Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains (15 page)

“
Drish!”

“What do you want from me!” The noble fired
his challenge into the darkness, and suddenly the noble found
himself being flung about and slammed against the sewer’s curved
wall.

“Bar, easy,” protested Abby.

When Drish regained his wits, he found the
pirate captain clutching his jacket lapels and breathing angrily in
his face. “What are you doing…? Now’s not the time to be keying the
Empire in on our location…not if we want to escape. Just stay
quiet
and keep moving!”

“
I still have your note, Drish!”

Bar let the noble go with a look of
confusion. Abigail appeared immensely puzzled as well by the
broadcasted statement, but the sudden and approaching clatter of
moving machinery, sent everyone into a panic. The whole tunnel
seemed to tremble under some titanic cacophony, and even the muddy
sewer-water rippled with seismic waves.

“
My offer still stands, if only you’ll
surrender yourself now.”
The voice blasted down the tunnel,
shaking the foundations, and setting Drish’s eardrums to quivering.
A loud speaker
, he reasoned, just as Mace’s powerful voice
rose almost to the same decibels.

“
Combat crawler!”

Drish turned towards the warning just as a
heavy clunk hammered the air, and suddenly the whole tunnel flooded
with an intense light, leaving him blind and groping dumbly for
safety.

“Eye shades on! And bring out…” But the
resistance leader’s voice was drowned beneath the roar of an
engine, the squealing of ball bearings, and the hiss of
hydraulics.

“Drish,” Abigail screamed, but her voice
lost out to the thunderous report of heavy machinegun fire. Brick
shattered and crumbled to sand and gravel, and while pelted by this
debris, the noble tried to seek out his companion, but his loafer
slipped in the unseen muck on the floor, and he went crashing down
on his side instead. Around him, he sensed feet scuffling, seeking
escape.

Another round of machinegun fire burst out,
thundering in Drish’s chest, leaving his ears buzzing with a
maddening tone, and yet through it all, those terrible ball
bearings squawked in riotous movement. For a brief moment the light
fell away, and when Drish looked up, he saw a cylindrical nightmare
of iron snaking through the tunnel; a nightmare filled with moving
parts, and swiveling guns, looking almost centipede-like in its
terrible form. This mechanized monster hissed and roared, and when
its spotlight came swinging back around, Drish braced his head
before another barrage of machinegun fire tore up the walls around
him. But then a thud, a whoosh, and finally a deafening explosion
sent a percussive shockwave of heat, flattening all, and silencing
the assault. The mechanized centipede rose again, but with a
torturous groan, before it started to screech and rattle towards a
deathly sigh; slow at first, then slower and slower, until all
revolutions ceased and the menace went still and quiet.

The light faded soon after, and in the
setting twilight a heavy door came falling down from the crawler’s
side, striking the ground with a
bong
. The patter of boots
followed, and when Drish raised his head he spied imperial soldiers
spilling out the side of the machine, like carnivorous insects,
firing their guns, or drawing swords in preparation for
close-quarters combat. From the nooks and crannies of the tunnel,
pirates and insurgents rushed in challenge, dashing madly until
both side came crashing together like a tide on the shores of the
sewer’s mainline. In the ensuing clash, the centipede could be
heard issue one final crackle before a loud pop put its lights out
entirely and plunged them all into darkness.

Steel rang. Sparking flashed. Intermittent
bursts of gunfire lit up the tight confines of the arched tunnel,
revealing snarling figures locked in battle, exposed into existence
as white ghosts one second, and then fading to shadows in the next.
Drish couldn’t keep track of the movement. In the primal darkness,
grunts, cries of shock and pain, and moans of despair was all that
there was.

“Flare,” someone’s voice echoed out, and
instantly the darkness vanished in a flash of red. Squinting, eyes
throbbing under the intense light, Drish saw a soldier standing
nearby, and it looked like his hand was on fire, until Fen shot him
in the gut. The trooper doubled over and crumbled to the ground,
dropping the flare in the process. It went rolling across the
grated stonework past Drish and into the river of human waste, and
whatever mysterious reaction caused the flare to burn was not
extinguished. Instead, it continued to glow an unearthly brackish
green—horrible to behold beneath the surface. The whole chamber
took on a strange underwater quality after that, and everyone came
to look like desperate corpses locked in an immortal struggle.

