The Chronicles - Book 1

The Chronicles
Book One
Chapter Four

“Oops,” Raine said as miner after miner slowly started making their way out of the mine entrance. They had odd, jerky movements, almost like they had strings tied around their limbs and someone was pulling them to move them. “We figured the people in the mine's had died last…guess we were wrong.”

“Congratulations,” Kaine said. “You all get to fight for your lives,” he said, addressing the group. “Reborns, as we call them, don't move very fast, they aren't very graceful opponents, but they are hard to kill.”

“Maybe because they're already dead?”, Gabe asked in a slightly panicky voice. He looked considerably paler than usual.

“Try taking off major limbs,” Kaine continued, ignoring Gabe. “…arms, legs, or just cutting them in half. Cutting off a hand or a flesh wound won't accomplish much.” Everyone except the Symbions visibly paled at this information. “Raine, perhaps a charge,” Kaine added, seeing everyone's reactions.

Allen had forgotten all about the tales of the Symbions being able to tap into The Core and use its power, until he saw Raine's right hand begin to glow green. The merchants and their guards who passed through Gilder's Hollow all the time would always sit in the common room of the inn and spin wild tales about Symbions using the Core's power in their fight against the dark one. The stories always said that the male Symbion could only use destructive magic, while the female Symbion could only use constructive. Allen had never fully understood it and had always wanted to see it in action, but not from within an actual battle.

“Once their bodies are no longer any good for fighting,” Kaine continued his tutorial on how to fight a Reborn. “…the dark power controlling them will flee and they will truly be dead.” The Reborn miners continued their slow march out of the mine and into the center of town; Allen could make out a faint blood red glow in their unfocused eyes. “Fighting them isn't terribly hard,” Kaine took up again, “but it is physically exhausting; so Raine will give a little boost to your life energy. It will just make you move a little faster and tire less easily.”

Allen and Gabe stared wide eyed at each other. Hearing about people using the Core power was strange enough, much less having it used on you. “One for you,” Raine said as she brought her glowing green hand up to Jaun's head. The green light seemed to focus into the tip of her thumb, which she then pressed into the center of his forehead. His body shook slightly and then his eyes opened wide. Raine removed her thumb and Jaun's eyes returned to normal, but his breathing seemed to be much deeper. He smiled and gave a thumbs-up to his brother, who had been looking on with interest. “One for you,” Raine said again as she brought her glowing hand up to Kaun's head. The process with Kaun went exactly as it had with his brother, and Raine stepped in front of Gabe when it was done. “One for you,” she said again, bringing up her glowing hand. Gabe, wide-eyed, backed away a step. “It doesn't hurt ya big baby,” Raine said with a pout. “Now hold still.” Allen thought he saw a faint green glow flit across Raine's eyes, but when he looked again to be sure of it, it was gone. Gabe, who had gone completely still, didn't so much as flinch when Raine put her glowing thumb to his forehead. She stepped in front of Allen and for the first time he was able to get a good look at her. She stood about half a foot shorter than he, her light blue hair and eyebrows offset her pale skin nicely. He couldn't make out if her eyes were blue or green, because the color seemed to shift every time she moved. It was hard to tell under her long black cloak, but it looked as if she had a slight, athletic build. Given all of the amazing things he'd heard of Symbions doing, he didn't think they'd look so…normal. Aside from the hair color, that is. “And one for…” she said, bringing up her hand and pressing her thumb against his forehead. Unlike she had done with the other three, she held her thumb in place for what seemed to Allen like a very long time. He could feel the eyes of the others on him. Rained frowned slightly and chewed on her lower lip. “No…you don't need it,” she said more to herself; Allen doubted that any of the others had heard her. Then she walked back over to stand beside Kaine.

