෴Midnight෴

Mourning and Anger

  Midnight lay atop an icy peak. His frost covered black metal armor sat in stark contrast to the brilliant white sunlit snow. His pale blue eyes scanned the sky above him. Looking upward from well over twenty-seven thousand feet above sea level, even on an otherwise bright sunny day, the darkness of space looked close enough to touch. Within minutes, a series of bright reentry trails cut across the sky above him. He reached a hand up as if to touch them, despite the distance.

  The icy wind picked up. He closed his eyes and mouthed some words. The wind stole the sound away just as it blew the frozen tears off his face. Other than his tears freezing instantly on his face, he appeared unaffected by the frigid wind. He flinched when the next trail of fire carved its way across the sky. Each bright flash of fire across the heavens brought a new thought or memory of those lost.

  He lay there atop Mt. Makalu for several hours. Lost in thoughts about what might have been, he reminisced to himself. As the hours passed, his expression hardened, and the tears dried up.

  When he got to his feet, the raging winds stopped. It was a rare moment of stillness atop the high peak. He looked to the sky once more with an expression that of saddened penitence. After a few seconds, the somber expression changed to an angry grimace of defiance. As the expression shifted, his hands slowly closed in sync with his posture tightening. He clenched his jaw and his fists tightly enough to cause the thin layer of ice forming on his skin to flake off and be carried away by the returning winds.

  Midnight flicked more shards of ice off his face. With a thought, he turned his electronics suite back on. After standing still and listening to local traffic for several more minutes, he flicked his gaze to the side, looking northeast at a distant neighboring mountain valley barely visible in the distance. Metal flowed around him in a flurry of motion, kicking up a cloud of dirt and ice. Five seconds later he was back in his armor and halfway there.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

Off the Record

  Midnight carefully floated down into the deep crevasse toward the emergency beacon. Soon he could see a light. Two climbers lay huddled together on a small ledge of ice. The ledge looked barely large enough to hold them. The crevasse continued downward into darkness. Neither of them looked good. “I was starting to think I wouldn't be able to find you. Who’s hurt?”

  The man pointed to the woman. Her ashen pallor and fast shallow breathing painted a grim picture. “She needs help. We got away from the monster, but we fell down here.”

  Midnight heard small popping and grinding sounds from the surrounding ice. He sent out tendrils of his suit to wrap around the woman. “Her leg and arm are in bad shape. Compound fracture on the leg, some kind of crushing trauma on her arm. We need to get her to a hospital or crush syndrome will kill her.”

  He gently encased her in a near cocoon of metal. Once she was safely ensconced inside, he carefully warmed the inner surface just enough to remove the threat of cold, while letting the cool environment contain the injuries for the moment. “Where’s the rest of the climbing team?”

  The man shuddered and shook his head. “They’re all gone. The glass monster got them. Only the three of us got away.” he trailed off with a haunted look in his eyes.

  The sound of grinding and popping returned, seeming to emanate from the walls around them. Midnight looked at the ledge and peered around them. The three of them seemed to exist in a tiny pool of blue tinted light in a vast, dark, space. “We should really get you out of here. I don’t like the sound of—”

  The ledge broke away from the wall with a snapping sound. The man lashed out with his ice axe to try and arrest the fall. The tip of the axe skated along the wall, then found a crack and bit deep. The sudden shock caused him to lose his grip and continue falling. Midnight sent out a metallic tentacle and managed to catch the man as he fell.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

   The sounds of shifting and popping continued. “How did you get away? What made you end up here?”

  “We tried to run and lost our footing. I don’t recall who fell first, but then we were all sliding down the ice sheet.” He grunted in pain as the metal cocoon gripped him.

  “How bad are you hurt?” Midnight asked him.

  “I—I don’t know. I think my left shoulder’s dislocated. I tried to slow us down with one of my axes. It worked, and I had the lanyard on, but we were going so fast. I felt something shift and give out in my shoulder.”

