Chapter 25: Chapter 24

 

1 Year and 8 Months Earlier - Inside the Stormveil

40 Years Before the Fall of Hybra

My fingers ached ever so slightly as I held the frayed cord of the net in my hand. I gave it a tug and watched it slide smoothly beneath the surface of the water laid out in front of me. Tarl had said there wouldn’t be much fishing here, but what did he know? Truthfully, none of us knew anything about this place, other than what we did know. The waters lapped steadily at the jagged rocks beneath my bare feet, white foam frothing on the surface. It was like a hungry beast going for its evening meal, and if I didn’t vacate before the rise of the tide, I could be its next meal. I reluctantly pulled the empty net in, breaking the surface of the water with great effort as the frayed rope had taken on so much water. It was empty, of course. 

Fishing trips like this were a waste, but I enjoyed them nonetheless; they were an excuse to get away from the town, away from people. They called it Sardanus and it was home to twenty people just like me. Twenty people inexplicably plucked from their lives and placed in this endless, inescapable wasteland. I missed home sometimes; if my count was accurate, it had been ten years, and if my reflection in the troughs, lakes, and streams were to be believed, I hadn’t aged a day. I was still the sixteen year old girl who had disappeared on a national holiday. The year had been two thousand and thirteen. It seemed useless to number the years now. In my mind’s eye I recalled my straw-blonde hair, thin red lips, freckled face and pale blue eyes. In another life I might have worn makeup or styled my hair. Those days were gone.

I laid the net on the rocks, rolling it up and folding it over a few times. It would be difficult to carry back, but I was up for it. 

The sun was high in the sky, blazing in a shade of light silver over the western end of the continent. The sun at my front, the roar of the waves to my back, I began the long walk to Sardanus, high up on the cliff side. 

I passed a copse of trees, a boulder, and a field of tall grass, taking a moment to enjoy the scenery that I had seen a million times and would see a million more. As the village came into view, brown rooftops and stone fence poking up near the cliff side, I caught sight of Mariel walking toward me. Her hair was done up in a braid and she wore the same sack-cloth dress that I did, tied off at the waist with a length of salvaged rope. 

“Lyra!” She waved to me, her approach anything but urgent. There seemed to be no reason to hurry around here, not anymore. “Marlenus needs you, they’re goin’ up to the stone.”

“The stone?” I said as I approached, walking past her so that she could fall in step beside me. “Someone new?”

“That’s right,” She nodded as she endeavored to keep up with my pace. “Two of them. Popped up earlier today, military type I think. One keeps screaming like a hog.”

“Most of them do,” I shrugged. “It’s weird to show up somewhere no one speaks your language.”

“You were quiet.”

“Always was, my mom hated it,” I took a right turn away from the second boulder and toward a dirt path that led through a briar patch; sharp thorns flanked us on both sides as we made our way up a steep hill. It was so bad in fact, that I dropped the net onto the ground before entering the path. 

“I don’t know why you do it,” Mariel shook her head. “Go fishing down there when there’s no fish to catch.”

“Something to do,” I shrugged.

“Could explore.”

“Not with those things out there.”

Those things had appeared out of nowhere one day, nasty creatures, seven feet tall, blades on their elbows and wrists. Kind of lizard-like. They left us alone though, as long as we didn’t wander too far out into their territory. There were other dangers out there in the wilderness too; other animals. Bears the size of houses, bugs the size of dogs; corpses brought back to life that would eat you through. Rip out your jugular. The whole place was a death trap, but if you dared to make your way through the Ghostwalk or even the hospital ruins, you might find yourself in another town filled with other people who had been sucked into this never-ending nightmare. It wasn’t fair to call it a nightmare; my dreams had worse.

“Lyra’s here,” Brutus said to Marlenus as I crested the hill. Marlenus glanced up to me and whispered something to Via who nodded and then moved toward the two newcomers, one of which was bound, his arms pinned behind his back by two hulking villagers. The other was a balding man with a scarred face, dressed in the same black military uniform, but oddly quiet, as if waiting to see how the situation played out. The bald man said something in a strange language to the other one who appeared to be around my age, only to recieve a series of shouts and struggles in return. The man shook his head and then looked expectantly to me.

“We’re ready, Lyra,” Marlenus gestured toward the massive crystal in front of us, positioned atop a stone pedestal covered in mysterious glyphs. 

“Yeah, but is he?” I gestured toward the guy who was now red in the face and screaming at the top of his lungs. “You going to hold him still long enough?

