The empire of the blanks
Opus Lunaticum novelette
Note: This novelette was inspired by the prompt from IronAge, Dirigible. A good choice of music to listen to while reading would be Empire of the Clouds by Iron Maiden. Two lines of lyrics from that song is used in the text.
***
A vast shadow touched the outskirts of the ruined town, creeping over the damaged buildings and abandoned streets full of rubble. The shadow grew darker and smaller as the trans-world patrol airship NAF 101 "Empress of the Clouds" started to descend.
Ker Dorhom was an ancient town, supposedly hundreds of years old, with a small and crumbling castle in the middle, surrounded by a circle of old stone or brick houses and a much wider circle of modern buildings, usually several stories high.
The old part of the town appeared deserted as if it had been abandoned for a long time. The more modern parts appeared to be in an even worse condition. Some buildings were broken up or blackened by fire, others were just missing roofs and windows. Only a few didn't look damaged… just abandoned for some time. Years, at least.
Most of the crew had seen places like that in the past, towns destroyed during the War, but there was almost no vegetation that would normally overtake any abandoned places in just a few years. Ker Dorhom looked like it was in a middle of a desert, not in a large valley, surrounded by sparse forests and grazing lands for livestock.
There were remains of a few toppled trees visible, some blackened and burned, or dry, dead for a long time. Even the grass in the gardens and one small park seemed more grey than green.
People in the bridge gondola wore light blues of Norport Air Force, with two exceptions: a civilian in casual clothes and a man in green officer uniform of the Kaedon Army.
"I thought you said that Ker Dorhom was almost untouched by the civil war, major Lesnek?"the captain of the airship asked his guest, who was staring at the scene below in a state of shock. "Major?" captain Ample asked again after a few seconds.
Lesnek shook his head and turned to the captain. "It wasn't, captain. Almost no fighting, the only serious damage reported was the blowing of the train bridge… A week ago, this was… I don't understand. How could it get so bad so quickly? There's… nothing alive down there. Not even bodies!" Lesnek knew he wasn't doing his best to present Kaedon's military to the outworlders he always disliked, but he just couldn't help himself.
"Captain, we should stop descending. We need to keep the height of at least a few hundred meters from the surface," the civilian standing in the navigation section said suddenly.
"Why, doctor?" captain frowned.
"I concur, sir," said the ship's navigator, standing next to the scientist assigned to the hastily prepared expedition. "Doctor Desto is right. This is bad. Very bad. Worse than over an unstable current…"
"The level of ambient thaumaturgic aura is growing rapidly, captain," doctor Desto said. "I can feel it even without the instruments, same as your navigator." He took a small gadget out of his pocket and took another look at it. "This world's physical reality is very stable, but the town below us is a strong exception. I have no idea how powerful the aura is on the ground and no wish to find out."
"Stop the descent," captain Ample ordered. "Stabilize the height. Doctor, if you care to explain?"
Doctor shrugged. "There's not much to explain, captain. The thaumaturgic aura on the ground must be extremely strong. It's an early afternoon; the time when the ambient aura should be at its lowest. We have only simple instruments used for navigation over the ocean, showing stability of the surrounding reality and all of them are now in the red. My handheld device is a bit more precise, but it shows the same level. I have only a very weak and untrained talent, but I can feel the reality responding. Normally, an aura that high can be found only in the outer worlds and during a full moon… or if something extreme happened. Like a malfunctioning portal or a moon dust contamination."
"Or a storm of oblivion."
"Yes, captain. The visual clues we can see indicate exactly that."
"But how?! Why?!" exclaimed Lesnek helplessly.
***
Sergeant Wramph had seen supposedly abandoned towns like this before. He grimly stared through the binoculars in observers' post and tried to find any sign of something alive, but he didn't expect to succeed.
The captain hadn't told the crew any details, just that they were asked by a suddenly friendly local government for help with checking up on a distant town. Some kind of natural catastrophe, they said. The locals already sent their cavalry, but with the rudimentary train network of Kaedon wrecked by the civil war, it would take at least another week to reach a town in the middle of the continent, so they shyly asked the new Norport ambassador if the airship that brought him could, maybe, take a look at what happened.
The ambassador dragged his feet for a while, probably because he didn't want to be seen as too enthusiastic, but the Empress was ordered instantly to prepare for a short expedition to the interior. The ambassador even ordered the only member of his diplomatic mission with some knowledge of the supernatural to accompany the expedition. It took a day of waiting because Kadeonians wanted more of their people on board, not just two token military officers, but the ambassador and captain of the airship flatly refused.
Hurry and wait, as always, thought Wramph. He heard the rumors, all the crew heard them. Just a few years ago, the old sergeant would ignore whispers about storms and deadly magic, but the worlds had been changing lately. A lot of stuff considered forgotten and gone was coming back. So instead of ignoring it completely, he hoped that it was just rumors, and gave some quiet orders to his troops.
The first look through the binoculars, when the airship started its descent, was enough to send chills down Wramph's spine. It appeared that the rumors were true. The mutated adrenaline gland detected the stab of fear and pushed a mix of chemicals into his blood, pumping him up and making him eager to face certain death or worse. For glory and Fatherland, even if it hadn't existed for decades.
It took him a minute of careful breathing exercises to calm down. He knew he will need caution and luck more than combat drugs to survive this if the Emperor decides to send a ground team down.
"I don't see any movement," the trooper standing next to him said, staring at the town through huge mirrored shades. "Not even birds…"
"The animals are not stupid. They ran away. Maybe except a cat or two," the sergeant noted. "Keep looking though."
"Commander of the paratroopers to the bridge!" the intercom said. Finally.
***
Lesnek's head was dizzy from the discussion between Norport officers and their pet wizard. For all Norport's official strict stance against anything magical, they seemed to know a lot about it. Unlike Lesnek who, like most Kaedonians, had essentially no clue. There was almost no magic in Kaedon, only old legends, fairy tales, and occasional cheap artifacts with very limited use.
Lesnek was told that the official news, a tornado that savaged the Ker Dorhom and caused the loss of contact, wasn't complete, but he had problems understanding what his general hinted at. Lesnek was picked as the Kaedonian liaison because he was considered dependable and expendable, and grew in Dorhom.
