The entranced soldiers began to regain their senses, steadying their grips on their sabers, or reloading their rifles in the case of those who had extra rounds to spare within reach.
That brief reprieve probably saved their lives. Through the ringing of his ears, Richie heard another noise - the blare of a ship's horn. Leon heard it too. Stumbling, they cast their looks out over the bay, where a large fishing trawl was cleaving through the waves, barreling toward them. At the wheel, the frail, weathered captain was lashed in place by binding filaments of black velvet, his body covered in shades that had taken the shape of something between lamprey and barnacles. The old man's jaw quivered as his muscles tremored, and his eyes were already vacant and lifeless like the shade kind's own.
The ship was going to crash into the dock at full speed.
"For the love of-" Leon groaned and rolled his eyes. "Take cover!" he cried out to what men remained alive and sane.
Richie turned and bounded inward toward the web of piers linking the harbor platform to the residential districts. At the far end of the walkways lay the evacuation checkpoint gates where this neighborhood had already emptied its survivors through, leaving the shacks, boathouses, and docks empty and eerie in the howling wind and the flicker of flames at their front. A rope bridge swayed in the breeze to Richie's left, rising to one of the upper tier platforms where a narrow stretch of deck was loaded with huge piles of lumber and iron plating. A few loose ropes dangled from the edge, trailing in the wind, their ends lit by stray embers like huge fuses. A canal like a river cut the block in front of Richie across the middle, both halves linked by quaint wood bridges, and an unmanned Venetian gondola drifted across the current, banging randomly into the sides of the channel. Swarms of scurrying plague rats fled from the alleyways and crevices nearest the burning wreckage of the harbor, stampeding toward the platforms at the far end of the district beyond those bridges. They squeezed their supple forms under the gates of the checkpoint, flinging themselves into the sea where the automated ferries were drawn by the ropeway up the aquatic slope to the floating bay. Their wormy tails twitched and twirled as they scampered up the iron bulkheads that had slammed shut, their little claws scraping against the rusted flecks of metal.
Richie's strategy was to follow the rats and hope for the best, even as he knew he could never scale those sheltering iron walls in time should the shades corner him there. There wasn't time to weigh his options before the runaway trawl impacted the harbor, and Leon and the others were already scattering for short-notice cover. Richie glanced at the intersecting pools below the wooden streets, but thought better of trying to dive to safety within them. Even if he could submerge to duck under the incoming bow of the ship, he was dead weight in the sea, helpless against the shades, who had more than proved their superior amphibious movements.
Richie heard the thunderous crashing of boards being split apart as the trawl slammed into the platform. Shacks were blown away to splinters to either side of it as its figurehead - a silken-haired mermaid - snapped off, and the collision nearly capsized the vessel. Iron ground against iron as its plated sides screeched against the encircling rings and posts of the dock poles, throwing countless sparks into the sea, and the ship was turned sideways as it slammed against the inner docks. Those docks broke apart like a trail of dominos falling out from under Richie's feet, who had to sprint to keep solid footing, a plunge into the bay always a half-step behind him. Then a wayward powder keg rolled off the upper deck as a snapped support beam collapsed the structure. The barrel broke in the screeching fountain of sparks, and the gunpowder reserve exploded like a small meteorite impact. Rolling clouds of smoke and fire were thrown skyward as the sea turned orange with burning debris thrown across it. A ship's mast came crashing down, collapsing the roof of a boathouse. Overhead telephone cables snapped and danced wildly like berserk cobras, spitting electric sparks. Richie was tumbling.
His body skipped across water like a stone thrown across a lake, and he rolled onto his back as his waist struck a sunken wooden beam. His hair hung around his face in matted clumps, slick with seawater and filthy with silt and debris fragments. It felt like he had ground his head against wet sand. He clutched at his pounding skull, briefly forgetting where he was and thinking back in time that he had taken Leon’s suplex just now. The fog cleared from his vision, and he saw that he was sitting in a shallow pool of water where a section of dock had collapsed into a channel and flooded. All around him were splintered boards and fallen shack walls, and the toppled ship mast he had narrowly avoided being crushed by cut off the flooded area from the encroaching flames behind it where the powder keg had exploded. The backside of the mast was slowly crackling as it dried and began to burn in the heat, and flecks of embers and burning wood chips leaped over the rail to splash and sizzle in the stagnant pond Richie soaked in.
He stood, feeling his forehead where a thin streamstreamer of blood had begun to run down from his scalp, and looked about the ruined docks. Walls of debris cut him off from the path the rats had followed toward the now barred evacuation route toward the floating bay. Overhead, Richie heard Leon’s voice echo from somewhere amidst the rooftops, visibility blotted out by the orange glow and the smoky haze choking the sky. He couldn’t tell exactly where the voice was coming from, but he could make out the words.
