The octagon box set, p.53
The Octagon Box Set, page 53
part #1 of The Octagon Series
In the distance a wide river curved and snaked under two bridges. One bridge was solid with arches. The banks of the river were edged in frozen sheets of snow, and a slurry of broken ice and water flowed through the middle.
Following the road, it ran straight across the arched bridged and into a small township that was a sprawl of similar architecture, cathedral-like structures, clusters of buildings and squares. The place shared the same look of desolation and neglect as the campus-like area near the stadium. A smaller stone footbridge spanned the river to the right, and further on Kobe could see a crimson dome atop a tall white bell-tower shaped structure with what looked like a red clock face.
“Whatever this place was, it’s long gone.” Brax spoke first as they took in the deteriorated buildings, icy river and overgrown landscape that spread out before them.
“We are not still in the construct,” Tanza said. She was used to heat and sun, and despite her suit, she felt cold to the bone. The place looked dead and had a strange feel to it that she had felt before.
“We have never left the construct. We are still inside it,” Karuna replied.
“How can that be?” Vella said. He gestured at everything. “This can’t fit into that cube we went into. It’s too big.”
Kobe said nothing.
“He’s right,” Grin chimed in. “Look at that sky. It goes all the way up. There’s no way we are inside that thing any more. This is real.”
“This is a place of death,” Tanza said, her voice flat and haunting. “Many people died here, a long time ago.”
Karuna ignored her. “That’s why it’s called a construct. This has been all constructed just for our benefit. We didn’t jump to another location. It’s just a representation of another place."
She looked at Tanza, who had gone quiet and still. “Don’t ask me how. I’m not an engineer or a scientist, and I know this place seems very real, but we are all still standing within the cube. Probably just a few feet away from the transition point we walked through.”
“But it has a physicality to it. I feel the cold. This stadium is real. If I jump into that river I’d probably die of exposure within a few minutes,” Kobe said.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. Everything you see, touch, feel and smell is real. But it’s a construct. I’ve seen this in previous Dominions, but not to this scale. All different types of environments, ecosystems and structures. I can’t explain how they do it.” Karuna replied, without taking her eyes off Tanza.
Then Karuna felt it. Maybe Tanza had felt it first. Maybe she was more adept at sensing something ominous or danger. “Let’s get back down. We’re exposed up here.”
They climbed back down the metal and assembled near the row of columns under the covered roof.
“This has to be real,” Vella said. He still wasn’t convinced. “There’s no way we are still in the cube. Somehow we've been transported to another place.”
Karuna shook her head. “We need to move, maybe across the bridge, and find another transition point.”
“But where?” Lupus said. “This town looks massive. Where do we start looking?”
Vella stepped between two columns, out from under the covered roofline and into the open. Laughing he spread his arms, palms upwards, his face skywards, sticking out his tongue like a kid having fun in the snow. Tiny white flakes fell onto his face and into his mouth. “Well, I don’t know about you, but this sure feels like real snow to me.” He smacked his lips together and swallowed. “And it sure tastes like real snow.”
A javelin thudded into his back and drove out his front, a foot-long shaft of crimson protruding from his chest. Blood dripped from the tip onto the white snow at his feet like ink onto blotting paper. His eyes went wide in shock as he looked down at the shaft, trying to comprehend why a foot of bloody metal was sticking out of his body.
Vella keeled over, face-first onto the concrete. Dead.
13
Cornered
Whilst no Civil War battles had ever been fought on this ground, many young men who lived here hundreds of years ago did fight. The thirty-one acres of land upon which the old stadium stood was a memorial to those men who had lost their lives and shed their blood for their beliefs.
Blood seeped up from the ground in oval patches of crimson.
Moments before, Rake was ignoring Vella’s horseplay, instead searching the stadium and seeing the snow-covered playing field near the drooping goal post. As Rake watched, the carpet of snow near the edge closest to them started to darken in spots. They were small at first, but then more smudges of brownish-red started to appear from under the snow and the crimson shapes grew larger.
Looking back in hindsight, Rake wished he recognized the blood for what it was. He should have realized that blood seeps downwards, into the ground not upwards.
But by the time he did, it was too late.
They rose as one like dead soldiers suddenly awoken, buried for centuries in the frozen earth. Forty Sanguis Elites, dusted with snow and ice, the weeping eye of blood across each chest, kept warm under the layer of snow by their pulsating crimson armorskin. They had buried themselves and lain in wait. Ludus Sanguis were experts with the javelin. Vella's body proved that, skewed with a shaft of metal.
“Move!” Karuna screamed as she drew her katana in one fluid sweep, the sound of the bright blade leaving the scabbard echoing under the covered seating area.
The Sanguis Elites split into three groups. One headed left, another right, the third rushed headlong up the rows of concrete seats in a direct line towards the upper level. It was a classic pincer move. The two split groups would flank them left and right at the top, cutting off any chance of escape whilst the third group would drive straight into them in a frontal assault.