The man who suddenly entered the bridge and stood at attention in front of the captain was a huge one. He was wearing motley light and dark gray fatigues, a light green beret, and a savage grin on his ugly face. Lesnek blinked and realized that it wasn't an intentional grin. The man's face was crisscrossed by several scars. He probably wasn't pretty before, judging by his asymmetrical jaw, but with the scars, he looked more like a monster out of a fairy tale. The corner of his mouth suddenly twitched.
"Sergeant Wramph, reporting as ordered, captain."
"At ease, sergeant. I hadn't told you, deliberately, what's our exact mission, because I wanted your opinion based on what you'll see if the reports turned out to be true. So, sergeant, what do you think?"
"A Hammer storm, sir. A fucking strong one, the worst I've ever seen."
"A hammer… you mean storm of oblivion?" blurted Lesnek. It was hard to guess the age of the sergeant with his mangled face, but it seemed impossible. "How could you see something like that? There wasn't any storm of oblivion for almost forty years!"
He was ignored by both captain and sergeant.
"That bad, sergeant?" the captain asked grimly.
"Yes, sir. The most places where we were sent for recovery and…. for prisoner capture, were places only touched by the storms. But I was on two missions in towns where the storm got physical. And it wasn't as bad as here."
"Excuse me," the scientist said, narrowing his eyes at the sergeant. "Why do you think it was so bad here? Are you a sensitive?"
The sergeant stared at the scientist for a moment before he answered: "I'm wehrwolf, sir. I was made to be extremely insensitive to anything magical. But look at the pattern of the damage. It's not just that some parts are now visibly older…"
"That could have been caused by a local temporal instability," the doctor objected.
Sergeant ignored the interruption and went on: "There are pieces just… missing. Forgotten. Obliterated from reality. This was an extremely strong hammer storm."
Lesnek was frowning at the sergeant. If he really was a wehrwolf, a mutated soldier created before the War, he could have seen the aftermath of it. It also made him a beast. A monster, one of the many reasons why Kaedonian disliked or even hated Norport. The city-state gave refuge to many old monsters. Including hated mutants that occupied Kadeon for a short while during the War.
"Your suggestion, sergeant?" the captain asked.
"Report our findings, check on nearby villages, and warn them if the blankers did not already hit them. We're not equipped to do anything else, sir."
"So you would be against a ground recon?"
"If ordered, I'll perform it myself with two men, sir. A short light recon only to confirm the situation. We have only a few hours to do so, sir, unless you wish to withdraw and wait for tomorrow."
"You can't possibly check the whole town in a few hours with just three people!" Lesnek blurted with an annoyed grimace at the sergeant.
"Sergeant?" the captain asked.
"Sir, unless all the blankers already died and rotted… or joined together, the moment we encounter the first one, all of them will come after us. If ordered to perform recon, I intend to carefully check typical places where they could hide, basements and such, and retreat immediately upon contact. Anything else would be suicidal, sir. You need a heavily armored infantry armed with flamethrowers or troopers with strong demonic blood."
"And the extraction?"
"Either from a roof of one of the taller buildings, or we'll run for it to the forest, sir, to be hopefully picked up later. You really don't want to bring the Empress too close to the ground, sir."
"Who are you going to take, sergeant?"
"Phills and Bigron, sir."
"Why those two?" the captain frowned. Both troopers were dependable and big, physically capable men. But they were also a little… simple. And unlike most paratroopers, they were completely normal humans.
"Because blankers are more attracted to anything magical, sir. At least that's what they told us years ago. And they both have at least some experience with entropy, sir."
***
The Empress made a full circle around the town, using loudspeakers to notify any possible survivors that the help arrived. As Wramph expected, there was no reaction.
Despite Wramph’s careful objections, the Empress took a station over one tall building, seven stories high, on the edge of the town. It seemed solid and had a flat roof, so it made a good place to rappel down to a relatively safe landing zone. But after the wehrwolf sergeant and his two troops checked the roof and the upper floor, the captain ordered them to anchor the Empress to the roof, to save fuel that might be needed later.
On one hand, it gave the ground team a better chance for extraction. All they had to do was to get on the roof, grab the anchor ropes and let the ship take them to safety.
On the other, it forced the Empress to stay low, where she risked equipment failure from increased magic interference. Or even worse things.
But the captain made up his mind. The nickname “Emperor” crew used for the captain wasn’t just due to the ship’s name. When he ordered something, he expected absolute obedience.
Wramph was armed with his personal shotgun, special double-barrel pump action with detachable magazines for both barrels. He judged it the best weapon for what he expected to encounter, one magazine filled with incendiary rounds, the other with heavy explosive slugs. He also had a single half-filled magazine of Hellfire rounds for an absolute emergency. And a huge enchanted bayonet as a last resort if blankers rush him.
His two troopers had to make do with standard pump-action shotguns, alternating incendiary and standard shot, and small subguns they took as a backup. Wramph hadn’t bothered. He had a pistol, but the most probable use of it would be for himself if the situation would seem hopeless. It was possible to kill lesser blankers with a pistol or rifle ammo, but they often ignored even headshots that shattered their heads as ripe melons. At least for long enough to get to their target.
In a fight against any kind of entropic beast, only brute force or fire worked reasonably well.
All the paratroopers in Empress’ detachment were veterans who survived at least a few ugly fights, either during their service or before. But only Wramph was old enough to personally remember the horrors of Entropy. He picked two soldiers who had at least some experience with blanks from a fight against a renegade forgetter a few years back. He wished for better armor, but the light riot gear made from dinosaur leather and closed helmets should provide at least some protection against blanker’s touch.
The team slowly checked the cheap apartment building, floor after floor. Some of the apartments were locked but empty, while others were open. Sometimes the door was visibly forced and there were traces of a fight inside.
“Blood stains, again, sarge,” Phills whispered. “But no bodies. Where are the bodies?”
“Either turned or dragged away. The blankers devour their victims. Or worse.”
When they reached the ground floor, the sergeant made a sign to stop and made a gesture for his troops to wait on the stairs. He slowly moved to the most probable place of contact, to the basement. Blankers preferred to be as deep as possible during the day.
But he found nothing.
“Ground team to the Empress,” he reported quietly to the radio. “No contact in the building. No bodies, signs of combat. Moving to check surrounding buildings. Over.”
“Roger, ground team,” answered the captain himself. “Good luck.”