“Do the other one first,” Marlenus gestured toward the balding man. Brutus casually stepped around the crystal and while the man tensed, he put up no obvious resistance as Brutus took him by the wrist and placed his hand against it. The crystal began to hum and vibrate, coming to life with the touch of an organic lifeform. I’d seen it before, done it before, and in truth, the reason they wanted me here, was that I was the best one for the job. They could all do it, but I was faster. I stepped forward and placed both hands on the crystal; the humming was then accompanied by a glowing from deep within the core. It continued as a purple-black light pulsed and I closed my eyes, concentrating. Then, all at once, the humming stopped.

“Can you understand me?” Marlenus asked the man. The man looked at him, confused. 

“Uh…yes, I can,” The man said. “What is this?”

“People come here from all over,” Marlenus explained. “Makes sense they’d want us to communicate. Don’t ask me who ‘they’ are, got no idea. Who are you? How’d you get here?”

“Name is Commander Balthasar Hammond,” The man replied. “Our airship crashed into the sea. We breached the Stormveil with shields designed around Mah’Kur crystals.”

“Makkur? Stormveil? No idea what you’re talking about, friend, let’s get your man to the stone.”

We repeated the process with the boy, and after a few things were explained to him, he stopped fighting. 

“Your name?” Marlenus asked him.

“I am…Micah Lavoric,” He said breathlessly, doing his best to straighten up. “Son of Lord Stephen Lavoric, Duke of Axock.”

Marlenus looked to Brutus who simply shrugged.

“Names and titles are useless here, boy,” Marlenus told him; Micah gritted his teeth and glared. “Seeing as you’re never going home again. Here we all do our fair share. You’ll work the fields, or you’ll fish, draw water, whatever needs done, whatever you’re good at.”

“Are you serious?” Micah spat. “The Duke’s son, work the fields? You must be mad!”

“Mad enough that I’ll let you starve to death if you don’t pitch in,” Marlenus said. There was no underlying humor in his tone, he meant every word of it. The real humor was hidden within the fact that we didn’t necessarily need food. We grew it, we ate it, but we could live without it here. 

“This is not quite how I pictured the Stormveil,” Balthasar said. “But it’s just as well. I was tired of your father’s stupid wars anyway.”

“Stormveil?” Brutus frowned. “What’s a Stormveil?”

“This place I presume,” Balthasar gestured widely to the landscape around us. I glanced in the direction he indicated, over the hill and toward the lowlands that were dotted with jagged cliffs and emerging trees. Over the cliff’s edge far off in the distance, waves crashed into the sand and retreated just as quickly as they came. “We came through the Stormveil, and landed here. Is that not where we are?”

“We all came here in different ways,” Marlenus told him. “I was exploring a cave, in the Principality of Canweld, Brutus fell through a mirror, apparently, clumsy oaf that he is. Lyra was struck by lightning. You say you came through a…storm wall?”

“Balthasar,” Micah said. “You cannot take this man seriously, he is lying to us!”

“Shut your trap, lad,” Balthasar growled. “We’re out of our depth here, best listen to the man. Yes, the Stormveil is a wall of wind and lightning that was created by a race called the Mah’Kur thirty years ago, it tore through the continent of Fadraiye running east to west. Cut us off from the other half of the world.”

“The Mah’Kur?” I asked, curiously, getting an awkward glance from Micah.

“You let your servant girls speak?” He demanded.

“Mind your tongue!” Brutus snapped, stepping close and towering over Micah. Brutus had a good foot on Micah and was built as a wall of muscle. “We have no servants here, and if you treat that girl as one I’ll tear you limb from limb!”

Micah gulped and paled, stepping back and looking to me apologetically. 

“Apologize to the girl,” Marlenus ordered. “Or I cannot be held responsible for what Brutus does to you.”

“I…I’m sorry,” Micah said to me, lowering his head.

“I think the Mah’Kur’ are those shadow people that popped up a while back,” Mariel said helpfully. “They don’t bother us much, just so long as we don’t get too close to them.”

“Hmph,” Brutus nodded his agreement. “You should speak with Tarl, or Talena, they’ve been closest to them.”

“If you can pry them off of eachother for long enough!” Marlenus laughed. “Amazing those two haven’t lost the urge, long as they’ve been here. What is it now, fifty, sixty years?”

“At least,” I confirmed. “At least they say.”

“We’d best be getting back,” Marlenus gestured toward the sky. “It’ll be dark soon, don’t want to get caught out here.”

The night was uneventful; we returned to Sardanus; I ducked into the small hovel where Mariel and I stayed; we shuttered the windows and hung the curtains, blocking out any light that could have possibly escaped through the slats. They liked the light, always came for it. 

