Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2016 21:57:06 -0600
From: Michael Offutt <kavrik@hotmail.com>
Subject: Chapter 14-The Orb of Winter-Gay Science Fiction

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				   *****

			     Chapter Fourteen


   The pounding in Kian's head finally drove him awake, and he tasted blood
in his mouth. Weakly, he pushed himself up from the frigid muck, and snow
slid off his armor like white dust. He heard the rush of the river, and his
teeth clattered in the cold. Then the pain started; it came in from every
limb, and he realized all too soon that he was not waking up in Elysium,
but had managed to do the impossible and survive.
   "Fuck me," he whispered, trying to get his bearings. At first he had
difficulty not seeing two of everything, so he didn't move much. To stave
off the biting cold, he pulled his knees into his chest and huddled in the
fetal position for a while.
   There, shivering in the cold, Kian never felt more alone.
   After twenty minutes, he tested his right limb by limping a couple of
feet. He inspected it in the darkness, and didn't think it was broken. But
when he tried to get any real use out of it, he had to shift most of his
weight onto his left leg as the strength simply wasn't there.
   "Tethyr's teeth...that bloody hurts," he uttered between ragged breaths.
   Kian turned and looked at the bank where he'd lain unconscious for god
knows how long and realized he'd washed up near the edge of the forest
almost a thousand yards downstream from the bridge. Cyryalayeth was nowhere
in sight. Near him, Bloodbane lay tangled in reeds and mud, hilt sticking
up to catch Mondath's rays just right.
   The sword is yours to wield and no other, he recalled. Tethyr had said
this to him on the day he became a Black Dragon Assassin. As if I could
lose you if I wanted to. He limped over to it and grasped it by the handle,
managing to sheath it before it could insert hypodermic veins into his
wrist.
   "I just need to take it slow," Kian said, choking back the agony of
internal injuries that had most likely covered his thin body with massive
bruising. Part of him wanted to strip nude and take a look, while the other
part of him feared to do so. After a few moments, the intense pain coupled
with the realization that Cyryalayeth was probably dead, became a drowning
tide of "all the feels."
   The boy he was on the outside displaced the man he'd become on the
inside.
   Kian crumpled into the snow and mud and sobbed his heart out. "Tethyr,
I-I can't do this. I'm trying, but I just can't," he said, sucking snot
down his throat. But of course, there was no answer from the woods, or the
dark star-filled sky above.
   Just a profound silence occasionally shattered by the wind through the
trees and the sound of water tumbling over boulders in the riverbed.
   After five minutes of feeling sorry for himself, he dried his cheeks
with one glove.
   "Fucking stop it," he said to himself. "You're a goddamned assassin. You
can't stay here or you're dead. You made a promise to Luminara, now keep
it," he said, trying to psych himself out of despair. He slammed his fist
into the icy black mud and pushed himself once more to his feet.
   Kian looked around for a place to sit and spied the old twisted root of
a willow tree nearby. He invoked the quantum sidestep, flickered, and
reappeared there with his feet dangling over the edge just above the
water. Scooting his back against the trunk, he pressed his fingers to the
armor around his neck, found the latches that secured his helmet, and
released them. Then he pulled it off to take a closer look at it.
   "Why won't you work?" he asked to no one in particular. He looked at the
visor and saw where Tomoluk had struck him. The blow had left a dent in his
helmet (no small feat) and spider-webbed the glass, some of which he felt
he could push back into place. Gently, he applied pressure to those areas
until they popped even with the rest of the visor. When he did this, the
helmet systems lit up. "I guess I can't take a blow to the head anytime
soon," he said. "But this is better than nothing."
   Mindful that he needed to keep up his strength, Kian opened a pouch on
his belt and produced an elvish ration. A dried tasteless cake, these
things nourished his body for up to twelve hours, and he had six left. He
chewed on it for a long time, hoping that the fogginess and double vision
would subside. Kian also just enjoyed the almond flavor in his mouth.
   Next, he opened a second pouch and took out a small vial containing a
clear liquid. In that same belt pouch was an all-metal syringe he could
assemble. The drug was called `Trance,' and Kian desperately didn't want to
use it, because it was so fucking addictive. But he knew he had to, or he
wasn't going to be able to do anything. Not with this level of pain.