The sergeant checked the gadget that the civilian scientist gave him. It was a physical instability meter, a magic detector in other words. Only slightly more precise than the navigational instruments on board the ship, but portable. On standard gain, the pointer was deeply in the red. On minimum setting, it slowly oscillated between the third and half of the scale, declaring the local area as highly magical and chaotic. Wramph stared at it for a moment, hoping that the needle will go visibly over the half of the scale and stay there long enough for him to declare the mission over, as the scientist suggested.
The needle refused to move far enough, so he stepped on the street, shadowed by the Empress.
“Hello, we’re from Norport, here to help,“ Phills whispered. Bigron snickered. Most of the other worlds disliked Norport, although they desperately needed fuel and machines that Norport sold them. Kaedon’s short but vicious civil war was mostly fought because several factions wanted to throw Norport’s growing influence away, together with the old aristocracy that ruled Kaedon for millennia.
“You don’t have to whisper,“ the sergeant said. “The blankers generally don’t respond to sounds. And if they’re close to hear us, they’re also close enough to sense our minds.“
***
Although not as nerve-wracking as on the ground, the mood on board the Empress was far from serene. The captain used the intercom to confirm the rumors. The ambassador ordered them to check a site where a catastrophe occurred and it seemed that it was a powerful storm of oblivion. Captain warned all hands to pay attention to any displays of something unnatural and to be ready to assume combat stations at any moment.
The airship was anchored with two lines one hundred meters long, and slowly bobbed in the light wind, only occasionally using a single side engine to keep the position. The rest of the paratrooper detachment took positions on top of the dirigible with binoculars and sniper rifles, hoping to provide some cover for their comrades on the ground if something went wrong. And the sergeant seemed to be sure that something will go wrong.
The pairs of snipers and spotters were quietly joking among themselves to reduce the tension. They placed bets on how long the ground mission will take, on the number of expected kills, and whether Phills and Bigron will make it back with the sergeant. Everyone assumed that the sergeant will get back. The NAF paratrooper units contained a lot of non-humans, monsters even, as the five or ten-year service was one of the ways to gain full citizenship, but only a few of the old Reich’s wehrwolves. And Wramph had a reputation for surviving and killing just about everything. There were a few of the true magical werebeasts serving among the paratroopers and even those respected Wramph, despite their usual scorn to “cheap scientific copies” as they called the remains of Reichs’ inhuman scientific experiments.
Wramph was serving on the Empress for decades. One of the jokes about him claimed that he was the only part of the airship that was never exchanged or upgraded. Even the hull frame had a lot of replaced parts after two crashes that happened while the Empress still served as an exploratory airship.
“I wish they’d go faster. So far they’ve checked just three buildings, and still nothing,” grumbled private Nerifir in a coveted sniper position on the nose of Empress and took another slow look around. But not even his huge predator eyes, usually masked by mirrored shades, could detect any movement.
“Shut up, Owl,” snapped private Kyskersky at his spotter. “Check the windows in the third building on the right, third floor.”
“Will you give it a rest, Sny? This is the third time you’ve been… Damn. You’re right.”
“Is there a movement or not?”
“I… possibly. Yes! Bridge, this is Sniper One. We have a movement, repeated, in the window…”
***
“Roger, Empress. Ground team, over and out,” Wramph said to the radio. He took a look at the designated building. If Owl said that there was a human-like shape moving between windows, it was probably true and worth investigating. They were running out of time, with only a few more hours of daylight. The ground team checked several nearby buildings, especially basements. They even looked in the simple sewer system, but it was full of water.
The building with reported movement was on the other side of the street. A lot of distance to cover if they’ll have to run for it. It was also one of the houses that seemed almost normal, with no visible damage.
Movement meant that there was a blanker… or a survivor, however improbable it was in Wramph’s opinion.
“Let’s move,” he ordered and started towards the target in a slow, relaxed walk through the middle of the street.
***
“They look like a bunch of sailors on liberty searching for a pub with the cheapest beer, not a team on a combat recon,” major Lesnek complained, not for the first time.
The captain ignored him. He focused his attention on the building, trying in vain to see the reported movement. Kaedon liaison was quickly getting on his nerves, an annoying cherry on top of a frustrating cake. It wasn’t the first time when the captain was reduced to waiting for his ground team to make a report, but he couldn’t recall any situation when he actually felt afraid for his ship and crew. The entropic beasts shouldn’t be able to touch the airship… but they also shouldn’t exist anymore.
“You should have sent more people, captain. It would go much faster,” complained Lesnek again.
The captain almost asked the fat Kaedonian if he would be willing to volunteer for a second team. He managed to swallow the vicious question at the last moment.
The ground team entered the building and slowly made their way up to the third floor.
“Empress, ground team. We made contact. Do not, repeat, do not open fire unless we ask for it. Assessing threat, stand by,” reported Wramph after a few minutes.
“Assessing threat?” Lesnek asked. “He can’t tell?”
“I would guess that the sergeant located a person touched by the storm,” the doctor said. “And he’s trying to determine if it’s a harmless blank or something much worse.”
“And how can he tell that?”
“If it attacks him and tries to destroy his memory and soul, it’s blanker,” the doctor said. “Otherwise it’s hard to tell the difference if the person still keeps human appearance.”
***
It was a huge, empty room. A gym or a dance floor, it was hard to say. The plaque at the barricaded door they had to force open said that this was the Dorhom Culture Club. There was a big uneven circle in the middle of the room, probably made from spilled salt. There was a woman slowly dancing in the middle of the circle. She didn’t seem to care about anything. The eyes in her gaunt face were tightly closed, and she was trembling with exhaustion, but she still made slow dance moves.
“Sarge?” asked Phills. “What do we do?”
It has to be a blank, Wramph thought. Possibly only partial because she was still moving instead of just standing or sitting and waiting to die as most blanks did without external orders. The circle of salt was a poor protection against magic, especially one as strong as an entropic storm. It might have been enough to protect her mind, so at least something remained when the storm passed… And later, it might have shielded her from those who weren’t so lucky.
There was an old saber on the floor and some empty bottles. An upturned chair. A bucket that was probably intended to use as a chamberpot. She tried to protect her as best as she could. It wasn’t enough.
Wramph carefully stepped into the circle and checked the detector gadget. The oscillating needle might have dropped a bit lower. It was hard to say with the constant movement.