“What’d you think of him?” Mariel asked me as she nibbled on a piece of bread. I walked to the shelf, or rather our makeshift pantry and sorted through baskets of assorted beans, nuts, and berries, picked fresh at the beginning of the week. I finally settled for a dry string bean, if that’s what it even was, and chewed on it as I sat on my bed, tucked away on the far side of the room. The space was small, maybe the size of my mom’s living room, and the walls were all brown driftwood that she and I had salvaged over a few years. Our little house hadn’t even been here when I’d arrived. 

“Who?” I asked, laying back and dropping my head onto a makeshift pillow, which was really just a pile of animal skins folded up. I turned to look at her, her dark face peered back at me, filtered by the flickering candlelight positioned in the middle of our table. 

“The cute one,” She said. “Obviously.”

Mariel had never really talked about where she was from, but if I had to take a wild guess, I would have said she came from wherever I did, but farther back. Some people talked about it, other people didn’t. I guess some people were just all talked out and I could understand it, what was the use of going on about a place you were never going to see again. I wondered, sometimes, if my mom ever thought about me.

“You think he’s cute?” I raised a eyebrow at her and then chuckled silently to myself. “You saw that tantrum he threw, didn’t you? That’s not cute.”

“Come now, Lyra,” Mariel chided. “They’re all a bit disoriented and upset when they get here. Besides, he’s kind of adorable.”

“Kind of looked like he belonged in a diaper,” I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

“So you like the bald one?”

“Do I have to like either of them?” I asked, exasperated. “I like you.”

“I could live with that, I ‘spose,” Mariel laughed. “Goodnight, Lyra.”

“Goodnight.”

The morning came quickly, not that it mattered all that much. No one was in a rush to do anything, there was no real schedule, and why should there be when we didn’t age, and were essentially working toward nothing? Still, there were things to do, and if we were going to be comfortable, we simply had to. I recalled one year when no one really wanted to to anything and our little town fell into decay. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

I climbed out of the bed and made it, out of habit. I tucked the fur blanket beneath the mattress and patted Mariel awake after I’d pulled myself into my scratchy burlap dress, rope tied at the waist to give it a bit of shape. I should dye the fabric; we had plenty of berries and I always did look good in blue. 

The town was alive in the early hours, as the darkness of night waned and gave way to the silver sun, rising high in the east. The smell of salt air filled my nostrils as I strode past the well and walked over to Marlenus who was hard at work fixing a gardening tool. 

“How goes it?” I asked him. He looked up and shrugged. “Same as any other day. The new man, Balthasar, seems to enjoy it here. A soldier, apparently. I asked him to take a look at our weapons, he wanted to work the field. Guess a man gets tired of war.”

“Guess so,” I said. “And the other one?” 

“Little more difficult,” Marlenus wrapped a length of twine around the head of the tool, then tested it, shaking it back and forth. “Doesn’t want to work the fields, won’t take inventory, won’t cook - says that’s women’s work. Can’t get him to draw water from any of the wells, doesn’t want to hunt. Thinks he should be in charge of something.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. Marlenus nodded. “Don’t see it doing a whole lot.”

“What else have we to do?”

I found him sitting on a pile of wood, slumped over, head in his hands. He was still dressed in that ugly black army uniform, his hair all messed up, boots scuffed but laced up tight. We could probably use that fabric for something.

“Hey, new guy!” I shouted in his direction, though I was standing just a few feet away. He looked up at me, annoyance evident in his expression.

“And just what do you want, servant girl?” 

“You keep calling me that, and I’ll turn you into the servant,” I warned him. “and don’t think I won’t.”

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“You dare speak to me this way?” He demanded. “Do you not understand who I am?”

“Look to me like a big crybaby, afraid of doing some honest work. Which is fine, if you don’t want to eat. You do want to eat, don’t you?”

He looked up at me; I could see the hunger in his eyes, and I folded my arms, looking at him expectantly.

“In Axock I would have you killed for speaking to me in this manner,” He huffed.

I looked to my left, and then to my right. 

“I don’t see Axock anywhere,” I shrugged. “I just see Liminality.”

“Limi…what?”

“That’s what they call this place, it’s written out on one of the standing stones, up north. You can read it pretty clearly after you’ve touched the translator crystal. Liminality.”

“What does it mean?”

“How should I know?” I shrugged. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to fish.”

“I do not fish,” He said firmly. “My servants do it for me.”

“I don’t see any servants around,” I said turning from him and walking away. “Guess you’ll have to do for yourself.”