  “You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get you warmed up, and we’ll go double check that there isn’t anyone else from your group still alive and needing help. Then I’ll get you to a hospital.”

  “No! It got them. It ripped them apart! Don’t go back there! Don’t do it!” he started to struggle in the tight confines of the metal sheath.

  Midnight deployed more lights and started to ascend. “You said three. What happened to number 3?”

  The man sighed as his cocoon started to warm up. “It got him. We were trying to slow down, but it just ran down the side of the mountain after us and grabbed him. It was so fast. It looks like glass. It has a big spiked tail and claws.” he trailed off again.

  Midnight continued to gently ascend toward the opening at the top, where the brilliant glow of daylight was still visible.

  “Don’t panic, but I’m going to extend the protective skin to include your face.”

  The man didn’t answer. He’d fallen asleep. Midnight flexed his will and caused reinforced mesh to appear over both of his passenger’s faces. A shimmer, maybe just a trick of the light, caught his eye from the opening above him. Midnight looked up to see the mostly transparent face of a creature that was definitely not a local.

  It seemed to be looking at him with prismatic eyes. It scanned over the three linked forms rising out of the crevasse as though it didn’t know what to make of them. The glass insectile creature appeared to be made from long strands of a flexible transparent material.

  “So you’re the glass monster. I’m guessing light isn’t a good way to attack you.”

  At the sound of his voice it made a sound in turn. It sounded like the corner of a piece of glass cutting into the side of another. Regardless of the sound, it clearly communicated hostility.

  Midnight prepared to fight, before realizing that his passengers probably couldn’t withstand any impacts or other fight trauma. “Look, can we postpone this? I promise I’ll come back and kill you later.”

  The only response was a barely visible flicker and the crystalline spiked tail shattering into tiny shards against his chest.

  “Ouch. That was a good hit.” He responded by sending blades of black metal at the glasslike creature. As soon as it flinched, he burst out of the icy hole and gained enough ground clearance to take in the scene.

  Below him was a glittering white panorama of ice and snow. In some places the stone face of the mountain showed through. Some distance from the crevasse there was a discarded backpack. It had been torn apart.

  “Where the hell are you?” he muttered in frustration.

  A tiny shifting in the ice was the only clue. He fired a beam of searing light at the spot. It struck, and refracted into dozens of other directions. “Yep. Useless.”

  He floated down and then started descending the mountain. The glassy monster followed. He finally spotted a small flat area on the side of the mountain face. He sped up and quickly nailed the two cocoons in place with spikes that resembled pitons.

  He looked at the approaching transparent enemy. “Ok, let’s do this.” Inside his suit, his expression had shifted to a savage grin.

  Soon the creature was crying out in pain, trying to escape the implacable force it had engaged. It hadn’t taken long for Midnight to realize the creature was a compound organism, made up of thousands of snake-like creatures of varying lengths, most no thicker than a finger. He felt a sadistic enjoyment in shattering the creature, killing some of the wormlike snakes, then letting them rebuild the bigger creature. Each time it was slower to reform, weaker. When he tired of hearing it whimper, he smashed the last of the snakes into shards of glass like flesh. He returned to the two pods and reattached to them.

  Later, in the Kathmandu hospital, Midnight wheeled the two injured climbers in on a pair of gurneys. “I mean it. I don’t care what you say, but keep me out of it. Trust me, telling the world I helped you will be more trouble for you than it’s worth.”

  The man looked like he didn’t like it, but agreed to keep Midnight’s involvement a secret. He seemed shocked when Midnight’s armor flowed off him, leaving him in a glittering black burqa.

  It was in this full body covering that a hunched over Midnight pulled two gurneys inside and slipped away as soon as medical professionals swarmed over the injured pair.

  Outside he stopped for a moment and reflected on the creature he’d killed. “There must be an incursion somewhere up there. How did I miss this?”