“Hey,” he said loudly. The woman ignored him and continued dancing. The sergeant moved to the side and carefully tapped her arm with the barrel of his gun. “Stop!” he shouted at her.
She stopped almost immediately and opened her eyes to look at him.
She might have been a pretty and young girl before, but the combination of exhaustion and dehydration caused her face to look almost like a corpse. Together with the stink from her soiled dress, she even smelled like a one, yet she was moving. Like a zombie, although that was a different type of monster.
“Do you understand me?” the sergeant asked.
Her eyes were dark, almost black… and completely devoid of any signs of sentience.
She was just standing there, staring at him.
“Sarge?”
“Wait,” he ordered and took out his canteen. He opened it and offered it to the woman.
“Would you like to have some water?”
He waved the canteen so she could hear the liquid splashing inside.
“Take it and have a drink,” he ordered her.
She blinked and raised her hand.
He pushed the canteen at her. She took it.
“Now drink,” he ordered, miming what he wanted to do with an empty hand.
She put the canteen at her lips and tilted it up. When the water touched her mouth, she grabbed it with both hands and started to swallow. She drank it all and when the water ran out, she suddenly looked displeased. It was the first sign of emotion on her face.
Wramph raised his hand, asking silently for the canteen. She didn’t seem to understand at first, but she gave it back after a while.
“Bigron, check the rest of the rooms,” he ordered. “Phills, get in the circle and give her your canteen, but be careful. Don’t let her touch you. I think she’s safe, but I might be wrong.”
***
“The sergeant’s theory might be true,” the doctor admitted after the first report. “It’s outside my specialty, but the old folklore says that a simple circle can help with surviving the storm. And it helps to do something familiar that helps you remember yourself. Singing, telling stories…”
“Old folklore?” Lesnek said with disdain. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
The doctor frowned at him. “Sir, I have a doctorate in thaumoeconomy and thaumography. I’m required to have a basic knowledge of thaumatic theory. It doesn’t make me an expert on Elder Gods and their magic.”
“Major,” captain Ample said with considerable restraint, “unless you have something relevant to add, I would like to ask you to be silent.”
Kaedonian looked offended, but he kept his mouth shut for a while.
“Any suggestions, doctor? Regarding the survivor?” the captain asked.
“None, captain. As the sergeant said, she must have survived the first reported storm with her mind mostly intact. She would be dead by dehydration by now otherwise…”
“Sir,” the radioman interrupted. “The ground team reports more survivors.”
***
Sergeant Wramph stared at the bunch of scared kids stuck inside a small closet. He could see the silver lines etched in the wood, accompanied by some runes he hadn’t recognized. But he saw chests and closets like that before. They were used for storing magical artifacts or materials that reacted wildly to magic. There were containers with similar shielding on board the Empress, used to store special ammo.
The content of the closet was on a pile in the corner of the small room, together with shelves torn from inside. Broken bottles, a few blackened charms, and some pottery, all thrown away to make a place for six small kids, crammed inside like sardines in a tin can.
Some of them had the same blank look in their eyes as the dancer, but others seemed to be a lot more human. They looked scared. One little girl was crying, something about a boogeyman.
He stepped behind and motioned Bigron forward.
“Talk to them, Bigron. Open your helmet so they can see a friendly face. I need to call this in.”
He returned to the dance room and sent Phills after Bigron. The dancer was sitting on the chair they gave her and ordered her to use. She looked asleep.
Sergeant sighed. This was a nightmare. He would have preferred a combat encounter with a bunch of blankers.
Seven survivors, a woman, and six kids, with minds at least partially damaged by the entropic magic, complicated everything.
***
“And are they sane, sergeant?” Captain Ample could detect his ground commander’s unhappiness and shared it. He couldn’t leave the survivors in the ruined town, but he wasn’t exactly happy about getting them aboard. He was given restricted briefing documents about the possible effects of entropy magic a few months ago and although the information there was limited, it still sounded as scary as the old stories from the War. And he knew the old wehrwolf well enough to see under his scarred poker face. The sergeant was afraid and nervous even before he went on the ground.
“Some of them, sir. They’ve been all licked by the storm, some more than the others, but Bigron is good with kids and got them talking. The woman was their teacher, or possibly a babysitter. She was watching over them when the first storm came. Their parents were at some kind of ball in the old castle. When the storm came, she put them inside the closet and told them that if they leave or fall asleep, the boogeyman will come for them. In the morning, she let them out, fed them, but forced them to get back for the night. The same next day. They have been in the closet for two days now, too afraid to leave it even during the day when it’s calm. What are your orders, captain? Over.”
“Wait a moment, sergeant. Does that mean that the storm came during the night again? Over.”
“Yes, sir. I made Bigron ask several times. The kids say that the storm starts as soon as it gets dark. They say they can hear it and sense it. The boogeymen are riding on the wind, that’s what they said. I strongly recommend moving away for the night. Over.”
The captain thought for a moment. “What do you suggest regarding the survivors, sergeant? Over.”
There was a long silence.
“We either cram them back in the closet, or we take them away with us, sir. I think the kids are safe. I’m not totally sure about the woman, not without an empath or a forgetter to check her out, but she’s not totally out. She even reacted to kids. If we tie her, and keep her and the kids in the loading bay, we should be safe. Over.”
“Escort them to the landing zone, sergeant. Over and out.”
Captain Ample closed his eyes for a moment. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Radioman, do we have an acknowledgment of our report?”
“Not yet, sir. We might have to wait for the night to get through.”
“Keep trying. Engineer, be ready to get us on the way as soon as everyone is on board. Doctor, if the storm comes back with the darkness, how far do we have to be to be safe?”
“As far as possible, captain,” the doctor frowned. “The storms can move. At least fifty kilometers.”
“Navigator, take a look at local maps. See if there are any villages or settlements that far away. We might as well check the area.”
“Sir! Lookouts report more movement!”
***
“Owl, talk to me,” Kyskersky said. The slowly walking figure he could see in his scope looked human. True, it was a dirty, weirdly walking human, but still…
“I’m not sure, Sny,” the spotter admitted. “A bit too far, even for me. Wait. There’s another. Crossroad, fifty meters closer… Damn. What the hell is that?”
“Bridge, Sniper One. I have a target, closing on the ground team position. Correction, several targets. They don’t look human to me. Do I have permission to shoot?”