   He popped the cork on the vial, and filled the syringe with shaky
hands. Then he put the vial away. Next, he injected it into the webbing
between his fingers. "Fuck...," he whispered, choking back the sting. But
then the drug took hold and warmth filled his body. Slowly he pulled out
the syringe, took it apart, and put it away. Within a minute, he felt good
as new. And that's all that mattered.
   Kian donned the helmet when he spied the saddle pack where he stored the
majority of his belongings. It had washed up on the far side of the river
near a stand of aspen trees. He teleported over there, grabbed a hold of
it, and saw it had bits and pieces of Cyryalayeth's fur on the outside. He
checked the mud and snow for tracks but didn't see any.
   "Please, old boy. Give me some sign you survived that fight," he said,
crouching on his haunches while transferring the belongings to a magical
backpack he owned that had twice as much volume on the inside as it did on
the outside (although the weight of the contents would remain unchanged).
   This small pack had nice shoulder straps custom-fit to his arms and a
belt that he could tighten above his hips. Kian managed to squeeze half the
contents of the saddle bag that normally sat on Cyryalayeth's rump into its
gaping hole. Now he had to choose between a tent and the most gorgeous suit
of Timeron knight armor anyone had ever seen. There simply wasn't room for
both.
   Over a thousand years old, and hand-crafted by the goddess of beauty,
Eilustriel, the suit of armor fit only Kian and was unalterable. Its
contours were meant for only a male body with perfect proportions to be
able to wear. Of course "perfect" in this case was completely subjective to
the goddess of beauty's own ideals. And it just so happened that Kian fit
the bill, but he never (not even once) considered himself perfect. In fact,
right now he felt like a complete and utter failure of a human being for
two reasons. First he was weak; second he was afraid. Add to this the fact
that he still didn't know how to read, and Kian also felt stupid. These
conditions made him feel ugly, and because of this he felt unworthy of
anything, even love.
   "Maybe this is why I'm always alone," Kian whispered.
   As for the armor, legends said that it never lost its luster—even in
battle—because Eilustriel would not suffer a creation of such beauty to
ever be marred. Of course Kian had never tested it. His only memory of
wearing it was a bad one, and he was half tempted to just let it drop into
the river. But, in the back of his mind, he knew it could come in useful if
he ever needed to impersonate an evil knight, although explaining its mint
condition might take a convincing lie. It also didn't come with any spurs,
a thing he was going to have to correct if he wanted the ruse to stick. I
keep forgetting to grab some, he thought.
   At long last, he made up his mind and stuffed the armor into his
backpack and tossed the tent.
   "Time to hunt down a minotaur," Kian said with conviction in his
voice. He slung the pack across his back and secured it tightly to his
shoulders and waist. I can't have this thing flopping around, he
thought. Then he broke into a run, following the edge of the river toward
the Bone Wall, and teleporting across narrow gullies and swampy areas as
needed. When he reached the granite bridge, Kian stepped gingerly over the
dead bodies of the hell crows and scanned the ground for clues as to what
direction Tomoluk might have taken. The fresh snow that blanketed Kian
while unconscious (and probably saved his life) also worked to conceal his
quarry's tracks.
   "I could use a break, please," Kian said to the sky, stomping his foot
angrily in the snow. Even high on Trance, pain shot through his body like
fire. "Fuuuck!" he screamed and limped around for a few seconds.
   As the burn subsided back into a dull throb, he ran his toe through the
deep grooves Cyryalayeth's claws had made in the granite span, knocking
some snow and ice free. Then he tightened his jaw, wracking his brain for
any inspiration that might help him here.
   Think, think think, you bloody idiot. I know he went to the Bone Wall so
let's start by looking there, he thought. Please, Tethyr, don't have my
suit crap out on me.
   The readouts on his heads up display sputtered a little, but for the
most part gave him the lay of the land in a green-tinted night vision. He
tapped on the nose pad, adjusted the view to detect heat, and that's when a
small red dot appeared on the horizon. To Kian it looked like it stood atop
the Bone Wall itself.
