Golden Void, page 29
part #3 of Black Blade Series
“Come on! I thought everyone was some flavor of magic here? What, you only have guns?” I can hear Mom scoff and snort, “You must’ve been raised badly.”
Another pop, and this time the perfect circle of empty space forces a whole row of columns over and the wave of toppling rubble rolls through the space towards me.
She’s not that far away so I throw my fire, and watch it squeal through the air, shedding sparks in every direction.
Sorta feels like lobbing a bottle rocket. It’s not big, or scary. The dull red barely glows in the darkness, but Mom yells out as a little tongue of flame catches her sleeves. As swiftly as it catches, she runs her hand over it, and the flame winks out with a sucking sound.
“Meg! Is that you?” She yells into the dark.
It’s her big flashlight. She probably can’t see me.
I still don’t know what I’m doing, but instinct forces me behind the base of a broken pillar.
Another bang, and this time Mom cries out. I almost want to see if she’s…
The moment passes. Silence, apart from my breath.
More and more bangs, more gunshots.
I watch the flashing shadows. Kendrick’s silhouette’s pulling gun after gun from her bag and then throwing them away rather than load again. Mom’s staggering back, her hand raised in front of a storm of bullets.
I poke my head out, no longer looking down at my hands as they come together again for the Biting Sparks. Could we actually win?
Mom’s staggering back, the constant rhythm of bullets shakes the air, crashing off all the pillars and into my ears.
I throw. It’s not that far, and my aim’s pretty good. The handful of embers catches, spitting as it grows across her back and spreads into her hair. Mom’s hands reach up to her head and Kendrick keeps blasting, following Mom as she dives between the pillars.
I have to get closer.
While I run from shadow to shadow, I notice a trickle of water following me, flowing through the cracks.
“Before I blow your head off,” says Kendrick’s shadow as I run, jump, and shove as much debris out of the path as I can, “who were you talking to? Don’t feel like you have to answer, it won’t make any difference to what comes next.”
“You’re disgusting,” Mom spits. I’m close enough to see both of them now, Kendrick standing over her in a bed of rubble, “Why do all this? Why brainwash and kidnap an innocent child?”
“Last chance,” Kendrick says with a grin as she flips a long, black gun upwards in one hand, jerking down, then up again. The mechanism growls with a deep, ominous, mechanical chime. Something like sparks start to spit from the barrel.
I close my eyes. Flinching at something that hasn’t come yet.
The shot never comes.
Instead, I hear the awful sucking sound. The gun flies away from Kendrick and whirls away into Mom’s hand for a moment before the hole shrinks down to nothing.
She’s getting up, stepping-in closer as Kendrick reaches into her bag for something else.
My legs carry me there before I realize why. She’s too close, and if Mom touches her-
A wave of water and mud rises from the ground, smashing Mom and her outstretched hand to the ground.
“Kendrick!” I shout, rushing over to her, “are you okay?”
I can’t see anything wrong with her, but it could be the darkness. After a moment, she wipes her brow and pulls another gun from her bag.
“And why am I not surprised to see you?” she says. “And you’re worried about me?”
“What happened? Did she get you?” I ask, looking over my shoulder to see a frothing cauldron of water carry most of the broken stone around us away in a crashing wave.
“Not even close,” she says, “but that gun was a collector’s item, one of a #&$*ing kind!” She honks, “come on!”
Kendrick leaps to her feet and into a run.
“Wait!” I shout at her, hoping she’ll stop, take a breath, something.
“No time,” she shouts back, sprinting back down the steps. In the middle of those waves a whirlpool’s forming, churning with foam as it draws the water in, faster and faster, more and more spray flying into the air until I can taste it on my tongue.
Kendrick drops to one knee, the rifle set across her forearm and aimed at the dark shape in the center of the waves. Blood runs down the back of her sweater and turns it black.