“Where the fuck—” Grin yelled, but his voice was cut off as a javelin caught him high on his chest, the razor-sharp point piercing his armorskin. His eyes bulged wide and he fell to his knees between the columns, clutching at the shaft, a river of crimson spilling down his steel-blue armorskin. It had offered little protection.
Three more javelins flew past them, missing and clattering off the stone.
Kobe, Tash, Tanza, Brax, Rake, Lupus and Karuna crouched behind the columns, bunched up, struggling to find enough cover.
“No!” Tash screamed.
Lupus ducked out to recover a fallen javelin. He grabbed one, but as he turned to scuttle back another drove into him, dead center between his shoulder blades. His body jolted forward and he fell to the ground.
“Bastards!” Brax screamed. He was with Tanza. They shuffled and squeezed together, struggling with his bulk to remain hidden as more javelins slewed through the air between the columns, some hitting the back wall and pulling out lumps of concrete, others skidding off the stonework just inches from their faces. “They fucking hid and waited for us,” he spat. He felt totally useless, his axe gripped in one hand. He wanted to get close enough to them so his blade could taste blood, but moving out from cover would be suicide.
From where she crouched with Rake, Karuna could just see at an angle without exposing herself. To her right a crimson tide of Sanguis Elites was working its way up the side tiers towards them, leaping across the rows of concrete seats, taking them two at a time, javelins clutched in their hands.
“Shit!” They would be doing the same thing on their left flank as well, where Kobe and Tash were sheltering. She looked down at Rake. She had managed to throw him behind one of the columns before a javelin sailed towards her head. She had deflected its flight with a sweep of her katana, a move she practiced many times with Mace in the training grounds at Ludus Infernum. But that was just one man throwing one javelin at a time. Not half a dozen Elites throwing them all at once from multiple angles.
“A weapon only needs to miss you by an inch to be a fail.” That’s what Mace used to tell her time and time again. God knows where Mace was now. If she was with her own cohort they would have made a meal of the Sanguis Elites. But with this rag-tag group of misfits, the Sanguis were going to dine on them instead.
Stealing another look, but this time to her left, she could see the other flanking group of Elites running up the rows nearest to where Kobe and Tash.
“Where the fuck to now?” Brax yelled over his shoulder to no one in particular.
The Sanguis Elites were throwing death from afar. Karuna needed to take away that advantage. Any moment now all three groups would converge on them and they would be completely exposed, squeezed together, and hacked and stabbed to death.
The hail of javelins slowed. They were getting close now, the creeping death of the weeping eye, not wanting to waste effort and javelins on targets that were hidden.
The path up the twisted metal frame to the rooftop would be useless. They would be cornered up there with nowhere to go except jumping to their deaths.
Looking behind her, Karuna saw that the back wall of the stadium curved away in both directions. There was space in front of the back wall behind the last row of seats, a channel for spectators to walk around. The nearest exit tunnel was ten or twelve rows back down the tiers, past the Sanguis Elites, back towards the enemy. There was no way they could make a run for it down the stadium rows without running directly at them. They would also be caught in a crossfire of javelins from opposite sides. Plus, how would they get past the front group of Elites, javelins in hands, poised and determined to impale them all?
There must be another way. There always is another way.
She could see Kobe and Tash, then Brax and Tanza pinned down, almost resigned to their fate. It was going to be left to Karuna to save their bacon.
Kobe looked around wildly. Panic and desperation eating at his gut. He searched the curve of wall several rows behind him. It was cracked in places and part of the plaster had sheared away in others. There was a blackened section of the wall with more damage further to his left, almost hidden by the curve of the wall.
Maybe. Just maybe. He prayed.
It was a slim chance, but they had no other option.
The Elites were treading carefully over the rows, edging closer but with caution. They weren’t in a hurry. They knew they had their prey boxed in.
“All of you, follow me on the count of three,” said Kobe.
“No!” Karuna yelled. Another javelin sailed past her head, missing her by inches and thudding into the wall behind.
“Now!” Kobe screamed. “Or we die!” Kobe turned, pulling Tash with him, and jumped over the last few rows. He launched himself onto the concrete walkway behind the last row, Tash falling with him.
“Move!” Tanza yelled at Brax, and they both took off up the rows before hurling themselves to the ground, hoping the last row of concrete seating would offer some protection.
Pulling Rake up, Karuna hurdled upwards, almost carrying the boy, diving over the last row with him, skidding along the slush of ice and snow on the floor and then slamming hard into the back wall. Pain ripped through her shoulder that took most of the impact. Almost immediately she felt a warm rush as her armorskin released painkillers into the joint and muscle.
They all ended up in a pile of bodies, twisted and on top of each other, hard up against the back wall.
Karuna had expected a volley of javelins to slice at them, but none came.
Kobe crawled on his belly towards the blackened section of the wall. Something had punched a hole through it, but not large enough though for them to get through. Daylight shone through the gap and parts of the brickwork had fallen away creating a zigzag of stone like missing teeth, blackened at the edges. There was something familiar about the blast pattern.
They were scorch marks.
Maybe they could find a fire escape gantry or external pipes that they could climb down on the exterior wall? Anything was better than staying here and becoming a human pin-cushion.
