Horada Bela Veto - Sample
Sampke from the first book of the novel (call it a long introduction section if you like)
The night sky was black, devoid of stars, of life, of light and of any hope for a future. Without any past left above to see, without a whisper of photons or rumor of history, the few left remaining could barely comprehend. Their minds had begun to loosen, slowly at first, taking millennia or months. It came on quickly, when it finally and obviously must. Cities flickered out one at a time, an eerie simulacra, a macabre mirror of the sky’s demise, the galactic calamity echoing through the narrowing dimension like the hammer striking the anvil. The surface - the anvil - could barely be called ground anymore, shattered for the absence of light, shattered for the will of a man removed, outside, a man beyond. He moved in directions that couldn’t be, and his mere presence sent ripples through spaces both seen and unseen, simultaneously understood and unknown. The minds that didn’t sever, didn’t snap under the loss of all the concepts of orientation, first wandered under instinct. This was relatively short, though relativity now lacked the authority had it once commanded, and soon they understood again what a body was, and recognized themselves as minds as well. They grew, warped and terrified, in the infinite space between the beginning of the end, and against all odds they flourished in the true lack of reality that followed. What had once been an amalgam of minds, a single truth with a thousand thousand voices, was now fractured. Individuals were born, or came to be by self actualizing, pulling matter like a loose thread from the superstructure of the universe, a skeletal, resonating web. Some of them remembered, and some came to know, what had caused the calamity, though for a time they would not speak of it for it did not deign to be spoken of. Instead they grew, exploring the sub-dimensions of the limited universe they were trapped in, finding a series of civilizations, eight in all. They were at first delighted to discover that some of these other beings, already so similar as to have been obvious projections of their own race, could too harmonize and work threads of matter as well. It was in the cultivation of humanity that they discovered war. Black destruction within further destruction wracked the wanderers as purists demanded that they cease integrating the lesser beings into an ascended state, claiming their ability and positions entitled them to godhood, and soon forgot the calamity that had forged their galactic stillbirth. Soon the purists began raiding and killing any of the wanderers that coupled with, or even sheltered, the newly risen humans. The war spilled to the earth, and the fires of those conflicts burned across time, each of the civilization manifesting its’ own ethnocentric fear of the other. The wars echo still, ignorant to the weeping wanderers whose only remaining religion was of guilt. Unable to be peaceful, burdened as they were by the sins of humanity, instead they used their ability to rewrite the stilted universe. The purists broke off and called themselves Vagantur, those who wander, their leaders casting off their mortal shells and guiding them from an ethereal plane between realities. Those that saw humanity as the answer, the one thing that might make them strong enough to repair the fractures and restore them to the natural universe, remained in the city they had founded, Noveria Feroch, and called the community of integrated peoples they had formed there the Viator; the Travelers. To cull their differences and wage their wars they both continued to draw matter forth from the universe, building massive cities and magnificent crafts that could dart in and out of dimensions and worlds. Travelers dubbed it “weaving” in tribute to how they came to manipulate the delicate, glowing streams of matter, while the Vagantur called it “moli” and claimed they did not gracefully weave the gifts of the universe, they bent them to their will. Some called it divine, some called it science, all knew it to be power. They are both nearly beneath notice now, though once the Viator and Vaguntur had been known. There were those along both paths that would be known again, if they could. They had been known to some worlds as observers, as gods, as human, as machine, and as harbingers. Truly they were, though the description pales when one understands the fury of a god eater. The nature of dilating and compressing time is infinite, and in that one infinite moment something granted them an understanding, a mnemonic legacy hiding in their DNA. This understanding is one they possess, but must come to truly know on their own. They moved freely within their own time lines, laying beneath the notice of the dark, hiding behind shadow, and watched. They only left in search of discovery, of understanding. They had, after all, been made to understand, and lived for ideas, so while they waited, they warred.