She aims, but her hand is shaking. My eyes close at the sound and light of gunfire. By the time they’re open, Kendrick’s fallen to the ground with a perfect round hole in her shoulder. She’s gushing blood across her back and down the steps.
All I can do is catch her as she falls, and watch the water drain away, the last lash of white foam ejecting Marion’s body onto the stone.
His arm moves to drag himself upright, but just then he coughs a stream of blood into the dirt and broken stones he dragged with him.
Mom steps out of the darkness and kicks his head to the ground.
My hands are full, trying to hold Kendrick up, protecting her head from the stone as her blood bubbles up over me.
Mom sees me and steps over Marion, striding up the steps towards me.
And yeah, I feel it…
The same I did in the tower.
The second I question whether I’ve changed, my head bows, my brain fighting against me, already imagining what living with Mom again would be like, thinking of all the ways it could be okay, settling, compromising, writing the lines I could use to keep her happy, even convince her I didn’t want to leave.
My eyes are all blurry. Not from tears. Maybe they’re just trying to save me from having to look down at Kendrick’s face, all the color’s draining out into the darkness.
My hands come together, clapping and scraping. The heat wells up from inside, just enough to still feel alive.
I spit lukewarm embers barely hot enough to burn, but I lay them across the hole in Kendrick’s shoulder, trying not to smell the burning flesh and hoping the pain might wake her up.
It could be the smell, or the pulse of heat that lingers in my fingers, or even the sound of Mom’s footsteps coming closer and closer, but my eyes focus again, adapted to the darkness.
The gun is still there in Kendrick’s hands.
It’s even cocked, loaded, whatever you do to guns.
All I have to do is pull the trigger.
One of my hands moves down to it, the other is still burning Kendrick’s wound closed. My hand can’t close around it. All those compromises keep coming back, I keep hoping Mom’ll just be nice.
Don’t make it worse. Don’t shoot another person, especially when-
Except I already shot someone. It didn’t work. Would I be dumb to do it again?
Is this really just as simple as Super Megan and Wimpy Megan?
One wants to keep going, keep Kendrick safe, the other one just wants to keep itself safe.
“You think you’re getting away with this?” Mom’s voice shakes, there’s blood running down her shirt, “I know now, this isn’t kidnapping, is it? You conspired against me!” She says, stretching into the darkness, “how long has it been like this? You exchanged emails with them? Trying to get adopted by someone who’d make things easier for you? Living well isn’t easy, Meg!”
I move. I don’t even know why, maybe just to run, but the point of her boot hits my chin, and slams the back of my head down onto the edge of the stone stairs.
Not a squeak, not this time. I grit my teeth and feel the blood run between them.
Something about the impact, or maybe her voice, forces my hands to clench into fists.
Which means the gun’s still in my hand.
I level it out, aim it at her.
I know I should give her time to suck it in with her hand, but…
Pretending to be Super Megan. Would that help? I don’t even think Super Megan would do this.
The thing is, my finger pulls back the trigger. I see Mom’s face in the flash of light, hear the thunder in my ears, hear the trigger clicking over and over again.
Water sweeps her away from behind. Another sucking noise.
I lay my head against the harsh edge of stone, letting the pain wash over me, listening to the sound of rushing water.
Trying to lift my head as I watch Marion change back and forth, like a frozen balloon breaking over and over again, and smashing Mom to the ground.
But then, with another pop, maybe a flash of light, a silhouette. Not darkness. Light, like the opposite of a camera flash, the outline of a person, still, there, gone.
She’s just gone.
And it’s almost like I fall asleep.
“Get up,” Marion pulls me by the arm, his face torn and his breath coming in heaving sighs, “we need light.”
My eyes are spinning, looking for Mom.
Clap, clap, scrape, scrape. Spit.
I forgot the hands. The embers just sprinkle onto the ground.
Barely enough to see with.
“Can you…” Marion gasps, “…stand?”
“Don’t know.” Speaking hurts. There’s blood in the palm of the hand I use to push myself up onto my knees. “Kendrick?”
