17. Time After Time

The room beyond was cold, and even larger than the last. Pale globules of light merely served to cast shadows up the grey walls, failing to illuminate a hint of the ceiling presumably far overhead. Eerie after the noisy clash only moments before, all was silent, save for the rushing of water and whirring of fan belts from within the walls.

The only visible contents of the room were rows of evenly spaced, regularly shaped blocks, each as large as a storage crate - or a coffin. Mindful of how loud his footsteps sounded on the stone floor, Lux wound his way between them. Something caught his foot and he tripped, instinctively grabbing one of the slabs to steady himself. He recoiled at its ice-cold temperature, seeing that he’d left a handprint in the condensation covering its glassy surface. He beckoned for the others to gather round as he wiped away the opaque layer.

Inside, they could see something almost like a person, lying motionless in its crystalline casket. Unlike the prisoners in Vozloc’s cottage, this had clearly never been a normal living thing. It was a grotesque parody of a human, like a child’s clumsy drawing. Far too many teeth had been crammed into its lipless mouth. Its neck was too long and thin, like a wooden puppet. It wore its alabaster skin like an ill-fitting suit. And, most horrifyingly of all, its eyelids were fused shut, though still pulsating as the eyeballs beneath drifted back and forth.

There were six sarcophagi in total. From each one ran a thick tube, which snaked towards a giant shape at the rear of the room. Caela, eyes piercing the veil of darkness, gasped. Even if it was made out of a different material than the others - riveted steel, not splintered wood - she recognised the crimson mark stamped on its slablike surface.

“Gods,” Valerios breathed with a puff of vapour.

“The gods can’t see us down here.”

The voice, reedy and mechanical, came from far above their heads. The lights on the ground flared, highlighting the outline of a tumbling grey rag. The piece of material fluttered down, seemingly empty until, like a magic trick, a diminutive figure emerged from its folds. He swept like a fallen leaf towards the box, and raised a hand. Spots of white light lit up its red-stencilled surface, as well as the byzantine device connected to it by a fat copper tube.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” the figure asked dreamily. “It’s like looking into the sweetest future. One of my own design.”

He whirled, his grey hood falling to reveal a gnomish face. The once-rubicund complexion had been drawn tight to his skull, his eyes pits of tar. Lux recognised in him something of the addicts they’d seen in the Otherside.

“Don’t you see?” the man beseeched. “Your doltish overlord would have you destroy such art, just like you did in my cottage!”

Caela recognised something else in the floating figure: a face whose portrait she’d seen gathering dust in a derelict office.

“You’re Vozloc,” she breathed. “You’re the mage who retired - who was killed in the lab.”

“You tried to kill me,” Vozloc sneered, “and cost me a very fine project. I spent months sculpting that face to look like mine. Still, I must thank you for the flattery of falling for my simulacrum.”

Caela shook her head, perplexed. “We didn’t attack your lab. Well… we did, but only after everyone was already dead.”

She traced the bumps of her granite scar.

“Your creature killed me.”

Vozloc peered through half-moon spectacles from his lofty position.

“Really? Well, I shall have to take a closer look at you afterwards. It matters little, though. Why bother conquering death when I already have life on tap?”

He raised his hand, and a flash of green energy leapt towards the mechanism. With a shuddering whir, it jolted to life, its gears shrieking and rattling against each other. The floor trembled beneath them.

The tubes snaking along the floor pulsed, swelling as fluid surged through them. A gurgling sound echoed throughout the chamber, followed by a series of metallic clanks as, one by one, the lids of the six sarcophagi slowly rose.

Air rushed in and the frozen inhabitants finally stirred. Twisted limbs twitched, then pressed against the lids, pushing them further open. Unanimously agreeing that they didn’t want to see what would happen if they escaped, the others lunged forward, bracing against the frost-covered crystal as the creatures inside slammed their fists against the glass.

“Stop!” Caela shouted over the din. “Haven’t you caused enough suffering? All this, just for a few badly-made puppets?”

The gnome looked down his squashed nose at her. “I am not such a cruel man to try and make you understand my work - although, I admit, you have forced me to accelerate to live testing earlier than anticipated.”

“Still,” he crowed, raising his hands in triumph. “Results are one thing, but a true creator does it for the love of the craft!”

Vozloc’s beady eyes fixed on Johannes, who was hovering by Valerios’ shoulder. “Isn’t that right?” he asked, voice dripping with sludgy glee. “I can recognise a fellow practitioner of the arcane arts. What say you come under my wing, and together we can shave those grey years from your face?”

