The Wyrms of &alon

Hell, thy name is Elpeck.

The city was in shambles. People stampeded out onto the streets like a rush of lava from the earth. They pounded the pavement—the gravel and the pitched stone— waving the dicolor banner—the Blue and the Green. News flowed like water, and when it reached the people, it burst into steam—clouds of gunfire, secreted bombs, and the breaths of frightened horses.

Pride came before the fall, and in between them came the bloat.

The Second Trentonian Empire had fallen into the same trap as its medieval predecessor, overextending itself for the folly of glory. There was a reason the people called the campaign in Odensk Eustin’s War. If abject defeat and humiliation had been kept at bay, it was only because the pious old man on neighboring Polovia’s throne had been a willing factotum for Holy Emperor Eustin’s delusions of grandeur.

But now, the old king was dead, and his successor had no intention of letting his people die for an inbred stripling’s lust for conquest. The newly crowned Polovian king—King Étro II—had withdrawn his troops from the Empire’s western reaches without so much as a word. Now that the Polovians were no longer doing the work of keeping the enemy at bay, Odensk’s army was free to march up to the door of the Imperial Palace and reap their revenge for Eustin’s folly. The Emperor had been forced to deploy what remained of his standing army to intercept the Odenskaya forces. The soldiers left under the cover of Night, marching out with the moon at their backs, hoping the people of Elpeck would fail to notice.

But things had not gone according to plan. A vacuum had been opened in Elpeck’s streets, in the foggy hours of the gray-skied morning. It sucked the belching smog out from the smokestacks of the great furnaces. Worker and slave marched side by side to man the barricades in the city’s arteries, melting into the onrushing the mob, to join the cause and fight for a better future.

For a republic.

At long last, the capital would answer Hilleman’s call.

For months, the wide-eyed revolutionary had led his motley army of Sunbaskers and the Blueshirts—their secular sympathizers—in a grand march from one end of the country to another. Hilleman and his Blueshirts flew the Dicolor: blue for factory slaves’s denim trousers; green in mourning for all those with whom the Church had cut off from communion. They marched for Elpeck; for the Melted Palace, and the Imperial throne, demanding change. Church and state could no longer be bedfellows. Autocracy’s grasp would, at last, be broken.

The people of Elpeck welcomed them with wild cheers. They overwhelmed the guards and flung open the ancient gates. Bugle calls and snare drums filled the streets.

As did the opposition.

It came from the only pieces of authority the Empire still had within the city: the local police, the Imperial Guard, and the Templars of the 231st Lassedite, Mordwell Verune. But it took little more than a handful of hastily erected barricades to keep the Crown’s best at bay. Horses, rifles, and bayonets wouldn’t suffice. Only bombs and cannons could clear the way, but those would take time to deploy. And time was really all that mattered. In the chaos, the Melted Palace—the seat of the Lassedicy itself—was left almost completely unguarded. And by the time anyone realized what had transpired, it would already be too late.

“Injure no one but those who deserve it,” Legen said.

His fellow revolutionaries nodded.

The Great Forum was empty as Legen Nadkila led his band of brothers to storm the Melted Palace. They had only their blue denim clothes, the rifle in their hands, and the dreams in their hearts. But that was enough. In the Munee days, the Lassedite’s personal guard secured the leader of the one true faith against wanton assassination. But now, the privileges of the templar guard were little more than prestigious sinecures handed out to favored imperial ministers or church Luminers. Against men with a cause worth fighting for, they offered not even token resistance.

With pleasure, Legen and his comrades stripped them of honors they didn’t deserve: the glistening plate, the ancient blades. They locked them in the undercroft.

“Someone remember to let them out after this is all over,” Legen said, only to pause. “Wait. What about the acolytes?” he asked.

One of his comrades nodded. “That’s right, you’re Sunbasked. You wouldn’t know.” He grinned. “They’ll be busy with morning Convocation. I doubt they even know we are here. And even if they did, what would they do, use incense and pray?”

“Are there any other loose ends?” Legen asked.

“None except the big one,” replied another.

“Then I’ll be off to the Inner Sanctum,” Legen said. “I’ll clear the way for Father Agan.” He tightened his sweaty grip on his rifle. He bowed his head to his friends. “Go in peace.”

Legen and his Blueshirt comrades went their separate ways. As per the plan, they split up into smaller groups and went off to canvas the Melted Palace to secure their conquest. Legen, however, had a special duty to perform.

Legen ran down the center of the grand building, through the hallway and the atrium, until he came face to face with the Sun Door itself. Wrought from sacred oak a millennium ago, it bore the history of the Church and the faith carved into its rich, dark wood. Beyond the Sun Door lay the Inner Sanctum, a holy place sanctified by the Lass herself, and—once upon a time—by the holy Sword. The Inner Sanctum was the heart of the world. No other space was as near to the divine. In it, and in it alone, could a new Lassedite be proclaimed, and none but Lassedite could enter. For a faithful Angelical—for any who placed their faith in the Resurrected Church—to enter that holy space was an act of sacrilege and desecration, an unforgivable wrong that guaranteed the perpetrator a space in Hell.