I start to scan the dark for her, tilting my eyes way from the wimpy pile of embers I barfed onto the ground.
“Alive,” Marion says. I can make him out now, just barely, scattered across the side of half a stone wall. His cloak’s in tatters. There’s blood under one of his hands. “You did well…” he coughs, sputters, “to remember to close her wounds. The blood loss could have been fatal.”
“She didn’t stop.” It’s the only thing I can think to say, “even when Mom’s hand did…whatever it does. She didn’t even notice.”
“A benefit of her legendary stubbornness,” he grunts, almost snarls with pain as he rises to his feet, “we need to keep moving. She left suddenly, she may return just as quickly.”
“Yeah, she…disappeared?” I ask him, “What happened, did you…”
My eyes fix on Kendrick, lying against the base of the column.
“It had nothing to do with me,” he grunts again, forcing himself into a stable walk, planting one foot in front of the other, “I’ll do my best to carry her.”
“Okay,” I try to grip her, maybe put her on my back, but all I can do is pull her along.
There’s going to be a big burn on her neck.
Is this the second time I saved her life?
Don’t know, I probably shouldn’t keep track of that sort of thing.
I sort of grab her by the arm, and Marion’s giant hand comes down over mine, lifting her up and onto his back. It sort of looks like he must’ve done this before.
“There should be a door, not far from here,” he says, wincing and adjusting Kendrick on his back. “Something only Excalibur can open. It’s the reason we came this way.”
I pick a little of the embers I spread across the floor and rub them between my palms. The sparks are enough to see by, even if it’s a guilty reminder of the larger flames I could’ve made.
I can feel it coming back. The simple denial, but this time there’s no cliff.
She’s not gone. She didn’t stop.
“What does it look like?” I ask over my shoulder, trying to follow what’s left of the street after the battle.
She just went. He’s right, she could come back any second.
My legs are half sore and skinned, half numb, but I pick up my pace, sprinting out into the dark.
The bloated shadows rush by, half of them crumbling away into nothing as I search them, the handful of fading embers the only guide I have.
Marion’s plodding along behind me, scraping and staggering with Kendrick on his back.
What if she did some right back?
The idea, and the thought that it’d be just like last time, nothing changed, cuts into my stomach and up my throat, almost chokes me as I run, but I force the fear down into my legs.
That’s the good thing about legs, their answer to almost anything is just “run”.
Besides, how different was it?
I shot at her. That has to count for something, even if I knew it probably wouldn’t stop her.
“Here!” Marion’s hoarse voice calls out in the darkness, almost forcing me to skid as I turn and run back the way I came, feeling the cold, rough sensation of my lungs trying their best to keep me on my feet, hoping that helps the adrenaline to bleed out into my system.
He’s standing at the entrance to…something.
It’s hard to tell in the dark, but this place looks better kept than the rest of these ruins. A mausoleum, maybe? I only ever saw one once, when Mom and I went on vacation and we looked at a lot of fancy graveyards because all the places she wanted to go were closed for the season.
It’s just a lot of steps down, even further than the street.
“So…what do I do?” my question bounces around the rock as Marion lowers Kendrick to the ground again.
“If Castor’s writings were accurate,” he explains, laying her down, checking her pulse and breathing, “there should be a central door at the end of these stairs. You needn’t do anything. The chosen wielder will pass.”
“Okay,” I nod, hesitate a little at the sight of Kendrick’s face, eyes closed, bruises and cuts spreading across her face.
The embers are still in my hands, casting everything into shades of gray and blue.
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out, but I’m holding them mostly with my hand closed, the light escaping through the cracks between my fingers. Like a lantern.
Probably not great for regular darkness, but down here it’s alright, so long as I don’t look right at them.
I’m not in danger of tripping, though.
The stairs I step down, one at a time, are even. No pieces of rubble or cracks to trip me up.