Johannes stared unblinkingly at the gnome, and Lux saw a dark expression pass across his face. For a moment, he felt a cold shadow of doubt-

“You know as well as I do,” Johannes said levelly, “that wizards don’t like to share.”

His knuckles showed white as they tightened around his orb, a raincloud blooming within the glass. Vozloc smiled murderously, but his expression froze as a ripping sound cut through the scene.

Hellebore tugged their dagger free from the tube with a visceral spurt of pink ooze. The contents sloshed out, forming a thick puddle around the end of the sarcophagus it had been attached to. The aberration inside screeched, nearly lifting Rose with the force of its death-throes before falling silent.

Vozloc echoed the misbegotten creature’s screech. Hellebore took a few steps forward, undaunted.

“Enough,” they said flatly. “You’re embarrassing yourself. Leave my friends alone.”

Vozloc wheeled in the air like a leaf in a storm, clutching his head. Lux felt a chilly gust whip up around their feet as the small figure spun faster and faster, becoming cloaked in an icy vortex.

Johannes’ eyes grew wide. “Watch out!” he cried, as Vozloc came to an abrupt halt. The mass of freezing air condensed into his upraised palms in an instant. For a brief eternity, it hung there - suspended, seething.

“GET BEHIND ME!” Valerios bellowed, slamming his shield into the stone. Everything went white. Amidst the cacophony of hail and wind, Lux heard a bell toll distantly. As his vision slowly returned, its chime faded, until all he could hear was creaking ice.

Through the haze, Lux saw his friends stagger to their feet, their breath misting in the frozen air. Ahead, misshapen figures rose from the remains of their smashed stone coffins - a cruel parody of the living. The entire floor was coated in sparkling hoarfrost - except for a cone of untouched ground, stretching out behind Valerios.

He had borne the brunt of it, and sheltered them from the blast.

He had fallen to one knee, bent behind his towering shield. Thick blue ice glued it to the floor, and Lux realised with a start that it was the only thing keeping him upright. A tremor ran through Valerios’ frame, and his knee buckled. He slumped against his shield, breathing heavily.

He had done his duty.

Braced for the next attack, Lux frantically looked for any sign of Vozloc, but his stinging breath caught in his throat when he saw someone else.

Amidst the fernlike wisps of frost, a slender tree of ice had grown. Its thin branches split like fractals, forming a bloodstained crown of needlelike spikes.

Hellebore hung from them like a scarecrow, skewered through their arms, legs and chest in a dozen places.

Lux’s gaze roamed over their broken-doll body, desperately searching for a twitching finger, any sign of life. He watched as hot blood ran from one wound down its impaling icicle, freezing into a scarlet droplet on its tip.

No.

Lux could hear his own blood pounding in his ears.

“Lux!”

Caela’s scream echoed, dull and distant, and Lux barely registered being lifted off his feet by unseen hands. Pressure closed around him like a vice, crushing his ribcage until he could barely breathe - an invisible force, cold as the icy winds whirling around him, held him aloft. Vozloc’s face leered down at him without empathy, without even interest - as if he was nothing more than the sum of his body’s fragile parts.

Lux’s lungs burned, his ribs on fire. His head lolled back, and a trickle of fear ran through his addled brain as he realised just how far off the ground he’d been lifted. Twenty feet below, Caela rolled over the top of an empty coffin, dodging a blast of green lightning from Vozloc and scrabbling for her next arrow. Lux felt himself hauled through the air to hover in front of the mage, forcing Caela to redirect her shot at the last moment.

Freija stumbled over to Valerios, who was still hunched behind his shield. At this distance, Lux could only watch her lips move as she placed her hands on his side. As she chanted, the silhouette of a ram coalesced above her shoulders, blue light shining down over them both. Valerios stirred, energy slowly returning to his fatigued limbs.

Freija’s ministrations were abruptly interrupted by a thin shape lurching out of the mist. A spindly arm slammed into her with unnatural force, lifting the elf off her feet. She crashed back-first into the wall, struggling to sit up straight. Her attacker cast a gaunt shadow over her, drool spilling from a mouth far too full of teeth. It reared back again, only to be yanked off its feet by a tattooed arm.

Rose tossed the creature to the ground, dropping to snap its arm over his knee with a crack. It showed no emotion at all, whipping the broken limb up to graze Rose’s cheek. He backed off, looking around wildly. A second creature lurched towards Johannes, who was still stirring back to consciousness. Two more approached from the left, stumbling towards Freija on uneven legs.