But Legen Nadkila wasn’t an Angelical. He was Sunbasked, like his parents, and their parents before him. The true church, he knew, was unbound by space and time, or the small thoughts of grand men.

He had nothing to fear.

Setting his rifle against the wall, Legen grabbing the heavy iron rings hinged onto the Sun Door, one in each hand. He heaved and groaned, pulling at a weight meant for two men. The creak of the wood as it turned on its hinges quickened Legen’s already racing heart. He bent over and grabbed his rifle before stepping inside.

A tingle licked its way down Legen’s spine as he stepped into the Inner Sanctum. There weren’t words for the cocktail of feelings that rushed through his veins. The Sanctum wasn’t at all what Legen had expected it to be. Ever since childhood, the Melted Palace had been the grandest, most awe-inspiring structure Legen had ever known. Only the sky could rival it. And yet…

The Sanctum was old. Older than the trees. Maybe even as old as stone itself. The floor was naked earth: gravel, dirt, pebbles, and sand. The walls were brick, but a kind of brick Legen had never seen before. They rose up in many little arches to form the ceiling. A shaft of daylight poured through the Eye in the ceiling, reflected down into the room by a mirror of polished bronze. A boulder stood at the heart of the room.

The Rock of the Lass, once the resting place of the Sword.

Legen stepped up to it, and looked down.

A deep hole had been bored into the stone, cylindrical in shape, and wide enough for a weapon to fit inside. But it was the inner surface of the hole that made Legen stare. The hole was lined with a paper thin layer of purest quartz that bled into the surrounding rock, as if it had been melted into being. The quartz extended in intricate, twining tubes, as if vine stalks had eaten their way through the transfigured rock. The construction was too fine, too delicate to be of human make. It went down into the depths of the stone, farther than any tool or hand could reach.

Just looking at it sent goosebumps prickling down Legen’s arms.

“I see you’ve finally shown your true colors, Legen.”

A voice came from behind, though it seemed to surround Legen as it echoed off the ancient walls.

Legen turned and then scowled. He lifted his rifle.

“Hello,” Legen said, “little brother…”

Legen Nadkila steadied his arms to keep his rifle’s sight aimed squarely at Luminer Orrin Nadkila. He tried not to let Orrin see the fear in his arms.

“Before you get any closer to me, take off that assassin's uniform,” Orrin said.

The Luminer stood just outside of the Inner Sanctum, flanked on either side by the Sun Door, like wings.

“Why do you hate the Angel so?” Orrin asked. “How could you defile this the holiest of all places? Why do you nurture your wrath? No good will ever come of it.”

Legen’s head quivered as he stopped himself from looking back at the Rock of the Lass behind him. He redoubled his efforts, tightening his grip on his rifle and stepping forward to confront the brother that was no longer his brother.

“We’re here to make it pure again,” Legen said. “Verune is Night-Touched. He is greedy, corrupt, and mad with power.” His posture stiffened. “Orrin… he sanctioned massacres of innocent people—our people, Orrin!” Legen’s emotions started to spiral out of his control. Tears welled beneath his eyes. “I’m going to help Goodman Agan set things right.”

“Oh are you?”

Wow…

Rayph was hitting all the right notes tonight.

Good God, was I proud of him. All of them—the whole third-grade grade class—they were doing superbly.

I just wished I’d gotten there sooner.

The production value was a sight to behold. This was professional work, no doubt about it. One of the kids up on that stage had parents with connections to the entertainment industry. That was the only logical explanation for why my son’s public elementary school had a state-of-the art holographic projection system installed in the ceiling of its auditorium. The projectors extruded from the ceiling like an oil rig at sea, only upside-down. Threads of light spread out from its many wide lenses and coalesced into the seemingly solid scenery that we saw on the stage: the buildings, walls, the vaulted arches, the Rock of the Lass. During the scenes in the city streets, you could see plumes rising up from fires and mortar-blasts playing out in the distance of the holographic recreation of Elpeck’s streets as would have looked over two-hundred years in the past.

Let me put it this way: the show was so good, it almost took my mind off the fact that I was now a walking—well, currently, a sitting—corpse. That, and the guilt I felt at sitting in seclusion at the back of the auditorium.

From where she and Pel sat, several rows of seats up ahead, Jules turned around and looked back at me, glaring in angrily.

Because there was no way in heck that I was going to sit next to my family and risk infecting them, I’d waited as long as physically possible before leaving the car—using up the remainder of the hand sanitizer in the glove compartment in the process as I wiped everything down—so as to ensure that, by the time I entered the auditorium, there wouldn’t be enough room for us to sit together as a family.

“We have enough Prelates to form a quorum,” Legen said. “Father Agan will be elected Lassedite.”

