Sphereshifters: Aleph (Story Arcs 1, 2) Read online

over the edge once she reached relative safety in the Archaic's tea hosting room.

  Lancer stumbled, both mentally and physically. He had no idea how to carry Rei up the ladder, didn't know if he had the strength necessary. Feeling horrible, like a complete failure, he decided on going against all better judgement and accepting the path of least resistance.

  Rei still had thin wires attached to her joints, the ones the Archaic painstakingly applied before Lancer interrupted him. Holding onto the ends of each wire, leaving Rei laying on the dirt floor, he climbed the ladder. At the top, with help from Francine, he hoisted Rei up by her strings. His sister dangled in the air like the puppet the Archaic wanted her to be, head lolling to the side and the wooden clatter of her limbs clapping against her torso.

  Still, if anything, Rei was safe.

  And then a bellowing roar erupted from the tunnel below them. The loud, resounding thuds of a provoked beast trampling after its provoker boomed through the tunnel. Francine stared at Lancer, stricken with panic. Lancer didn't know what to do except run.

  He set Rei on his back, her arms draped over each of his shoulders, her head nestled between her own shoulder and his neck. Using the strings again, and hating himself for it, he held onto the wires attached to her arms while tucking his hands beneath her knees in a makeshift variation of a piggyback ride. With Francine's silent approval, her watching and waiting for his first move, they ran.

  The Umbral Stand greeted them, darkness and night claiming the space around them. With the light from the Archaic's workshop, they rushed through the first few yards with ease. After, pitch black and with pillars of trees surrounding them, fatigue pushing in, their escape came to a crawl.

  The bellowing continued, growing louder every second. The Archaic sounded inhuman, his voice a guttural, monstrous thing. In the shadows, every tree became a demon, every soft patch of dirt a hand grasping for their ankles.

  Lancer saw the Archaic everywhere, his eyes deluding him. Only when he noticed the lantern chasing behind them, the roaring beast of a man holding it, did he ignore what he saw and run with full reckless abandon. Francine hastened to keep up, grabbing at pieces of his shirt in what he assumed was a hope to be carried along by his momentum.

  He sprinted all of a few feet before he crashed into a tree shrouded in darkness. Thinking of nothing more than holding onto Rei, he crumpled to the ground. Francine knelt beside him, whimpering. Pain bloomed in Lancer's ankle when he attempted to stand.

  The end. There was nothing more to do, and so he resolved himself to die with his sister in his arms and Francine at his side.

  The Archaic approached, his howls stopping once he realized the incapacitated state of his prey. Lifting the lantern to achieve better range of sight, he spotted the three sitting on the ground next to a tree and swaggered forward, cocksure.

  Breath escaped from Lancer's mouth and refused to come back. He felt lightheaded and dizzy. The world around him spun, blackness twisting in upon itself.

  Small fingers wriggled towards his closed, frustrated fist. He opened his hand a little, letting in the tinier palm. Glancing down, thinking to see Francine wanting to hold his hand before they met their demise, he saw Rei's sylvan digits interlocking with his own. In the center of a twisting blackness, light pooled to form a small, motionless ball upon her chest.

  The longer the luminous sphere remained, the more range of movement Rei seemed to regain. Intoxicated and dizzy, Lancer saw strange shadows lifting off of Rei's body and join with the ball of light. Nausea threatened to overcome him, but he strained himself to keep his eyes open.

  The Archaic grinned, preparing to crack the heavy lantern against Lancer's skull.

  Rei lifted her head, and one arm with it. Water fell from the sky, forming small raindrops

  Deluge

  Rain fell in sheets. Caught in the Umbral Stand's canopy, water pooled on each tree's leaves and coalesced into raindrops the size of marbles. The pitter-patter of rain, like myriad tiny footfalls, overwhelmed the night noises.

  The Archaic looked up, wiping his face. Water drenched his lantern, seeking the flame within. Raindrops hissed, vaporized by the fire, and the lantern dimmed, but remained luminant enough to reveal the immediate area around the Archaic.

  Lancer sprung into action, though with less spring than he wanted. Ankle still aching, and Rei in his lap, he eased her towards Francine and hauled himself to his feet using the tree behind him as leverage. Pain shot through his foot, reaching for his knee. Before the Archaic could finish wiping rain from his cheek, Lancer launched himself at the man.

