Chapter 86 – Fixation

  Cole shot awake, reaching for his sidearm before his eyes fixed on the members of his team. Nona slumped next to him, while Roxy and Beth leaned against each other on the opposite wall. Howie curled up in the corner, and Nutmeg was splayed across Besson’s lap, who had his head tilted back and snored softly. Something had startled him awake, and he couldn’t put his finger on what. But there was no immediate danger.

  Cole relaxed for an instant before he realized something was wrong. He did a quick headcount. Roxy, Howie, Besson, Nutmeg, Nona, Beth, Artian. They were all asleep.

  Who was on watch?

  He whistled, high and sharp, pushing himself to his feet and checking his equipment. The others started to stir, looking around in confusion. Like Cole, they probably didn’t even remember nodding off.

  “Get up,” he said. He dropped his magazine and took a look to make sure it was loaded before replacing it and checking the chamber on his rifle. A quick look at his pack told him that it, likewise, hadn’t been touched. The door was still barred from the inside, so—

  “Cole,” said Roxy, looking down at an angle through the window. Her face was ashen, despite the heat of the floor. “What the fuck is that?”

  Cole sidled over to the side of the window and peered down, careful not to silhouette himself in the frame. The streets of the city were packed with the stone statues—hundreds of them, placed in the street and all oriented to face their bolt-hole. Statues of all shapes and sizes. Monsters, humans, and animals. One pack of humans in particular caught his eye.

  “Howie, get over here.”

  His mage bombard came across the room, taking position on the opposite side of the window. Cole nodded down.

  “Eleven o’clock, forty meters. Those look like the guys that were following us?”

  “Nope,” said Howie, not even looking down and just maintaining eye contact with Cole. His eyes were wide, and his hands shook. “Cole, we got to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Agreed, be ready to move in five mikes,” he said. And not just because some otherworld entity had somehow knocked them all out and dragged hundreds of tons of stone around in the—he checked his watch—three hours they’d all been asleep, but because it didn’t take a genius to look at a field of stone statues and realize they were all pointed inward at something. All those statues made it pretty damn clear that something was in the center of them, and they didn’t have a proper perimeter. They might as well have painted the building fire engine red and put a flashing beacon on the roof.

  “Nona,” said Cole. “We need eyes out there,”

  She swallowed and nodded. She vanished from sight, but reappeared only a few seconds later, eyes wide and breathing hard. “There’s something else out there in Soul Schism,” she said. “Something huge. And it’s dangerous.”

  “Shit,” said Cole. “Which way?”

  “Every way. We’re already inside it. It’s bubbling up from the ruins like a miasma.”

  Besson swung his pack around. “Then we get out of it.”

  “Who says it’s going to let us leave?” asked Howie.

  Beth turned her nose up. “Who says we’re going to let it leave?” she asked.

  “Beth,” said Roxy, reaching out a hand. But Beth was already moving. The teenager grabbed her enormous sword, put her foot on the windowsill, and launched herself out so hard that the stone cracked under her foot.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Beth!” said Roxy. “God damn it. Cole!”

  Dashing to the window, Cole grabbed Roxy and dropped his fall speed. She followed him out, hanging off him like a tandem skydiver. Whatever the bubbling tar Nona had seen in her soul-swapped mode, it wasn’t manifesting physically. But the feeling of being watched had intensified tenfold, and some extra sensory information was like nails on a chalkboard to his enhanced Acuity.

  On the street, Beth turned around, weaving in the paths left between the statues, looking for a straightforward enemy to fight. But Cole was beginning to suspect this wasn’t the sort of fight guns would win. He called out. “Hey, Beth! Don’t run off!”

  He lost sight of the girl momentarily and then heard her scream. Roxy charged ahead, and Cole was close behind, gun at the ready. When they found Beth, she’d managed to get caught on one of the statues.

  No…

  One of the statues, an enormous goat-headed humanoid held her in its grip, one hand locked around her wrist, and the other gripping a handful of her clothing. And its mouth was open wide as it inched, almost imperceptibly slowly, closer to Beth’s throat.