***
Wramph could swear he sensed incoming even before he was warned by the radio. The street was still filled with a creepy silence, but there was something… bad.
They were herding the kids and their teacher toward the building used as a landing zone. It went slowly, especially with the kids whose minds still worked.
“The boogeyman is coming,” whispered one boy and started to cry.
“Bigron, Phills, get them to the landing zone,” Wramph snapped about a second before the radio started to squawk the warning. “I’ll be the rear guard! Move it!”
He could see the closest figure coming at them, walking slowly and weirdly like it had one leg much longer than the other. The face was still human, but the jaw was strangely deformed, hanging to one side.
Wramph shot it with the explosive slug from the left barrel. The blanker went down in a cloud of blood.
“Request fire support,” he said to the radio and aimed at another deformed figure that appeared in a door nearby. He breathed out and squeezed the trigger.
***
“That’s what I call a target-rich environment,” Kyskersky murmured and serviced another target. It looked like a normal human, civilian in shabby clothes, but it was running after his boss so it had to be either a blanker or a total idiot.
“Your previous target,” the Owl snapped. “It’s getting up again!”
“What?! I shot his head off!” But when Kyskersky aimed back, he could see the headless human figure standing again. “Shit, you’re right!”
The sergeant gave them a short briefing before he went on the ground. “Aim at the head,” he said. “That will usually drop them. But not all the time. Sometimes you have to shoot those assholes to pieces and even the pieces might come after you.”
Kyskersky thought that the sergeant was exaggerating a bit. But not anymore. He quickly aimed at the knee of the figure and squeezed another round.
“Give me another,” he screamed at his spotter.
“Find your own,” private Nerifir snapped and opened fire with his assault rifle. “You’re too slow!”
***
It started with just a few blankers, slow and shambling figures, but as soon as the shooting started, more and more appeared from nearby buildings, drawn to a small retreating group of paratroopers and rescued survivors. Most of the blankers looked human. They still wore clothes, but some were so deformed that they resembled a badly shaped clay figures. Or outright monsters, running on all four to their target.
Wramph swore and switched to the incendiary rounds he was saving for later. He was shooting as fast as he could, filling the street with the cones of hot fire. Blankers hit by the dragon breath were usually done for… after they burned down to a blackened crisp which took some time.
Wramph had to turn around and run after the rest of his team, followed by blazing monsters. The snipers and machine gun turrets on the airship were helping a lot, but he wasn’t sure if it would be enough. The radio said that there was a huge mob getting close. And they added a piece of meaningless advice to move his ass.
***
Captain Ample hated himself for hesitating. He should have ordered the single cannon turret to start firing as soon as the huge mob of monsters appeared about a half kilometer away, pouring on the street from a broken building. But he hesitated, just for a few seconds. He was afraid that it would look bad in the report if he destroyed half of the town. And now it was almost too late.
At least major Lesnek stopped screaming about murdering poor civilians. He was now staring out of the window at the apocalyptic scene on the street with a blank look on his face. He was trembling a bit.
“Keep fire on everything that moves,” the captain ordered. “Engineer?”
“Ready, sir. As soon as we blow the anchors, we’re good to go.”
“Ground team, report!”
***
“Phills! With me! Bigron, get them on the roof!” the sergeant snapped when the group finally reached the entrance to the building, serving as their landing zone. “Phills, I’ll keep them off. Ready your grenades and throw them at their rear. It’s best if you kill more of them at once.”
“Why?” Phills gasped.
“If they’re in a pack, close to each other, killing just one makes others stronger. We need to plug the gap, slow them down. When I say run, run one floor up and get ready to repeat it. And ready the satchel.”
“Yes, sarge.”
Wramph replaced the left magazine with Hellfire rounds. He had only ten of them, but he hoped it will make a difference.
He waited for a moment. A few blankers were already in the entrance and started to advance on him. He squeezed the trigger.
The Hellfire shells contained two components. The tip was a scaled-down explosive round, but the lower half was filled with an extract from a demon's bodily fluid.
It was extremely effective against angels, which was the reason why Wramph originally smuggled the forbidden ammo on board. But entropic beasts hated it too. Wramph wasn’t sure why. The explanation he got after the War never made sense, but he knew it was effective.
He hit the first blanker. So far, the monsters were eerily silent, but now it screamed in an inhuman voice.
Wramph knew he would be screaming in fear too if his mutated glands weren’t pumping him full of combat juice. He was glad that Phills was still keeping it together, but the huge man was always dependable, cool as a cucumber even in the worst possible situations.
“Grenade and run!” Wramph ordered, shooting another incendiary on the pile of monsters.
They managed to get to the third floor before they were almost overrun by burning monsters.
It’s hard to fight hand-to-hand with monsters that can wipe your memories and suck your soul just by touching you. Wramph had some resistance to entropic magic, thanks to the Reich’s scientists. But even he could sense the massed magic aura radiated by the blankers, scratching on his brain, trying to suck his memories and reduce his soul to a meaningless jumble. He used his bayonet to cut off an arm too long to belong to a human, ending with weird claws, kicked another blanker, this one looking almost like a human, and screamed: “Throw the satchel!”
He shot two incendiaries at point-blank range, burning his own face, hoping for a strong explosion that would tear the staircase down. He originally wanted to wait until they were on the roof, but he had to risk it now.
Except there was no explosion.
Wramph shot another Hellfire in a gap between massed blankers and turned around.
Phills was just standing there, shotgun aimed at the stairs, but he wasn’t doing anything.
Wramph swore, quickly shot another Hellfire, and jumped to Phills. He tore the satchel charge from Phills's harness, armed it, and threw it down. He stabbed and kicked and shot the last incendiary and the last hellfire. He threw his shotgun in the face of the burning blanker, grabbed Phills, and started to drag him up.
The loud explosion shook the building, but the staircase held. Wramph was almost deaf from the shooting and more exhausted than he could remember.
He realized, with horror, that there are more things he just can’t remember.
Like the names of two soldiers who appeared on the staircase and started to shoot over his head with their submachine guns in a milling pile of burning meat that was still trying to get to him.
He turned around and gasped.
The thing that was slowly crawling up the stairs didn’t look human at all. There were some appendages and a head or two, but it was connected in a mass of meat, hungry for his soul and the rest of his memories.