   He switched back to normal vision and then put the suit on maximum
magnification. The cracks on the glass were a bit of a distraction but sure
enough, there atop the Bone Wall, Kian caught the gleam of silver moonlight
from Tomoluk's axe. The minotaur had managed to scale all one thousand
feet, and was busy laying out a rope to help him descend the far side. He
was miles away. But, there was also a silver lining: no other signatures
showed up, which basically meant that all the hell birds had been killed in
this area.
   Kian was willing to bet that even at this distance, he could still catch
up with the minotaur if he could just get to the base of the wall.
   A thousand feet's a long ways, Kian thought. Tethyr warned me never to
jump that far. But I've got to try. Eph's life depends on it. Maybe I can
take it in two or three parts, but jumping to places in the dark is going
to be tricky, especially with all of the stabby things jutting out from
this side.
   Kian grimaced and started off on foot, racing toward the Bone Wall. He
wanted to save his mental strength for the challenging teleports to come,
and give a little more time for the drug he'd taken to completely banish
his headache. Blazing fast, Kian managed to sprint four miles before he had
to stop. He estimated twelve or so minutes had passed for him since he'd
stood on the bridge. Slowing to a walk to allow the fire in his blood and
the stitch in his side to subside, Kian's heart still pounded away in his
chest and clean sweat froze on the outside of his armor. The Bone Wall was
only a few hundred feet more to the west.
   He paused to stretch when he heard the thunderous crack of bone. At
first, Kian stared at his knees and wondered if it had come from him. But
then it happened again, and he realized the sound originated with the wall
itself. This side of the Bone Wall lay in the shadow of the silver light
from Mondath, and because of that it was so pitch black that he could see
nothing without night vision. But Kian didn't have to look through his
visor to know he'd committed a gross error: he'd strayed beyond the
invisible line he'd staked out over several days of reconnaissance up and
down the entire length of this thing. By using the finger bone of a
necromancer floating on a leaf suspended in water, one could tell where a
strong necromancy ley line started and ended. If you stayed on one side,
you were safe. But just on the other and you called forth a guardian from
the wall: a necro-terror linnorm.
   "Tethyr's teeth," he swore, throwing his eyes all around, zooming in and
out with his helmet, and turning on the motion tracker to help him see what
was going on out there. Kian whipped Bloodbane from the sheath and the
sword slid corobidian veins into his wrist. Almost immediately it started
to moan.
   "I wish you'd stop that," Kian said to the sword.
   "Why?" Bloodbane responded. "It's more sinister, don't you think?"
   "Because it gives us away. Stop it."
   He felt rather than saw Bloodbane's disdain, but the sword stopped
moaning and the runes darkened.
   Kian's eyes swarmed over all the details he could pick out in the
shadows at the base of the wall, and his mouth fell open in awe as a great
dragon made mostly of bone, yanked itself from the massive barrier. The
enormous creature possessed gargantuan jaws, a sinewy neck, and razor-sharp
teeth. It roared in his direction, and a long, serpent-like tongue dangled
from between its slavering mandibles. Its eyes glowed and gave off wisps of
smoke. Its tail whipped around with a stinger dripping poison on the
end. The great necro-terror linnorm was covered here and there in gobbets
of cold rotten flesh and scales. But Kian spotted something warm there too:
a beating heart some six-feet in diameter.
   Multiple body lengths away from the creature, Kian thought himself safe
when the linnorm suddenly pounced into the field before it and shot out its
tongue. To Kian's surprise, the thing covered the gap between them in a
split second, slamming into his killsuit cuirass, sticking to it with some
kind of adhesive, and then recoiling with such power he flew through the
air like a rag doll. He would have dropped Bloodbane were it not attached
to his wrist.
   Reflexively, Kian tried to teleport but the quantum sidestep failed
because it never worked while he was essentially held by animated flesh.
   So, a moment later Kian hurtled into the jaws of the dragon and sparks
burst from his armor as the thing bit down on him. Kian managed to keep the
jaws from completely crushing him for two reasons. First he kicked out with
his feet and military pressed the roof of the linnorm's mouth with his
palms. Second, Kian was quite strong, and the armor of his killsuit nigh
impregnable to piercing weapons. But it still hurt, and he screamed through
his helmet as a rib broke from the pressure of those awesome jaws. As
quickly as he could, Kian thrust Bloodbane through the upper skull of the
undead monster and managed to shear the maxilla and nasal bone in one
blow. With a punch, it fell off the dragon's head, leaving its tongue
exposed. Then Kian cut through that at a place near the throat, sending the
slimy thing tumbling to the ground in a spray of ichor and blood.