Rose looked from one to the other for a moment, before the first zombie took another swipe at his face. He ducked, grabbing it in a headlock before jumping to drop-kick Johannes’ attacker with both feet. Planting his weight on his grappled foe, he leapt upright and swung it like a meaty bat towards the two remaining creatures.

Rose staggered as the kicked creature bit into his ankle, just as a tawny shape leapt over one of the caskets, shaking a fifth construct in his jaws. Mene dropped his foe and pounced upon the creature biting Rose, burying his own fangs into the loose flesh. When the mindless automaton did not release Rose, the wolf growled, letting go long enough only to reveal rows of sharklike teeth before crunching down once again on the creature’s arm, ripping it in half.

Rose shook the severed hand from his ankle just as one of the other constructs sprung towards him. He kicked out, catching its birdlike chest on one scarlet boot before stomping it into the ground. Before he could recover, two more were upon him, locking both arms above his head. He was dragged off his feet as Mene harried at his attackers.

Lux watched all this with a pang that eclipsed the pain gripping his chest. His friends were fighting for their lives.

They were strong. They were fast. But they were outnumbered.

A tear rolled from Lux’s eye, running sideways down his cheek and splashing onto his limp arm.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Vozloc asked mockingly, bringing Lux close enough that he could feel his stale breath. “No sense feeling sorry for yourself. It’s all over now.”

He snapped his fingers, summoning a twisting vortex in Caela’s line of fire. The ranger sought in vain for a clear shot.

“I didn’t ask you to come down here,” Vozloc complained. “You could’ve been a good boy and let me continue my experiments in peace. What made you interfere? Was it money?”

No, Lux thought. I’d take my fishing hut over any palace in the world.

“Fame?”

No, not fame. Becoming a household name is Rose’s dream, but I’d like nothing less.

“Revenge, perhaps, for a loved one I’ve wronged?”

Caela’s death made me angry, but that’s not it either.

Vozloc affected a pitying expression.

“Or perhaps you’re a criminal who thinks that one good deed will erase a lifetime of wrongdoing. Is that it? Because I can assure you, it’s far more rewarding to set aside conscience altogether.”

Is that it? Lux wondered. A few days ago, I’d have said yes. But I told the others about my past… and they forgave me. Even though I hadn’t forgiven myself.

He felt more warm tears run down his face, dripping onto his companions far below. As they caught the meagre light, Lux saw their golden sparkle.

His tears fell faster and faster, like wax poured from a candle that was nearly burnt out. A fat droplet fell upon Johannes’ cheek, sinking into his skin and suffusing it with vitality. The professor spluttered as he regained consciousness, scrabbling for his fallen components.

More radiant globules splashed onto the floor, melting holes into the frost. They raced towards Freija and Valerios like raindrops running down glass, leaping onto their bodies to jolt them back into action.

“What is-” Vozloc began, recoiling from the molten radiance, but Lux laughed weakly, Candlelight running from his lips as he spoke.

“I came… because… I made an oath,” he rasped. “An oath to protect…”

Vozloc’s magic released its hold on him. Lux plunged through the air, liquid light streaming behind him like a comet tail. Somewhere inside him, he felt a dam finally burst, giving way to a flood of gold.

Lux banked out of his dive, the Candlelight solidifying into a pair of gilded wings. Instinctively, he beat them with a thunderous crack, sending him shooting along the ground. He raced past Rose, who was making his last stand against the constructs, delivering gunpowder jabs with one arm and clutching his bruised ribs with the other. Despite the peril, he broke out into a cheer at Lux’s passing.

“That’s my boy!” he roared triumphantly. “That’s my godsdamned student!”

Lux dived for his fallen blade, snatching it up and bursting upwards like a firework.

Vozloc thrust his hands out protectively, conjuring a glassy sheet in his path. Lux thrust his sword ahead of him, piercing through the icy wall. The shards wheeled in the air to slash at his body, but Lux took no notice of the pain, cleaving them to slush with his blazing blade.

Below him, Johannes was chanting sonorous words of power as Rose and Mene held off the few remaining constructs. As the wizard tapped his cane upon the ground, the creatures sank up to their waists in the stone. Valerios, rising with new-found strength, tested the ground for himself, and found it solid. Raising his scimitar, he cleanly severed a trapped foe’s head from its body.

Witnessing the execution of his soldiers, Vozloc screamed in frustration. He twisted and banked erratically through the air, which Lux could feel growing colder by the second. The mage turned, rags flapping, a ball of white energy in his hands. He slowed his mad whirling to aim his palms at Lux.

