“Thank you very much for your co-operation, Cleric,” Wreath said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have much to arrange.”

Solus waved him away, his pen already scratching as Wreath left his office.

Chapter 25 - The Vivid Dead

Chapter 25
The Vivid Dead

he world felt different to her now, ever since the Surge. It even looked different: paler, more vague. Less real. The people looked different too. She could see, for the first time, how glassy and unfocused their eyes were, how translucent their skin. She thought, if she concentrated hard enough, that she’d be able to see through them, to the underneath, to the blood and the veins and bones. She wondered if that would reassure her that all this was real. She doubted it.

The White Cleaver was at the door. He stood like a statue, his scythe held in one hand. He was real to her. He was solid. He was as different to a zombie as humans were to apes, but he was still a dead thing. And as such, she didn’t even have to look at him to know he was there. She could feel him. She didn’t know how, she couldn’t explain it, but while everyone else had become vague and distant, he was the one clear thing she could latch on to for comfort.

The other man in the room, another guard, was so insubstantial he was almost a ghost. She’d spoken to him a few times, and before the Surge he had appeared perfectly normal. But she was seeing things differently now. She reached out with her mind, trying to sense him in the same way she sensed the White Cleaver. She could feel her awareness expanding around her, moving out in all directions like a bubble. She felt emptiness, and the emptiness made her uneasy, tied a knot in her stomach. But still she expanded her awareness, searching for the man. He made a sound, his body stiffening, and he became real to her so suddenly that she pulled back in shock. The bubble of her awareness retracted and the man toppled. She knew he was dead, she could feel it before he hit the floor, and she pulled his death into her, absorbing it, letting it make her stronger.

The White Cleaver turned his head slightly to look at the dead Necromancer, but made no move other than that. Melancholia stared at the dead man, marvelling at how vivid he seemed now that he was dead. She reached out, touched his leg. He was so solid, she almost laughed. She wasn’t alone. So long as there were dead people around her, she wasn’t going to drown in a sea of uncertainty. Her heart felt lighter than it had all day.

Chapter 26 - Terminal Two

Chapter 26
Terminal Two