   The linnorm screamed at him and smacked him into the air with its lower
jaw, much like a paddle slapping a ball. As he flew into the air, the
linnorm tried to hit him again with its tail. Kian teleported, landed
behind its rear right leg, and cut through that with one slice from
Bloodbane. As the bony leg crashed to the ground, it bent its head around
and unleashed upon him with a breath weapon that reduced everything in its
wake to rot. However, Kian was not there to get slammed as he'd quantum
sidestepped a split second earlier onto the linnorm's back. Atop the hide
covering the spine, Kian swung Bloodbane in a downward arc, completely
severing its tail so that it fell free and flopped uselessly in the muddy
snow.
   The monstrous creature reared upward to toss Kian off its back. He
teleported again and drove his sword through the ribcage and into the
beating heart. All at once the eyes of the necro-terror linnorm darkened,
it continued to fall backward, and then crashed like a thunderclap into the
ground. Kian pulled his sword free and hopped down from the dragon's
ribcage. Then he fell to one knee, panting heavily, and pressed his hand to
the left side where all the pain originated every time he drew a breath.
   Kian opened his visor, panting heavily, and sweat dripped from his face
on the snow. He balled his fist and punched the ground several times
because it hurt so much. Breathing shallowly wasn't an option at this
point. Not until his heart stopped racing.
   "Don't do it," Bloodbane said.
   "I don't have a choice," Kian told the sword. Then he sheathed the
weapon and opened up his belt pouch again to grab the metal syringe. He
filled it with another dose of Trance, and then gave himself a shot
directly into the meaty part at the corner of his eye. Kian hated to do
that, but the pain was becoming intolerable and this was the fastest way he
could get it to work.
   First burning pain, and then warm, comfortable heat filled his sinus
cavity and spread throughout his body like a gentle caress; the pain fled
before the drug like sand before a tide. After ten seconds Kian felt good
as knew, even though nothing had physically healed. He blinked tears from
both eyes, blew his nose, hocked up some spit, and then stood on wobbly
legs.
   But he felt super, and that's all that mattered.
   Kian replaced the killsuit helmet, lowered the visor so that it sealed
on his face, and stared up at the summit, which seemed so very far
away. Rubbing his tongue piercing on the roof of his mouth gave him an
idea. He ran over to where the monster's own freshly severed tongue lay
cooling on the ground and started gathering it up. While "alive" the slimy
thing was about as thick as his thigh. Now that he'd killed it, the sinewy
organ had shrunk down to a more manageable two inches in diameter. He
stepped on one end and pulled.
   Yup, it's still got its elasticity, he thought, as he coiled the thing
up.
   Hoisting it over one shoulder, he jogged over to the base, trying to
pick out handholds and protrusions in the dark that he could grasp onto
after he translocated. Doing so in the black of night would be very tricky.
   He said a quick prayer to Tethyr and then launched himself into the
sidestep.
   Kian aimed for a bone protrusion halfway up the escarpment. That was a
distance of about five-hundred feet, and the farthest he'd ever
jumped. This time it wasn't instantaneous, and that scared him to death. He
experienced a delay in the quantum sidestep, and Kian found himself
floating in a never-before-experienced inter-dimensional haze. It lasted a
full three seconds, filled him with anxiety, and then expelled him within
reach of the huge white bone. He grabbed onto it, right as a monstrous
headache exploded in his brain. It hurt so badly, for a moment he couldn't
even see. Despite the drugs he'd injected himself with, he felt intense
pressure behind his eyes pounding over and over like a war drum. Sweat
broke out on every portion of his body, and even dripped from out his
armor.