As soon as he did so, a raven arrow pierced through the ball and into his shoulder, dissipating the fragile strands of magic and scattering them explosively into the gnome’s face.

Lux didn’t waste Caela’s gifted opportunity. He caught hold of his quarry with both fists, driving him into the side of the great steel box. Vozloc coughed hot blood into Lux’s face as the impact hammered a dent into the metal.

Somewhere behind the pulse of adrenaline, Lux heard an inhuman gibbering in the back of his mind. It had grown louder the closer he came to the box.

“Give up!” Lux hissed, mind and body aflame. “No-one else has to die today.”

Vozloc’s head rolled to one side, then the other, then back again. Lux realised that he was shaking his head.

“N…” was all the half-conscious man could gurgle through a mouthful of blood. But a horrible grin crept across his battered face. Lux looked down, too slow, to see the gnome’s hand pressed flat against the box’s surface. There was an almost anticlimactic pop as the spell tore a fist-sized hole through the thick steel.

An instant later, something wet and purple ruptured forth in a shriek of rending metal.

Lux reflexively released Vozloc, clutching his ears as the gibbering became a mental screech. A fleshy appendage snaked out of the box, wrapped around Vozloc’s head, and squeezed. Lux closed his eyes at the spray of skull fragments and viscera.

The container’s edges groaned, rivets popping like champagne corks. Lux was sent flying as the top of the box was peeled open like a tin can, disgorging a colossal mound of flesh. The veiny, cancerous mass sloughed over the edges and rolled forwards like a vile tide, its lumpy surface broken up by a random assortment of limbs and organs. Even as he watched, fat tendrils grew like stalks from the abominable mass, smashing the grand clockwork device to pieces.

Lux flapped his golden wings madly, slowing enough to reorient and hit the ground running. Caela was already ahead of him, trying to hurry Johannes through the doorway as Mene leapt past. Freija sprang forwards, shifting mid-leap into the form of a cerulean deer and galloping from the room. Valerios all but tossed the elderly wizard under his arm and followed suit.

Lux charged through the archway, hot on their heels. Tentacles were bursting through the walls all around them, muscle fibres exposed, as the mass grew through the clockwork that they’d heard within the walls. He dodged flailing strikes and falling scaffolding, shrugging off the debris that bounced against his back.

Valerios barrelled along, shedding all unnecessary weaponry in an effort to increase his speed. The only thing he retained was his shield, which he held above Johannes like a steel umbrella. His tree-trunk legs pumped like a forge’s bellows, driving him straight through the obstacles that Lux was having to weave around.

The survivors dove towards the trapped passageway, feeling heat on their back as racks of potions were upturned with explosive results. Something heavy crashed into Lux’s back as he banked round a sharp turn. He picked himself off the floor and tried to re-launch himself, but felt his second wind draining by the second. He flapped his wings vainly, globules of Candlelight melting off at each beat.

Hooves clattered behind him, and he heard Freija call his name. She slowed barely enough for him to leap astride, tearing across the workshop and through the passage connecting it to the crevasse they’d traversed just an hour earlier.

The grand device powering Vozloc’s experiments had been subsumed by the mass of flesh, and now the gears within the channel were spinning out of control. Cogs popped free, whizzing like shurikens to embed themselves in the walls. As they watched, one burst from the sea of spinning copper and scythed through one of the walkway’s support beams. Caela and Mene wasted no more time, dashing across without even slowing to test its integrity. The remaining struts complained, but the nimble-footed ranger and her companion were across in a flash.

Valerios was just behind them, pounding across the failing walkway with Johannes under his arm. He was halfway across when a scarred tentacle whipped towards him - missing the pair, but buckling the metal. Caela and Mene backed through the circular porthole into the sewers to make space for the paladin’s desperate arrival.

Lux and Freija brought up the rear. Her hooves clattered as she skipped across the failing walkway until, with a lurch, the remaining ceiling struts gave way. Freija leapt for the far platform, landing nimbly beside the door. Lux’s head whipped back at the jolt of the impact, sending a shiver of pain up his neck.

He performed a quick head count, his heart aching with the remembrance that they would be one member short. But… there were five standing on the platform.

Lux’s stomach plummeted as he realised that Hellebore wasn’t the only one missing.

“Where’s Rose?”

—

My head hurts.

Rose shoved away the twisted hunk of metal pinning him down, staggering blearily to his feet. A strand of hair swung like a crimson pendulum across his vision; when he brushed it back, his fingertips came away bloody.