The Reborns marched inexorably towards them, the six of them readying their weapons. Allen's staff wouldn't have been much use in a fight where the goal was dismemberment, and he had left it back at the cart, at any rate. So he managed to scrounge a scythe from one of the local houses that Jaun had pointed out to him. The brothers had noticed it on their earlier search of the houses. Allen guessed that it was about as good as a staff, it just had a long, curved blade on one end. Luckily whatever farmer had swung it before death took this village, had the presence of mind to cap the end of the long handle with iron so it was pretty well balanced. Both Jaun and Kaun had their swords in their right hands, and their long belt knives in their left. Gabe had out his normal belt knife and a block of wood he must have intended to use as a shield / bludgeon. Kaine had one of the two swords he kept strapped to his back out and was idly sharpening it and managing to look bored. Raine's weapons were of a type Allen had never seen before. They were identical except that one looked to be designed for exclusive use by her left hand, and the other for her right hand. The tail end of the weapon was a metal circle that she slid her arm through, which came to a rest just below her elbow. From the top of the circle ran a rounded band of steel that lay covering a good portion of the top of her forearm. Attached to that at the wrist was another metal band for her to put her arm through, then sprouting out of the forearm guard a little below the wrist was a blade that looked like it could belong to a short sword. Allen guessed that its design would allow her to ward off blows with her armored forearm while slashing with the other arm. She glanced back at him and said something to Kaine, who then turned to stare at Allen for longer than was comfortable.

“That one with the white hair's fallen in love with you.” Gabe said at his side. He had been pretty giggly since Raine had “charged” him.

The Reborn miners reached the edge of the town square and the ones in the front stopped, swaying on their invisible strings, waiting for the back ranks to close in. Soon a wall of Reborn stood facing them. Allen did a quick headcount and estimated that about 100 of the miners had been killed in the mines; most all of them still carried their pick-axes.

The brothers smiled and gave each other the thumbs up, then smiled and gave the thumbs up to Allen and Gabe, then finally smiled and gave the thumbs up to the Reborn miners. Allen could only stare blankly at them as he wondered if getting “charged” was such a good thing after all.

-----.-----

The Reborn were all standing there, swaying in unison as if some giant puppet master needed to organize their strings before the big show.

Glancing around, Allen saw that he was the only one who looked even a little bit nervous. The two brothers were talking happily amongst themselves about what the best strategy to dismember a body was. Gabe, who was standing just to his left, was sweating profusely, even in the cold air, but he had a smile on his face and gave Allen a reassuring nod. Slightly ahead of everyone else stood the two Symbions. Kaine was leaning languidly against the hilt of his sword, whose point he had stuck in the ground, and Raine was having a mock fight with an invisible opponent, apparently warming up for the real thing. Allen finally had time to wonder why he hadn't been charged as the others had, when the Reborns suddenly lurched together as one.

Allen jumped a little, taken aback by the speed at which the Reborn seemed to have suddenly achieved. He didn't know if their slow shuffle from before had been a feint, or if their halt at the edge of the town square had been to charge up before the assault. He thought he might ask one of the Symbions about it if he lived through the battle. The charge of the Reborn was a bizarre thing. Allen had always pictured battles as being two big groups of men charging at each other full speed, their weapons held high, and their voices pitched to a scream. The Reborn did indeed have their weapons held high, but the only sound they made was their footfalls in the snow, and the occasional creak of a leather belt. Kaine let them get within a few paces of him before he finally brought up his sword and used it to cut one of the Reborn cleanly in half, then he followed through on that swing by spinning around on one leg and using the momentum to cut through a second miner. Allen noticed that the second miner was halved before the first one had even completely fallen to the ground. Raine, on the other hand, was doing some macabre dance with her opponents. She had garnered a group of five Reborns, who were trying to surround her, but she spun and flailed her arms with amazing speed. One of her blades would hack off a limb while her other weapon was occupied with blocking a blow from a pickaxe. Allen stood transfixed, watching her weave in and out of her opponent's defenses, blocking here and dismembering there, all the while managing to dance around the arcs of blood flying through the air. He was so engrossed in her fight that he barely noticed his own fight was coming to him, until Gabe nudged him hard in the ribs. Several of the Reborn had made it around the Symbion and were charging down on his and Gabe's position, while another group was headed for the brothers.