Lev Kuada Seing scouted, moving like a ghost through the abandoned battlefield, his hesab in hand, blade cocked but weave unfired, black clothing flapping in the seething winds. Acrid smoke hung in the air, roiling in the same way the black and green clouds churned above, the devastated landscape bearing the scars of the nuclear holocaust that had long ago made the humans of this dimension into a subterranean race. Lev wove through the clumps of broken bodies, side-stepping the scattered shards of a long dead city. He adjusted the light mask that covered his face, irritated by the tubes running alongside his throat and into his black jacket pocket. He closed the hesab and holstered it, reaching up with both hands to open the jacket, pulling the zipper down a few inches an pushing the tubes to the side. They immediately bounces back into place and he cursed, trying once again. He was so caught up in this that he didn’t notice the black shadow slinking from broken pillar to shattered wall alongside him. Shifting his weight he held one side of the jackets’ collar in place, trying to zip it up again. The shadow darted forward, crouching by a pile of bodies, watching Lev carefully. He moved again, but too fast to see. Lev reacted instinctively and immediately, his hand flying to his holster and his hesab flaring to life bright enough to potentially blind his attacker. He immediately wove and thrust matter downward, opening the well as wide as he could. He was propelled upward with so much force the ground below him buckled, leaving two craters were his booted feet had just been. The attacker laughed and followed, jumping even higher than Lev and throwing up so much dust and wind that the cloud caught up to the pair in a moment. Blind, Lev swung widlly, arcing the sword around his body, attempting to block blows from any potential direction. His instincts proved to be dead on, and the weighted blade met another in a shower of sparks and pops, tiny fission explosions popping in the blinding light behind his thin hesab. The satisfaction in connecting only lasted as long as the shock of impact, then his hesab exploded violently, showering him in burning metallic fragments that tore into his side, his chest and his face. Lev howled and barely managed to keep enough control to slow his rate of descent as he neared the ground. Before he could reach to the ground he felt two bare feet slam into his chest and drie him down on to his back. The air in his lungs expelled in a whoosh, and for one insane moment all he could really think about was howterrible it must be for him to be breathing all this dust. The heavy attacker moved off of him, stepping away and chuckling low beneath his breath. “What are you?!” The man howled so feriociously that Lev started, and trickles of blood pooled into his eyes. He reached a hand to his face and pulled it away immediately, feeling a number of deep lacerations. He lifted his other hand and stared at in shock. Ending partway down his forearm, strips of flesh and black cloth so entwined he could not tell them apart. His horror was short lived, as the barefoot man took threequick steps toward him, then seemed to fall. He stopped, hovering a few inches above Lev’s face. All Lev could make out was the bright shine of white teeth, the blood muddled his vision too much to make out any other features. He could hear the mans’ black cloak, which was all he appeared to be wearing, flapping violently in the wind. The man reached down and ripped off the mask that covered the lower half of Levs’ face, then pushed his nose to Lev’s. “What are you?” He asked, soft this time. “Lev,” Lev coughed. “Lev Kuada Seing.” “I,” the man seized the sides of Lev’s head, dashing it to the hard packed ground beneath them. “Know that! I didn’t ask who you were, you slug, I asked what you were!” “I…I don’t understand.” Lev reeled, trying to organize his thoughts. He couldn’t tell this man anything. Trying to fathom who he even was, as he clearly was not a Vagantur. Lev pointed to the man’s cloak. “No uniform.” “Ah!” The man’s teeth appeared again, eerily white under the features washed out by the blood in Lev’s eyes. “You’re correct, young man, no uniform. I should not require one. All know me. Though none would recognize.” Reaching up to rub the blood from his eyes, Lev thought furiously, trying out outpace the pain that was finally beating back the adrenaline. Despite the innumerable lacerations and missinig hand, his mind was beginning to clear, but none of this made sense, regardless. Only succeeding in grinding the blood into his eyes, he tried to move. Every inch of him howled in protest, and he felt that even his body was betraying him. He focused instead on assessment, trusting that his nimble mind