“Incendiary grenades!” he screamed. More troopers were coming in, despite his orders that the ground team should be limited. The captain overrode his orders, but Wramph was glad this time.
The concentrated fire of several subguns and the grenades tore the greater blanker to pieces. No more were coming. The satchel charge must have worked and bought the Empress’ paratroopers enough time to retreat.
The troopers dragged Wramph and Phills to the roof. They were already clipping their harnesses to the ropes, ready to ascend.
“Wait,” Wramph screamed. “Phills! Phills!”
The big trooper just stared at him blankly.
“Dammit!”
“Sarge?” one of the troopers asked.
“Phills got blanked.”
“Maybe it’s just a shock…”
It was a split-second decision. Wramph fingered his pistol, but then he decided against it. Instead, he took out Phills’ autoinjector filled with morphine and stabbed the trooper in his thigh. A wickedly sharp and thick needle powered by a strong spring pierced the uniform and meat underneath. Phills didn’t react at all.
“Give him another and cuff him before you clip him on the rope!” Wramph ordered.
“Sarge, are you sure?”
“Do it!”
***
"The ground team is clipped to the ropes, all accounted for, captain."
"Blow out the anchors and take us away," the captain ordered. "Guns, paratroopers, cease fire."
A wave of relief washed over the captain. From the reports, it was almost too close, but he refused to leave without his troopers, despite loud pleas coming from both navigator and civilian doctor. The instability of reality was growing quickly.
The storm was coming.
And the streets under the airship were filled with shambling figures.
All engines howling at max, the Empress of the Clouds started to move and turn around to flee the doomed town.
"Why are we so slow?" the captain asked after a moment.
"The wind, sir. It's blowing directly against us now."
"Change heading, ninety degrees to the left. Side engines to full lift. We need to get out as soon as possible. We'll bother with selecting a target site later."
"Sir, there's a problem in the landing bay."
"What is it?"
"It's sergeant Wramph. He's… crazy."
"Tell him I'm ordering him to stop being crazy!" captain Ample snapped. "Get me a report on what's happening, but I don't have time to for this now! Helm, I ordered a full lift up!"
"Sir, the wind is coming from up too, pushing us against the ground. It looks… like the wind is coming from all sides, but that's impossible…"
"We're becoming the center of the storm," whispered the navigator. "It's going to devour us all…"
"Release ballast! Guns, fire at any bigger concentration of targets you can target!"
***
“We have to throw him down,” Wramph said, desperately trying to sound calm and normal. “He’s gone. They got to him.”
“Sarge, it’s Phills we're talking about. He’ll snap out of it, I’m sure. Now… could you maybe hide your gun, sarge?” Bigron was talking to him like he was a little kid. Wramph barred his teeth at him. At all three troopers who were holding him, keeping him from what had to be done.
“Look at him, you fool. He’s still standing and just smiles.”
“Well, you gave him a morphine, sarge, so…”
“I gave him three doses already! He should be out cold!”
Phills was standing with a dumb look on his face, unseeing eyes wide open. He was cuffed to the railing with one hand.
“What the hell is going on?” the ship’s medic asked.
There was a sudden sharp sound. The reality-meter gadget still clipped to the sergeant’s harness cracked.
“Boogeyman!” one of the kids blurted and started to cry. All the kids and their teacher were sitting in paratrooper’s seats, with seatbelts fastened.
“Look at his hand!” Wramph yelled furiously.
The huge trooper was squeezing the railing in his hand so hard that the aluminum tube was already deformed. The thin layer of paint was slowly flaking off on a whole length of the railing.
The ship lurched in the air again, and the thing that used to be Phills staggered. His arm visibly lengthened by at least ten centimeters.
The troopers finally released the sergeant, who moved his hand to his pistol at first. He realized that the bullet might go through the trooper and hit something important, so he drew his combat knife instead.
“Open the door!” he screamed. “And help me get him out!”
There was no time to look for keys for the handcuffs. The sergeant screamed a combat cry and slashed with his knife.
His body, conditioned by both training and minor mutations, responded to the cry. Even normal humans can perform feats of great strength when desperation forces all muscles to perform at maximum at the price of serious damage to muscles and sinews. Wehrwolves were trained to do that almost at will.
And so the knife went through the uniform, muscles shattered bones in the forearm of the blanker and cut his hand off.
Before Wramph could do anything more, the blanker responded by trying to punch him with the bleeding stump.
The airship jerked again, sharp enough that everyone went on the floor.
Except the blanker who ignored inconvenient physical reality and stooped over to grab Wramph’s face. Jagged edges of the broken bones added new scars to Wramph’s collection, but the other blanker’s hand that grabbed his shoulder with terrific strength was worse. If not for the leather pauldron, his shoulder bone might be already crushed.
The constant scratching in his mind suddenly turned into a storm, trying to decay everything that he ever was. He dropped the knife.
Another implanted gland, one that wasn’t active for many years, interpreted sharply rising entropy as a mental attack and flooded the sergeant’s blood with yet another combat drug. He could suddenly feel everything with crystal clear clarity. Especially the pain. It was so sharp it brought back memories of his transformation in Reich’s secret lab. His pride in being chosen to be one of the first of the new super-soldiers.
“VATERLAND!” he screamed, grabbed the blanker, and tried to push the monster towards the door in the landing bay.
He managed to force it back for a few steps, but blanker was clawing at his face with the stump and his undamaged hand. Phills was a big and strong man. The blanker was way stronger because his body and the remains of his mind just didn’t remember any limits.
“Geronimo!”
Bigron joined his sergeant with a traditional yell and together moved the blanker by another step to a door opened by another trooper.
The monster, feeling more memories so close, stabbed Bigron in the face with the stub of its hand. The trooper cried and released the monster, but Wramph managed to pull out his pistol and placed three shots in the monster’s face, all bullets going through and flying out of the airship through the opened door.
It was almost enough, but the monster’s grip on Wramph’s shoulder was extremely tight. Blanker’s fingers elongated, nails probably turning into claws, digging deep into the sergeant’s leather pauldron to his shoulder.
Wramph pushed the monster to the door but he couldn’t dislodge its fingers. The blanker was still struggling, even weakened, and with his head shot to pieces.
“I must get him out. I’ll have to jump,” Wramph thought. “Vaterland!” he screamed again.
