Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

It moved fast, leaping almost horizontally at Vashell who dropped his shoulder in a blur, knife ramming up into the vachine's belly and ripping savagely sideways as he took the vachine's short black sword in his fist, and twisted allowing the moving body to slam against the wall with a splatter of blood. With a short hack, he severed the vachine's head and blood-oil flowed free from the neck stump. Nobody else had moved. Vashell squared himself to the other two creatures who stared, stunned at what they'd just witnessed. They separated as far as the cave would allow, and as the wind howled mournfully outside, Vashell caught sight of his brother from the corner of his eye; Llaran was smiling.

"What's funny?" snarled Vashell. "The fact I'm going to sever your spine?"

"You cannot stand against us."

"Watch me."

With a battle shriek Vashell attacked, ducking a sword strike and slash of claws, elbowing the vachine in the face and front-kicking the second, leaping figure back to the wall. He leapt himself, and sword blades clashed, and he reversed his sword thrusting it under his own arm and into the chest of the vachine leaping at his back. The creature gurgled, and clockwork whined and clicked, and Vashell withdrew the blade, turned fast and lopped off the second man's head… continuing the fluid move with a roll of hips, drop of one shoulder, his left arm bearing the knife coming up, a clash of steel sending sparks scattering through the cave as the short black sword came high overhead to slam through the third vachine's shoulder, and deep down into lungs. Clockwork machinery, spinning and moving, could be seen through severed, wide-open flesh. Vashell tugged free his blade, and split the vachine's head clean in two showing a cross-section of skull and brain – closely meshed with fine gold wire and tiny, micro-clockwork. The head peeled in two, like fruit-halves, and Vashell heard the sounds and turned fast – but Llaran had gone. Fled, into the snow.

Alloria was standing, hands before her, panting hard. Vashell leapt to the fire, and using the tip of his sword flicked Fiddion's head from the flames. It was a blackened, crisped ball, a globe of stinking fried pork and fat ran from orifices, and steam rose from the cooling, over-cooked meat.

"Hell," hissed Vashell, his vachine blood-fury still raised as his eyes narrowed, and he contemplated following Llaran into the snow. To be betrayed by his own brother! He could not understand it. But then he thought about it, and he could. Vashell was no longer beautiful vachine; and he had lost his fangs and claws, that which made him holy, that which endeared him to Engineers and Watchmakers alike. If they had taken him back to Silva Valley, he would have been executed as impure. Burned, like a common criminal. Quartered, like a captured Blacklipper. Vashell spat into the fire. "Bastards." Now, he could never go home, and that burned worse than any loss of face.

"Listen… to… me…" croaked Fiddion.

Vashell moved to the cooling head, and knelt. He reached out, touched the scorched flesh. He shook his head. "I cannot believe it. You tough little bastard. Can you hear me, Fiddion?"

"Listen carefully. Vashell. The Vampire… the Warlords, they will return. Kradek-ka and Graal, they will make it so. A… summoning. They will…" He coughed, then, and a tiny raw pink tongue darted against scorched, blackened lips. "They will take Anukis. To Skaringa Dak. Helltop. To sit on the Granite Thrones. She has the Soul Gem, you see? You must stop this." He coughed – or at least choked – again, ejecting a long thick black stream of gore. "Help Anukis," said the Harvester. "Help the vachine race."

"You don't know what you ask," said Vashell, eyes full of tears which stung his tortured face. "She has taken everything from me; my fangs, my claws, my vachine life. She took my pride and my dignity – stripped me of everything and left me as outcast! Even if I saved Silva Valley, saved the entire vachine civilisation – they would still turn on me and execute. Don't you understand?"

"That is why you must help," said Fiddion, quietly. "Now put me back on the fire. None, none must know my secrets."

Vashell obeyed, placing the Harvester's crisped, smouldering head back into the flames. The fire roared for a moment, bright green flames soaring to scorch the roof of the cave. Then the head burnt fiercely; in minutes it was nothing more than an outline of ash, which crumbled, vanishing into glowing embers.

Alloria was there. She placed a hand on Vashell. He looked at her.

"What will you do?" she said.

He glanced back at the vachine corpses, their bloodoil staining rock and ice. Then he stood, and shook free the queen's grip. He lifted his short black sword and examined the blade. Then he bared his teeth, where once his vampire fangs had sat.

"I will fight," he said, eyes lost in shadow.

It was like a dream. A dream watched through fog. A dream watched through refracted glass. Kradek-ka took hold of Anukis by the throat and he pinned her down, and she screamed and struggled and the Harvesters helped, long bone fingers piercing and cutting her flesh and the brass needle was long, and dripping with globules of amber fluid, of sweet sweet honey and Kradek-ka, face twisted in animal hatred, plunged the needle into Anukis's neck and her struggling slowed and ceased and she watched the scene from outside her body, and felt good, and felt warm, and memories faded and everything in the world seemed cosy and kind and simply right.

It had taken days of preparation, but Anukis had grown strong, had grown calm, had filled herself with yet more love for her father. He sought to make the vachine strong, to accelerate their civilisation; his was a noble cause. And when he pioneered new technology, she would be accepted back into Silva Valley, no longer blood-oil impure, no longer outcast. She could return to her old life. With Kradek-ka, her father, by her side.

Now, they travelled ancient mountain tunnels. The walls were of purest white, and the Harvesters who travelled with Anukis and Kradek-ka, numbering perhaps thirty strong and making her shiver when they crept up behind, smiling curiously with long bone-fingers extended, carried small white globes which lit the way with a dull, feverish light.

Kradek-ka led, with Anukis usually one step behind. Occasionally he would smile back at her, at his eldest daughter, at his special daughter, and her mind swam a little as she tried to remember why she was there. The gold liquor the Harvesters gave her in the morning and evening, it seemed to have dulled her senses and made the world flicker like beautiful candlelight, and yet it confused her at the same time. It was most strange.

"You are a delight to behold," said Kradek-ka, remembering her earlier struggle, her fight, her animosity. But then, all emotions were easy to control with a subtle infusion of drugs. Just like all physical aspects were easy to control with a little introduction of melding clockwork.

They walked, through endless tunnels. Sometimes the walls were smooth and curved, corridors wide and paved as if used by great armies or royalty; other times they became angular, the white tiles gleaming and slightly off centre, awkward to look at as if they were plucking to unravel your mind. Then they would walk across rough hewn stone, sometimes dry as desert sand, other times slick with water or a clear, viscous slime. But two constants remained; the walls were always white, and the tunnel floor always sloped up.

They climbed. For hours, they climbed.

Occasionally they would come across rest rooms, low-ceilinged and scattered with beds. Kradek-ka would allow Anukis to sleep, to regain her strength. Kradek-ka never slept and would stand at the foot of her bed, watching her, staring at her, until she drifted into a world of dreams, of before the horror and bloodshed, when she used to sneak at night through the city streets of the Silva Valley, avoiding Engineers on her way to the Blacklippers for a bottle of Karakan Red.