“Head for the marina, there’s another security gate! I’ll meet you there to let you in, and we can head for shelter, fortify our defenses!” Leon called.
Richie nodded his head and called back over the walls of wreckage. “Ok!”
He heard Leon curse “Oh shit!” and could guess at the danger Leon confirmed a moment later. “I can’t stay here, it’s not safe. You’d better get moving too, they’ll find you soon!”
Roger that, Richie thought. He jogged with a noticeable limp, surmounting the deadfalls of ruined boards and busted barrels, till he cleared the site of the crushed canal freeway and came to a lower strip of dock, colored over with gray instead of the usual ruddy hue of reddish-brown. It was a straight shot running toward a bend where a big billboard rose out of the water, offering rental spaces for pleasure boats and personal crafts under covered lodgings in the adjacent closed-roof marina and boat storage facility. The dock was roughly the length of a football field - Richie could make that, he affirmed to himself.
In any case, it didn’t do to stand around waiting for trouble - he could already hear the persistent chittering of shades pushing their way through the flames, and ignoring the dying squeaks of their incinerated kin, pushing over the dead to keep advancing like voracious driver ants borne from Hell.
No sooner had Richie started trotting down the dock’s length than liquid shadows seeped under the crumbled wood and entrenched mast, swirling and coalescing into joined shapes of hungry darkness. Sparing a glance over his shoulder, Richie saw a handful of shades lose their defined forms, becoming spastic flailing globules of inky depths made manifest, and these coiled around each other like ropey black worms. These loathsome shapes pressed tightly against each other, compressing into thick, muscle-bound black arms and legs, and the disparate entities ultimately combined into a single hulking figure whose stature was matched only by that of the cloaked wraith Richie had encountered in the apartment. The shade conglomerate’s palette shifted over into tanned trench coat and heavy boots, and its void of face was covered by a plume of wide-brimmed fedora.
“This old trick again?” Richie tutted.
The shades had combined and taken on the form of Richie’s childhood kidnapper. Clearly they had missed the memo that one of their leftovers - that pitiful phantom pain - had already used that low blow technique to get under Richie’s skin. The boy was adamant that the cheap illusion would not work twice.
All the same, he didn’t fancy getting caught in those powerful hands and shaken like a ragdoll till every bone was broken in his limp flesh. Richie ran.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“I hope you realize this means war!” he called back at the faux-cultist mid-stride. “Caving that creep’s face in is a duty long overdue! All you’ve done is save me the trouble of looking for him!”
The kidnapper only trudged forward in that solid, unbroken stride, face stern and resolute. While the shades seemed to be mindless beasts who could only mimic the intentions and the substances of the horrors they embodied, the illusion was far too convincing for Richie’s liking. He was no longer being pursued by an ensemble of living shadows baying for emotion to suck dry - he was being chased by the cultist thug who had taken him as a child, had stuffed him in his trunk, and who had locked him in a human kennel where he was left for a night to listen to the death rattles and shrieks of children being slaughtered like lambs in the darkened tribute room beyond the hall. And the man had unfinished business with Richie, the one who got away.
Richie’s dragons had unfinished business with that man too. They glowed to life again on Richie’s arms, growling and shaking - they were angered.
“How good of you to join us!” Richie snapped at his runes. “Do you only function when you feel like it?”
The dragons looked almost apologetically at Richie, and he seemed to hear their voices in his mind.
Do not forget our autonomy. We will keep you alive, in the interest of all parties involved. But we are not toys, nor pets to be bent to your will. Our mark on your skin is not a gift given freely, but a loan. No - a trial. Only your conviction can make our power your own. The enemy at your back - he bears the face of the one who subjugated us, the one whose like we were forged to oppose. You hate him, do you not?
Richie growled. “Of course I hate him!”
Why?
“Because he ruined my life!”
How?
Richie grit his teeth. “His cult forced me to live my life in isolation, always watching my back every time I left the house. No holidays, no family gatherings, no friends or vacations,”
More. Tell us more. Keep going. Find the core of your grudge and grasp it with both hands!
“He had my mother murdered! Gunned down in cold blood in our own home! I was thrown out the garden window and forced to flee, to run away and leave the only person who ever loved me behind to die! I had to cover my ears against her dying screams and the hail of gunshots!”
Deeper!
Richie’s eyes began streaming tears. “I had to live on the edge, on my own, homeless, afraid, cold and hungry. I had to steal to survive, I had to take from others so that I could eat! I had to sleep with one eye open, never knowing when they would come for me again! I couldn’t go to anyone for help, I’d just be laughed off! Every day, every night, every moment of my existence was nothing but bitter regret and resentment!”
