Contents
Title page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Interlude - Lianshi
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Interlude - Imogen
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Interlude - Naomi
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Interlude - Leonis
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Thank you! Please read!
Bastion
Book 1 of
THE IMMORTAL GREAT SOULS
By
Phil Tucker
BASTION
BOOK ONE OF THE IMMORTAL GREAT SOULS SERIES
Copyright © 2021 by Phil Tucker. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any meansm electronic or mechanical, without expressed permission of the author.
Chapter 1
Scorio awoke from death in a tomb of hammered copper. His breath echoed harshly within the stark confines, his chest heaved, and his eyes grew wide, drinking in the faint, blood-orange glow seeping into the air from a rectangular hole in the ceiling.
With a convulsive jerk, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bier on which he’d lain. There was darkness all around, made thick and swarming by the mere hint of light from above. He grimaced, blinked his eyes owlishly, and tried to stir thoughts into motion. He sat there in a stupor, slowly coming back to himself until at last, he once more studied the rectangular hole.
It hovered some eight or ten feet above him. The steady, ruddy light came from a source outside his line of sight. He couldn’t make anything out but a great sense of enormity, of scale, of height.
Drawing deep breaths, he carefully stood upon the bier, his legs still weak, his balance unsteady. No telling how far the drop to the floor was—perhaps a yard, perhaps more. The darkness at the base of the bier was absolute. He rubbed his hands together and stretched up to the hole. It hovered a few feet above his fingertips.
Scorio drew his hands back, wiped them on his hips, rocked a little from side to side as he prepared himself, then leaped. It was a weak first attempt; he didn’t even brush the ceiling before falling back.
Again he leaped, then again, and a fourth time before casting around for some other means to get out. The bier was large, so he stepped to its head, measured how many steps he could safely take, then strode forward, half-crouched, and whipped his arms around and up, leaping again. This time his hands slapped against the hole’s broad, metallic rim, and his fingers curled over the uppermost edge.
Gritting his teeth, Scorio hauled himself up, arms shaking, muscles burning, until he was able to pull his head out.
His eyes widened at the sight. For a moment he simply hung there, shocked, but his body began slipping back into the tomb, so he heaved himself out, rolled onto his back, and sat up, staring.
The space was so vast that for a moment he thought himself outside. A great beam of luminous amber, some ten yards wide, split the darkness in the distance and rose to a great height before fading away. It shone like a slice of sun, richly golden and pitiless, inhuman in its scale and without detail or depth.
Scorio gaped in wonder, only to realize that the beam was in fact a partition between two dark walls that drew close together at the top of a dozen steps. Steps that were easily a hundred or more yards wide, partitioning the great plain on which he sat from the platform that led to the light.
Light which turned the upper surface of each step to a rich maroon, and which reflected off the ground in a feverish, apocalyptic smolder; swathes of imperfections in the copper dimmed its burning glow so its reflection looked like a bloody sun setting behind a haze of clouds.
Scorio felt himself a speck before that immensity, its grandeur. The floor on which he sat was patterned with countless small rectangles like his own, laid out with geometric precision, shallow depressions uniformly reflecting the amber light, showing they remained sealed.
His mind raced. Were others trapped below? Was he trapped here alone? Where was he, what was this place, was he meant to do something—?
Movement off to one side, and he rose to his knees, peering as a shadow clambered up from a distant rectangle, its mouth dark, unsealed. Eager, hesitant, he leaped to his feet, took a half-dozen steps, and stopped. “Hello?”
The man, for so it seemed, rolled out and onto his back, and lay there panting for breath.
Scorio could sympathize.
“What is…?” began the man, his voice a powerful rumble, but his words trailed off as he shifted onto his side, propped himself up, and caught sight of the livid amber beam.
Scorio walked toward him, taking care not to step into any of the rectangular depressions, even sealed as they were. He paused when he noticed something. He crouched and brushed his fingertips over a number incised at the base of one depression. 237. Frowning, he glanced at the next one over. 238.
“Where…?” The stranger pushed himself up to sitting. He was little more than a hulking shadow, two-toned; the side that faced the beam lit up fiery red, the other half-cast into darkness. “What is that?”
“No idea.” Scorio glanced back at his own tomb entrance. What was his number? Was it significant? “Just got out myself.”
The stranger rose to his feet and proved to be a bear of a man, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, his beard and pale skin burnished by the light, long, dark hair spilling halfway down his back. “This place. Are we dead?”
“Would be just our luck.” Scorio approached the man once more. “But before I awoke, I had this dream, or vision…”
“Of dying,” finished the stranger. His voice was rich and powerful, and with each passing moment, he seemed to be collecting himself, mastering his agitation. “Me too. But the details are lost to me now.” And he looked down and away, frowning.
Which prompted Scorio’s own thoughts. What could he remember? That dream of death, of dying… he could remember movement, violent arcs of something being swung—but no. It was gone.
“The name is Leonis,” said the man, extending a large hand. “You?”
“Scorio.” They shook, and the man’s grip was firm but not crushing.
A new voice drifted toward them, hollowed out as if from the base of a well. “Is there anybody out there? Hello?”