Crysalis: Beginnings Read online



  Crysalis Beginnings

  Meade's Tale segment copyright K.G. McAbee 2014

  Iionii's Tale segment copyright J.A. Johnson 2014

  Vira's Tale segment copyright J. Kirsch 2014

  All content copyright © J.A. Johnson, J. Kirsch and K.G. McAbee 2014

  Cover art copyright © J.A. Johnson 2014

  A Note from the Authors:

  Crysalis (formerly chrysalis or chrysalides; spelling reformed New System Dictionary, 25th Edition, 2327: Burroughs Ltd. New New York and Selene). The pupa of certain kinds of insects, especially of moths and butterflies, that is inactive and enclosed in a firm case or cocoon from with the adult will eventually emerge.

  Welcome to the world of Crysalis…

  In the distant future, the last remnants of humanity huddle in fragmented societies deep below ground, struggling to stay alive while threatened with inconceivable dangers. Three strong women from three different cultures are on intersecting paths, heading towards a fateful meeting which may well be mankind's only hope for survival…

  Crysalis: Meade's Tale

  K.G. McAbee

  Part One: Quicker than the Eye

  The crowd, their scrawny bodies dressed in simple kilts and tunics of homespun and fish leather, gathered around me, murmuring, their bulging eyes wary but interested. This break in their usual daily monotony of same, same and more of the same had brought what must be the whole village down to the square to see the newcomer give a final performance before leaving.

  The whole village, in this particular one at least, consisted of about thirty, with a hard-to-count wandering herd of bony kids thrown into the total. Their homes were tumble-down piles of rock or wattle-and-daub, plus some shallow caves laboriously scraped from the living stone of Haven. We all were aware of—or at least I was; maybe they were used to it—the constant drip drop drip drop of water falling perpetually from the top of the cavern.

  In some of the larger villages and towns, those close to Loop stations for example, such condensation problems were taken care of by intricate series of blowers and baffles or even, in the techie enclaves near the surface, by electric dehydrators.

  Little Middle was about as far as you could get from a large village, and I doubted if many visitors made their way here at the best of times. The nearest Loop station was five day's hard journey, and with all the recent disruptions and excitements, no one would be likely to come here now or for the foreseeable future. Especially since the fierce ammonia reek of the village's surrounding cesspools made a barrier as strong as a wall for the more fastidious. The inhabitants didn't seem to notice the stink, lucky them, but I'd been breathing through my mouth ever since we'd gotten within sniffing distance of the place.

  Still, since the boys and I had done our job as well as we usually do—that's not conceit, by the way—we wouldn't have to stay longer. Thus, my final, going-away performance.

  I've spent time in even less savory places, difficult as that may be to believe. It's what I do, after all. The forgotten peoples of Haven can be hotbeds of infection and disease, so the Brainery sends me out to do two things: investigate and inoculate. With the help of the boys, I'd done both in Little Middle. We'd taken blood samples. We'd vaccinated against everything we could vaccinate against.

  I wasn't sure it would do much good in the long run, though. Too many strange diseases were floating around; that made getting back to the Brainery with our samples even more important than trying to keep the people around me alive.

  I looked around the circle of my audience and caught their eyes.

  "Magic," I said in a portentous tone and was rewarded with a soft "Ahh…" of wonderment.

  Or perhaps it was just gas. Turnips are the major crop of Little Middle, with the occasional wild indulgence in a cabbage or two, to augment the usual fish-and-fungus of such off-grid places. I've survived on the same diet myself, plenty of times. Survived is the operative word. These folks were scrawny and I could see plenty of the deficiency diseases in their bowed legs and scabrous skin. Still, I wasn't there to save them. I gave up on saving a long time ago. Now I'm happy just to do my job, as long as the result is to keep the ones I care about alive.

  "Magic," I said, louder, "magic of the ancients, those mighty miracle workers of distant times and far off places, when the sky above," I gestured towards the invisible cavern ceiling above us and hid a smile as all the heads before me looked up as if worked by wires, "was littered with scores and hundreds of blazing lights and bright glowing spheres."

  I looked around. Confused looks were my only reward.

  Ah, of course.

  "Balls. Roundy rounds. Shiny, sparkly roundy balls." I described with gestures.

  Several nodded, but nowhere near all of them.

  I sighed and went on. "Magic filled those skies of old, and magic is still a part of our own existence. Magic is power drawn from beyond this world around us, drawn from the very depths of the outermost darkness."

  I waited for another "Ahh…" but they disappointed me this time.