Richie was scratching at his arms. “They tried to kill me, for these things on my body - for you! Because I was born with you fuckers under my skin! What did I do to deserve this?!”
Richie was tearing at his hair now.
You’ve done nothing to deserve it, Richie. If you meant what you said in declaring war on that man, then turn and face him now. Let the indignity and the outrage at the life you were cheated out of fuel you, let your decade-long nightmare become your strength to avenge yourself and everything you lost. If you don’t stand and fight, you’ll always run. You will never stop running. There will always be new monsters to look for in the dark. You must decide if you will run away forever, or if you will drag them out of the dark and make them bow.
“You want me to let anger and fear consume me? Like them?!” Richie thrust an arm back at the pursuing shade-man.
No. You will consume your anger and fear. Make the darkness fear YOU.
Richie felt his legs anchored to the spot, and he nearly fell, only a few meters from the gate to the marina. His dragons had become sutures binding him in place, tethering their scaly bodies through the boards.
Our purpose is this. they said to him. But we cannot act alone. You must give us your consent, your will, to be your spear against the darkness. Let us off our leash to do as we were meant to. It is the destiny we share.
“Leave that trite out of it! This is my fight, mine! It’s not for you, or for destiny!” Richie argued with them as the shade-man approached.
The giant’s shadow towered over them, boots thumping on the dock heavily.
Will you kill him when you find him? they asked.
Richie froze in place, suddenly freezing. “I… I don’t…”
Let go of what holds you back. Discard the things in your way. He deserves death. You have every reason to want that man dead. Admit that much at least to yourself.
Richie trembled.
At the very least - this pretender in that man’s likeness is no different than a traumatic flashback to your loss of innocence, or a nightmare. His face is but target practice. Treat it as you would if there was nothing holding you back, no morals or scruples to complicate things. Do as you will. Release.
Richie choked back sobs and closed his eyes, pointing his arms at the imposing shade-man. “Goddammit!”
Say it.
“Dragon Sign - Level 4 unlocked!” Richie cried out.
The dragons coiled off of Richie’s arms and sprang into the shade-man, burrowing under his coat and chewing into his interior, penetrating and infesting him.
Go. We shall return to you soon.
Richie nodded once, biting back the hot tears, and sprang for the junction at the billboard, throwing himself down the slight steps under the cover of the marina roof shrouding the boat storage in darkness. The echoes of the struggle tapered off behind him.
He was standing on a long walkway that ran through a kind of enclosed mini-bay where dozens of private sailboats and personalized crafts were moored for safekeeping. Various smaller docks branched away from the main one like blood vessels, dividing lanes into what were essentially aquatic parking spaces. The outer wall of the marina was semi-enclosed, looking like the entrance to a great storage shed or maintenance outlet, complete with a metal shutter door that could be unfurled from the ceiling to close the flooded building off from the artificial river it bled out into, and the open sea beyond that. The smells of lumber and moss were all about Richie, who stepped cautiously under the shadows of the place as they flickered and bent to the whim of the caution lights and reflective surfaces of the boats, and the lampposts in place to warn walkers against stepping off into the drink.
He heard water churning, and wood knocking. He looked over one of the parking aisles, where he saw a digney was rocking against the dock, as if disturbed from underneath by something. Richie felt cold unease as he heard something ripple elsewhere, and he quickened his pace, heading toward the end of the viewing platform where a set of steep stairs waited to lead him to the front gate, and Leon. The docks began to shake and creak, along with the roof, as though the building were caught in a great earthquake. Miniature tidal waves splashed over the docks, the pushing force surprisingly strong and more than capable of sweeping Richie right over the side if he wasn’t careful. In the center of the shed, an outcropping dock was overturned entirely, and broke away from the rest, sinking as it snapped in half inward, as though drawn down by an aquatic antlion.
Richie tripped over an inward-mounted mooring that was built too closely to the main walkway, and skidded down on his knees and elbows. He heard hissing and bellowing as something lifted itself out of the water. Instinctively catapulting himself forward, Richie dodged a fountain of sea spray and flung reptilian saliva ushering in the arrival of the gigantic albino alligator. It dropped its heavy, flat belly onto the dock and snapped its elongated jaws over where Richie had been. Its claws pulled deep furrows in the docking, like vicious rakes. The beast turned its head toward where Richie had sprawled forward, and roared at him, shaking the roof with the thunderous reverberation.
“Not you again!” Richie screeched.
I hope the others are doing better than I am. Huh? Richie caught his strange thought mid stride. Others? If Cuppy was one of them, then who was the other?