He almost did it, but he was grabbed by someone from behind and there was another trooper with a knife, stabbing and cutting in the monster’s hand. Wramph used his pistol and emptied the rest of the clip into the blankers heart, hoping to slow it down even more.
Then the trooper with the knife finally managed to cut through the wrist. Together with Wramph, they kicked the monster out of the opened door of the landing bay.
“Bigron?” Wramph turned to a trooper on the floor. “Trooper! Respond?”
“Wait, Sarge!” the trooper with the knife said. “Don’t move, I have to take this fucking thing out…”
“Bigron!”
“Sarge,” whispered Bigron. His face was seriously damaged and bleeding, but he managed to talk. “I guess I’m going to be as pretty as you. Chicks dig scars, right?
“Medic! Take care of Bigron!”
“Done,” the trooper with the knife said, satisfied, and threw the thing resembling a human hand with long fingers out from the airship. “Guess we can close the door now, sarge?”
Wramph finally remembered his name.
“Stevens! All of you! Don’t leave the bay! Watch civilians, especially those who don’t respond. Be prepared to throw them out! You will constantly talk to each other. Do you understand?”
The scratching in his head dimmed, reduced to a weak, hungry hum. They were still in the middle of the storm of oblivion.
Medic, already trying to clean Bigron's face, asked: “Should I use morphine on the woman? And the kids who’re blanked, sarge?”
“No! It was a mistake! No morphine, no painkillers to anyone, do you understand? If you fall asleep…”
“If you fall asleep, boogeyman takes you,” the crying kid said.
***
“Captain, landing bay report. There was a blanker on board, they threw him out.”
“Sergeant Wramph?” the captain asked with concern in his voice.
“On the way to the bridge.”
“Good. Helmsman, good job, you seem to be getting the hang of it.”
“It’s weaker now, sir, but…”
“If we had a blanker on board, it was probably calling the storm,” the doctor said. “There was a sharp spike in instability for a moment, but it’s lower now.”
“Not by much,” the navigator said in a trembling voice. “Sir… I don’t know how much longer I can take it. I feel it…”
“Get a hold of yourself, man!” the captain snapped. “Doctor. The storm is still chasing us. We still can’t move anywhere.”
“We’re the only thing around that the entropy can feed on,” Wramph interrupted him.
Captain turned to the sergeant. His face was bloody and the corner of his mouth seemed to tick almost constantly. There was also some blood on Wramph’s shoulder. Captain frowned when he realized that there are holes in the heavy leather pauldron.
“Report, sergeant.”
“I blew it, sir. Phills turned. We had to… throw him out.”
Captain was silent for a moment then asked: “Any recommendations, sergeant?”
“We have to get through the storm and escape, sir. It’s going to get even stronger when the sun sets down. Even if it won’t tear the Empress to pieces, it’s going to devour our minds.”
***
The sun was slowly climbing down to the mountain range on the horizon, and the storm was gaining strength all over the town. The wind whirled unnaturally in thousands of smaller eddies, with a much bigger vortex surrounding the airship. The Empress was desperately trying to get out of the wind trap that was swirling around it, but the winds were merciless. There were a few times when the airship almost got through the streams of angry air buzzing with unnatural entropic energies, but every time it lurched back to a relative calm in the middle of the vortex.
The streets below were full of blankers, aimlessly wandering around, except those who were feeding on torn bodies in craters made by cannon shells and a few bombs that Empress of the Clouds carried. Captain Ample ordered the crew to lighten up the airship in any way possible. Just throwing the ammo overboard would be a waste, so it was used to reduce the number of entropic beasts.
So far the Empress managed to keep the height of a few hundred meters, supposedly far enough from blanker sense for souls, but the winds were relentlessly pushing it down.
“We can keep somewhat stable in the eye, although we’re burning fuel at an alarming rate. Side engines are not designed to run on full power constantly, sir. And I think the eye is slowly shrinking around us,” the helmsman said in an exhausted voice.
“Captain, we must rush through,” sergeant Wramph pleaded.
“The last time we tried, we almost crashed,” the captain snapped. “And the… mental effects were… unpleasant.”
The corner of Wramph’s mouth moved in a tick.
“Sir, it would be better to die in the crash than wait until the storm devours our minds.”
Captain sighed but didn’t answer.
“Well, at least it’s fascinating to watch,” doctor Desto commented.
“What?! You find this fascinating?!” major Lesnek asked angrily. He managed to keep his mouth shut for most of the time. Probably because he was too terrified.
“Dear major, I can either study these phenomena and make some notes that might survive what’s coming, or I can whimper in fear and desperation,” the doctor answered solemnly. “Succumbing to fear and despair will only make your mind more vulnerable to the effects of the storm. So… I watch and study and try to look for patterns.”
“And have you found any, doctor?” the captain asked. “Because the storm is dragging us all over the town.”
“It looks like that,” the doctor agreed. “But… I don’t think we’ve been over the old town and the castle yet, am I right?”
“You’re right, doc. The storm is dragging us around it. That doesn’t make any sense. It should be pushing us there,” the sergeant said and licked his lips. The nervous tick was back in force. “It doesn’t make sense… unless…”
“What do you mean, sergeant?”
“I need to confirm this first, sir. I need to talk to Owl… private Nerifir. By your leave?”
“Go. Engineer, is there anything else we can drop down to make us lighter? Keep ammo to machine guns, personal weapons, supplies, and fuel, but anything else that can go should go overboard.”
***
“Talk to me, Owl,” the sergeant ordered after a moment.
“I’m not sure yet, sarge,” private answered, fully concentrated on the storm. He was peering out of the observation bubble, trying to confirm the sergeant’s hypothesis.
“Talk anyway. We’re in the storm. Keep talking, keep remembering,” the sergeant repeated his advice.
“Well, I can’t see shit through the storm around us, sarge. But… you might be right. It does look like the air over the castle is mostly still. Everywhere else I can see eddies and whirlpools, but it’s more quiet there. I’d have to be closer to be sure. “
He turned to face the sergeant. Wramph’s mouth twitched. Nerifir’s eyes were unsettling, even under normal circumstances. They were at least three times bigger than human eyes should be, orange with dark black irises. At that moment, they were almost completely black and bulging out as private tried to use them to see impossible detail at long distance.