“Your name is Lyra?” He asked, following close behind me as I walked toward a storage shed. Inside, I grabbed two cane poles and tossed one to Micah; it missed him entirely and dropped onto the ground.

“You gotta catch it,” I pointed to the pole, now on the ground beside him. He looked down at it in apparent confusion.

“What is it?” He asked me. “Why should I pick it up?”

“It’s a fishing pole, and you’re a moron,” I walked past him, half listening for him to pick up the pole and trudge after me, which he did.

“I am the Lord Micah Lavoric!” He shouted after me. “I do not fish!”

“You’re the lord of shit!” Someone called after him. I snickered. 

“Do you think I want to be fishing at this god awful hour?” I asked him without turning to look at him. We crossed the border out of the village and trudged toward the hills; a large lake would await us; in my early day here I’d gone swimming there, but now I no longer cared to do it. “There was a time, Lord Micah Lavoric, of Shit, when I would spend my Saturday mornings lying in bed playing with my phone, and then I’d get up, smoke a joint with my friends, and surf Facebook all day. That was living, Micah Lavoric, Lord of Shit. Now we just exist, and so do you.”

“This is unacceptable!” He shouted after me as we crested the hill and the lake came into view. “Has no one ever tried to leave?”

“You look hot in that uniform,” I told him. “And I don’t mean attractive. You’re not attractive by any means. No, I mean you should dress like the rest of us, you’ll catch a heat stroke walking around like that.”

“I will not wear rags!” He said indignantly. “I am-”

“The Lord of Shit, we know,” I rolled my eyes. “Let me show you how to catch a fish.”

I caught seven fish that day, he caught none, but I’d been expecting that. I never thought the Lord of Shit would be good at anything, but at least I’d gotten him to do something. As we walked back toward the town, my fish securely inside a burlap sack, I caught a glimpse of his friend, Balthasar, chopping wood with one of our improvised stone axes. Truth be told he looked as if he were right at home by the woodpile. He’d shed his black uniform top and was wearing a white undershirt, a piece of cloth tied about his forehead to block the sweat from his eyes. 

“Take these fish to that building, over there,” I said, handing the bag to Micah. “Don’t get lost.”

As he stomped off toward the building I indicated, I walked toward Balthasar. The sound of splitting wood grew louder as I approached. He seemed to be a man in his sixties, and judging from the scars on his face, he’d seen a lot of action, wherever he was from. He nodded to me as I approached, splitting another log, and then replacing it.

“You uh…found your place here kind of fast,” I observed. “Usually takes people months. Micah over there can’t even catch a fish. Are you…going to ask how to leave Liminality?”

“No,” He said simply, splitting the next log.

“You sure you don’t…want to ask me a bunch of pointless questions about how to get home?”

“Not a chance,” He shook his head. “I’ve spent a lifetime doing the dirty deeds of Lord Stephen Lavoric, often under the threat of death. I wanted to be a simple farmer. Then, I get thrown into this place where I’ll live forever, and work as a farmer. Why in the three hells should I want to ruin that?”

“That is…an interesting perspective,” I admitted. “Well, in case you wanted to know later there’s really no way to-”

“Don’t care,” He cut me off. “Is there good fishing up in the hills?”

“Not if your boy is doing it,” I smirked. He chuckled a little. 

“He’ll either learn or get eaten by one of those bears your friend Tarl spoke of. Heard they’re the size of the building, would love to take one down. Roast bear is always a treat.”

“You’ll have to do that all on your own, old man,” I laughed. He grunted and attacked the next log.

“You like it, don’t you?” He asked. I frowned.

“Like what?”

“Telling people there’s no way out of here. Bet you like seeing the light go out of their eyes when they realize they’re stuck here.”

“I mean I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“We’ve all got our guilty pleasures, girl. What was your name again, Lyra?”

“Lyra,” I confirmed.

“I like you, Lyra.”

“I may like you too, old man, we’ll see,” I walked away, off toward the village, hopefully to find something to do. Talena always had some vegetables to chop, Brutus was probably working on drying out some meat. I guessed that Balthasar would have the firewood taken care of for the next century. And Micah? Well, he was sulking in a corner again. 

Days passed, then weeks, then months; they all ran together. I eventually forgot that those two were even new to the village. New people arrived, some stayed, some departed for neighboring villages. A few were mauled by animals. It was hard to die in Liminality, but not impossible. Balthasar grew on me over time; he often talked about going on a bear hunt, but so far it hadn’t materialized into anything. He was probably having second thoughts about taking on a bear the size of a house, though I had to admit, roast bear did sound good. 