could work past the rising crescendo of agony. Who was this mad man? Where did he come from? Who did he work for? What did he want? How can I delay until everyone else catches up? Listen, Lev, he told himself, listen and be very, very careful. “The won’t remember you?” Lev asked weakly. “Of course they remember me!” The man roared, racing toward Lev from where he’d been pacing. Lev squished his eyes shut and braced for a kick, or a punch, or a deathblow. Nothing. He slowly opened them, and the man was staring down at him, once again only a few inches above his face. Eyes so dark they were almost black bored into him, the mans face seemed to be stuck in a horrible rictus of a smile. His long fingererd hand rose up in front of Lev’s face, and sure he was going to die, Lev set his jaw. The man’s hand slowly lowered, the middle finger bending down to…tap him on the nose? “Boop.” The madman cackled again, and jumped back, walking from side to side, staying in Lev’s view and gesticulating like a stage actor, projecting in a terrible, bone-splintering timbre. “Of course they remember me, young Lev. They must, for I am the name written in their DNA, a sobriquet so sweet it breaks hearts and shatters minds, a magnifence so terrifying that Archons and gods tremble as over and over I carve it into your souls.” He stopped, his arms held out, wrists loose and hands hanging, with one leg crossed over the other. His gaze was on the ground before him, and he slowly lifted it to roiling sky. He never left his pose, but lifted one, insolent finger up to the sky and grinned wickedly. There was a concussion so deep and low that Lev thought he might vibrate right off his own skeleton. What he saw next, though, brought Lev back from the cloying darkness of blood loss. The clouds parted. They did not swirl apart, this did not appear to be blown away, they simply split, slamming outward in four directions and forming a square. Quickly a thin stream of cloud pulled from the bottom of the square, pooling in the center and forming a shape so quickly Lev couldn’t keep track of it. An orb, representing a star, formed in the center of the square, and circles appeared around it, smaller orbs materializing on the circles and began a degrading orbit the central orb, all of it reminiscient of a solar system or a galazy. To the left of the galaxy a giant oval manifested, and tiny spikes pointed inward along its’ circumference as it moved toward the cloud galaxy. Lev’s heart hammered in his chest. He was overmatched from the beginning, and now understood why his meager attempt at self-defense had meant almost nothing, despite the fact that he was one of the finest warriors currently alive in the sequestered time-space of Laniakea. Before the words could cross his lips, the man spoke. Lev’s eyes lowered to him, and he was shocked to see the man’s eyes had lit up, literally, with the hot blue light of a supernova, and while his cloak flapped in the wind bits of darkness seemed to be ripped off of it and into the air, like black leaves being torn from a tree. “I, Lev Kuada Seing, am the fury that drives the storm, I am the shadow in the darkness, the devourer of time. I have taken this place as my own, and watch gleefully while you petty manifestations try vainly to understand my eternal war, uselessly affecting the false light of peace. I am the soulsucker, the godeater. I am Athlai Pul, Lev, and I’ve come for you.” Lev didn’t hesitate, knowing that he was dead anyway. “Okay, soulmuncher,” He coughed and blood dribbled out onto his chin. He realized, as he inhaled the poisonous air, that some of the shattered hesab must have breached his negative pulse armor. He took a quick, rattling breath. “Two things.” The man didn’t move a muscle, his face didn’t so much as twitch, but Lev had the feeling that their was anger, frustration, boiling underneath the surface. His performance had not intimidated as intended. After a few long moments, in which Lev struggled not to breath, Athlai opened his mouth as if to speak. Lev cut him off. “I have to know. Where did you go to school? That’s an impressive little show, you could really take that out on the road-” Lev’s reply was cut short by what felt like a kick to the face, though Athlai didn’t move. He wheezed again, and this time it was like inhaling a blackness that immediately took up residence on the peripherals of his vision. “What do you want?” He growled, trying not to cry out. “I want to dissect you, flay you alive so I can see who you really are. It’s hard to hide behind anything when your skin has been peeled off, inch by inch.” Athlai motioned with one hand and Lev felt the familiar tug of a well being opened up nearby, and a white hot something materialized before him, still shapinig