“Sarge… you wanna try to get to the castle?” private asked. “Land?”
“Keep looking, Owl. Warn bridge if you see anything.”
***
“Sir, there are only two explanations I can think of. Either there’s something in the castle that’s keeping the storm out…”
“Survivors?” the captain interrupted. “I would have expected them to signal us.”
“So would I. The other explanation makes more sense. The blanker there is dead. The storm must have started somehow. If there was a huge ball in the castle, with a lot of people in attendance, and someone set an entropic bomb there…”
“What bomb?” Lesnek asked warily.
“A weapon of mass destruction,” the captain snapped. “There were several attempts to set them off in Norport in the last year. Go on, sergeant.”
“If the bomb created a greater blanker, it would quickly absorb everyone in the castle and surroundings. A big enough blanker is supposed to create a hammer storm by itself. The storm would take the rest of the town, turning people into normal blankers. But the big blankers, sir, they don’t live long. They start to rot quickly, in a day or two. It might be already dead, sir, just a vast pile of rotting meat.”
“Doctor?”
“We’ve made almost a complete circle around the town. The storm area looks like a toroid with a center somewhere near the castle, but it’s hard to be sure. Sergeant might be right, but…” the doctor paused suddenly, looking glum.
“Doctor? What is it?”
Desto sighed. “This is not my specialty, but… hammerite priests are said to be able to control blankers, to direct them to do their bidding. And this storm doesn’t behave as randomly as it’s supposed to. It’s just a thought, but…”
“But that would give us a target, sir,” the sergeant growled, his voice full of menace.
***
The Empress made one more attempt to escape from the town, but the captain ordered retreat as soon as the winds were starting to grow too strong.
“Alright, we’ll try to get over the castle. Put anchors, if possible, or rappel down and take a position in one of the towers. How much salt do we have in the galley?” the captain asked.
“If you have a roll of copper wire, a phone cable will do, I can do a better circle than just salt,” the doctor offered. “I haven’t done a circle since my student days, but it’s not that hard. We should take the salt, anyway.”
“Start getting ready,” the captain ordered. “Radioman, change the message to NAF101 trying to take refuge in the castle. Repeat constantly. Be prepared to switch to SOS on my mark or if we crash. This time, we’ll push through, no matter what. Engineer, prepare the main propulsion for the maximum push.”
“This seems… reckless. What we’re going to do if we crash?” major Lesnek asked.
“We move to a suitable place and defend it, or we die,” sergeant Wramph snapped. “Captain, the mental effects are going to be bad if the storm tries to swallow us. Everyone should get ready for that.”
“Anything we can do about it? Doctor?”
“I told you, captain. Nothing. We can’t make circles without grounding. The conductive mesh in the shell provides better protection than a simple circle, anyway. And there’s no one on board with a talent that could help.”
“Sir? I have an idea,” the sergeant said.
***
The storm visibly intensified when the sun touched the peak of the distant mountain range, but the Empress was already trying to get out of the trap, hoping to find refuge over the castle.
The airship was shaking and jerking as the unnatural winds tried to tear it down or at least force it onto the ground, but it was slowly pushing through. With the security governors disabled, the main engine howled loud enough to be heard even through the sounds of the storm. And there was another sound, faintly heard over the town.
“All hands! Remember who we are! We’re the Norport airmen! We’re the Empress of the Clouds!” the captain shouted in the intercom after he gave the final order. “Now sing! Sing with me! To ride the storm! To an empire of the clouds!”
Every airman and paratrooper serving on the Empress knew that ancient song from the mythical Earth. When the dockyards assigned hull number 101 to a newly built frame, someone remembered a ballad called “The empire of the clouds” about a crash of a huge airship named R101. The more superstitious thought it would bring bad luck, but the Empress survived numerous battles and emergencies for decades despite its name and unofficial hymn.
The crew thought it fitting to sing it as loud as they could on their last flight.
“To ride the storm, and damn the rest, oblivion!”
They almost made it over the old town walls.
***
Four days later, another vast shadow started to move over the valley toward the ruined city. The captain of Cloudhaven, a huge transport dirigible requisitioned by Norport’s ambassador to Kaedon, stared glumly into his telescope.
“Yes, it’s the Empress, crashed in the middle of the town, near the old town walls. Nothing on the radio? We should be close enough for a short-range handheld now.”
“Still nothing, sir,” the radioman responded.
“Keep trying,” the captain sighed. “Helm, slow your approach, keep your height.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“The damn town seems to be completely dead,” the captain murmured.
“Let’s hope so,” the NAF lieutenant standing next to him said glumly.
“Sir! Radio contact!”
“Put it on the loudspeaker!” the captain ordered and grabbed a microphone.
“Cloudhaven, I repeat, do not approach the town. It’s not safe. Over.”
“Who is this?” the captain asked.
“Sergeant Wramph, NAF. Cloudhaven, you need to turn around now. You have about two hours to reach a distance of at least fifty clicks to keep far enough from the storm, do you understand? Over.”
“Where are you, sergeant? How many survivors? We can pick you up, we’ve got lift capacity to spare. Over.”
“Negative, Cloudhaven!” the voice on the radio snapped angrily. “There are over three dozen of us, NAF and locals. We’re holed in the old castle. We’ll probably survive another night, but not if you get too close up and trigger the storm sooner. Get in a safe distance and return in the morning. Over.”
The captain looked at the NAF lieutenant who nodded. “I know Wramph, captain. You should do as he says. Can I talk to him?”
The captain passed the microphone and started to snap orders.
“Sergeant Wramph, this is lieutenant Sanders, onboard Cloudhaven. We’ll heed your advice and return in the morning. Can you give me a preliminary report? Is captain Ample alive? Over.”
There was a moment of silence. When the answer came, it was delivered in an exhausted, sad voice: “Captain Ample’s body is alive. His mind is probably gone. The whole town turned to blankers. There’s a storm of oblivion every night. We… we don’t remember much of it, sir. This is the empire of the blanks now.”
Author's note: a few years back, there was a short story contest and I thought that maybe I could write a little story from the material I was preparing for a long time… The short story refused to stop and turned to a few hundred thousand words and a series that will probably have five books in the end.
The history is trying to repeat itself with this story, inspired by the IronAge prompt, but I decided to forcibly keep it at a short story length. But maybe I'll turn it into a proper novel one day.