Seven months later I found myself walking a familiar forest path and for the first time in a long time, my thoughts turned to home again. A wave of grief gut punched me as I recalled our trailer in a decrepit old park just outside of Cincinnati. Those faux wood walls, the hole in the carpet, the way the wind howled against the tin walls on stormy nights. That old Nintendo with its dusty cartridges sitting in the living room next to the TV. Simple things, simple memories of a place I would never see again and not for lack of trying. Everyone who came to Liminality tried their best to escape at some point. They asked questions to the point of exhaustion, they searched the hills and valleys, read the translator stone over and over, checked the standing stones, came up with wild theories, and at some point, they just accepted it. The stages of grief in Liminality were weird. 

When I looked up again I realized I was lost, deep within an unfamiliar part of the forest. I sighed. It wasn’t the first time, I’d gotten lost before, one time for three months. We couldn’t die of hunger here, and our bodies healed extremely fast. Getting lost was an inconvenience apart from the threat of wild animals; I doubted anyone would come looking for me.

I pushed on into the woods; with luck I might come out the other side, maybe run into another village that could give me directions back home. Then again, I might just be stuck there for a few months; time didn’t mean a whole lot here, especially when you had so much of it. I passed into a clearing that culminated in a hill, atop which were another set of standing stones. In my early days here, I’d been extremely interested in those stones, convinced they were a way out. Now I had decided that if they were a way out, they weren’t intended for me. Nevertheless, I climbed up to the stones and took a look at them, all engraved in that same odd, practically alien script that I’d seen on the rest of them. I let out a sigh and took a seat on the rock dead center of the circle, then laid back and watched the sky. It was blue today, like home with puffy white clouds floating by. I watched them and tried to pick out some shapes. A dog, a car, a spaceship, a penis, and then, finally, I sat up in the middle of the circle. I froze, laying my eyes on something that I’d never seen before. 

Just outside the circle, there was something familiar to the Liminality - a lioness. Liminality had a lot of Earthlike animals, feeding into one of my theories that it was an alternate reality that fed on the ideas of other realities. Everyone else had looked at me as if I were crazy when I’d said it aloud. The lion, however, was made entirely of glass.

It was translucent, shining bright in the mid-day sun, a low growl emitted from its jowls as it paced the interior of the circle, eyes on me. I should run, scream, do something, but there was nowhere to go. Ten years in Liminality and I was going to be murdered by a glass lion. That was somehow fitting. 

“He won’t hurt you,” A small voice said. I spun to see a boy of maybe seven years old with a shorn head standing just behind the stone I’d been lying on a moment ago. My eyes widened as I looked from him, to the lioness. He cocked his head at me and frowned. “I’m sorry if you were afraid, he’s very protective of me.”

“She,” I corrected, suddenly breathless.

“She?” He frowned again.

“It’s a lioness, it’s a she,” I gestured to the glass lion, still circling. My fear wasn’t subsiding, but at least I wasn’t in a panic now. 

“Oh,” He laughed a little. “I made her, I didn’t know that.”

“You…made her?” 

“Of course!” He laughed. “I made all of this!”

“…all…of what?” I looked to the boy in utter confusion. He looked ordinary, just like everyone here, dressed in burlap, a tanned complexion, and of course several feet shorter than me. 

“This,” He gestured to the forest.

“The…forest?”

“No, all of it!” He folded his arms and stamped his foot. “Don’t you believe me?”

“I…”

“Here, I’ll show you!”

I watched in a mixture of horror and amazement as he waved his hand, and a tree grew from the ground, starting as a tiny sapling, then growing faster and faster until I had to dive out of the stone circle, landing on my backside and gawking at the now fully grown tree. 

“How…did you ….how did you do that?!” I gasped.

“Do you want me to teach you?” He walked over and stood over me, laughing, as if he’d just played the biggest prank of his life.

“Yes,” I said. “You can show me?”

“Of course!” He smiled. “But come play with me first!” 

The scene faded, the boy, the forest, the standing stones, all of it transitioned to darkness as a hand laid on my shoulder. I sucked in a breath, my stomach lurching as I was yanked from sleep by the sound of Sheena’s voice.

“Lyra? See, she’s waking up. Lyra honey, it’s okay, it’s all over!”

“Sheena…” I muttered, opening my eyes. I was in a white room, laying on something flat. Reality was slowly coming back to me, the disconnect was lessening. She was there, Sheena, smiling at me. 

“It’s over, sweetie, it worked, okay? It worked!”

“Sheena?” I said weakly.

“Yes, hon?”

“I need to see the High Lady.” 

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