  Heads lowered, they all stared at me through fringes of greasy hair, like miner-alts expecting a beating. I swallowed my disappointment but kept a wary eye on the three hulking bruisers in the front row. They weren't healthy, but they were better fed than the masses. The biggest one was Frando, the village priest and the other two were his brainless muscle, Barster and Arn.

  Priests always get the pick of the food and the most of it, for doing the least amount work. Generally, I don't like priests. Can you tell?

  Frando was closest to me; he wore a stone pendant on a cord round his dirty neck, marking him as the man in charge. He stepped closer, his muscle flanking him as if they'd practiced the routine more than once. I'm sure they had. We'd had trouble with them all from the start. Every time we'd handed out the vaccines disguised as sweets, they'd wanted to confiscate them—I'm sure to eat them all. I'd let 'em do it once; the resulting projectile vomiting from the overdose had calmed them down for a while.

  Arn, the one on the left, cracked his knuckles in a less than reassuring way, channeling his inner bully while he grinned at me, showing off all five of his teeth. I watched in some dismay as the other villagers began to drift and huddle back, though they were all still watching me intently.

  Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  "Now, good people, behold…the wonderment of the ancients!" I said as I seized the red scarf covering the little table in front of me.

  Instead of the small crystal globe full of water and lazily circling baby oarfish which had been under the red scarf, now there was…nothing but empty table.

  Pretty good trick, I've always thought. I'd never known it to fail to get a reaction from a crowd, whether it was the techies in the Rim Sector or those arrogant Alpha creeps or, indeed, any of the various towns, villages and collections of hovels which cluttered the rocky guts of Haven. The only groups who disdain legerdemain are my own scientists, but even they can't take their eyes away. At least until they figure out how the trick is done, at least.

  This time, however, the reaction from the mass before me was not exactly the one I'd been going for.

  "An evil one!" shouted Frando as he raised his stone pendant, holding it up as if it could protect him from the massive evil badness that was so obviously me. "She has powers of darkness! She has sold her essence to the Pit!"

  And on and on. And on. You can fill in the blanks yourself; I'm sure you've heard the same if you've done any traveling at all, whether by Loop or shank's mare. Honestly, these inbred groups cut off, either accidentally or by their own choice, from the more civilized rest of Haven, seldom show even the faintest hint of originality. It's always evil with a capital E to be abl
e to do anything they can't explain.

  Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Once, just once, I'd like to run across an open minded group who appreciate talent and years of practice. Just once I'd like to find villagers who didn't think 'other' automatically equates with 'bad'.

  Sadly, it was growing more and more obvious that my heartfelt wish was not destined to be fulfilled today.

  I sighed as I took one step, two steps back, waving my red scarf in a negligent way before I tucked it into a pocket.

  "Good people of Little Middle," I said, holding my arms up so that the sleeves of my robe fell down and all the tattoos on my arms began to glow—it's a neat trick; remind me to tell you how I do it later, when I'm not being threatened and endangered. "I am a magician of an ancient and fearful line. Stand well away, lest I call forth a mighty power to encompass you all!"

  Silence. They looked around. I looked around, with a lot more concern.

  Nothing happened. No sound, no fury…no nothing.

  Then they focused back on me. There was an unsettling expression in each and every dull and vacant eye, eons away from my favorite one, the 'glad to see you, stranger, welcome to our humble town, won't you have a beer' sort of look that I get all too seldom.

  Ah. The boys were late, as usual. I really think they do it just to see me squirm.

  So it was all up to me. Again, as usual.

  I did a quick grab at my belt then held my arms straight out to the side, threw my head back and shouted, "Azazeelazney!" loud enough to cover the faint sounds of tiny glass balls breaking on either side of me. I was standing in the center of the village, where they'd cleared away most of the native fungus down to the bare rock. But their housekeeping wasn't as good as it should be; there were enough bits and bobs of dried shroom lying about for my purposes.

  A flame leaped up to my right.

  Another leaped up to my left.

  "Evil!" shouted Frando, rattling his pendant; what can I say, the man had a one-loop mind. "The fire leaps from her fingers and does her bidding. She is evil and must be consigned to the Pit! Take her, good people!"

  The good people didn't seem in much of a hurry to take me; in fact, they seemed a lot more interested in taking a walk, preferably in the opposite direction. Most of them retreated, as if they'd remembered a collective and very important appointment way off on the other side of town. But Frando and his two bullyboys, one still involved in his knuckle-cracking hobby, came for me.

  I did the only brave and logical thing.

  I grabbed my table, turned around and ran.

  Wahoommmm!

  The deep reverberation echoed through the tiny village, bouncing off the tumbled stone walls and the reed-thatched roofs, screamed up into the cavern overhead, then bounced back down, redoubled.

