"Clockwork asylum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koke Jak)

Prologue

Lethe fell.

The last crimson rays of the waning sunset painted the walls of Hells Canyon. The dark scar of the Snake River below grew thicker as he plummeted toward it. He willed himself to follow Burnout into the abyss, pushing his spirit close as the cyberzombie dropped. The cliffs on either side narrowed, and the universe contracted around Lethe as he fell after the cyberzombie called Burnout.

The cyberzombie looked human for the most part, but Lethe felt a cold, inhuman radiance from him. In the physical world, Burnout was very big, at least two and a half meters, with a density to him that spoke of cybernetic limbs and torso. His bald head was perfectly symmetrical and looked tiny on his massive shoulders and chest. His legs were strangely proportioned, with elongated shins and shortened, overly muscled thighs.

This… creature is perhaps the opposite of me, Lethe thought. Lethe was pure spirit, and unable to manifest in the physical world at all.

In the astral, Lethe saw that most of Burnout's spirit was gone. His aura was a dark shadow amid a glowing constellation of magic and spells. His true spirit was somehow separated from his body. Out of phase.

Lethe had never seen anything like it. He noticed a slight hazing in the astral wherever the cyberzombie passed. This creature was polluting astral space by its mere existence. Highly unnatural.

In one hand, Burnout clutched the Dragon Heart-an artifact that glowed gold and white-hot in the astral. Very powerful magic.

Lethe willed himself into Burnout's body of metal and flesh. He possessed the cyberzombie and overwhelmed the man's spirit, which flickered like a weak candle, barely tethered to the meager amount of natural flesh that remained inside the machinery.

I must protect the Dragon Heart, Lethe thought. I can still save Thayla.

Burnout's body crashed into the cliff wall, bouncing off with a grinding crunch. Lethe tried to extend his will into Burnout's cybernetic arms, to make the man bring the Dragon Heart close to his chest. To protect it. Despite massive exertion, Lethe could not influence the creature's metal parts.

That brought the first wave of panic. Lethe was a powerful spirit, a creature of will and energy who was not bound by flesh and could not influence the physical world except by possessing the bodies of living creatures. He had only tried it twice before, that he could remember, and only in emergencies, but each time he had gained full control over the host body.

Here he was merely an observer. A passenger.

The canyon walls closed around him. Narrower and narrower. It was pitch dark; Lethe didn't know when he would hit bottom. Burnout was falling like a bullet now, his metal growing hot from the speed. He impacted on the rock again, smashing his left shoulder. And again, scraping a wide patch of skin off the shiny metal sheathing.

Still he did not drop the Dragon Heart. Lethe felt its power close. Saw it through the cyborg's artificial eyes. Somehow that visual information made its way into the organic brain and Lethe could tap into it.

Burnout hit the black water and should have died. Water like duracrete. His hot metal casing warped under the impact, and Lethe knew that much of his cybernetics were destroyed. But whether it was Lethe's presence or the Dragon Heart, the man's spirit decided to stay with his remaining flesh.

As Burnout's body sank into the depths of the Snake River, Lethe panicked once again, not in fear for his own existence, but because he couldn't imagine anyone finding Burnout's body in time to get the Heart to Thayla at the magical spike.

The memory of Thayla came to him as he sank. He remembered when he had first awakened and been named by her, the goddess of the light and the song. Thayla had stopped her singing to speak to him. A song so perfect, so painfully wonderful that he could not move.

She had stood on the hard, cracked ground of a stone outcropping, framed by a colorless sky. A deep chasm surrounded her on three sides, the chasm dropping away in front of her precipitously. Lethe had no concept of the depth of this chasm; he could not see the bottom. The outcropping thickened into a broad arc as it stretched away behind them, widening ever so slightly as it extended. Until finally it connected with solid land in the distance.

"This outcropping is the result of unnaturally high magic," Thayla had said. "The Chasm, here, is the gap between our worlds and those of the… the…" She faltered, pain evident in her speech.

Lethe remembered looking out across the abyss. In the absence of Thayla's song, wind roared around them, throwing her hair across her face. The far side of the chasm was barely visible in the blowing distance, but Lethe could make out a similar cliff at the reaches of his perception. He could see a similar outcropping protruding toward them from the land on that side. Darkness clung to the distant cliff, and as Lethe looked across that space, revulsion rose inside him. A desperate nausea as he glimpsed the creatures writhing on the other side.

"I am here to prevent them from completing their bridge," Thayla continued. "They are evil and horrifying and more powerful than we can imagine. If they can finish the bridge, they will come in droves. And when they come, they will destroy everything they can touch. They will torture us. They will make us all do things…" Again her voice wavered.

Lethe shivered at her distress. Her voice was powerful even in shock.

Thayla took a breath and composed herself. "As the natural cycle of mana increases, the Chasm will grow narrower. But these outcroppings are unnatural-spikes above the normal mana level. The result of blood magic. Our worlds are not ready."

"But your singing…"

She smiled at him, the light beaming from her and warming him. "My song stops them. You see, they cannot stand to hear it, and my voice carries even across the Chasm."

Lethe knew it to be true: her song was the light.

"There are those on our side who are working to accelerate the completion of the bridge, those who are puppets of the Enemy and who are trying to hasten their coming. Look." She pointed back down the outcropping.

At first Lethe didn't see it because it was so small, a shadow among shadows. But when Thayla began to sing again, filling the world with light and beauty, a tiny blemish of darkness remained. It was almost insignificant, and it lasted only briefly, but Lethe had seen it-a flaw in her song.

"They have found one who can withstand the song," she said. "She is not strong enough to stay long, but I fear her strength will grow. And when it does, others will come. They will kill me."

Lethe's spirit sank as Thayla's song died away.

"Unless you stop them," she said.

"How?"

"You must find the great dragon called Dunkelzahn. He came to me not long ago and told me that I would not be able to hold off the Enemy's forces for longer than a few hundred years. He said they would find a weakness in my song. He said he needed more time.

"Dunkelzahn promised to create an item that would keep the Enemy from crossing over prematurely. The Dragon Heart."

Thayla bowed her head. "But that was some time ago, and the dark spot is growing. I fear something has happened. Will you go and find Dunkelzahn? Will you bring the Dragon Heart to me?"

"I will," Lethe had said. "I promise."

Now, trapped inside Burnout's metal husk, sinking toward the cold heart of the river, Lethe wondered how he would be able to keep his promise. He couldn't move the cyberzombie and he had no one to help him.

Ryan Mercury certainly couldn't be trusted. Lethe had seen the human claim the Heart for his own. Mercury had succumbed to the power of the Heart; he had simply jettisoned any pretense of carrying out the quest Dunkelzahn had given him. He had refused to take the Dragon Heart to Thayla, and Lethe would never trust him again.

Perhaps the other gifted one, Nadja Daviar, could be convinced to help him get the Dragon Heart to Thayla. She had always helped him in the past. Yes, he thought, I will go to her.

Lethe willed himself to flee Burnout's body.

Nothing happened. He couldn't move.

By the goddess! What is going on?

Lethe kept sinking inside the unconscious metal corpse. Then he noticed a spectral mesh of magic, barely visible. Like a gossamer web of fine strands, the mesh held Burnout's spirit to his body. The web kept Burnout's spirit from leaving the too little flesh. It was part of the cybermancy that allowed the man to be alive even with all this hardware.

Now that same magic blocked Lethe from getting out.

Lethe struggled, exerting all his power against the magic that held him. The gossamer strands stretched and bulged, but they would not break. Lethe was trapped.

An inmate inside this metal asylum. This clockwork prison. 20 August 2057