  Stumbling, the Archaic toppled backwards. His lantern clattered to the ground, the wick's flame dwindling. Hair slick and stuck to his face from the unexpected torrential downpour, Lancer swung a blind fist in the Archaic's direction.

  The tinkering man caught Lancer's knuckles in his palm and shoved the attack away. Without surprise, Lancer had no advantage. The Archaic twisted his body, tossing Lancer to the ground. With a lurch, the boy found himself with a face full of mud and leaves.

  The Archaic hobbled, meaning to stand, but Lancer grabbed his ankle. Pulling with all his strength, he managed to heave the man back onto the ground. A temporary win, as the Archaic simply kicked at his head until he let go and then rose once more.

  Water invaded the confines of the dropped lantern, dousing the flame. Night overcame them.

  Lancer saw nothing, but he heard sloshing footsteps from the Archaic. The man moved tentatively, careful not to fall. Lancer rolled to the side right before a kick aimed for his shoulder would have connected. A rush of wind and water whooshed past his ear. Whatever assault he'd avoided, it wasn't enough to deter the Archaic, though.

  The recluse stopped, listened, waited. When none of that revealed Lancer's vicinity, he kicked wildly around, spraying water and dirt in all directions. A splash caught Lancer in the face. He bit down, teeth grinding, determined.

  He would live. He wouldn't accept anything else.

  Crouching on his knees, he ignored the pain in his ankle and focused on his surroundings. Where did the water come from? A storm like this shouldn't have erupted out of nowhere. He vaguely recalled Rei's homework. Earlier in the day, before the kidnapping, she'd mentioned an assignment given to her by Ms. Allen. She'd asked him--though he suspected more to tease him than for real information--how to sphereshift a cirrus cloud; mentioning, as Ms. Allen told her, with practice she could form cumulonimbus clouds.

  Lancer knew nothing of clouds besides the fact that they inhabited the sky and tended to rain occasionally. And whatever cloud lay above, it had decided to rain heavily. A gift from Rei? His sister was moving again, a sphere of light reviving her, and if anything was the reason for this rain he thought it was her.

  When he tried to stand, his foot sank into the mud. The ground churned, sucking at his leg and pulling it further in. This didn't happen often, if ever, and he needed to think for a second to realize why. All the while the Archaic thrashed air, coming closer and closer through effort of deduction.

  The ground usually didn't give way, he thought, because there was more ground beneath it(a logical conclusion?). When miners mined caves, they set support beams to halt the walls from collapsing on them. This he knew.

  And if the mud was pulling at his body, it must mean nothing was below it. Except how did that make sense? Then he remembered the underground laboratory, and everything became clear. Whatever the Archaic had done after Lancer knocked him over and grabbed Rei, whatever rage induced mistreatment or burst of uncontrolled sphereshifting, it must have knocked loose the support beams making the ceiling susceptible to destruction.

  Wonderful, Lancer thought. He sat in the mud, in the middle of it, ready to go tumbling into the wreckage of an underground room.

  Maybe not, though. He had a plan.

  Easing his leg out of the mud, he lay flat and rolled sideways. As quietly as possible, he rolled until the ground solidified somewhat. Reaching for his foot, he remo
ved his shoe.

  The Archaic closed in on where Lancer had been, moving slowly. Still kicking, he must have sensed instability in the ground and didn't want to stumble. Lancer understood anger, though; he felt it whenever his peers mocked him for his lack of sphereshifting ability. True rage, the maddening sort, had no rhyme or reason; it merely needed to run its course.

  Whenever Lancer got upset, he threw rocks at the pond. Heavy, they made a satisfying smack hitting the water. He repeated this behavior, using his shoe and the rain-drenched ground as his rock and pond.

  The shoe splashed when it landed. The Archaic wailed, prepared for vengeance. Night blind, Lancer heard the Archaic pouncing upon his shoe, flopping in the mud. The man bellowed and screamed, finding nothing but leather and laces.

  A circle of light bloomed where the Archaic lay, the earth opening to swallow him whole. Lancer slid backwards, avoiding being sucked in. The madman slipped, gravity claiming his body. Clinging hands reached for safety, attempting to pull himself out, but his fists yanked snatches of mud instead of handholds to freedom.

  The ground collapsed. The pitter-patter of rain drowned out the Archaic's screams and he crashed into the laboratory floor.

  Using the burst of light to guide him, Lancer searched around. Rei and Francine huddled together nearby.

  Seeing Lancer alright, Rei's concern changed to a