…and roared the manticore

Book I, Legacy of the Dead

Chapter 1: The Pit

Stakes gleamed crimson where they pierced her mother’s flesh. In a pit too deep, with wounds too severe, her mother went on dying while Corliss watched.

“Can you get out, mama?”

A foolish question, she knew, but imperative. Her mother lay at the bottom of a jagged hole in the earth, until recently covered by a veil of branches and leaves.

“No.”

Her mother stroked wooden shards in her face and chest. They pinned vital points. The trap had not been set for her, but she had succumbed to it just the same. Corliss Malfara watched from above, unable to help.

“Go on, Corliss. Don’t watch me die. Cover your eyes, girl.”

“Mama,” she cried, no other words left to her.

Looking down, Corliss met her mother’s gaze. So much said in that final glimpse as tears filled her eyes. If only Corliss might climb in and cradle her, to die with her, rather than carry on alone. But she remained above, as her mother wished, and Corliss knew her place to be.

“I love you. Be strong, Corly. Have a heart better than this world deserves. Don’t let it drown you, dear.”

I’m drowning now, she wanted to say, but her words dwindled under the weight of blood.

“Never, mama.” Not your Corly.

She waited a moment for further response. She looked for faces in the woods around her, but darkness encroached to the grave. When no response came, Corliss looked down one last time. To a face gone white from exsanguination. Save for the blood painted on her lips, and dripping down her chin, Corliss had never seen her mother’s face so pale. The mask of death went stiff, flesh pale and rigid. A mask unmoving, lips never more to smile.

In the fading light, only the mask remained. A white mask with red lips. Then, swallowed by the dark.

Corliss cowered from the pit, and held herself. And she wept as she succumbed to the weight of what she had witnessed. Paralyzed and hopeless, she wondered who would find her first: the monsters, or something worse?

. . . . .

Images from that night haunted Corliss all her young life. None more so than her mother’s face. That, she could never forget. She dreamed of her mother’s death again, the next night her life changed irrevocably.

In a small village in the wasteland of a broken world, many years after her mother died, Corliss awoke from the nightmare she could never escape. She woke next to her lover, and saw for a moment the white mask etched on his face. But it faded, and she shivered. The nightmare always brought those memories freshly to her mind.

On the morning following her mother’s death, people from a nearby village had discovered Corliss beside the dead-fall. Honest, kind people—the same people who had placed the trap that killed her mother—they had taken her in and cared for her. She wanted to blame them, to hate them, but they had only been defending themselves. She was lucky they had found her, in fact, for the wasteland held dangers of a far crueler nature.

Citizens of the wasteland contended with other survivors who had turned to theft and murder, but also monsters who embarked from walled cities to hunt for blood. Such was the reality of life in the world after the collapse. There was no peace without fear, and no survival without sacrifice. Corliss’s survival had come at a terrible price.

Corliss had heard tales that the world hadn’t always been their domain—that people had once lived without fear of the creatures from the cities. She heard those creatures fell from the stars long ago. Why they had come here, nobody knew. But it was their world now.

Corliss took comfort in the fact that she was no longer alone. She took Garrick’s hand, as he lay asleep beside her, and gently squeezed. She had not only survived, but found love. That she had been graced with love, in this world so dark and cruel, continued to astound Corliss. The prospect seemed an impossibility. Yet there lay the man of her affection.

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. She closed her eyes and welcomed the coming rain, hoping it would held her sleep. But instead of rain, the alarm bells filled the night with their clamor. And when people began to scream, she knew her slumber had ended.

She jerked upright and held her breath a moment, before shaking Garrick awake.

“Corliss, hey, what is it?”

“The bells. They’re ringing.”

Garrick listened, then nodded, before flinging the covers off them.

“We’d better get dressed,” he said. Then, “Do you think they’ve come.”

Corliss stared into the dark. Fear struck deep in her heart. “Yes.”

Just then, Garrick’s father, Jeffrey, burst through the door of their bedroom.

“Garrick, Corliss, time to go. There’s a war party approaching the town,” Jeffrey said.

“How many, dad? And what species?”

“Starfallen. Enough to end this village. Now, take only what you need, and go! Your grandfather is waiting downstairs to lead you to safety.”

As Jeffrey darted from the room, Corliss heard him shouting for his wife, Lorena, and his other son, Vaughn. She and Garrick flew out of bed and scrambled to get dressed. They gathered their few belongings and stashed them in their backpacks before heading downstairs. Garrick’s grandfather, mother, and brother waited in the main room.

As soon as they entered the room, Declan began addressing them.

“Listen to me, say nothing, and do not leave my side. Trust me. Follow me. We must escape.”

Declan closed his eyes. Touched his forehead. Waved his hand in an arc that encompassed his family. Pinpricks of starlight burst briefly in the room.

“Does that mean we get to—,” said Vaughn, but Declan cut him off.

“Absolutely no spellcasting!”

He opened the door, as screaming outside intensified, and he motioned them forward.

Total chaos swept the town. Armed guards rushed toward perches on palisade walls and the gate, which stood barred to their enemies. Archers fired from the watchtowers and walls. But she could not see them yet. She had thought they were safe in this village, undiscovered for so long. Either somebody had tipped them off, or starfallen really could detect spellcasting remotely—from their walled strongholds.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” said Lorena, glancing around. People ran from house to house, alerting any sleeping citizens. Others escorted children and elderly to the town hall. But Corliss saw no sign of Jeffrey.

Declan looked at her, before leading them around the back of their house. “He’s not coming. But something terrible is. Without his distraction, we’ll never make it.”

“What do you mean distraction?” Vaughn said.

Before rounding the corner and losing sight of the gate, Corliss looked back out into the main square of the village, and saw Jeffrey Isenheart.