Not the worst hit I’ve taken, he thought gamely, remembering those first brutal years on the underground brawling circuit. He’d lived through worse. That was the important part.

He assessed the situation, finding little to celebrate. A colossal lump of viscera had spread across most of the floor - and even into the walls, judging by the tentacles tearing through the masonry. The white lights shone dimly through the translucent flesh, turning the scene a disturbing peach colour.

Massaging his side, Rose looked around for his friends. Nobody. No, wait. Just the one. The one he’d expected to see, really.

Hellebore’s icy crucifix had been smashed during the explosion, and the thief now lay in an icicle-studded heap, like a puppet with its strings cut. Limp and crumpled, they looked smaller than ever.

Dislodged by the impact, the ever-present porcelain mask had fallen away. Chipped but not shattered, it lay at Rose’s feet, black eyepieces staring blankly up. He looked at it. He looked at Hellebore.

“Huh,” he said, to no-one in particular.

Movement in the corner of his eye - he spun around, planting his fist into the doughy tentacle that had been lashing towards him. Cartilage crunched beneath the blow, and the monstrous appendage recoiled with a wet shudder.

“Alright, enough posing,” he said briskly, scooping Hellebore into his arms. He slipped their mask gently back into place, addressing them with a confidence he didn’t quite feel.

“Let’s go. We have a daring escape to affect.”

Rose sprinted through the archway and into the workshop. By now, it had become a hellish oven. Amidst falling scaffolding, aberrant flesh sizzled in puddles of burning potion slurry, forming a sheltered path through the chaos.

It wouldn’t last. Behind him, the tide of screaming entrails was rolling through the archway, filling its entire breadth. Rose lowered his head to avoid breathing the oily smoke and ran through the fiery corridor.

“We could do with some of Lux’s liquid energy, eh?” he puffed, cradling Hellebore to roll under a swinging tendril.

“Did you see him, though?” he continued, pride creeping into his tone. “That’s the kind of stuff they write songs about.” He shook his head, almost laughing. “Fucking magical.”

He was almost at the passageway. From somewhere ahead, he heard Caela cry out as something big crashed down and was chewed up by gears.

Only a few seconds behind them, Rose thought. Damn, I’m good.

He glanced down. The ice had thawed enough for fresh blood to trickle from Hellebore’s wounds.

“What do you think?” he asked, with false cheer. “Think the Professor and Nature Girl can fix you up?”

No response.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Me neither. But I have to try anyway.”

He was rocked forwards by the largest explosion yet, chunks of ceiling hammering down around him. The roiling mass behind him didn’t slow its advance - it just kept oozing around the falling debris, pressing in, relentless.

Rose slid into the passage, kicking off the wall to turn his momentum into a final mad dash. The walls opened up ahead to reveal his friends, clustered around the platform on the other side of the gorge.

And no bridge.

Ah, hells.

There was no time for second-guessing. Inches behind him, pseudopods stretched from the fleshy tidal wave to brush his heels. Rose barrelled towards the broken edge, and leapt.

The air caught him like cold water. Time slowed to a crawl as he soared above the whirling abyss.

He’d felt his knee buckle on the lift-off, and he knew what that meant. Through raw athleticism, he’d made it thirty feet across the gap, but he wasn’t even close. He needed more. A little push.

A memory rose, unbidden. Years ago - many years ago: a younger Rose, quivering under the weight of his mentor, who stood straight atop his pupil’s aching shoulders.

“Keep a strong base, lad,” the elder Rose had said. “For me to leap up, I must push you down. Such is the way of forces-”

The words blurred, half-drowned by the roar of screaming machinery and the pound of his own heart.

Leap up, push down.

Rose felt the bundle in his hands. Would it be enough? He couldn’t be sure. But he had to try.

After all, a hero never leaves anyone behind.

His eyes fell on Lux, reaching desperately from atop Freija. His radiant wings streamed down behind him like so much melted wax. They locked eyes, and Lux’s mouth began to open in anguish. Of course Lux knew what Rose was planning. They’d trained together long enough.

We both know who has to take the fall here.

You don’t mind losing?

I’ve had my chance to look strong. Now it’s your turn.

Rose gave them a last, triumphant smile.

Then he reared back one tattooed arm and hurled Hellebore towards the crowd, taking with them the last of his momentum. He heard Lux cry out as he fell below the line of the platform.

Then he was gone.

18. The Man in the Rubble >>