  I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

  Finally. The boys were off their scrawny asses and on the job.

  I chanced a glance over my shoulder—I'm far too experienced to stop when being chased by an angry mob; years of experience, to be honest—and saw that most of the villagers had done the sensible thing when faced with loud noises and quaking ground: they'd fallen to their knees, hands over ears.

  Well now, that was more like it.

  Then I saw the three big guys were still coming for me. Sure, they looked a little stunned, but that wasn't going to deter them from a potential ass-whipping.

  I folded up the table in four flicks and stuck it in a pocket of my robe while I ran for the outskirts of the village. I know; dexterous, you're thinking, but actually it was more due to too many years of practice. Running for your life as often as I have gives you some mad skills.

  Little Middle was so small it barely had skirts, much less outskirts, so it didn't take me long to reach the last couple of stone huts. Beyond stretched fields of turnips, their leafy greens barely knee-high, interspersed with shallow cesspits and fish pools. I had to watch my step in the dimness. This village depended on the pale greenish yellow light of fluoro-fungus, so no bright light. They were so far off the grid they probably had to import dirt.

  I could hear the pounding of bare feet on rock behind me, even feel the slight vibration beneath my boot soles.

  "Stop, evil one!"

  Yah, as if that was likely to happen. I knew if I stopped, I'd end up either drowned in shit, burnt on a pyre or, seeing how short they were on protein, the main course of tomorrow's supper. And I hated the idea of sharing a pot with turnips.

  Then someone grabbed the hem of my robe and jerked.

  I fell, of course, trying to twist so I wouldn't hit my head on rock. I managed to land on my hip and shoulder instead. A sharp pain shot through me, but not from the rock. I'd landed on the folded table in my pocket. I felt the fragile reeds crumble beneath me as I scrambled to my feet, a knife in each hand.

  "You…might want…to rethink…this," I said, gasping for breath. "If you…know how…to think at all."

  Naturally, it was Arn the five-toothed bruiser who'd reached me first. I crouched and slashed out with one knife.

  He looked down in amazement at the line of blood that had suddenly appeared across his chest. The other two skidded to a stop behind him.

  "Take the Evil One, Arn," the head man urged from a safe distance behind him. "Do not fear her powers, for we are the Chosen Ones of Ghool."

  Arn wasn't buying it. Who could blame him? After all, he was the one who was bleeding, though not enough for real danger. Still, he probably didn't know that.

  Time to up the worry quotient.

  "Can Drool take poison away?" I asked, brandishing my knives, which twinkled even in the dim light.

  "Ghool!" shouted the head man. "Do not blaspheme! Ghool is mighty!"

  Ghool's Chosen, on the other hand, were stupid. They'd crept up and stood in a straight line right behind the bleeding Arn, Barster on one side of him, Frando on the other. I slid one knife back into its sheath and grabbed a triangle. I'm not as good at throwing them as the boys are, but I'm not bad. I flicked the shiny bit of metal and had another in hand before it reached its target.

  Frando yowled in pain and fear. I'd just missed his left eye; the triangle stuck out above his eyebrow. Barster turned to look at what had his boss screaming.

  Distraction is ninety-nine percent of magic.

  I tucked my weapons away and ran.

  Not, unfortunately, in the direction the boys and I had planned our escape, back when we first came to the village. This was nowhere near the way we'd arrived, and I at once began to suspect, after I heard panting behind me again, that this was not the way I wanted to go.

  A low jumble of rocks rose to my right and left with a narrow defile between them, marking the end of turnip and the beginning of a rougher run. I speeded up, trusting the boys.

  Not much choice. I had to trust them.

  But I didn't feel too comfortable running into what appeared to be an open corridor between slippery piles of rock.

  "Psst!"

  I took as deep a breath as I could manage in relief.

  Finally. Dar and New.

  The little mutts must have circled around to cut us off, though how they knew which way I'd be running was beyond me. I hadn't even known…ah. They'd watched, planned and done their sneaky thing.

  Then I saw a lighter strip against the dark rock. I was careful to step over it, making sure nothing touched or got caught on it.

  Then I slowed ever so slightly, to give the men behind me hope that I was tiring.

  Actually, it wasn't much of a hope; I was tiring.

  "We have her now!" came a bellow.

  Then more bellows, but no words this time.

  I skidded to a stop and turned.

  My three pursuers were a jumble of dirty arms and legs and fluent curses, everything tumbled together and trapped in the loops of a wire net.

  From somewhere above, I heard Dar and New giggling.
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