“That ain’t a real long drive for some folks.” Faye could immediately tell that her attempt at humor had failed.
“This spell’s burden was more than any one man could bear.”
“I intend to prove you wrong.”
Jacques paused. “My apologies. I did not mean it that way.”
“It’s okay. He went crazy and started killing good folks. I wouldn’t be here talking to you now if I was planning on doing the same thing, now would I? I’ve got to know, though, what did he think the Power was asking him to do?”
“By that point, Sivaram’s writings had become far too difficult to understand. They were simply the babblings of a madman.”
“But…”
“If I were to guess, he thought that the Power had chosen him to be its protector.”
Considering what Faye now knew to be out there, that was a sobering thought. The Chairman had thought the same thing about himself, and look how that had turned out.
Jacques took one last look at the complicated, unsolvable maze. “We must go on a journey, Faye. There is someone I would like for you to meet.”
UBF Traveler
“What the hell is this thing?” Lance asked as he stared at the body. “Some type of demon?”
“It isn’t a Summoned…” Ian Wright was standing a few feet away, keeping one hand over his mouth. “Summoned have a feeling of… How can I explain this? Connection. This thing isn’t linked to any Summoner. Plus it would’ve dissipated back into smoke and ink when it was killed. The insides of a Summoned are basically smoke and goo, all kept in a shell based on the imagination of somebody like me. This thing has guts.”
“I realize that. I know demons pretty well.” Lance absently tapped his permanently damaged leg. He had been mauled by a Summoned when he was younger. “But you got another explanation for this critter?”
There were half a dozen of men assembled in the sick bay. The corpse had been dragged in and dropped on a tarp. Sullivan hadn’t said a single word while they’d examined the thing that had attacked them at the Imperium monitoring station. He’d only leaned in a corner, smoking and thinking over the implications of their discovery, angry at knowing that he’d been used.
It was hard to look at. Sullivan had skinned plenty of game in his youth, so he was no stranger to the sight of bare red muscle, but you shouldn’t be missing your skin and still be running around. And this thing had been fast, fast enough to take apart three wounded Grimnoir and their only Healer. It looked like a man, but its limbs were too long, its chest too big and its spine was all curved and bowed. The toes looked more like fingers, and its teeth… The bodies of his dead men showed what those teeth could do.
Dr. Wells knelt next to the corpse, poking at it maliciously with a length of pipe. None of them actually wanted to touch it with their bare hands. “It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen in my travels. However…” He squished the pipe into the hole in the ribs and rolled the purple and red bits around. “I’m fairly certain this was once a human being.”
Lance snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I can assure you. I’ve seen many, many human organs in my day, and these, no matter how deformed some of them have become, are clearly human organs.”
Lance wasn’t convinced. “I know you’ve probably read a lot of anatomy textbooks, Doc—”
Wells pried some of the ribs a bit further apart. “Textbooks? Hmm… Yes,” he replied absently. “Yes, of course that is what I meant… In textbooks.”
“But that ain’t no man. Look at those teeth! Damn thing’s got jaws like a hyena. And those claws… I’ve hunted damn near every corner of the world, and the closest thing I’ve seen to those were on an anteater.”
Heinrich had been nearly as quiet as Sullivan for most of their rushed autopsy. “We know the Imperium has performed terrible experiments. We’ve seen with our own eyes how badly Unit 731’s failures can be. Perhaps this is the next step in their eugenic madness?”
“It’s not one of theirs,” Ian stated with grim finality. “I’ve seen their work. They twist people, but not anything like this. I’ve been to one of the schools. My… Somebody I knew was lost in one of them. This isn’t how 731 works. There’s no brands on this body, no spells at all. Those Jap Cog bastards can’t twist flesh without magic.”
“Wright and Wells are both right,” Sullivan finally spoke. Toru had warned them about what had happened the last time around. He just hadn’t expected to see it again this soon. “This was a man, and it wasn’t Imperium magic that did this to him. This was something worse. You agree, Fuller?”
The Cog had been completely silent so far, standing in the corner, as far from the skinless man as possible. At first he’d seemed disgusted by the broken carcass, but then he had focused in on trying to understand the creature’s magical nature, and had been off in his own world ever since. He had a small notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other, and he was either writing quickly or sketching, or maybe a little of both. “Fuller!” Sullivan snapped his fingers.
Fuller’s head popped up, for a split second seemingly bewildered by the distraction. He looked back down at his notes, and then back up at Sullivan. It seemed to take a moment for his brain to shift back to reality and away from esoteric formula and odd geometries enough for him to form actual human language. “You promised that this expedition would witness magic like mankind has never before seen. You were true to your word. This…” and for once the man who had extra words for everything seemed stymied. “This thing is bonded to magical elements the likes of which I have never even dreamed of.”
Dr. Wells had given up on his autopsy and let the bloody pipe fall on the floor with a clatter. “What does that mean?”
“It has magic, but the power geometries are multistacked across planar elements!”
The rest of them exchanged confused glances. Wells ran one hand through his thinning hair. “You say so.”
“No, no. What you think of as magic is cords of omnidirectional energy capable of distorting physical law and probability. These cords have been tied into a knot. My Power can see the connection, but my mind is unable to untangle the knots. How? Why? I do not know.” Fuller looked back at his notes. “I need time to think.”
“Think quick.” Sullivan said. “I got a feeling we’ll be running into more.”
“You think this is the Pathfinder’s doing?” Lance asked.
“I know it.” Sullivan ground his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray, turned, and strode out of the room.
Sullivan’s words were left hanging in the air like the cloud of tobacco smoke.
“Hey!” Wells shouted after him. “What do you want us to do with this thing when we’re done?”
“Burn it.”
It was hard to keep his cool when he was that furious, but luckily nobody spoke to him as Sullivan made his way to the cargo hold. He found Toru in his quarters, standing in front of a mirror he’d hung from a wall pipe, pulling shards of broken glass out of his face with a pair of pliers.
The Iron Guard healing kanji had done its work, and Toru’s jagged lacerations were mostly closed, though Toru still seemed shaky from blood loss. “Sullivan.” He gave a curt nod into the mirror. “What do you—”
Sullivan grabbed Toru by the shoulders, spun him around, and slammed him back into the wall. The mirror shattered. Surprised, Toru didn’t even have time to use his magic before Sullivan’s elbow landed on his throat. “Talk, you bastard!”