Drish tried to slink away from the fray, but
found himself tackled to the ground. Someone was on his back,
pinning him helplessly. He tried to fight back, to wiggle free, but
the assailant pressed his face into the muddy stone, just
centimeters from the river of sludge.

“You can forget this note,” growled Graye,
his hot breath in Drish’s ear. A fist came slamming down in front
of his nose in an instant, and clenched between the fingers was his
confession letter. “After
this
, it doesn’t matter! Nothing
can save you.”

Graye put all his weight down on the
helpless aristocrat’s skull, and the earlier pain Drish felt in his
jaw intensified, and then his neck popped. Starbursts of light
danced in his vision, as tingling seized his extremities.

Does he mean to smash my head open,
Drish screamed with terror. He cried out, flailed his arms and legs
uselessly, but the Hierarch had him, and there was nothing the
helpless noble could do to save himself.

And then the weight vanished all together.
Slowly, painfully Drish rolled away, onto his back, and there was
Bar next to him, wrestling with the colonel. They were locked in a
brutal contest of strength, with Drish just trying his best to drag
himself away, but when his neck popped all the strength vanished
from his arms, and he collapsed. The stricken noble moaned in
despair; the left-side of his body numb; while the savage melee
raged on around him. In the tussle between the pirate captain and
the imperial officer, the glint of a knife flashed out. The two
growled and gasped; hands locked around hands, locked around knife,
while beside them, the feeling started to pour back into Drish’s
limbs. He rolled over, and spied the blade slowly sliding down into
the captain’s taunt stomach.

Bar roared with pain.

In a panic, the near-helpless aristocrat
sought out help for his would-be rescuer, but everyone was
occupied, fighting for their own lives, and that’s when Drish spied
it… an imperial pistol lying on the sullied floor only a meter
away. It begged to be used.

Instinct seemed to take hold of the noble’s
hand as it slide across the moist stone, to cup the pistol’s grip,
and haul it up into the air. Drish took aim, and at that moment
Graye raised his Hierarch-white eyes to find the barrel pointed at
his head.

The soldier’s ferocious grimace melted to
sympathy. “Don’t. I can guarantee your—”

Drish pulled the trigger.

There was a flash. A hole opened up
instantly in the center of Graye’s forehead, and behind him, the
wall on the opposite side of the tunnel was painted in gore…and all
of it seeming to happen in a vacuum of absolute silence. Graye
gaped in astonishment as the moment lingered, suspended perfectly
in time…enough time for Drish to contemplate the invasion, the
Oath, and ultimately his father’s murder. And then the officer
tumbled backwards and slipped into the waters of the sewer with a
muted splash, and that was that. Drish had killed a man, and an
imperial officer no less. His mind reeled under the
implications…under the horror of taking another man’s life. He’d
never even so much as struck a man in anger up until that point,
and now—just like that—he was a murderer.

Drish tossed the gun away.

“
Fall back! Regroup”
screeched a
Hierarch soldier, his voice piercing.
“Graye’s down, Graye’s
down, fall back!”
The fighting continued only a few seconds
more before the remaining Iron troopers scattered in abandonment of
the crawler and their dead commander, towards the tunnels behind
them. Portman took the opportunity to rally his own troops in
retreat, but none of that mattered, not to Drish anyway.

I am a murderer now
. He lamented, and
there he probably would have sat for an eternity had someone not
grabbed hold of his jacket and shook him back to awareness.

“Hey, you all right, Drish? Come on, snap out of it.
We got to get out of here before those troops get reinforcements.
Get a hold of yourself!”

A face took shape inches away, and Drish
realized it was Bar. “You’re not dead,” he stammered in
disbelief.

“And neither are you,” replied the pirate,
before a spasm of pain made him flinch. He reached down and pulled
the knife from his own stomach, issuing a sharp inhale through his
clenched teeth in the process. The tip stood stained red with
blood, but fortunately for the captain no more than that.