itself. Without warning or hestitation the glowing, spade-like object darted into one of Lev’s eyes, not going deep enough to kill, but deep enough to blind. Lev howled, and tried to thrash. Some immense weight held him down, though, and he had to lie still while Athlai dragged the white hot spade down his cheek. The smell of his own burning flesh made Lev gag, then vomit into his own mouth. Athlai made a sound of disgust and released Lev’s head. I have to make him kill me, Lev thought desperately, barely holding on as winds of madness and pain ripped at his mind. He felt another jab, then heard a soft ripping sound, like cashmere or silk being torn. A moment later he felt the burning pain, and fresh agony coiled on his chest like a viper. The ripping continued, and Lev felt the strip of skin tear free just as he screamed. He thought he’d scream forever, but he started coughing as blood dripped down his throat. Confused, he tried to cough again, but something slimy and wet and covered in blood was forcing itself down his throat. His remaining eye widened in horror. It was his skin! This lunatic was making him eat his own skin! Suddenly it stopped, the weight in his chest lifted, and the world began to come back. Bright lights danced in front of his eye, and there was a roaring in his ears. Just past the roaring he could hear a shout, then another. “What in the fuck is that?” A deep, Scottish accent sounded. Lev stirred, feeling hope rise. It was Simon! “I don’t know! Clouds?” Replied another voice, the tone smarmy and amused. “Clouds don’t do that, Xan, don’t be ridiculous. Page Lev.” The female voice, so richly accented and musical, could only belong to Marjorie. The radio handset he’d been wearing when Athlai attacked wasn’t on Lev’s belt anymore, but he heard it’s beep only a few feet away. He tried to move, but found he couldn’t lift so much as a finger. “Looks like backup is here.” Athlai said softly, stepping over to Lev. “I wanted to take you with me, but it appears I’ve broken your neck while I was taking my pleasures. Ah, well, I apologize for getting out of hand, Lev. Not that we would have had a civilized relationship, not at all, but I’m still sorry. I was hoping to get so much out of you on the subject. You may not understand this, but I’ve killed you a thousand thousand times, and I’m growing bored with it. I will discover the meaning behind this, though, so take heart. Know, though, that in your last moments you were useless. A ragdoll for my pleasures, a worm to pinch between my fingers.” “What the fuck? Lev!” Simon shouted in the distance, and Lev could hear his heavy footfalls. “Mar, Xan, get the fuck up here!” Lev saw Athlai smile wanly, then look up. He felt a tugging, like a wind was blowing from the ground through his hair, and he saw the blossoming light in Athlai’s hands. He tried to croak out a warning, but nothing came. Athlai extended a hand and the light shot out, faster than the eye could see and making a sound eerily similar to that of a shrieking woman. Lev heard a concussive thud, and felt more than heard a distant landing. “Holy shit!” Xan yelled. “Simon! SIMON!” Suddenly the ground started to vibrate, and the feeling of a wind rising from beneath him increased. Athlai looked down at him one more time, a macabre pity in his eyes. No, not pity. Disappointment. More footsteps, and Athlai’s head snapped up as he place one foot on Lev’s chest. He held out his hand and shook his head, a half smile curving up his face. “Oh please, oh please, don’t!” Marjorie screamed, and Lev could imagine the tears in her bright eyes, tears like the day Lysa had died, tears like the day…no, he thought, best not think of that. The feeling of wind suddenly stopped, and Mar yelled again. “No!” Athlai just laughed, stepping fully on to Lev’s chest. Pain blossomed where his dirty foot ground into the skinless flesh, but it didn’t last long. The black cloaked madman looked straight down into Lev’s eyes. “There will be another, I will find him. Find my answers.” Suddenly all sound stopped, and Athlai seemed to vibrate, the resonation pitching higher and higher. Lev could hear Marjorie shrieking and Xan calling out to Simon. “Shit!” He heard Xan yell. “Shit, Lev, no!” THUMP. Athlai Pul disappeared in a collapsing tide of matter, and the mounting air pressure from his compressions all flew out at once. Lev Kuada Seing didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to cry out. He was only able to lock his eyes with Xans. The the concussion hit him and his body simply burst, like overripe fruit tossed against a wall, all of the gore immediately compressed straight down into the packed dirt, forming a man-shaped crater of blood and bone before the shrieking and howling of Mar and Xan.