   Holding on with one hand, he checked himself, accounting for all of his
anatomical parts before swinging his body up onto the massive bone that he
now knew to be a gigantic antler. Inside the wall itself he could barely
make out the skull of an impressive elk, its eye sockets staring blankly
into the night. The wind this high up blew cold and chilly against his
body, taxing the killsuit's ability to keep Kian warm. The damage it had
suffered didn't help as his visor cut out yet again. Kian slammed his fist
into his head to try and get the visor to work again, but it only worsened
his headache. The readouts he depended on, as well as the night vision,
were at the moment completely dead.
   He popped the visor open and drew in a sharp breath as the bitter wind
hit his sweaty face. The shock of it almost made him lose his grip on the
wall.
   Staring up into the clouds that now scudded over the moon, it was
impossible for Kian to make out any details. If he jumped here, he would be
doing so completely blind. He set his jaw, and took a leap of faith, using
the sidestep to take him another five-hundred feet.
   Kian entered into this kind of purple limbo that surrounded him like
thick soup. He made the mistake of breathing some of it in, and his lungs
started to burn. Then he saw a shadow in his peripheral vision, a tall
black thing, and it reached out to him with an immensely powerful mind but
couldn't get a hold of Kian because of his immunity to psionics. "Who are
you?" it asked in a deep, visceral tone. It did not sound friendly.
   When he popped back into reality, Kian fell and barely caught hold of a
jawbone jutting out from the top of the wall. Up here, snow pelted him and
fierce winds swung his body back and forth like a pendulum suspended from a
pair of gargantuan canines. He risked a glance down, and couldn't see the
plain because the whole of it was lost in shadow and swirling snow.
   He scrambled up onto the top of the wall, and fell on his knees for a
moment, blood dripping from his nose. The migraine was pure agony, but Kian
knew he couldn't take any more Trance. He needed to look no further than
himself to find fault. His reckless use of the quantum sidestep, and
whatever he saw in that other dimension that now knew of his existence were
the cause.
   After five minutes, Kian forced himself to stand and looked over the
edge into the abyss. At first, all he saw was darkness on the other side of
the Bone Wall. But then, he saw a distant light. It looked a few miles
away, but Kian's vision was fantastic enough to make out the outline of a
keep in some kind of shallow valley.
   "The outpost," Kian realized with relief. "Eph and the others will be
there."
   Kian limped along the top, picking his steps carefully, and looking for
anything he could tie the giant linnorm's tongue to when he spotted a huge
skull, much like the one that he'd caught when he first arrived. The object
protruded out from the correct side of the Bone Wall and its eye sockets
already filled up with snow.
   Wasting no time, he tested the skull to make sure it was firmly
attached. Its spine inserted itself into the Bone Wall itself, and looked
about as thick as his waist. Kian nodded approvingly and tied one end of
the dead monster's tongue to the skull, threading it through the eye
sockets and then securing the end with an antler as a makeshift grappling
hook. Then he wrapped the other end around his ankles three times (making
sure to rub most of the slime off the thing) and then secured it with a
bowline knot. Then he stepped out onto the nose of the thing, balancing
himself perfectly in the strong wind, and leapt into a swan dive.
   The rush of air hitting his face and the feeling of butterflies in his
stomach almost left him breathless as he fell. Kian glanced at the tongue
as it grew taught and then grinned smugly as it started to slow his
descent. It expanded into a long flexible cord. Lower and lower it dropped
him, finally slowing his fall to a mere crawl. At some 150 feet above the
ground, he swung his sword through the tongue, cutting himself free and
quantum sidestepped to the ground, which he could now see by moonlight. He
landed without incident at the base of the wall in a cat-like crouch and
then pushed himself to his feet.
   Kian sheathed Bloodbane and took a look around the woods that loomed a
few hundred feet to the west. He knew he needed to keep going, so broke
into a run to the southwest.
   "Don't worry, captain," Kian said out loud as he ran, leaping over
ditches and scrambling up slippery hillsides. "I'm on my way to save your
bloody arse yet again."

				   *****

Chapter Twenty-Six is now available to read at
http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label
"The Orb of Winter" if you care to read ahead.

Are there any artists out there willing to draw some pics for my story? If
so, please email me.  There is an "Orb of Winter" map now in both the NEWS
section of my website and in the FORUMS of my website.

If you go to my website directly from this posting, you will want to begin
with "CHAPTER TEN" in the forums.