Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

"What is happening, Daddy? I am confused. Why are you here? What are you doing here? The Blood Refineries are breaking, the vachine of Silva Valley – your people – are beginning to starve!"

"You must brace yourself for what I am about to tell you," said Kradek-ka, and his eyes now looked old, older than worlds, and Anukis felt a shudder run through her body. In a strange way, Kradek-ka no longer resembled her father, even though his features had not changed; suddenly, he seemed alien, an altogether different creature.

"This does not sound good," said Anukis quietly, allowing herself to be led to a low couch. She sat, and Kradek-ka sat in his chair, and their hands remained together.

"The Blood Refineries are failing because…" he looked away for a moment, eyes seemingly filled with tears; tears of blood-oil, at least. "They are failing because I engineered it so."

"What? You seek to kill the vachine?"

" No! That is, not directly. I had to instigate certain events. I had to make sure General Graal, or whoever else, took the Army of Iron south. Invaded Falanor. It is for a greater purpose." His voice dropped to a low rumble. "A higher purpose."

"I do not understand."

"And nor should you." He smiled. Anukis did not like the smile.

"What are you doing, daddy? You left us! Shabis is dead!"

"I know this," said Kradek-ka, face serious, eyes gleaming. "But it had to be so."

"I killed her," said Anukis, hanging her head with guilt.

"This, also, I know."

"And you do not hate me?"

"You are pure, Anu," he was suddenly smiling. "Shabis chose her own path; and it was the wrong path. You came to me, you sought me out. I hoped it would be so. For together, we can find the remaining Soul Gems, and we can…" He stopped, suddenly, and his teeth clamped shut.

"This is too strange," said Anukis. "It is like a surreal, drug-induced dream. Have I imbibed blood-oil? Am I really hallucinating, back at my apartment in Silva Valley? Will Vashell bring a surgeon to bleed out the poisons? Tell me this is so."

"I have much to tell you, Anukis. I have much to tell. But soon, you will understand. And soon, I hope, you will choose to help me. You will help… us all."

Kradek-ka motioned, and Anukis turned, and gasped at the Harvesters standing silently in the doorway. She could see perhaps twenty, but also saw their pale bony figures spreading off into the surreal hazy gloom of the bone place.

Anukis's fangs and claws ejected, but Kradek-ka squeezed her hand. "No. They are friends."

"They have been hunting me!"

"But now you are here. Now you are safe. They do not understand the bigger game. I do."

Anukis was staring, hard, eyes narrowed, mind a maelstrom Everything was wrong. Nothing fit like it should. The world felt… seized, like old clockwork. Like a rusted puzzlebox.

Suddenly, Kradek-ka stood, drawing Anukis up with him. His eyes gleamed. "Don't you understand, Anu? I made you special! I made you special for a reason! The day is coming, when the vachine will regress! We will return to a time of ancient power, of ancient mastery!" His face contorted into a snarl. "Now we are secondhand, kept alive, kept whole by clockwork machines." He spat across the desk, where thousands of tiny intricate machines lay. "It was not always thus."

"You saved the vachine," said Anu, voice small.

"I cursed them!" he said. And his eyes glittered. "And now I will uncurse them."

"What do you mean?"

"We will bring back the Vampire Warlords, Anu," he said. "And then you will see what a species can achieve!"

Alloria, Queen of Falanor, wife to the Warrior King Leanoric, Guardian of all Falanor States, knew instantly the moment her husband died. It felt as if she had been stabbed through the heart.

She had been walking a path through high mountain passes, not long after she left Anukis who in turn set off in the Engineer's Barge, in search of her father. Queen Alloria, alone now, and carrying a satchel with few provisions and extra clothing which Anukis had given her from the Barge's stores, was navigating a particularly treacherous path of sharp frozen rocks, a sheer cliff to her right, a vast drop of maybe five thousand feet to her left, down sharp, scree-covered slopes which ended in a tumbled platter of massive cubic rocks. Her hands, once delicate and manicured, the nails perfectly filed and painted with tiny scenes, skin soft from rich creams and unguents, were now hard and scabbed and ingrained with dirt. They reached out, touching the rock wall for security lest her vertigo tip her over the edge of the slope, and laugh at her fall as she kicked and screamed her way to becoming a bloody pulped carcass at the bottom.

Alloria breathed deep. She calmed her mind.

Then the pain came, slashing through her heart like a razor, and she gasped, and heard his cry across the miles, across the skies, across the mountains, across the void; and Alloria knew as sure as the sun would rise that Leanoric, her true love, the man she had betrayed and who had, against all probability, forgiven her; she knew he was dead.

Alloria gasped, and fell to her knees. Overhead, an eagle swooped, then dropped and disappeared into the vastness of the canyon. Alloria clutched her chest, and the pain was intense and she could hear Leanoric's scream which suddenly cut off – in an instant – as he was slain.

"Oh, my, no," was all she managed to whisper, and knelt there on the rocky trail, rocking gently backwards and forwards as desolation filled her like ink in a jug; right to the brim.

She knelt there. For long hours. And cried. She cried for his death. She cried for her boys. And she cried for her betrayal of Falanor, her foolish foolish betrayal, which sat with her, sat bad with her, like a demon smothering her soul.

It was only as darkness fell, and she heard the distant cries of wolves that she was prodded into action. She climbed wearily to her feet, drained beyond any semblance of humanity. It had all been too much; the invasion, the rape, the abuse, the kidnapping. And now that her husband was dead, and she knew in her heart he was truly gone, there seemed little left to live for. But what about your children? asked a tiny part of her conscience, and she smiled there on the mountain ledge, as clouds swirled heavy above her and light flakes of snow began to snap in the wind. Of course, she thought. Her children. Sweet Oliver, and handsome Alexander; oh how she missed them. She picked her way along the trail in the fast-falling gloom. But then, who was to say they had not also been slain? They had been with Leanoric as he checked his armies in those last fateful days of Falanor's rule. Surely they were still with him, in the fast-falling panic following the swift invasion by Graal's Army of Iron? The albinos had marched on Jalder, then headed south with speed, taking every city and town and village they came upon. They allowed few to escape; and those who did escape were hunted down by the terrible beasts known as cankers.

Alloria shuddered again. She looked up. Above her, light fell swiftly from the sky. Velvet caressed her vision. She cursed herself, cursed herself for her self-pity, and cursed herself for knowing too much. Graal. Graal. She touched her hand to her breast, remembering the gems.

Whilst she knelt, weeping, the mountain night and the savagery of nature had crept in on her. Now the Black Pikes would seek to test her mettle, her agility, her stamina and her courage.

Alloria stumbled over a rocky ledge, and nearly pitched into the chasm far below. Panting, and with hands raw from scraping rock, she moved on, telling herself constantly that Oliver and Alexander were still alive; that Leanoric would have had the foresight to hide them somewhere safe. But deep down in her heart, in her soul, she did not believe it… even if she could not feel their deaths as acutely as that of her king, her husband, her lover, and ultimately, her soul mate.