Unfortunately, it was hard to watch—literally. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my eyes focused on the stage for very long. The holographic projections jammed their brightness into the crevices between my eyes and my eye-sockets. It felt like someone was trying to lobotomize me. I blinked and rubbed at my temples, but it wasn’t enough to stop the throbbing ache at the back of my skull.

Shuddering, I looked down at my lap and narrowed my eyes. Everything darkened. The darkness was a blessèd relief. I sighed as the pain sloughed off me. But, just like before, it would start up again after a minute or two of watching the play.

Feeling horribly self-conscious in addition to feeling horrible, and not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention, I tried to act normal. I made a show of scrutinizing the pamphlet for tonight’s program. The program was like a console screen, only in the form of a sheet of plastic with a fold down the middle. Brand once told me the technical term for it was a “flexible polymerized processor”. They’d only come out about ten years prior, and my forty-two years of age really showed in the way I ogled at it like I was holding a wizard’s grimoire in my hands.

Bringing the pamphlet close to my face, I flicked my finger across its glossy surface. In addition to the night’s program, I had access to information about the students, their teachers, and all the other highlights the school wanted to shove in front of parents’ faces.

Unfortunately, staring at the glowing codex in my hands aggravated my eyes even more quickly than the holograms on the stage.

Letting the pamphlet drop into my lap, I closed my eyes and rubbed my aching head.

Meanwhile, the two brothers’ dramatic encounter continued to play out on stage.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Legen. I miss you. I miss our mother.”

I opened my eyes. I saw Rayph’s Orrin shake his head as he continued to perfectly deliver line after line.

“Why do we have to be divided?” Orrin asked.

But today was not the day the Brothers Nadkila would resolve their differences.

Enter Goodman Agan. The holographic effects projected a full quorum of pro-Sunbasker Prelates entering alongside Agan, ready to begin the Election ceremony. Meanwhile, Rayph’s Orrin screamed invective as a handful of other Blueshirts arrived and helped his brother drag Orrin off-stage, out of the Melted Palace.

They had a soon-to-be former Lassedite to capture. Not that they would ever find him. The halls of the Imperial Palace would greet them with emptiness. Only blood and furniture remained.

The audience broke out in applause as the scene ended and transitioned to Imperial Palace’s horrors. I tried joining in the applause, but the sensation of my dead palms smacking against one another shot electric jolts up my arms.

The rubbery sacks inside my chest shriveled and swelled as my dead, doomed body kept drawing breath. Over and over again. In and out in and out. I wanted it to stop. I wanted the rotted things ripped out of me.

With my son off the stage and the fourth act nearly through, it seemed safe to turn away and survey the crowd—a simple, plausible excuse to give me aching eyes a chance to rest. Interestingly, I wasn’t the only person people-watching. Others did exactly the same. It was darn long play, close to three hours, so it was no wonder some people were getting antsy.

But, the more I looked—and, most of all, the more I listened—the more I realized that something wasn’t quite right. Weird pops echoed through the auditorium, and it took me a moment to match them to people’s faces and realize that the sounds were coughs. On closer inspection, some of the faces drooping at the far end of the crowd looked almost as miserable as I felt. Some folks were already up and out of the seats, trundling toward the doors in back, ready to abandon ship.

A well-dressed couple opened the door and stepped out into the lobby. Light streamed in, making me wince, and only got worse when the door took its sweet time to slowly swing shut. Just as I was turning to look away, a latecomer slipped into the room, carrying a briefcase in hand. Ordinarily, I would have thought nothing of it, but my mind had been broiling in a steady freak-out for two and a half hours, and I was on edge.

The man with the briefcase was different from everyone else in the room. The iron law of petty competition guaranteed that every parent, family member, and teacher in the audience were dressed in their finest, so as to broadcast their socioeconomic superiority to all that saw them.

The man with the briefcase, however, didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. He was dressed like he was about to lounge around his apartment, not attend a bourgeois fête. He stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I almost couldn’t help staring at him. I was transfixed by him, and I wasn’t quite sure why. It was a gut feeling, and it grew stronger with each passing minute, as if some secret part of me knew better. Through the dim light, I could make out a goatee and sideburns, a head like a half-bald ball, and work clothes blotted in dark, concerning stains. He crossed the room by walking along the aisle behind the rearmost row of seats. He seemed to be heading toward the doors that let out into the stairwell that connected the auditorium to the control room and roof space up above.

A pit grew in my stomach.

But why? Why would I feel this way? How do I—

—I could almost hear my spine going boing as I sprung upright in my seat, with my dead heart racing in my zombie chest. The motion drew my wife and daughter’s stares, but, at the moment, that couldn’t have mattered less.

I finally recognized the man with the briefcase. I had seen him before. I’d seen that face on a stretcher days before, flanked by policemen on either side.

Aicken Wognivitch. The Dressfeldt Shooter.