clumsy kick. Seth’s rescuer crushed its skull against the edge of the wall and tipped the body over the edge for good measure.
‘Quickly! There are more coming!’
They hurried to a junction, where the wall they had been following joined another that looped and curved off to Seth’s right. A tapered turret stood there, and his rescuer brought Seth to a halt within its circular walls, safe for the moment from the baying mob. The wide face confronted him unblinkingly. Two large hands gripped him.
Seth gaped up at the alien face. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did you know Hadrian was my twin?’
‘Your brother lives,’ the creature repeated slowly, explaining something very important and refusing to be tangled in details. ‘You, however, are dead. Can you accept this?’
Seth nodded, although the insanity of the conversation wasn’t lost on him. His mind was filled with monsters, impossible landscapes, riddles ... Was he in hell, or dreaming some increasingly elaborate fantasy? The latter seemed most likely, yet he simply couldn’t have survived that knife-blow to the chest, not even if a paramedic team had been standing right next to him, ready to begin emergency treatment. And if he was dead and still thinking, then that meant that there had to be something after life, be it hell or whatever.
Life after the body stopped working? He wasn’t so immersed in his agnosticism that he would defend it against all the evidence available to him. While his thoughts continued, he would fight to preserve them by whatever means available.
I’m the strong one, he told himself. I can do whatever I set my mind to.
‘My name is Xol,’ said the creature. ‘I will explain as best as I am able to. For now, Seth, we must move. Please, trust me.’
Seth let himself be manhandled out of the turret and back onto the wall. His legs moved numbly, as though at a great distance from his body. His left hand clenched and unclenched. Your brother lives. He ran with Xol and clung to those words — just as he clung to the feeling inside him that told him they were truthful.
That didn’t help ease the tearing, sickening lurch of separation, though. Not one little bit.
* * * *
The wall snaked ahead into an impenetrable distance, seeming to grow longer as they walked or ran. The creatures pursuing them weren’t deterred by the fall of two of their kind. The defeat of the skeleton-thing and others had drawn the attention of many more who joined the chase with grotesque enthusiasm. New creatures snapped from the air, whipped at them from the ground, tried to head them off or catch up with them on the wall. Every time one came too close, Xol managed to find a way to deflect them, using physical strength or something that looked very much like magic.
However Xol did it, Seth was very glad. The longer he survived the more his senses acclimatised to the strange and threatening world around him. The wall they followed was just one of many covering the roof on which the underworld had been built. Crossing and re-crossing, the walls divided the roof into numerous irregularly shaped and irregularly sized sections. Sometimes the intersections were adorned with parapets; others were bare. When the walls encountered a crack, Seth and Xol either pulled away or boldly leapt over it. Xol avoided particularly low sections, where the horde at their heels could reach.
How long they ran, Seth couldn’t tell. There was no way to measure time. He wondered at first if they were heading for the needle-towers, but all three of them were falling away to his right, still flashing lights at their summits.
‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ he asked as they took a left turn at the next junction.
‘The way through lies ahead.’ Xol’s spines were lying flat against his skull and back, and bounced as he ran.
‘The way through what to where?’
‘I can’t explain, Seth. You don’t have the knowledge.’
‘How am I going
‘Quickly! There are more coming!’
They hurried to a junction, where the wall they had been following joined another that looped and curved off to Seth’s right. A tapered turret stood there, and his rescuer brought Seth to a halt within its circular walls, safe for the moment from the baying mob. The wide face confronted him unblinkingly. Two large hands gripped him.
Seth gaped up at the alien face. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did you know Hadrian was my twin?’
‘Your brother lives,’ the creature repeated slowly, explaining something very important and refusing to be tangled in details. ‘You, however, are dead. Can you accept this?’
Seth nodded, although the insanity of the conversation wasn’t lost on him. His mind was filled with monsters, impossible landscapes, riddles ... Was he in hell, or dreaming some increasingly elaborate fantasy? The latter seemed most likely, yet he simply couldn’t have survived that knife-blow to the chest, not even if a paramedic team had been standing right next to him, ready to begin emergency treatment. And if he was dead and still thinking, then that meant that there had to be something after life, be it hell or whatever.
Life after the body stopped working? He wasn’t so immersed in his agnosticism that he would defend it against all the evidence available to him. While his thoughts continued, he would fight to preserve them by whatever means available.
I’m the strong one, he told himself. I can do whatever I set my mind to.
‘My name is Xol,’ said the creature. ‘I will explain as best as I am able to. For now, Seth, we must move. Please, trust me.’
Seth let himself be manhandled out of the turret and back onto the wall. His legs moved numbly, as though at a great distance from his body. His left hand clenched and unclenched. Your brother lives. He ran with Xol and clung to those words — just as he clung to the feeling inside him that told him they were truthful.
That didn’t help ease the tearing, sickening lurch of separation, though. Not one little bit.
* * * *
The wall snaked ahead into an impenetrable distance, seeming to grow longer as they walked or ran. The creatures pursuing them weren’t deterred by the fall of two of their kind. The defeat of the skeleton-thing and others had drawn the attention of many more who joined the chase with grotesque enthusiasm. New creatures snapped from the air, whipped at them from the ground, tried to head them off or catch up with them on the wall. Every time one came too close, Xol managed to find a way to deflect them, using physical strength or something that looked very much like magic.
However Xol did it, Seth was very glad. The longer he survived the more his senses acclimatised to the strange and threatening world around him. The wall they followed was just one of many covering the roof on which the underworld had been built. Crossing and re-crossing, the walls divided the roof into numerous irregularly shaped and irregularly sized sections. Sometimes the intersections were adorned with parapets; others were bare. When the walls encountered a crack, Seth and Xol either pulled away or boldly leapt over it. Xol avoided particularly low sections, where the horde at their heels could reach.
How long they ran, Seth couldn’t tell. There was no way to measure time. He wondered at first if they were heading for the needle-towers, but all three of them were falling away to his right, still flashing lights at their summits.
‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ he asked as they took a left turn at the next junction.
‘The way through lies ahead.’ Xol’s spines were lying flat against his skull and back, and bounced as he ran.
‘The way through what to where?’
‘I can’t explain, Seth. You don’t have the knowledge.’
‘How am I going
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