Steven Montano - Black Scars

The primal warriors weaken, until at last the Sleeper lands a devastating blow. The enemy is no longer distinct: it dissipates and spreads into shards. The fragments of its being sink and fuse into the living mages nearby.

White energy bleeds into them, an ethereal transfusion. The Sleeper’s enemy becomes a refugee hidden in human souls.

Weakened and suddenly alone, the Sleeper withdraws. Its enemy has gone.

The battle has fused the land into karsts. The devastation is frozen in a shattered epitaph of melted ice and fused black rock. They have destroyed the lands around them in their war of dust.

Victorious, the Sleeper disregards the mere human shell left behind by its enemy. Its jailor has escaped, scattered like ice crystals in the wind.

The Sleeper sinks into the earth, and rests.

Soon, it will hunt again.

Cross woke. He sensed that he’d woken before, but that might have been a dream. He had only vague memory of what had happened after he’d witnessed the battle between Lucan Keth and the Dra’aalthakmar.

He remembered razor claws and barbed chains; leering vampire faces and black laughter; a grey room with dark scratches on the walls; cages made of bone; falling through skies filled with blood clouds.

Cross had seen the frozen city in his dreams. Something waited for him there.

That memory faded, and he was left alone in suffocating darkness. His body ached down to the bone. His wrists were bound behind his back. The air was hot and moist. Cross was on his knees, on top of something cracked and sharp. Dank wind washed over his body, and for a moment Cross felt weightless.

He felt his spirit. She was weak and hovered just out of reach, like a firefly held in a glass jar.

Something tore away his hood. Hot air stung his face and his eyes, and the bright sky temporarily blinded him. For a few seconds Cross thought that the blazing crimson sun would crush him.

He knelt on top of a steel city wall. A bitter rot taste clung to the air and turned Cross’ stomach sour. The roar of arcane turbines filled his ears, and waves of heat pushed against him as low flying warships passed overhead.

Cross gazed into a metropolis of chains: tall and crooked buildings made of metal and bone, bound together in a massive web of iron links. Everything was the color of blood and rust. Every surface in that steel jungle of towers and parapets and jagged bridges was dented and browned from the touch of desert storms.

Endless drifts of ochre sand surrounded the city. There were hills and mounds and ridges of crimson rock and dust. It was as if the world had been trapped in a stain. The hot and dry desert wind carried grit that clung to the eyes and teeth.

“ Rise,” a voice commanded. It was not a human voice. The mouth that spoke the words was concealed behind a strip of red cloth that covered the lower half of a pale and ashen face. The vampire wore the red combat armor of a Shadowclaw. It held a large-bored rifle in its hands, and six black-clad vampires stood behind it, one for each prisoner, each of them with its considerable claws on display. Their eyes were solid coals, their skin was waxy and pale, their jaws were too large for their heads, and their hair was unnaturally black.

Black, Cole, Dillon, Kane and Ekko were there with Cross. Each of them was battered and bloodied and covered in dark desert grime. The prisoners were unceremoniously hauled to their feet. Cross felt vampire claws on his back, and his wounded leg nearly gave out as he rose. Sharp pain shot from his thigh into his abdomen, and he almost cried out.

There was no sign of Lucan.

The prisoners were brought to a pitted steel platform covered in scorch marks. Cross looked down. It was difficult to gauge the breadth of the city, but he suddenly respected its depth. Layers of rooftops and platforms and cross-sections of thick barbed chains lowered into dizzying metal canyons filled with black smog. Cross could barely make out the image of a dirt street far below. The height at which they stood was dizzying, and for a moment he felt his center of gravity shift and threaten to pull him from the precarious ledge.

The city moved. The groan of machinery sang through the air in a choir of metal. Something shifted deep in the city’s iron bowels, and other areas groaned back in response. The vampire metropolis shifted. The wall shuddered beneath their boots. Chains dragged across pathways and guide beams, pulled and lifted and squeezed sections of moveable city, which rotated like the interior of some vast clock. Gears slid in with one another, great joints snapped together, and locking mechanisms loudly shifted into place. Drifts of red dust exploded off of the buildings and fell like dry rain.

Dark fliers circled the skies: Razorwings with black and leathery skin, mighty claws and saber-like teeth. Stout aerial warships covered with spikes and guns floated above the city walls. Cross saw vats of hot blood and buildings covered in razors, temples made of bone and obelisks made of blackened skulls. Everything leaked shadow. Great brutish work beasts with silvered horns and thick ebon flesh roamed the oversized walls, hauling carts of goods and slaves and platforms packed with vampire soldiers.

They were in Krul. The City of Scars.

The six prisoners were lined up and held tight. The platform lurched beneath their feet. Steel ground against steel. Buildings seemed to grow taller all around them as they gradually descended into the shadows below. They sank into a metal sea.

Cross tasted acetone and tar. Industrial vents spat yellow gases into the air. Spectral visages like golden skulls swam in the poison fog.

The prisoners looked into the depths of a city of towers as the platform descended. Chains hung like cobwebs from every surface. Massive stone wheels and spokes of black bone turned with grating audible force. The network of chains pulled buildings together like jaws. Reverberating booms shook the city with bone-rattling resonance.

Cross grit his teeth against the pain in his leg; he had no choice but to place weight on it, since the vampire who held him did so at an awkward angle that left him unbalanced. He chanced glances at the others, but their eyes were cast down or sealed shut. They might as well have been miles away.

The dank yellow sunlight shrank to a box over their heads, and the darkness swelled as they descended. They sank into an atmosphere that was thick and dark. He saw cold steam and tight spaces between buildings carved from black iron. Dark fluids leaked and trickled down the walls. The air smelled like death.

The platform sputtered and stopped, and it struck the nadir of Krul with a hollow boom. They were half-a-mile beneath the top of the city walls.

They wanted us to see how deep we are, Cross realized. They’re making a point: escape is not an option.

Cross looked at the others. They reminded him of scared animals. No one spoke. Each vampire escort held its prisoner with just one cold claw around an arm.

Something inside of him went sour and sick. Every breath was ragged, and something painful churned in the depths of his stomach. He shook all over, partly from fatigue and hunger, but partly because he was so terrified he could barely hold himself together.

We’re going to die here. If we’re lucky. His thoughts went back to Lucan, and the Dra’aalthakmar. And if Lucan didn’t destroy that thing, we won’t be the only ones who’ll suffer. If only they’d been able to send some sort of warning to the Southern Claw.

The platform rested at the end of a long street that ran between caged walls. Dark steam flowed through the air. Cross heard something on the other sides of the walls, but it was difficult to tell what. The air was cold, and dripped shadow.