Allen tightened his grip on his scythe and stepped a few paces away from Gabe so as not to pose a danger to him as they fought. The Reborn bore down on them and finally reached the point where he could take a swing at one. The long blade of his scythe arced through the air and sliced through the torso of one of the miners. He brought his scythe back up for another swipe at a Reborn, dully noting that the blood on the long blade was glowing a faint red. During his battles with other miners, he was able to spare a glance at Gabe and saw that between his belt knife and his block of wood, he was having no troubles. Kaine had been correct; the Reborn were not especially graceful fighters. They would raise their pick-axes above their heads and swing it down. If that failed, they would try the exact same thing again. It was mostly a challenge to see if you could incapacitate them while either dodging or blocking their blows. Even those without pick-axes would use the same fighting tactics as their fellows, except they would seek to bludgeon with their bare hands. Allen heard laughter and glanced over at the brothers while following through on a swing of his scythe. The two brothers weren't just holding their own; they seemed to be having a grand time of it. They would lure in one of the Reborn and then stand perfectly still, waiting for the pick-axe to come down. Then they would jump out of the way at the last second. One of the other of them would offhandedly kill a few Reborn, as if annoyed at the distraction to their game. Allen saw Kaine look back and shake his head as he watched the brother's antics. “Yep, they're definitely weird,” Allen grunted as he wrestled the scythe's blade free from where it had caught on a bone.

-----.-----

For having been outnumbered fifteen to one, the battle went pretty smoothly. The only injury was a nick on Kaun from where he didn't jump back fast enough while he and his brother were playing Reborn-Baiting, as they called it.

Allen was hunting out unspoiled patches of snow and using it to clean some of the faintly glowing blood from his arms, hands, face, and hair. He couldn't help but to keep looking around at the carnage of the town square. Blood and body parts covered nearly all of the visible ground. He kept thinking how all of those Reborns he'd fought had once been normal men, who loved their families, worked hard for them everyday…he even thought he recognized a few of them from their occasional visits to Gilder's Hollow. There was just so much carnage, so much senseless death and he still didn't have any idea why. Who would want to kill an entire village? Well, not really kill. Who would want to turn an entire village into an army of Reborns?

“They wouldn't have been happy,” Kaine said walking up beside him.

“What?”, asked Allen, broken out of his thoughts.

“They wouldn't have been happy being Reborns,” Kaine answered. “These people would not have been happy being a tool of the darkness…cursed to live on after death, killing for the dark one. You did them a favor,” he finished and walked over to Rain, who Allen guessed was giving much the same speech to Gabe.

The glow of the blood was just beginning to fade as Allen glanced up at the hill leading into town and saw the sled and the other men from Gilder's Hollow making their way into town.

“Was getting worried,” Almon said as the group stopped their journey short of the gruesome town square. His eyes were wide as he tried to take in too many sites at once. He looked like he couldn't decide if he should stare at the carnage of the miners, the dead villagers still laying about everywhere, the two Symbions, or his son covered from head to toe in blood.

“It's a long story,” Allen answered for him to save him from having to ask.

“There should be time to tell it while we bury all these folk,” Almon said, glancing around at all of the bodies. “Some might require a bit more work,” he mumbled as his eyes fell on the miners, who'd been literally hacked to pieces.

Once again, Allen felt he had to derelict his sacred duty to the dead. “I think that we'd better be getting back to our homes,” he said, looking around. “Whatever did all this might be stopping there next.”

“Wise choice,” Kaine said, walking by leading a big, black horse that he must have hid in the town's stables.

“Ooh, he does like you,” Raine chimed in as she mounted her snow white horse and started out of town talking to Kaine, who was studiously ignoring her.

There was nothing left for the men of Gilder's Hollow to do but climb into their sled and follow the Symbions out of the graveyard that was New Load.

Chapter Four End.