He awoke to madness, pain and the dark. All he knew was the barest flickers of light beyond his eyelids, like shadows in darkness, figures in caves. Blind, he struggled against the lethargy that gripped his body, but the insidious vice of torment kept him still. He wasn’t a person at all anymore, he was just anguish. Sensations he had never known were possible pulsed in time with his rapidly beating heart, his head pounded in an off rhythm, conducting the ceaseless symphony of agony. His neck and chest were awash in flames, and the left side of his face felt flayed. He took a deep, shuddering breath and howled, the expanding lungs had rent the devastating wounds in his chest and he felt the fissures open anew, spilling blood that rolled down his side and began to pool beneath him. Each breath was a slash across his torso, again and again and again, knives flashed across his near incomprehensible thoughts, light catching the edge like diamonds as they tore him to literal ribbons. “No! No! Stay still, m'dear! Do not trouble yourself to move!” A woman’s voice, thick with a Scottish accent, demanded he forestall his movement yet calmed his mind. “Come on, Xan, Simon, help me. No, no, hold his legs, Simon, strap down his arms so he doesn’t hurt himself. I’ve got this one.” “S'bloody lucky we ‘adn’t stitched him up yet, else we’d have a proper mess.” said a deep, gravelly voice with a London accent. “You got 'im, Marjorie? Aye, 'old 'im like that.” He thrashed feebly against the sudden pressure on his limbs, and as he felt the restraints lock into place he sank back on to a table that was smooth and felt cool against his hot skin. His body arced again as a spasm of pain shot through him, and he felt a spray of blood spatter his neck and chest as his wounds tore further. Not again, he thought, not tied up again! He knew what was to come. “Please,” He whined pitifully. “Please don’t put me back in there, please. Not again, no, no, NO! NOT AGAIN!” “Shh, hush now my darling.” The Scottish woman said softly, and he felt a small hand stroking his hair. Someone beside him snorted and he felt her hand tense, but she didn’t say anything to the man, just continued to sooth him. “Sh, sh, you’re alright now, you’re okay. You’re free, he’s gone. We’re bringing you to help, to the UTA. They’ll heal these up right quick, you might not have many scars, even.” He whimpered again, trying to find his voice amid the pulsing waves of pain and the pounding between his temples. He felt he person who had bound his legs move away, but the hand stroking his hair continued. “Where? He gasped. “When?” “We’re on a transport, moving through the Narrow right now. We’re going to the UTA at three-six.” This confused him, but thinking through the insurmountable pain was impossible. As a creature of anguish there was no chance at any real thought. “When? I asked,” He gasped as another insidious wave wracked his body. “When? Who?” “Easy, easy now.” A third voice answered, reedy and high with the characteristic twang of a southern accent. He felt a slight pinch in his shoulder, a mosquito bite compared to the rest of him. “Charva will get you fixed up when we get to the UTA.” “Thanks, Xan. You’d better get something to fight off infection.” “Who?” He croaked as warmth seemed to flood out from his stomach. “Who?” “It’s me, darling.” The warm Scottish voice whispered in his ear. “It’s your Mar. Don’t you recognize me?” The man called Xan snorted again, and the woman made a hissing sound through her teeth. “Marjorie…” The thick British accent broke in. He could hear the clatter of metal on metal, and turned his head toward the sound. He felt a tugging on his neck, but the pain was far away. The hand stroking his hair turned his face up again, gentle but firmly. “Can’t see. “ He croaked. “Sorry, can’t see. So sorry.” The woman sniffled, very softly. He was starting to see again, to make out shapes in his peripheral vision, a round light above him set behind a filter. Then he heard the soft sound of metal on cloth, like a knife leaving it’s sheath, and the world ran away from him as he became anguish again. He jerked and tried to thrash, but was too tightly bound. “Attie, Attie no. No!” He strained against the restraints. “Calm down, calm down, shh.” Again the woman’s voice resumed the serene quality of a mother comforting a child. “It’s okay, he’s gone, Lev. He’s gone. That man, the one who had you, is dead. Xan, get a sedative, too.” “Dead?” He couldn’t believe it. “No, he’s not. You can’t kill him, he’s too fast, he’s too smart. No, he’s not dead. He’s not. He’s coming.” “He is, he is.” Marjorie began stroking his hair again. “The explosions were huge, massive, he’s gone. No way he survived.” “Doubt—” He choked. “I doubt it.” “I was there, Lev. He’s dead.” Marjorie said firmly. “No.” He repeated, whispering. He wanted to know why this woman kept calling him Lev, but his body felt so…low. Lethargic limbs wouldn’t respond to him and his voice was lost to the insane mirth rising within him. “No,” He chuckled. “Never dead, never gone.” He began to chuckle in earnest now, and he felt the hand in his hair stop and sensed Marjorie stiffen. The low mirth began to rise into raucous, crazed expressions of wild glee. Marjorie’s hand pulled away suddenly, her sniffling resumed, rising to a barely audible weeping. There was another pinch in his shoulder, then one more in the crook of his arm and he felt a rush of warm exhaustion, like he’d settled down to a well banked fire after a long day of work. The bit of vision he’d recovered began to fade quickly away, the mad laughter going with it. He managed a whisper. “Who is Lev?” Then the cordial darkness rushing through his veins took over, and the last thing he heard was the woman utter a loud, choking sob.