“Where’s…” Drish was almost afraid to ask as
he scanned the dead and wounded lining the sewer.

“Abigail,” Bar finished for him with a
gravity to his dark expression that made Drish feel suddenly
sick.

“Right here,” the woman’s melodic voice
pierced the gloom like a ray of light, and Drish heaved himself up
to find her limping his way through the pirates and insurgents
who’d made it back on their feet.

The overjoyed noble couldn’t contain the
upwelling of love in his heart. He had to talk to her; to be near
her, and he even shoved the young Fen roughly out of his way to do
so.

“Watch it, you jerk,” protested the boy
pirate.

But Drish ignored him. “Abigail,” he said in
a breathy exhale, as he rushed up to her. He stopped, however, just
short of actually grabbing hold and embracing the beautiful woman;
his noble sensibilities too refined for such a bold act. He checked
to see if she was alright instead, noticing her pants streaked in
rivulets of blood. “Are you… are you unharmed?”

Abigail did what Drish could not bring
himself to do; she threw herself into his arms, and even as he
winced with the pain in his neck, he caught her anyway. It didn’t
matter, his pain melted in the light of their singular embrace, and
as her lips locked against his everything else vanished as well.
Drish’s head swam in dizzying circles, and even after she pulled
her self away, he was lost in the moment.

“A couple cuts and bruises is all…” she
spoke softly into his ear as she wrapped an arm around his head and
teased at the hairs on the back of his neck.

“And that,” he nodded down to her leg,
feeling a twang in his spine, like someone had wrapped iron around
his neck and shoulders.

“A little graze across my leg is all.” She
smiled warmly, her saffron eyes aglitter. Believe me, I’ve had far
worse than this.” And again she locked her lips on his, and this
time he savored the experience; the taste of mint; the feel of her
soft tongue.

That’s when Bar cleared his throat. “If you
two are finished…”

Abigail pulled herself away, blushing
brightly, before disentangling herself from Drish. The absence of
her weight and heat was instantly missed, and the noble stood
dumbfounded and unsure what to do with himself, when Abigail
abruptly knelt down and swiped a rucksack up off the ground. Drish
recognized it as the same one from the skiff.

“Listen,” said the young woman in animated
excitement, “I brought this for you.” She looked girlishly
beautiful, filled with a bashful hesitance as she held out the ruck
for him to take.

Drish raise an eyebrow. “For me?” he took
possession of the sack with slow, skeptical deliberateness, finding
the bag unexpectedly light. “What is this?

“Just look inside…” she urged with a wide
grin, her saffron eyes all alight. “I was going to wait…until we
reached Bar’s ship, but…well, this is all so damned haphazard I
might as well do it now—before anything else goes wrong—right?”

Drish hesitated with the cord, instead
locking his eyes on the young woman; lingering on her hopeful
expression; her soft lips parting in anticipation. He was in love,
he knew that now. Just like his father, who’d given into the
enticements of Allura when he fell for a commoner named Emilie
Silverstein, Drish had followed suit, falling for one named Abigail
Fellkirk. How his grandmother would roll over in her grave if she
knew he was following in Arvis’s footsteps, but then maybe joining
the Resistance and falling in love with a common-born was his
destiny as well.

Finally he did as instructed, knowing
Abigail couldn’t take a moment more, and his heart beat faster with
the thrill of discovering what she’d given him. He folded back the
canvas flap, and peered inside. He paused in the light of his
discovery…a flood of conflicting emotions washing over him as he
reached inside and pulled out his father’s bottle of Coronation
Wine.

“I know he’d want you to have it,
Drish.”

The orphaned son was speechless, and on the
verge of tears, closer than ever before. It was like having a piece
of his father back, though it wasn’t without its bitterness. It
helped reminded him of just how far the two of them had grown
apart; how different they were right up to the end. Floating within
that murky red liquid he discovered a profound emptiness. His
father was the last tie that linked Drish to anything of the
Unified Kingdoms, and now he was gone…and only this bottle
remained.