented, will evolve over time. ]

  Oh.

  So the other part of the definition—the space between spaces, the time between time, all that was still true. He just already “got the message”, and was asking about a specifically different part, and the Codex knew that.

  “Well…Damage that may or may not have occurred hurts,” he mumbled to himself. “So now I can—”

  He froze.

  A flicker of a shadow on the wall on the other end of the alley.

  He spun around, looking for a quick exit.

  None in view.

  In fact…

  Looks like I picked a dead end.

  Levan’s hands tensed as the shadow flickered once again into view. A woman, holding a bundle of swaddled cloth dear to her chest, sprinting around the corner of the alleyway, nearly to the point of slipping. It was the first time he’d seen the [ Acolytes Robes ] on a living person outside of the temple. The woman’s terrified face shifted from behind her to in front of her, growing only when she saw him.

  She staggered back.

  “No,” she said, throwing her back to the alleyway, shifting the child in her arms behind her torso. “No, I’ve left the temple,” she said. “I’m a mother, I’m…focused, now, focused on the here and now, and…”

  She was afraid, but there was a fire in those eyes, too.

  “And you’re not going to sacrifice me,” she said to the soldier, angrily. . Then she looked behind her.

  She ran, speeding up a bit when she passed him, a crazed expression on her face. The baby in her arms wailed softly from the cloth.

  At least it was alive.

  “No use running,,” a somber voice said, turning the corner. “It’ll be quick. But I’ve got my orders.”

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  Levan watched as a soldier, wearing the same basic dyed red leathers as the soldiers in the temple and holding a short sword low at his hips, crossed into the alley. At his breastplate was a pin, a metal mask similar to that of the masked soldier who lead the men in the temple. The death-mask of a horrified philosopher, realizing something terrible.

  “I didn’t join up to kill women,” he said.

  “Then don’t,” she said, calling from the other end of the alley.

  The man said nothing.

  He spotted Levan, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Has Gaius not gone to deal with you and your temple?” the soldier asked.

  Levan opened his mouth to respond.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the soldier said, shaking his head. He took a few quick steps up to Levan.

  “Hey,” Levan said, backing off. “Hey, hang on, this isn’t—”

  The man said nothing. There was a far off expression in his eyes.

  That was the one thing that might have scared Levan more than rage, fury, or even passion for murder.

  Distant disassociation and military training.

  Go looking for anything else in a soldier’s eyes and you’ll find a man easier to sway with words. More likely to hesitate.

  This was…scary. He always imagined himself out-reasoning or de-escalating himself out of a fight. But this wasn’t a fight, some drunk outside a bar who didn’t like the aloof way Levan looked at them. This was…

  War.

  “Hey—” Levan tried.

  The soldier struck.

  Levan dove away from the soldier, rolling on the stone of the alleyway as the soldier picked up speed to run after him, sword in hand.

  [ Ability Core: Crafter | This Ability Core lacks many skills related to combat, and it is encouraged to only be taken if the user has significant combat skills from other sources. ]

  Are you serious right now? He asked the Codex. Is now really the time for, ‘I told you so’?

  Levan summoned what courage, and all the hand to hand, melee-combat training that his upbringing had taught him—which wasn’t much.

  He only had one shot at this.

  Against a trained soldier it was suicide.

  If it’s to come down to a dice roll, stack the odds and roll it, I think.

  He had an odd pride in that thought.

  That here, at the end…

  He faked another push of a sprint, a half-pump of his arms, the half-stretch of his calf. Then he turned on a dime.

  The soldier was on him immediately. It wasn’t that he didn’t fall for the trick, he just didn’t care.

  The short sword was aligned mercilessly at his gut.

  What sort of magical thinking lead me to believe I could somehow avoid the point of that sword. How was—

  There was a scream, and a loud wail as the woman, her baby nestled in the corner of the alleyway wall and ash and dust covered street, charged.

  She shoved the soldier from the side.

  It wasn’t much, and it just took a small step for the soldier to recover—just took a single heavy shoulder to shove the woman off him, staggering back to the alleyway.

  But it was another stack of the odds for the dice roll.

  Levan lunged for the man’s sword.

  He tried to pull it away instinctually, but Levan was ready. He’d try to do the same thing if someone tried to take his sword.

  He clung on, hands feeding upward to the soldier’s wrists, climbing in a tight grip.

  The soldier tried to head-butt him, but Levan dragged them further down the alleyway.

  Like a tug of rope war where one side suddenly drops the rope, the two of them barreled without resistance down the street.

  The soldier roared.

  Levan could barely hear it. His jaw was clenched tight enough to ring a pitch like a dog whistle through his jaw-bone and up through his ears.

  Just get the sword. Get the sword.

  The man’s grip wavered.

  [ Item Gained: Shortsword ]

  Levan’s desperate fingers reached for the grip.