If there was anything down here to worry about, he’d’ve said, right?
Maybe he only has what Castor told him. He might not know.
I mean, I have the best sword in the universe, right? I just can’t swing it. Even so, it must be pretty sharp. I can’t help but flinch a little remembering what Lance did with it.
Without even noticing, my foot comes up short as I reach the bottom.
It looks like a long corridor ahead, dotted with plinths, the sort of thing you’d see in a museum, only all of them are gone now, a few broken bits of rusty green metal littering the floor.
Guess I’ll keep going.
Did Marion ever say who built these?
Caveman wizards? I guess that’s always how I thought of them, big hats, staffs and fur pelts, saying “ug” to each other and drawing rabbits on cave walls, but…
Something about this place is making them seem more real. There are designs on the wall, lines of stone carving, even writing, I think. I have to resist the urge to get closer, knowing I’d never be able to read it.
I wonder how they’d feel, knowing we were treading their halls all these years later? Probably for the same reasons they built it, too, right? I almost want to hold Excalibur up, let all the ghosts know they did a good job.
I flick the blade around in my hand, spinning it so the widest part catches the light. It hurts my wrist, can’t do it for long, but as my gaze leaves it and goes back to the dark, I see the end of the tunnel.
A huge rectangle, black, lined with flecks of gold that meet in the middle. I step closer to look. It’s faded, but I think it could be a bear.
This is probably the door. Marion didn’t say what to do next, but I’m too tired to over think things.
I hold Excalibur up in two hands, as if the door has eyes, so it can see. Nothing.
Not that I know what I’m expecting. Is it just supposed to pop open?
There’s no hole to jam it or anything.
It just doesn’t move, and now I’m paying the price for trying to burn all my feelings out running.
I slump down to the floor, back against the door, looking back into the darkness.
One of the broken pieces of metal looks back at me. The only one with any kind of face or eyes.
A horse head, lying in the dust. Not even tied down with cobwebs, lust sitting there, abandoned.
It’s like I’m counting the minutes. After a while, Marion sweeps down towards me.
He doesn’t say anything, he can guess what the problem is. His hands run over the surface of the door, pushing at random spaces, running his fingers around the symbol in the middle. His fingers even curl into a fist for a moment before he drops his hands back under his cloak.
“Where’s Kendrick?” I ask, echoing back up the tunnel.
“She insisted on walking herself,” he says, turning back to watch the stairs.
“Is she…” I’m not sure what I want to say, especially when she might hear me.
“According to her, she’s had worse,” he says, “I’m unconvinced. She’s committed to continuing.”
“What do we do now?” I ask, listening to the sound of Kendrick’s boots slowly picking their way down the stairs towards us.
“What’s the holdup?” Her voice echoes down to us.
“The mechanism has failed,” Marion strains his voice to talk across the darkness, “or Castor mislead us.”
“Aye, maybe.” She’s refusing to limp, she still has her carpet bag over her shoulder. Like nothing happened. “Enchantments don’t fail over time,” she grunts, striding up to the door and running her hand over it, smearing a trail of clear obsidian through the dust, “and I think if Castor had his way, we’d still be one big happy family.” She scowls at the door, looks down at me, and then back up.
“Sorry,” Is all I can think of to say, “I tried everything. There’s no keyhole, or…anything. It’s just a wall.”
“No’ your fault, Meg,” she says, “he said this door was for the chosen wielder, isn’t that right?”
“He did,” Marion nods, “the status should have been conferred on her after Tyson’s death. She held the sword afterwards.”
“What if he’s not dead?” I ask them, both looking back at me. “He fell off the cliff, right? I didn’t see him… you know.”
“@#*&” Kendrick honks, “he was caught once by an invisible savior.”
“We saw evidence of a similar power earlier,” Marion says, still staring, “I think…” he takes a deep breath, rocking forwards on his feet, almost as if he wants to rest his head on the door, “Tyson’s survival is the most likely case.”