As though she read his mind, Karuna jumped to her feet and started kicking away at the edges of the hole trying to make it bigger. Kobe joined in as loose mortar crumbled. Bricks started to tumble through the hole to the outside of the stadium.
Brax rose and stood at one side of the curve, axe gripped in both hands, ready for the Elites on his side. Tanza stood on the other side of Karuna and Kobe, trident raised, protecting them as they hammered away at the wall. Tash and Rake grabbed discarded javelins from the floor and stood guard as well.
Karuna attacked the wall in a frenzy, like a wrecking machine. She had enlarged her side in half the time Kobe had done his. It was big enough to pass through.
Karuna stuck her head through.
“Damn it!” She pulled her head back.
“What is it? Kobe said, sweat pouring off his face. He noticed Karuna hadn’t raised a sweat at all.
“It’s a sheer drop on the other side. Hundreds of feet straight down to the ground. No framework. No pipes. Nothing to grab onto to climb down.”
“What about the snow, can it break our fall? The suits I mean,” he said, gutted that their efforts had amounted to nothing.
“Shit, Kobe. These suits are good, but they don’t make us immortal. They don’t come with built-in wings either.”
“But you landed on the bridge. You survived.”
“Blind luck and physics,” Karuna said. “I dropped onto the bridge probably just after I reached the top of the arc. Going through this hole means a three or four hundred foot drop to the concrete and ice below.”
Ludus Sanguis had arrived.
All men, tall, stony-faced. A javelin in each hand, pointing at them, forming a spiked circle around them.
Karuna estimated close to forty Elites. Not their full contingent.
So they had lost some already, Karuna thought.
But still trained. Battle hardened. Determined. Everything the people in her group weren’t.
One stepped forward. Tall, lean, drenched in arrogance. Too pretty.
Karuna wanted to kill him first.
The man tilted his blond head and scoffed. “This is it? This is all there is?” Looking at the group he let out a sigh of annoyance. “This is our reward? A bunch of Virtus stained and—” he paused, his eyes shifting to Karuna. “And a rogue Infernum.” He shook his head in wonder.
Karuna stepped forward, her katana poised, both hands around the handle. “Fuck you, pretty boy. Your head comes off first,” she snarled.
The man looked at her and laughed. Noticing that she had more rosettes on her chest than he did. “Oh, I’m going to kill you myself, Dragonfly,” he said, pointing to a spot underneath a row of rosettes on his own armorskin. “I’m going to put your kill right here.”
His eyes hardened.
All humor bled away from his features, leaving the face of a young psychopathic woman-killer from another time. Trained and let loose to ply his skills in a new world made perfect for him.
He raised his javelin a little higher. “After I’ve fucked you with one of these.”
“Hurry up, we need to get to the clock tower,” one of the Elites murmured behind the blond man.
He dismissed him with a wave. “Not until I’ve had my fun. I want this Infernum bitch to suffer. She cut down too many of us at the last Dominion to warrant a quick death." His eyes never leaving Karuna, his mouth cruel and twisted.
Kobe felt it first. A slight vibration through his feet.
Then a pause.
Then it came again, this time slightly stronger. A definite beat.
Dust that had been undisturbed for decades dislodged from the rafters above and fell around them like a grey snow in unison to the rhythmic beat.
Kobe’s heart turned cold and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
It was rhythmic beat that he had felt before.
Death on six legs.
The ground vibrated harder. The dust fell thicker. The beat became an earthquake.
Then a deep guttural sound, like a thousand cries of animal rage.
The blond Elite and the rest of his cohort turned in the direction of the sound.
A huge blur of pewter came bolting around the bend, its massive hunched shape almost filling the passageway as it hurtled towards them.
In a lightning flash, cloaked by the distraction, Karuna leapt forward, delivering a horizontal sweep that took off the Elite’s blond head as his attention was away from her. She grabbed Rake and pulled him back violently against the wall, flattening themselves. Kobe had done the same moments before with Tash, like they were expecting a freight train to squeeze past them in a subway tunnel.
Brax and Tanza flung themselves in the opposite direction, directly into a wall of Sanguis Elites standing along the back row of seats. Their attention and javelins turned away.
The bio-pred smashed into the first group of Sanguis Elites flanking Karuna and the group, bursting them apart. Bodies flew in all directions, and those who fell were trampled to a mushy pulp by the six clawed feet.
The bio-pred sped past Karuna, who dug her fingers into crumbling mortar gaps in the brickwork and just managed to stay clinging to the wall without being pulled off her feet and into the torrent of ice and snow that swept past in its wake.
The group of Elites on the left had time to raise their javelins and unleash a barrage of steel at the beast as it bore down. The animal hunkered down and increased speed, its powerful legs walloping like massive pistons in overdrive. It tucked its wedged-shaped head down further as javelins bounced and bent off its armored skin. It barreled into the next group of Elites like a locomotive. Bodies spun like skittles as it careened through them, before losing its footing on the slick, iced concrete and skidded off the curved wall.