  [ Item Equipped: Shortsword ]

  [ Item Unequipped: Shortsword ]

  [ Item Lost: Shortsword ]

  [ Item Gained: Shortsword ]

  [ Item Lost: Shortsword ]

  The two fought for the blade, frantic and desperate.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Levan grunted. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  “Visualize,” the soldier began in a grunt, “The Halls of your Fathers.”

  The words threw him off, the weight of them. Lore he didn’t know. Histories he’d never read. The beliefs of a man in a world more superstitious than his. A world that believed in, and had magic. A world where wars were fought with sword and flame and trebuchet again, and magic besides. A world he’d awoken in, naked, in a bloodstained temple.

  Visualize the Halls of your Fathers.

  Some things were just so…timeless though.

  “No,” Levan breathed.

  He sucked in a breath.

  “You,” he said, his every, last, burning muscle straining for the sword. The soldier was winning.

  But Levan could win, if he just pushed a little more.

  Every last strain of muscle.

  “Visualize,” he said.

  He looked the soldier in the eyes, fought until that’s where he was looking.

  “The Halls of your Fathers.”

  The grip loosened. Fractionally, but it loosened.

  [ Item Gained: Shortsword ]

  The soldier’s mind returned in an instant, his muscles renewed. But it was too late.

  “Aetherize,” Levan gasped, sealed his breath from the outside world.

  [ Aetherize: Shortsword ]

  [ Item: Shortsword has been added to your Aetherial Stores ]

  Pale green dust exploded, for a fraction of a second holding the shape of the shortsword in the air, before dissipating into nothing.

  The soldier fell forward, imbalanced, and Levan dragged him face-first through the cloud of Aether Particulate before it had the chance to dissipate completely.

  The soldier gasped, momentum carrying him deeper into the alleyway.

  There were tears of blood on the corners of his eyes that ran down his cheek. Levan could see them, even behind the soldier.

  But already they were disappearing, as new theoretical wound take its place. It wouldn’t last long.

  His heart sank.

  What was the spell that…

  He moved, and the Codex responded.

  [ Codex > Aetherial Crafter > Pull from the Aether | Retrieve a stored object from your Aetherial Stores. ]

  “Blade,” Levan said, the words coming to him in a whisper as he moved swiftly, keeping his mind as free as he could of what he was about to do.

  “I call you from the Aether.”

  The trim of Aether Particulate returned, again in the form of the shortsword. The dust spilled from the air, falling onto his wrists as they clasped the hilt.

  The sword was lighter, and certain areas of the blade had the shimmer of pale green. Other parts of the sword were missing entirely in random places across the hilt and blade. Semi-transluscent green light filled in the missing parts of the blade.

  A sword, half-ghost.

  And Levan buried it hilt-deep into the soldier’s back.

  He jerked throwing his hands and arms up, from where they had been hugging himself from a thousand burning wounds of the Aether Particulate.

  The soldier staggered forward, swaying left and right, the sword all the way through his torso.

  Levan watched, breathless, as the soldier fell to a hunch, arms reaching hopelessly for the blade in his back. His stagger grew lower and lower, until the soldier ran parallel to the street, just feet between them.

  He turned at the last moment, and hit the dead end of the alleyway with his side.

  He crumbled to his knees, hands holding his head, eyes wide.

  He turned to look at Levan.

  I think this is one of those moments, Levan realized, in the dark summer glow of city under siege, at the end of a hopeless alleyway in a world he didn’t know.

  One of those images that gets seared into your mind, he thought. Forever.

  The soldier looked up at him.

  “It burns,” he said, eyes bloodshot. More blood gathered and spilled from his tear ducts. “Please,” he said.

  Aether particulate gathered on the wound at his back and chest, drifting away in the wind like life and hope.

  Oh, no.

  Levan ran.

  He sprinted over to the soldier, who made no move.

  He pulled the blade free, and the soldier slumped.

  Levan threw the blade down the alleyway, sinking to his knees to help the man.

  “I’m sorry,” the soldier said, looking up at him with those bloodshot eyes. “I’m a soldier. I don’t…believe in any of it, priest. I got caught up.”

  Levan could only nod. He didn’t know what the man was talking about, but he could listen and keep silent.

  He found the man’s hand, which found his, and he squeezed.

  There were tears at Levan’s eyes, too.

  “Visualize,” Levan began, and the soldier breathed out, nodded to himself, shut his eyes.

  “Yes,” the soldier said, squinting hard, his brow furrowed. His hands reached for the pin at his cuirass, and he threw the pin to the ground. “I am ready.”

  “Visualize the Halls of your Fathers,” Levan finished.

  He didn’t know what it meant.

  But of course he did.

  Mostly, at least.

  The soldier nodded to him, eyes shut in concentration. Once, twice, and on the third nod, he nodded off, and fell to lean completely against the dead end of the alley.