  The realization that the statue itself was moving was all the warning he had when a statue Roxy brushed past began to close its grip. He yanked her to the side, out of its reach as the fingers of a robe-wearing mage, rendered in stone, closed its fingers.

  “Stay away from the statues!” Cole shouted into the radio.

  “Easier said than done,” called Howie.

  Roxy made it to Beth as the teeth were almost brushing Beth’s throat, sword arm pulled straight and bruising under the relentless grip of stone fingers. Gritting her teeth, Roxy reeled back with her shield, and then slammed the rim on the wrist of the goat-man statue, cracking through the stone. A thick, black, viscous fluid flowed from the stump, and the hand still holding Beth’s arm cracked and crumbled.

  Her arm free, it gave Beth the leverage she needed to tear herself away, leaving behind a scrap of her cloak. She turned, looked at the fluid bubbling out of the statue, screamed again, and brought her sword around in a wide arc that bisected the statue. The top half dropped away. Black sludge fountained from the cleanly cut stone, hissing as it hit the hot stone ground of the city. Beth ran to Roxy.

  “I got you kid, I got you!” said Roxy, running her hand over Beth’s head. Behind them, a statue of a winged ape loomed, clawed hands reaching toward the pair.

  “Roxy, your nine!”

  Roxy turned, shoving Beth behind her and lifting her shield and shotgun on its sling. She blasted the statue in the chest, carving out a hollow in the rock, through which boiling pitch bubbled. The next shot took its head off, and by then she had backed out of its reach. The pressure against Cole’s senses increased, and he put a hand to his head as a wave of pain washed over him.

  “This whole place is a fucking trap!” Cole snarled. Now he could hear them, the slow, low grinding of rock against rock. The thing, or entity, or whatever it was haunting this city was like a flytrap fixated on Beth, and the statues were its teeth. And they’d walked her right into the middle. Other monsters knew to avoid it.

  But they’d been so tired…

  You’re still so tired…

  Lay down…

  Cole shook his head. That thought hadn’t come from him. Glancing behind him, he saw Besson slow, and Nutmeg stop entirely. Howie stumbled for a moment next to him, looking confused, as though he’d just forgotten what he was doing.

  Sleep.

  He focused on the low grinding—the noise that had undoubtedly triggered some primal fear and awakened him from the unnatural sleep.

  “SNAP OUT OF IT!” he shouted into his radio, earning him winces from the team. “Some sort of psychic Venus Fly-trap monster or something is trying to make us stop moving so these slow-ass statues can get close. Don’t let it.”

  Beth, who had been standing between Cole and Roxy, close enough to hear his radio call, growled and hefted her sword. “Well if the stone statues are trying to kill us, then we just kill them first,” said Beth. She swung, cleaving another two statues into multiple parts. Black pitch bubbled from both, flowing out and dripping onto the obsidian floor.

  For once, Cole found himself in agreement with Beth. He pointed down the street. “Towards that spire, go, go!” He raised his rifle and emptied half of his magazine on statues in their path, accretion affix whipping his rounds with the force of miniature meteors that ground down three more statues in their path.

  This is a waste of ammo, he thought, vaulting the black sludge seeping out of the remains.

  This is necessary to survive.

  Cole reloaded and aimed ahead again, trying to ignore a strange buzzing in his ear. On his flank, Besson was spraying the statues slowly closing in on them with his machine gun as Nutmeg snarled, hackles raised. Howie lobbed shells ahead of them from his cannon, clearing the path further afield. Artian had his bow, but his arrows did very little.

  Nona was…

  Don’t worry about Nona. Focus on survival.

  He didn’t have time to—no, fuck that. That wasn’t how he thought. That wasn’t who he was. Nona was part of his team. He shook his head, trying to break free from a fog that seemed to envelop it, like carthorse blinders on his brain. The buzzing in his ear intensified, changed in pitch.

  And became Nona’s voice.

  Discord and also a if you want to read ahead.