“There he is!”

The Isenheart brothers slammed into their mother as she halted and turned. Declan, however, only hissed, “No! On me, it’s the only way. Please.”

Something bright and shining swept the sky above the village. A silver scar etched in the heavens. It traced a line above the houses across the field from them. Then, it opened and spilled a torrent of white fire. The homes burst asunder in a terrific explosion—dust and blood mist spurting into the air.

“Jeffrey must stay so that he can save us from that thing. It has come for us,” said Declan.

Corliss stood petrified. Terror suffused her being utterly. The ultimate horror had come for them? But why? Nothing could survive it.

Garrick grabbed her hand and pulled her after the others. Lorena started to call out for her husband. “Jeffrey!”

Declan grabbed her shoulders. “No, quiet. I’ve done all I can to obscure us, but Jeffrey must tend to the rest.”

“What about the others?” said Garrick.

Declan shook his head. “Too late. And if we are to survive, we must flee immediately.”

Taking one last look toward the village that had been her home since her mother died, Corliss saw the town hall explode. Then, the walls shattered. And the gate. Jeffrey approached the maelstrom encroached there, shards of wood that should have impaled him instead bouncing off in uncanny fashion.

They fled.

Declan took them to the wall behind their house and, casting a focused arcane beam, cut a hole. Garrick and Vaughn pushed through the blockage. Reeling from the barbarous slaughter behind her, Corliss followed them. The town was most certainly lost. As were all who had lived there. And the realization suffused her with sorrow to match her fear. They fled toward the forest, chased by the glare of inhuman light within the village.

Thunder struck the village. Wind and waves of terrible light swept over them. Screaming creatures swarmed past them toward the cataclysm, but somehow took no notice. Never ceasing, Corliss and her family ran into the forest after Declan. And they didn’t stop running until dawn.

. . . . .

Jeffrey saw his family one last time. For their sake, he pretended not to. May we meet again, he thought, not that he had hope for such an occasion—not with what he faced. But he could not allow himself to engage this fiend without hope. So, he dismissed his anguish and steeled himself. Blinding white beams of energy obliterated the watchtowers. Then, the gate exploded inward.

Here and now, he revealed his secret to his fellow citizens. His family shared his secret, and his power, though it represented a danger to them all. He sought the spark deep inside his soul, the ancient access point to arcane power. Seizing the source of magic, he crafted a shield for himself in time to save his own life.

Guards lay in the street beside him. One, spitting blood, looked up at him with horror-stricken eyes. Horror directed not at the encroaching villains, but at Jeffrey himself.

“Curse you, sorcerer! No wonder they’ve come.”

With that the guard gave out, but Jeffrey heard other survivors behind him in the field screaming their own accusations. Trapped in the burning village, an inferno on all sides, with a sorcerer and the light storm before them. They screamed, and pointed at the mage in their midst.

“A damned mage!”

“Apostate!”

“He brings the wrath of heaven upon us!”

All true. And for that, Jeffrey felt sincere remorse.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

According to conclave decree, all magic was outlawed on the penalty of death. Unless you served the starfallen, of course. Jeffrey and his family had been forced to conceal their arcane prowess, though they’d continued to practice spellcasting in secret.

Much to his dismay, it appeared the rumors were true. They’d drawn the starfallen to themselves like carrion to a corpse. Now, at what was sure to be his end, he would hold nothing back.

Cacophonous wailing out in the woods, beyond the blazing specter that walked toward him. Jeffrey conjured a flame wall and sent it barreling toward the figure of unbridled luminescence, but it only carried on into the ranks of starfallen gathering behind it. Though the initial ranks burned and died, the swarm appeared of incomprehensible size. And the figure appeared unharmed. Utterly impervious.

I cannot hurt it? No. But I can hold its attention.

“Here I am, demon. Face me. Only I remain.”

The specter laughed. “I’m no demon, fool. But one of you.”

Light dimming, a man emerged from the glare.

“Men die,” Jeffrey said, readying his next spell.

“And yet we archons blaze eternal.”

Jeffrey’s lightning barrage illuminated the man, wrapped in tight white fabric. The archon held out his arms as if to catch the thunder falling on him, and grinned.

Then, he flashed, and closed the distance to Jeffrey in a blink, grasping him tightly. Pulling him toward that bright smile. And eyes gone white from staring into the depths of secret stars. Jeffrey quivered, but could not avert his gaze from those blasphemous galaxies spiraling in the archon’s eyes.

Ceasing to struggle, Jeffrey saw truths revealed to him as he never could have perceived on his own. A white mask gone red with blood. Crimson effulgence creeping in on sacrifices at the end of time. Darkness welling in the hearts of men. Images of untold destruction and torment. Terrors from the abyss, and a vanguard out of space to drive them back. With their shimmering host of ascendant men and women. But bloodlight reigned, and washed over the vision, and pierced into him.

It staggered him, sent him to his knees, such was the horror he witnessed.

Harnessing his remaining energy, he cast in an attempt to dispel the vision—and its accompanying sensation. But the archon’s corruption prevailed, beginning to erode what remained of his resistance and waking consciousness.

“How could I have ever known?”

Jeffrey needed this man’s forgiveness. They could not remain enemies, not with the shadows lurking beyond the veil. Even now he struggled to recall their forms. Though the mask yet seared his sight.

“The Conclave tried to warn you. You failed to take heed. But it’s not too late, sorcerer. Death or compliance, these are the paths to your salvation. Choose.”

Vision eclipsed by vistas of blinding infinity, Jeffrey groped for the archon’s hands. He uttered his choice.

Hands gripped his skull. And the man known as Jeffrey Isenheart ceased to exist.